>> Robert Hess: The world around us is built up of infinite diversity and infinite
combinations, hardest of all types commonly embody a diverse set of talents and
interests. This gives them a rich array of experiences to draw upon in their work.
Today's guest surrounds his passion for technology with a diverse collection of
experiences which provides him a strong foundation for solving many of the hard
problems faced by modern operating systems.
Hello. I'm Robert Hess, and I'll be your host today as we talk with Richard Ward,
distinguished engineer in the Windows Core Architecture group. I hope you
enjoy this chance to look at the technology and the person behind the code.
Richard comes from a family with a strong passion for technology. But despite
that or perhaps in support of it, his own path to Microsoft was one which included
a variety of personal interest and studies. Attending a liberal arts college and
often spending a lot of time with studio arts and theatrical engineering, Richard's
path finally brought him to Microsoft in 1989 where he has become a leader in
the very infrastructure of windows.
But before I bring Richard out, let's hear from one of his colleagues,y Rebecca
ignore lander.
>>: When I heard that Richard was being asked to participate in behind the
code, I was very excited. Richard has a long history at the company and he's
been a great asset to Microsoft and to the industry. But really what I wanted to
do was figure out what I could say on camera that was, you know, dirt or
secretive or something that would get people to really laugh or know who Richard
is.
So I thought about it for a long time, and I racked my brain and I contacted all of
our friends and we all sent mail back and forth. But at the end of the day,
Richard Ward is a quiet force who has greater impacted both Microsoft Windows
and the industry at large, in Windows and security technologies. And there's not
a lot of bad things that you can say about him.
>> Robert Hess: Join me now as I welcome today's guest, Richard Ward.
[applause].
>> Richard Ward: So no dirt, huh? Great. [laughter].
>> Richard Ward: Best way to start I think.
>> Robert Hess: You know, that was Rebecca's chance to actually get back to
you for you not being able to say anything bad about her.
>> Richard Ward: Well, yeah, except as an [inaudible] maybe that was good.
>> Robert Hess: So I mean, technology. How did you first get started in
technology? What piqued your interest from a childhood standpoint?
>> Richard Ward: It was something kind of ever present in our house. My
parents actually met at IBM and my mom was actually the software engineer, so
we were kind of ->> Robert Hess: And what did your dad do?
>> Richard Ward: He was in sales actually. Selling to the banks on Wall Street
and but he was always interested in engineering and my mom had this -- actually
had the software background, and the notion of computers was not foreign to our
house really ever.
>> Robert Hess: So there really want any time where you said gee, what is this
technology thing, it just was always there just like food and TV and grass?
>> Richard Ward: Technology wasn't much larger back then, wasn't quite like we
have now where we have gadgets everywhere.
>> Robert Hess: So how do you think then your growing up was different than
other children who probably so imbued with technology?
>> Richard Ward: I don't think it was terribly different the at all, we still played
outside and rode our bikes and all those good things, but we also learned
different base arithmetic and things like that at home to kind ->> Robert Hess: Different base arithmetic?
>> Richard Ward: Yes. We had to learn hex and binary and octal when we were
growing up. [laughter].
>> Robert Hess: That's a little bit different. Did you realize why you were
needing to learn that?
>> Richard Ward: Not really. Not really.
>> Robert Hess: About your parents just having fun with you
>> Richard Ward: I think my dad was just having fun with us.
>> Robert Hess: And what did your teachers think of that?
>> Richard Ward: It didn't really apply until many years later, so when you count
other stuff in normal math courses, I remember this, we discussed this around
the kitchen table. Does make you think oddly a little bit.
>> Robert Hess: So what was your first computer?
>> Richard Ward: The first computer we had was -- that we all had -- got a
chance to use was the Commodore PET. Back in 19 -- my dad came home with
it in 1978.
>> Robert Hess: I remember those computers, kind of those strange little
devices with little built in monitor on the top of it and everything.
>> Richard Ward: Yeah, it was all in one, it was large and heavy, and it was the
bigger one, it was 8K.
>> Robert Hess: I think my watch has more memory than that now.
>> Richard Ward: Yeah.
>> Robert Hess: So what was your first program that you remember writing?
And what language was it in?
>> Richard Ward: Well, language was basic of course, and everything ran on
basic. I don't know if you -- those days you could get these books worth of
games and odd programs and big source books that you would then type
everything all in, because there's no common interchange formula at that point.
The Commodore had a tape drive that you could a cassette tape drive that you
use one format and no one else had the same thing, so you would type it all in all
over again, the moon lander stimulation or something like that.
>> Robert Hess: I remember one of my first computers I spent all day long
typing the program and then realized I didn't have the tape interface program for
it, so I couldn't even -- so I just had to turn the computer off at the end of the day
and all the stuff was gone. So from there, where did you take and move from a
computer science or technology standpoint from the early PETs and things like
that?
>> Richard Ward: Well, we had -- starting from that point we had a computer in
the house all the time, and we had -- there was a joint project between TRW
[inaudible] that my father was involved in, so he had something from that era and
then we moved to Albany New York and we -- it was -- he was working at a
different bank and that was a total IBM shop, so we had a PC.
>> Robert Hess: And each of the kids have their own computer?
>> Richard Ward: Oh, no. Not quite there yet. There was one computer and.
>> Robert Hess: You had to fight for it?
>> Richard Ward: My siblings are substantially older than I was, so by the time
we got ->> Robert Hess: You didn't get much time on the computer then?
>> Richard Ward: Well, they were on to other things as teenagers that they were
-- when I was 12 and 13 it was like look at this, it's all to myself.
>> Robert Hess: Now, your siblings, did they also go into the technology area?
>> Richard Ward: Some degree. My brother tends more towards hardware, and
my sister tends more to the design rather than hardware or software.
>> Robert Hess: And when did you know that you wanted to go into technology
as a career?
>> Richard Ward: That's kind of a tough question. There's lots of different ways
you go with technology. For a while I was thinking, wow, wouldn't pure science
research be, you know, fascinating, we could read all about astronomy and
physics and cool stuff going on there, but I think once you start creating real -once I had a chance to start creating real programs and real things on the
computer, then that got me hooked.
>> Robert Hess: The bug got you with that?
>> Richard Ward: It's a great creative output where you can do something and
type it up and you can see results. It's actually pretty cool.
>> Robert Hess: From an educational standpoint after high school, you know,
where did you focus on going to to get your computer science degree?
>> Richard Ward: Well, I opted for a liberal art college, small liberal college
nestled in the heart of the brasheers [phonetic].
>> Robert Hess: A liberal art college?
>> Richard Ward: Yes.
>> Robert Hess: And what drove to you that college specifically?
>> Richard Ward: Well, that specifically was a great college and, you know,
you're doing the little college tour and you're a senior you're in high school and
you can settle upon whatever you want. Computer science courses as majors
were just kind of kicking off and the liberal arts world at that point, and so most of
them are offshoots of the math department and they were just coming into their
own as a new discipline.
>> Robert Hess: Where nowadays, you know, almost every school has a big
gigantic computer science going on.
>> Richard Ward: Many schools do have these programs. I don't know if they're
big gigantic. Depends on the school.
>> Robert Hess: So being at a liberal arts school, did you actually then take and
study some liberal arts courses in addition to the technology?
>> Richard Ward: Oh, definitely. I mean, we -- part of the -- the goal behind I
guess liberal arts in general is to have a rounded liberal education, right? Well,
not liberal politically, but liberal in coverage. So ->> Robert Hess: What sort of courses?
>> Richard Ward: What sort of courses? That was 20 years ago.
>> Robert Hess: And who with your teachers? [laughter].
>> Richard Ward: You know, languages and art and economics and ->> Robert Hess: I understand you did some theatre work there as well?
>> Richard Ward: I did some theatre work on campus and I continued helping
with a French theatre in Seattle when I came down here for a while.
>> Robert Hess: So in the theatre stuff you did there at the college, what sort of
were you like an actor on stage or ->> Richard Ward: Oh, no, no, no, I'm not one to try the boards. I did the lights
and technical aspect of theatre, design, some sound work.
>> Robert Hess: So you were one of the people that we're always waiting on to
get the lights finally fixed up before we actually start the show, right?
>> Richard Ward: Because it's very hard as a technical person to wait for all this
talent, the lights stop vibrating and getting everything focused. And they never
get their queues right.
>> Robert Hess: And you're saying you actually continue on in the theatre from
that standpoint. So you've been in theatre since then until now or take a break or
something?
>> Richard Ward: So it's two or three years after I came out here some friends of
mine from college moved out to Seattle and set up a friend's theater, Theater
Schmeater town in Seattle, and so I helped out there on their board. I did some
several shows. And it's a charitable organization. If one can donate, it's great.
>> Robert Hess: We'll be passing out cards later on?
>> Richard Ward: Yes. Schmeater.org. Find it online. So certainly having a
salary helps because I can help feed them money and we've got lots of
equipment and ran lots of shows.
>> Robert Hess: And do you find a good balance that people have this
technology career as well as some other interest like the liberal arts and stuff like
that in theater?
>> Richard Ward: You have to have balance. If everything you do is the same
that you do for work, then you really don't have a lot of -- anything else to look
forward to. It's just more of the same.
>> Robert Hess: And you think maybe some of the courses you took and the
liberal arts actually play a role and you being a better Microsoft engineer?
>> Richard Ward: I'd like to think so. Other people would be the judge of that, I
guess, but, you know, you get a broader perspective on things, and you can
understand better where people are coming from, you can use language and
figure out how to communicate your ideas to other people by having a broader
set of experiences to draw upon.
>> Robert Hess: So you often speak Latin in some of your meetings and stuff
like that?
>> Richard Ward: Poor Latin.
>> Robert Hess: Now, quite often we have guests on the show here and we're
talking about their technology background, quite often it's very much focused on
just technologies where you've actually take and expanded beyond that quite a
bit. You know, I feel that having that level of diversity provides other ways of
thinking about problems when you're actually doing things. Do you have any
maybe specific problems that have come up recently that you can think of that
having a non technical lean on things maybe helped you solve better?
>> Richard Ward: I don't know if any problems recently. I think many of the
things that we work on involve communicating with other people and expressing
ideas and concepts, particularly technical complicated ideas and concepts to
people who may not be well versed in background of either the technology in
general or in specific areas of say Microsoft technology. And I was involved with
some of the people, some who were even in the [inaudible] and protocol
documentation for example where we really needed to express some very
complicated concepts that have been built up over 15, 20 years at Microsoft and
you have three months and 50 pages to do it in. Getting those concepts out,
coming up with phrasing, figuring out what people need to hear helps out with
that.
>> Robert Hess: So you take, you know, some creative writing here almost,
you're almost writing a story.
>> Richard Ward: You have to be creative. It's not creative writing, it's
nonfiction. It's all truth. [laughter].
>> Robert Hess: There's true stories and there's fake stories. I've seen some
documents that look like they're probably fake stories.
>> Richard Ward: That's more in product planning. [laughter].
>> Robert Hess: Now, so you focus mostly not on product planning but actually
doing the actual engineering and research directly for the system itself?
>> Richard Ward: We try. We obviously had to be closely tied to the product
lining process to make sure that give our input into what's tenable, can be done
with the code that we have, you know, the source code that we have available
can support or how much work would it be to make huge changes or small
changes but we have to stay close to what actually gets turn into real product
and it's a large process. A lot of people involved, and we help out.
>> Robert Hess: Now, in going to Microsoft, did you have any other jobs
between college and Microsoft?
>> Richard Ward: No, actually. I came out here, I was -- I had intended to stay
in the Boston area but in 1989, Boston technology kind of crashed and I was
looking around, and I came out here almost on a lark. I forget. Two, three years
tops.
>> Robert Hess: And do you remember what your thoughts were about
Microsoft back in those days?
>> Richard Ward: It was kind of.
>> Robert Hess: Because we're still a real small company back there.
>> Richard Ward: It was a small company that was doing some suffering for IBM
really and I didn't know -- that's why I didn't think it was really going to last that
long because it was really IBM that was pulling the strings, right? That didn't last
that long.
>> Robert Hess: So in 1989, you finally come to Microsoft. What was your first
job?
>> Richard Ward: I was hired into the -- was then call the network business unit.
Officially working on a product called LANMAN 90 but that -- it was an attempt to
distribute operating system with, you know, structures, integrated storage and -I'm sure you've heard a lot of stories about integrated storage here. I won't go
into that. As with most things, I got pulled over to the actual product line which
was LAN Manager, LANMAN 2.0 is what I got pulled on to and helped with that
for a while, and then went over and work on NT briefly during its starting phases
and then back over to startup that was called Caro [phonetic].
>> Robert Hess: Caro, yeah. I remember that well.
>> Richard Ward: Shutter a little bit and looking funny.
>> Robert Hess: I mean, Caro really was a very groundbreaking project that we
were working on and a lot of the stuff that you guys were working on in that
project then are actually still coming into the operating system these days.
>> Richard Ward: Caro as a complete operating system was overly ambitious.
Caro had a set of technologies that really helped solve problems and haven't
been able to come out over the last 15 years. They still come out and appear in
different products. I was on the distributed, just distributed system side, the
networking side, not the easier interface side. People always have opinions
about user interface. But on the networking side, we've been able to leverage a
lot of the stuff that we -- or the ideas that we originally had in Caro and take them
to version.
>> Robert Hess: What do you see as being some of the core tenets that Caro
was trying to achieve I mean as an operating system?
>> Richard Ward: Boy, core tenets that Caro was trying to achieve? I think the
biggest change that we were trying in Caro was to make the network more
central to the way business was done, and so while you were [inaudible] your
PC, obviously you're using applications on the PC as a rich experience running
windows, you really wanted to be thinking heavily about distributed computation
in the sense of we've got servers, file servers, print servers, direct entries, useful
objects and really take strides in moving out towards a less one client, couple
servers to lots of clients and gazillions of servers.
>> Robert Hess: And you've got to remember, this is bag in the days when the
network really wasn't quite as pervasive as it is now. I mean like in our officers
we had usually two computers, one computer working on and one computer that
was connected via Zenix to the e-mail system.
>> Richard Ward: Yes, we did -- I did that in my office when I started. Actually I
still have my ungarin bass [phonetic] NTP thick Ethernet transceiver box, it was a
monitor stand. Every time we moved, the movers try to hook it up and that I had
have no idea how it fits together, because, you know, it doesn't fit in the
[inaudible] any more. They don't know what to do. Networking was kind of in its
infancy back then and even back then we there was net buoy and there was IPX
and PX and IP/TCP was, well, that was kind of a researching kind of thing the
overhead was viewed as too high as opposed to net buoy and some other things,
but now, you know, the world runs around -- on IP.
>> Robert Hess: I mean like.
>> Richard Ward: Everything is connected.
>> Robert Hess: Everything is -[brief talking over]
>> Robert Hess: Water glasses are almost connected, you know, so it's then
after working on Caro then, what else did you do after that?
>> Richard Ward: So after Caro we got folded into Windows NT group, and so
we got folded in just in time for NT 3.5 officially and I stayed in that product line
since.
>> Robert Hess: And you enjoy actually working on the internals of the system
rather than the gooey interfaces?
>> Richard Ward: I do. I find more reward in creating, you know, services and
systems that just run in the background and you never really think about them
and hopefully they stay up for weeks and months and years. I appreciate a good
gooey. I don't have problems giving feedback to the people that are doing it, but
that's not actually drawing the pixels is not something that's really been appealing
to me.
>> Robert Hess: You know, in our previous episode with Rebecca, she
mentioned that you guys worked on security together. So in security became
kind of a big part of your career from that standpoint.
>> Richard Ward: Yeah, actually I -- from the beginning I was hired to do
security for LAM 90 and Caro and all the way through. I had been doing -- I did
security for the first 14 years I was here. Officially security and now that's one of
the things we worry about. And it was always, you know, there's a shift between
creating security technologies at the time where we're trying to figure out how to
do, you know, more advanced methods of authentication and securing new
communication methods and trying to get the systems online and then the last
six years or so we've been saying okay, you know, we don't need this much more
new secured technology as it is to, okay, everything else has to catch up and
deal with a totally new threat model.
>> Robert Hess: Yeah, because in a pre, everything's connected world, security
from the outside wasn't that big of a deal, and we didn't even think about people
being as malicious as we see people being these days.
>> Richard Ward: I think we saw people as being malicious, however, we
leveraged a lot of things in the early days about, okay, you know, your building
has to have physical security, right, someone can come in and kick your server in
the side and it falls over, you know, worrying about them selling bad software is
not the big problem.
As everything's gotten connected then that guy doesn't need to worry about the
visual security we're building, he can rap on your doors a test your locks from
halfway around the world. Okay. That's different world than now, the network
lets it -- changes the whole situation. So instead of here are some bad neighbors
or I can decide what level of security I need, our physical security on the store
and, you know, maybe another secure door inside to keep the server safe now,
we really keep -- that part doesn't matter as much as the fact that we need to
figure out what packets are actually going in and out.
>> Robert Hess: So everything is always marching forward. Now, you actually
are focussed not on the current versus of Windows and not even the next version
of Windows, you're actually currently working on the version after that, right?
>> Richard Ward: I'll answer that carefully. Everyone in Windows is focussed on
Windows to some degree, and I'm not working day to day on Windows 7, which
is the next version that's coming out as of this taping. But I'm on the team that is.
I run the internal bills, I file bugs, I work with people, I do reviews of stuff, we dig
into possible problem areas and work out kinks of designs that having on for the
last year. But on the other side, we're also looking at, okay, here's an incubation
that we have reviewed this week, an incubation that we started up eight months
ago, we're using some of our technology in new ways and, okay, that's
something that we probably should think seriously about factoring into Windows
8, which will be or whatever the next version of Windows is.
>> Robert Hess: Windows plus plus plus or whatever. So I'd like to spend some
more time talking kind of exactly what your current group is doing as much as
you can talk about it, anyway, and what some of the problems that we overall
need to face on focussing. But before we get to that, we've got another little
short little blurb we have from one of your current colleagues, Richard Plecher
[phonetic], and we'd like to see what he has to say about you.
>> Richard Ward: Okay.
>>: So I've been working with Richard Ward for about five years now on core
architecture team and COSD, and the thing I've always noticed about him is in a
meeting he tends to sort of be a placater he if there's confrontation, he sort of
restates both sides of the argument in a more neutral way and usually pacifies
things even with upper management meetings the same kind of thing.
>> Robert Hess: So I really did try to find someone that gives me dirt on you,
but, you know, it's like there isn't dirt to ask. So he's basically saying that, you
know, you're kind of the guy that holds these meetings together and keeps the
different teams kind of at bay sometimes. Do you feel like you do that?
>> Richard Ward: Some days worse than others, yes. Some meetings worse
than others. I say, a lot of our -- a lot of my job be and the job of senior technical
people here is to get people talking about their ideas and their requirements and
get them communicating in a way that's actually productive and so that involves
getting people into a room and getting each side to vent for 10 minutes and get
the worst of the out of the room and okay, let's talk about what you're really
saying and usually the differences aren't that much.
>> Robert Hess: Okay. Now, Richard mentioned COSD. What is that like an
acronym for ->> Richard Ward: COSD is the corps operating systems division.
>> Robert Hess: And so what is the core architecture mean exactly?
>> Richard Ward: So the core architecture team is a team that was set up, boy,
about five, six years ago where we were dedicated full-time to be thinking about
the architecture of the system as a whole. So rather than what we had been
doing before, where we had a kind of a collection of people who were deep in
their particular technology areas like networking or security or graphics or
something like that, we took about five people to kick it off whose full-time job
was to think about the system and how all the pieces fit together and how -- what
the hard problems were that we're dealing with in the future and ->> Robert Hess: So you still have the individual team maybe focussed on the
networking and stuff like that, but now this is the team that sits above them that is
seeing how everything pulls together or besides them?
>> Richard Ward: Well, we very carefully try not to say above, right. We're all
working on the same product, and we definitely -- we didn't want to become
gatekeepers or design mavens or submitting like that, it was like more along the
lines of have you -- oh, you're doing this, you're doing this in networking, have
you talked to the people in the terminal services stack, have you talked to so and
so over there, because they're doing something similar.
And so in a certain sense it was a clearing house of ideas that were going on
where the -- at the feature design level where the program managers were
communicating back and forth it was perhaps at a level that didn't describe all the
actual technical interactions and so someone said oh, we're doing this, and
someone else said oh, we're doing this other thing, we were in the position of
saying, wow, have you guys talked to so and so, because they're doing
something similar or their counting on no one using this interface and now so and
so you are, you have to go work it out.
>> Robert Hess: So did your team actually program in or you just simply
facilitating other programmers? It's kind of hard to ->> Richard Ward: Well, so yes, we do do some programming still. Let's see.
What's a good example. Well, we can't just take over for other teams and oh,
you're not doing your job right, oh, we'll step in and help you out.
>> Robert Hess: As much as you might like to sometimes?
>> Richard Ward: Well, we'll skip that answer. [laughter].
You know, storming in and saying oh, we're going to come safe the day double
help anyone, it didn't help the teams grow, it doesn't help engender better
communication or anything else in the future. So we're -- my team is coding still
as in incubation areas primarily. Or prototyping and figuring out some things. So
we had people working for me during the early part of Vista investigating how to
figure -- free audio-video transports so when you're streaming something that's
high-def with really framework requirements, how could we adjust priorities and
keep the system running and the packets flowing over the net and all these other
things without stopping on the video streams so because no -- when you're
watching the video you don't want to see shutters and gaps and because the
frame couldn't be generated correctly.
And so he dug in and did lots of coding, figured out what the design should be,
and -- but he was prototyping. So we threw it all away and said here are the
currents, here is the technique you should use and gave it to the team to -- well,
three teams I guess at that point to do the right implementation.
>> Robert Hess: I think that sounds like an extremely important work that you're
doing because it is basically assisting them in giving a leg up on what the
problems are helps identify the different areas of the system, especially with
something like the video playback is going to actually touch different parts of the
system. You've got to operate the file system with the network with the video
with all pieces of it.
>> Richard Ward: Yes.
>> Robert Hess: You know, and also you're talking about security being a big
thing there. Being a group that is kind of looking at the uber picture of the
operating system, since security does dive so deeply across different pieces that
also gives you capability of pulling all that together, understanding what the
landscape is like and what some of the possible risks and threats might be.
>> Richard Ward: Yes. I think that for me personally my history through the
security team where we worked on the kernel code, we worked on distributed
networking code, protocols, management tools, even some gooey stuff, that let
me have a fairly broad [inaudible] of the operating system and you know, moving
forward the -- there was lots of things that need to be secured, there was lots of
things that affect the security of the system even though they may not seem that
way on the surface.
And so even down to the level of oh, you know, your -- yes, we want your feature
to be showcased but your feature still needs to opt into that before, you know,
you introduce things in a safe way, even though that's -- whatever you're working
on is really important, really cool, you can't surprise people and turn on without a
warning.
>> Robert Hess: Plus it also seems a sense, you know, you're not necessarily
working on a particular technology, but kind of your fingers in all the different
technologies across the operating system. This is really where diversity comes
in again. I mean, you've got to take -- you and your team have to understand the
diverse set of technologies involved in an operating system as a big unit.
>> Richard Ward: Yes. We are called upon to understand a lot of things and
fortunately often on short notice. Oh, some things maybe not working out right,
okay, let's dive in and give it a couple weeks to sort some things out.
>> Robert Hess: Do you think the other members on your team perhaps also
had the same diversity education that you've had with liberal arts and theater and
stuff like that?
>> Richard Ward: I -- I think we have a fair amount of diversity of backgrounds. I
know people who have never had formal higher education on my team and I
have got people who have grad school and everything in between. So and that's
a yes, I guess, lots of diversity.
>> Robert Hess: And do you, I mean by looking at other teams like the whole
work life balancing can also be a problem, do you think your team, since they're
having to think in such a diverse model, perhaps has a better work life balance
than some of the teams that are maybe really focused on things?
>> Richard Ward: I'd say that the work life balance is more of a personal choice
and how you manage your time rather than the work load that's presented to you.
When things are popping, you know, I stay up all night if I have to, to get some
things done, and when things are relaxed, then I can get home at 5:00 and go
play catch with my son. And so it's -- it's how you manage your own balance.
>> Robert Hess: Speaking about the home life, you know, I understand you've
got a farm; is that right?
>> Richard Ward: We have a horse farm, yes. My wife runs a boarding facility
and [phonetic] facility.
>> Robert Hess: That sounds a bit different from you know Microsoft in one
hand and farm on the other.
>> Richard Ward: Well, it's a fairly high tech farm.
>> Robert Hess: Green Acres comes to mind a little bit.
>> Richard Ward: So it's a well wired farm. Yeah, I think many people from my
past are surprised to hear that I'm a gentleman farmer sometimes. So maybe
there's -- it's great for laughs sometimes, too, because we'll throw pictures of me
picturing a stall or something like that. I can use that as an analogy for some of
my job aspects. [laughter].
>> Robert Hess: Shoveling manure sometimes is really shoveling manure.
>> Richard Ward: I'm sorry it's a metaphor and sometimes it's -- [laughter].
>> Robert Hess: And, you know, today in coming into the show you actually
bicycled into the studios and so I take it that bicycling is a big part of your life as
well?
>> Richard Ward: I do enjoy bicycling, try to do a couple organized rides during
the summer. And September has been really nice weatherwise which is where
we are right now and I got special dispensation not to take my son into work so I
could keep biking for a while. Take my son into the school on my way to work.
>> Robert Hess: And how far is the ride from here to home?
>> Richard Ward: It's just about -- just under 12 miles. 11.8.
>> Robert Hess: Not too bad.
>> Richard Ward: It's a good hills on the way and it's a good way to keep things
relaxed because you know, the exercise lets you kind of detox after the day on
the way home and kind of gets things -- you know, gets your body moving in the
morning when you're on your way to work.
>> Robert Hess: Now, do you do any bicycle racing as well or just.
>> Richard Ward: I'm not the racer in our group. We do have a person in our
extended virtual team who is a racer but I just ride.
>> Robert Hess: And what other things do you do just for the finance of it. You
mentioned theater is still kind of a partial ->> Richard Ward: I spend quite a while helping out with the theater Schmeater
downtown and a lot of the kind of the standard hobbies. I like taking pictures and
biking and cooking, but we don't get to cook that much right now.
>> Robert Hess: And I understand you're into music as well?
>> Richard Ward: Do some music production.
>> Robert Hess: And what does that entail?
>> Richard Ward: Well, much like the technical theater aspect, it's behind the -let's see, doing the recording, mixing, mix-downs, working at the effects, working
with the band itself to figure out what sound they really wanted and record, you
know, is this right, it's not right.
>> Robert Hess: You're kind of in the booths?
>> Richard Ward: I'm in the booth.
>> Robert Hess: And ->> Richard Ward: Behind the scenes.
>> Robert Hess: And do you have like, you go out to bands and actually record
their stuff, do you bring the bands to your home ->> Richard Ward: We've got a studio over our garage and we basically there's
one band, although we've had some other people come in occasionally who need
to record small things here and there, but it's one old, old Microsoft band that
comes by.
>> Robert Hess: And do you have any recordings that you've actually done that
you can rub on to CD or through downloads?
>> Richard Ward: Well [inaudible].
>> Robert Hess: Another option for plugging some of your work I suppose.
>> Richard Ward: Yes.
>> Robert Hess: URL or [inaudible].
>> Richard Ward: Yeah, the problem with hobbies is there's no really -- there's
no compulsion to actually finish it. So many of the songs are in, okay, it's great
accept for they want to redo one vocal track or part of the per cushion isn't quite
right and so it's perpetually in the mix.
>> Robert Hess: You also mentioned that you would like to be able to redo more
cooking than you're currently doing. What is some of the cooking you like doing,
when you get a chance.
>> Richard Ward: When I get a chance? I enjoy cooking Thai cuisine and
baking pastries, desserts, you know, cakes, those are always good. But there's a
side effect if you bake too many cakes. [laughter].
Your perimeter tends to grow.
>> Robert Hess: That's what the bicycling is supposed to take care of.
>> Richard Ward: Yeah. But then everyone in the household needs to do that
as well.
>> Robert Hess: So if you were not working at Microsoft, what do you think you'd
be doing instead? And let's say not in technology, per se? Computer
technology.
>> Richard Ward: Geez. I don't know. I think I would probably stay connected
to technology somehow. Into these days I think it's probably for anybody not to
be connected to technology.
>> Richard Ward: Yeah. Other than -- yea, I could say pure organic farming with
nothing with wooden hose and rain water, but I think technology will always be in
something that we do. And so I could say oh, maybe go back and work with a
friend's theater again and don't waste time, taking quantas managing director,
something like that, there's still lots of things you have to worry about there. If
you don't have a website, you're dead, if you don't have online booking, people
start -- you can lose a good third of your audience because they can't make a
reservation.
>> Robert Hess: Right. Right.
>> Richard Ward: If you're trying to make the leap out of, okay, we're just going
to take walks on bike street to, okay, we want to have a fill a 75 person room, you
need to have a little more control over what's going on.
>> Robert Hess: Yeah. I mean, it's amazing how broad technology has come.
And I think networking like you first got started in was a -- it's a big piece of that.
I mean, it allows people to ->> Richard Ward: It's all about the network.
>> Robert Hess: It's all about the network. But now it's all about the core
architecture, right?
>> Richard Ward: Well, networking fits into a bigger picture. [laughter].
>> Robert Hess: So, Richard, in each episode we like to have a certain set of
questions we always ask people so we can kind of set the level playing field and
stuff. And then we'll take and open up to the audience and so they can ask
questions about core architecture, security or shoveling manure or who knows
what they're going to be interested in. But we'll find out in a couple minutes.
>> Richard Ward: Probably not manure.
>> Robert Hess: So what advice do you have for people in your field?
>> Richard Ward: For people in my field, software in general or in architecture?
>> Robert Hess: I'd say some of the core architecture.
>> Richard Ward: Well, the architecture aspect is really understanding the
components that you are involved in and more the understanding how they relate
to others, other components and what the interactions are and to kind of see side
effects and all the other minds that you draw between components when you
[inaudible] big way for a diagram.
For people who are coming into this area and working with people who are on
kind of the senior individual contributor track or architect and focussing on, okay,
know what you're -- know your area, know how to design your area, deliver in
your area and then the next step that we're adding is how to, you know, get them
connected to a broader community so they can share not just information with
other people but build up the community of like minded individuals. So ->> Robert Hess: Okay.
>> Richard Ward: Get connected I guess.
>> Robert Hess: Get connected.
>> Richard Ward: Would be the summary of all that.
>> Robert Hess: Keep a broader looking of the whole playing field. How would
you describe your work to someone who's not technical? Which seems like all of
us have to do on a regular basis.
>> Richard Ward: Yeah. Well, right after you get the three questions about how
do I fix this thing on my computer, and you also say well, what is it that you do, I
usually focus on the design and integration aspect that, the group that I run is
figuring out how different parts of Windows work best together and how to move
forward on some of the problems that people are facing right now. And anything
else we'll get technical, do you want to go deeper? Oh, that's enough.
>> Robert Hess: In life, what will you compare to producing software?
>> Richard Ward: Well, there's some unfavorable comparisons but we can skip
those. It's the creative impulse. And no matter what area of the software product
that you're involved in and you're working on, you're taking something, an idea
that you synthesized and you are expressing it in a tangible form and you get to
see the results. And so it's like any other creative thing, whether it's cooking and
you're adding stuff to the skillet or if you're painting or you're writing a book or,
you know, making -- you figured out the spreadsheet and you get the numbers
for your company balance there. It's the success of the your creative impulse
and seeing the results.
>> Robert Hess: And again, that sounds like kind of a diverse mind set and
paying attention to what all is going on.
>> Richard Ward: Yeah. It's all about creating something that is a value at least
to you and hopefully to others.
>> Robert Hess: And let's finish this sentence. You know you're a computer
nerd when.
>> Richard Ward: You know you're a computer nerd when someone forwards
you a picture and a joke about the large Hadron Collider and you get it.
[laughter].
>> Robert Hess: I haven't seen that joke yet. What was it? Forward it to me
afterwards. Do you see people having a hard time understanding, you know,
what a computer geek is and what a non computer geek is?
>> Richard Ward: I'm not sure what the differentiation is. [laughter].
>> Robert Hess: I mean, you know, people that would get that joke, I mean, do
you feel that kind of puts you in a different sort of social structure than people
from the outside that don't quite understand quite as well?
>> Richard Ward: In the case of that joke in particular, it wasn't specifically about
computer science or software or anything like that, it was there's some video
games and then there's this whole thing about big science and this Collider that's
going to, you know, some naysayers are saying create strangelets and black
holes and stuff that they don't understand but it sounds good. And so being in
the know and being able to apply rational thought is the common theme. Wait a
minute, that doesn't make sense and that's why it's a joke. So we're making light
of it.
>> Robert Hess: Okay. Now, here comes the part that everyone loves, and that
is where you actually exercise your creative talents by drawing a picture of your
favorite data diagram.
>> Richard Ward: Okay.
>> Robert Hess: You got something in mind?
>> Richard Ward: I do.
>> Robert Hess: Okay. So go ahead and draw the picture and then sign it and
then we'll explain it to the audience. We've only got one color of pen.
>> Richard Ward: I know. Can't quite get the blue line in there, but that's okay.
>> Robert Hess: Go ahead and sign it. I'm guessing you don't sign things with a
Sharpie that often. So what is this?
>> Richard Ward: This is the dataflow between the client server and the main
controller for Windows 2000 domains and later for purposes of authentication.
It's a diagram I have drawn for no small number of engineers, executives,
litigators [laughter].
>> Robert Hess: So can you explain what these -- what's going on here?
>> Richard Ward: The client first requests an authentic case credential, a ticket
from the domain controller and it comes back and then the client can then apply
that to a server and the server can respond favorably or not. But we've
eliminated this back channel between the server and the domain controller which
it improved a lot of performance characteristics.
>> Robert Hess: Are there security aspects associated with this as well?
>> Richard Ward: It's all about implementing a friendly security protocol.
>> Robert Hess: Okay. Well, thank you very much.
>> Richard Ward: All right.
>> Robert Hess: I'm sure we'll find a nice place to hang this in the hallway. And
now the fun part. We get to open up to the audience to see if they have any
questions for you.
Does anybody have any questions about farming, bicycling, computers?
>>: So Rich, you've worked on a lot of things, and I've known you for a lot of
years. What do you want to do ten years from now. What do you think you're
headed towards? What's your next technology?
>> Richard Ward: Well, it's coming down ten years, I think the -- I think what
we're most focused on is understanding how our assets like Windows will play in
a word where everything is constantly connected and highly portable. And we
have incredible base to work from, but our base also comes from dealing with or
being from heredity ti of desktops and enterprise servers and things like that, and
so a shift to constantly connected but varying latency and stuff bouncing around
strangely and got some data here, some data there and part of it's in your pocket,
part of it's in your laptop and that we're going to have a very [inaudible] future
and to figure out how it all works.
>>: Now, if you compare where computers are today with this constantly
connected attitude they have from ten years ago, when they weren't quite so
constantly connected, do you think in ten years from now we'll see as big or
bigger of an alteration of what computers are actually doing and how they're
integrating themselves in our lives?
>> Richard Ward: Yeah. I think that the past ten, 15, 20 years we've had
connectivity mostly driven by either your consumer space or your in your
workspace and the twain really never met. And there's this kind of mini shift
where people start dialing in from their home machine and then there's a
backlash because those machines were usually not clean. And in the future
we're going to have these problems where you're not just constantly connected
to one network, you're constantly connected to a variety of different networks and
hierarchies an authorities, and so I may be my cell phone, for example, is always
connected to AT&T or whoops, or whatever carrier you happen to be using. My
cell phone's always connected to its carrier, and it's always chat ring back and
forth regardless whether I'm in, you know, a secure building or if I'm at home.
And that's only going to extend as we get smarter advices in our pockets and our
laptops. Laptops already have cell phone chips in them. So whose rules apply,
if you think -- the notion of the firewall is going away. So things are going to
switch around kind of dramatically in that sense.
>>: So the network is no longer necessarily being controlled by your work or
whatever, it's now it's just broad network.
>> Richard Ward: One network is and one network isn't and you're bridging
them. So how do we create that bridge correctly.
>>: Yeah. Very good.
>> Robert Hess: Is there a question from the audience in.
>>: Richard, I'm curious, which of the projects that you've worked on over the
years had the largest sense of mission that you felt and why was that?
>> Richard Ward: The largest sense of mission. It kind of varies. The sense of
mission works best the smaller the team because the vision is shared, and so for
example the Caro project, though ultimately unsuccessful was pretty well
understood and everyone kind of signed into the central vision. I think Windows
2000 had a great sense of mission for such -- for a comparatively large team, just
under a thousand people, I think, working on it at the time. And people knew
what the -- it was plug and play and distributed systems. Everything else was
okay, if it fits into one of those, you're on.
When we did XPXP 2, I think the notion was shared that the core of the team
was small, and so we really had a good understanding but we were able to get
the rest of the organization signed up because the outside pressures were so
evident of why something like that had to come together.
>>: Okay. Thank you.
>> Robert Hess: So then, you know, you're talking about a smaller team has a
better sense of mission associated to them. Do you think that means that a
smaller team is better than a larger team?
>> Richard Ward: A smaller team is better than a larger team depending on the
size of the project. There's only so much a small amount of people can do, you
can't expect them to change the world. But when teams are small, then
communications, the bandwidth is very, very high, and everyone shares a lot of
knowledge, everyone shares what's trying to be done and, you know, from an
engineering perspective, everyone gets to see everybody else's check-ins, right,
so you really know what's going on, and you can really say whoa what did you
do, or oh, that's really cool, now I can leverage that.
The larger the team, the harder it is to maintain that level of communication.
>> Robert Hess: Now, with a project like Windows which obviously is going to be
a big team, how do you handle something like that efficiently?
>> Richard Ward: I think that's one of our ongoing challenges. Yes, it is a big
team, there are 3,000 people in the COSD division, there are another 1200
people in the WEX [phonetic] division, there's hopefully a comparable number of
people in the server division all working on this thing that's a lot of people to try
and get shared. So there's structured communication that you do or you try and
get, you know, thought leaders in a room and make sure everyone shares at
least some set of common principles or goals and then try and get lots of other
community setup that people share information. Like for an example an architect
community.
>> Robert Hess: So a social networking inside the company kind of?
>> Richard Ward: I think it's very important.
>> Robert Hess: Okay. Thank you. Now, let's take another question.
>>: Yeah. Now, Richard, as you know, one of the important things as an
architect is to -- how to be influential without really having authority, and I was
curious about, you know, your sense on how to be successful in that regard as
an architecture.
>> Richard Ward: This is kind of the hallmarks of our profession is that we have
very little organizational authority and it's all based on influence. Part of this is to
establish a good working relationship with the organizational authority, right, so
that when you come and say, hey, I think we need to look at X, that it's not just
someone blowing a lot of smoke and things, oh, you know the, ha, that's a weird
thing the networking guys are doing, let me go talk to the head of the networking
group, that works. Then it comes back to what we were talking about earlier, the
social network, right, so you build your set of people who are in either similar
positions as the architect for the network group or the architect for the security
group or so on, where you could say, hey, something's going on, I don't
understand this, can you tell me what's going on or hey, we're about to do
something in this regard, this is going to affect you, you make it -- if you always
go with demands been you're going to be unfortunately tagged as one who
comes with a bunch of demands. If you come with offering help or offering, you
know, warnings or, hey, we see these changes coming down the road, then you
become research that other people want to listen to and respect their opinions.
So the advice I guess would be, you know, number one, build your social
network of similar senior technical talent and second is just because you're not in
organizational authority doesn't mean that you can't -- that you're free from the
responsibility of knowing how organizational authority works.
>> Robert Hess: We've got a question over here.
>>: Yes. I mean, you said that you wanted to become an architect after leading
a team to do more, you know, put your individual contributing to a test. I guess
my question is do you feel that actually leading a team, a def team actually
helped you become a better architect than you would have been without having
gone that management trek for a period of time?
>> Richard Ward: That's a good question. I think that running a development
team helps a lot to understand how the whole engineering process works, right,
and to understand that when I've got a design in mind how many man weeks or,
you know, person months and, you know developer years or whatever it's going
to take to get done gives you an understanding of what a regression rate really
means, lets you understand a lot of things. It's a tool, it's a way to learn how the
whole system works. I don't think it's required of everybody, and I can think of in
fact several people who I think are going to make great architects who should not
really ever run a team, and I can think of a number of good managers who really
shouldn't be architects at all. And so it's a tool, and I encourage some people to
try it on their path up the ranks and some people, like I said, no, not so much.
>> Robert Hess: Do you have think you might want to be a manager again?
>> Richard Ward: Well, technically I am a manager now. I've got six reports.
And that's about the right number.
>> Robert Hess: So it's a smaller team?
>> Richard Ward: Small team. They're all senior people. It's not -- in a certain
sense, yeah, friends of mine who have actually managed large teams and they
view me as cheating slightly since I don't have a lot of problem employees or
anything like that, they're all senior, high productive folks. I'm not one who's look
for running a huge organization, so it's not something I want to do.
>> Robert Hess: Now, do you still get to write code yourself?
>> Richard Ward: I do actually sneak times writing code. It's not always
checked into that it should be a product, but I put together some scaffolding code
for one of the prototype efforts that we're doing and keep my hand in, have to
repay some kind of LV.
>> Robert Hess: I see we have a question over here.
>>: So we had the opportunity to learn about your educational ground and your
life and I was curious to hear perhaps about who your greatest mentors have
been throughout your professional career and your life and what important
lessons you learned from them.
>> Richard Ward: Mentors. Well, there are a lot of people I've learned from over
the years in differing capacities. I learned a lot from the old deck crowd that
came in to to NT. I learned from Dave Cutler [phonetic], I've read a lot from
reading his code. And I also had -- my office was three doors down from Dave's
for several years, and I learned a number of things. [laughter].
Let's see. Mark Lococski [phonetic], another old NT engineer, was a huge
system guy. I learned a lot from hanging out in his office and asking him about
how things worked and design issues and sorting through things.
My previous boss, Rob Short I learned a lot of how to finesse difficult situations
and get people talking and listening skills and things like that. And a lot of people
I've learned from over the years. And some of them are even here still.
[laughter].
And you also learn from your peers, right? It's not -- I don't want to make it
sound like oh, you need to have to go find a senior person and latch on, you
learn a lot from working with people in a sense of what you -- what works and
what doesn't work when you're talking to other people in the areas that they know
and skill sets that they bring to the table.
>>: Thanks.
>> Robert Hess: And do you think these people know that you learned
something from them?
>> Richard Ward: I think so. I stay in touch with them.
>> Robert Hess: On the flip side of that, do you think there's people who look to
you as their mentor?
>> Richard Ward: I have several people who have -- under the mentor program
that I meet with regularly and I try to help out people who are in architect track
jobs whenever I can. I guess I should probably go back and figure out if it's
working.
>> Robert Hess: Thank you, Richard from the techno community network for
being our guest today. And thanks to all in the audience for coming.
[applause]