Leaving a print at Microsoft

Looking back, I think it was inevitable that my career would be in tech. After graduating from the University of Washington, I volunteered on a seaweed research project where a scientist used a dual-floppy laptop for data entry.

That laptop sparked my fascination with computers; they just made sense to me. I can remember that my first real hands-on experience came with an early Compaq ‘Luggable’ portable PC and, from then on, I was hooked on all things tech.

Later on, I had gained experience of installing and training staff on point-of-sale systems for stadiums and theatres, ahead of moving to a computer rental company in the early ’90s.

There, I gained both PC and Mac experience, as well as practical knowledge of setting up and networking classrooms, as well as constantly troubleshooting the inevitable hardware and software issues. That was a great proving ground.

The route to Microsoft

As with many people, my actual path to Microsoft came via the vendor that provided helpdesk services to the company. That was back in 1993, and it turned out to be a great opportunity. It was a role that opened doors, helped me learn constantly, and eventually led to a full-time position at Microsoft a few years later.

Going in, I expected challenges. But, mostly, I looked forward to troubleshooting problems and helping people get their systems working again. In fact, that’s what I enjoyed the most, and when you’re passionate about a task or challenge, I think everyone benefits from your passion and energy.

Chasing bugs in the lab

My first role at Microsoft was as a lab manager for the print team. Back then, the lab had shelves stacked with printers and computers running stress tests every night.

Each morning, I’d report failures to the relevant dev teams — spooler, file system, networking and so on — while work closely with highly skilled engineers to pinpoint the problems.

It was dynamic and I learned something new every day. I can’t deny that it was intense, but it was also really motivating. Everyone was driven and everything was fast paced.

We were constantly problem-solving, collaborating, and learning from the brilliant people around us. I remember finding deep, long-standing bugs — the ‘day zero’ ones — was an especially rewarding challenge professionally.

Back then, printer hardware and interfaces caused issues, partly because we had to deal with every connection type imaginable — from SCSI to parallel, serial and network — and, early on, even AppleTalk on Macs.

As Windows became dominant, those interoperability issues faded, but it was still a very valuable experience. In fact, later at PaperCut, I appreciated supporting multiple platforms again — Windows, Mac, Linux — and not just one ecosystem, as it harked back to those old days.

The importance of the upgrade

My role at Microsoft continued to evolve as the lab expanded and, in line with that, as did the challenges; a major one of which was always having to compete with previous Windows versions and encouraging users to upgrade from NT4 to 2000, then 2008 R2.

That was a great leap forward, as it was the first 64-bit–only server release and it offered a really strong print platform.

Life at Microsoft in the 1990s saw us build and test new Windows builds daily, from installs to running tests overnight and debugging failures in the morning.

It was repetitive but never boring, as each day brought new bugs to solve. The objective was to make Windows better with each release. To that end, people worked incredibly hard — and some even slept in their office! — simply out of dedication to the task and our shared goal.

In fact, it was determination and pride in our work that drove development and a better product for our customers. I’ve always been someone who works until the job’s done, and that mindset fitted Microsoft’s culture perfectly.

Bumps on the road to success

Bugs are part and parcel of software development, and I worked to provided solid reproductions. I enjoyed finding memory leaks, and a key part of my role was ensuring problems were reproducible, so the dev team could fix them quickly.

I even earned credibility with the dev team by proving issues through precise testing, which was really rewarding. Needless to say, we did make mistakes in our pursuit of excellence. Once, I accidentally crashed a corporate print server while debugging Windows Update, which was my biggest blunder.

Of course, there were other obstacles. One of the most significant related to print drivers that ran in the Windows kernel for speed; in hindsight, that set up was a bad move, as faulty vendor drivers caused blue screens.

We later moved them back to user mode and, finally, with driver isolation in 2008 R2, we achieved the best of both worlds: stability and performance. It showed that perseverance pays off.

From life in the labs to print the cloud

I learned about PaperCut around 2006. Microsoft was exploring print management ideas, but we were too Windows-focused.

Later, while helping users on TechNet, I found PaperCut configurations exposing a Windows bug. We collaborated to fix it and backport the patch, and that’s how I first connected with the PaperCut team.

The rest, as they say, is history, but I’m thrilled to be able to now channel and share all of my software and platform learnings with the PaperCut team as we work to create secure, easy-to-use, print solutions optimized for the cloud.

Needless to say, print has evolved a lot in the last 30 years, not least due to heightened concerns over security and sustainability, and user demand for simplicity, especially in the hybrid workplace era.

Arguably, the biggest change was virtualization; running multiple print servers on one machine, then the more recent move to the cloud.

That introduced new challenges since printers remain physical devices, but it showed how adaptable the print ecosystem had become in the last 30 years.

I’m really excited to have witnessed those changes, and I’m looking forward playing a role in driving forward the next revolution on print.

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