Peter Spiro: Building great databases. Making great teams. Leadership. WinFS. The power of having fu

Posted By: Charles | Aug 10th, 2007 @ 3:58 AM

Don't get a real job until you're 30. This is Technical Fellow Peter Spiro's advice, and something he fell just short of doing. Discover how this forestry student got a job at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and then came to Microsoft to help build the team that drove SQL Server to the huge success it is today.

How do you learn the necessary skills for leading huge projects?

Try restaurant work or being in the Peace Corps. Also, never underestimate the power of knowing how to live it up. In this episode, learn how Peter uses his passion and energy to influence technology across Microsoft while empowering talent and growing teams to produce first-rate software.

Tags: MS Personalities, SQL Server

Rating:

Views (26,970)

Comments (19)

Downloads

Ray6

Is that a real beard?

shoshan

why won't you compress the videos ?

this is an hour video and it's a gig!

littleguru
allein, allein,... allein, allein!

Ray6 wrote:

Is that a real beard?

Image the years it took him to grow that one. I'm so sure this one is real.

dot_tom

I was lucky enough to lurk at the back of the room many years ago at Redmond during a Longhorn Technical Design Review. WinFS was still on the table then and Peter was there talking about schemas for various entities like contacts (you know: people, numbers, addresses etc). He struck me then as a serious brain and also deeply enthused by his work. Can't help but envy his team Smiley

samdruk
samdruk

Yes, it's real. He shaved it once about 15 years ago, or so I've heard.

mwirth

Thanks for this video! He 's a really outstanding person with an interesting background. Throughout this interview i thought that there are parallels in his way of thinking to the way Bill Hill thinks about the interaction of software and humans. So I was pleasantly surprised that Bill Hill asked the last question in this interview.

Somehow I really enjoy listening to people with so different backgrounds. I think it's because this is so rare in the more traditional companies where you need a specific degree for a specific job.

This immediately reminded me that we do need another Bill Hill interview. The hike around the campus is still my favourite video on channel 9.

Cheers,
Martin

raymond

Really enjoyed this video.

Cool

Erwyn

Nice interview. Unfortunately a lot of the WinFS stuff seems to have been edited out at about 42m45s into the video. There is a sudden jump to Peter's vacation plans.

Xaero_Vincent
Sexy me

Is this guy related to Richard Stallman in anyway? :O

Good video nevertheless.