preconceived notions, race, diversity in tech

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We're continuing our season, we're going through interviews, and we are starting a new interview today. We're going to be speaking with William A. Adams, also known as the William A. Adams, as we will introduce him shortly. This is an interesting conversation for me because when you've been many years in any kind of profession such as IT, it is a huge blessing to be able to talk to somebody that's actually been there as long or longer and has a broad range of experience such as you're going to find out that William has. This is a really interesting conversation to me. It's one of those that really is a little different focus from what we do generally speaking. We talk often about setting expectations and planning and not letting things like titles and stuff like that get in your way. But we're actually going to talk a little bit about preconceived notions. We're going to talk a little bit about race. We're going to talk about what makes the IT industry what it is today and how it has changed in the previous couple of decades. If this is a topic that you are interested in on a regular basis where you're worried about or like to discuss things about diversity and things like that, not necessarily diversity of thought but even diversity of backgrounds, I think you'll see or if it's something where you think this is a useless topic for IT, either way, I think this is one where you'll find this is actually a very interesting conversation because what you're going to find out is that as we've talked about before, no matter who you run into, they have a different experience and they can bring something to the table that you can't. This is a great story. This guy that has worked hard has done a lot of cool stuff, has worked with some very big names. I think you'll find that as always, you're going to get something out of talking to somebody who has a, I would say, unqualified success in their chosen field. Now, if I have, hopefully, have not oversold him and I don't think I have, but let's go ahead and get started with our conversation with William A. Adams. I want to welcome today, William the William A. Adams. You may think it's a different one, but no, this is the William A. Adams that we'll be talking to today. This is somebody that is a cornucopia of topics, experience, and background. And so somebody that I want to spend some time with, but before we dive into it, why don't you in your own words, because they will be so much better than mine, give us a little background for the audience or where your background in is and how you have come into the being a technical speaker and consultant, essentially, I guess. Yeah. So William Adams, my background in tech starts when I was a wee little lad back in the seventies. I received my first personal computer, a Commodore Pet from my uncle. And I recently actually bought a Commodore 64 off eBay because I just wanted to decorate my office with the nostalgia. But I was into tech way back in the day. And that predates the Internet, cell phones, personal computers, everything. And I was self taught and all that. I went to college at UC Berkeley. I started a business with my brother in 1984. And that was a bunch of custom software development. Eventually worked on Steve Jobs's next computers when he was doing that. And then eventually I found my way to. So we did that business for I was in it for about 12 years. And then I ended up going to Microsoft in 1998. And I spent 24 years there. And I recently just retired from Microsoft. So now I'm in the world on my own, pushing a mission of more equity in tech for women and minorities. So that's the brief of who I am. And there's lots of stories along the way like, hey, we're in the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. Little known fact. A couple of patents and lots of experiences on different continents around the world. Excellent. Yeah, that's like you said, that's just such an overview as we start digging in. I'm sure we could spend days going through that. That's quite a journey. And several that are interesting, I guess, from a maybe from a geek tourism point of view, things like the next systems. Those are those that know them. They were very, they're very cutting edge at the time. They were way ahead of their time. I was actually like one of these little known facts. The school I went to, college I went to was at one time the second biggest installation of next machines, which was not a big number. I think it was like 500 machines or a thousand. But other than that, I mean, it was at that time, it was pretty big. It was a lot of machines. But yeah, it's a really interesting path that you've taken. But I want to go all the way back to beginning a little bit because it's back when you started in IT with that little Commodore pet. And I was sort of about the same time it was, it was not as glamorous as it is today. You know, it was one of those things that you had to sort of seek it out a little bit. So how did it, how did you, how did you get to the point where somebody got you that Commodore? Was it, you know, what is it that maybe that got you thinking along those lines? That was something you'd be interested in. From the beginning. Well, we can go a little bit further back. My father was a typewriter repairman. And back in those days, it was mechanical typewriters, you know, an adding machine, ch-ch-ch-ch-ching. So I was interested in the, what, the mechanical computer, if you will, before the electronic computer showed up. And I think that was, that was the spark of it for me. I was a nerdy little kid, you know, precocious. And I always thought that as early as I, as I could remember, I was going to have an electronics company. Right. And we lived in this place called Anaheim, California, which was a bedroom community for the aerospace industry. So Rockwell International was down the street and they did stuff in Rockwell Street. Hughes Aerospace was down another street. And so electronics was in the air. Computers were not common, but it just so happened that my uncle worked for the Navy and he had a computer, this Commodore PET, and he knew of my interests and he said, hey, I'm going to give you this computer. Right. Because he was getting whatever he was getting. So that's how it happened. It was just a, it was just a spark of the environment that I was in, where I already, before I even knew about computers, was like, electronics are for me. And it probably had to do with my shy personality. It's like, well, it seems like machines are something you can control and you don't have to talk. So that's probably really what kicked me into it in the first place. And then the rest is just, it just grew with me. Right. I mean, literally the Commodore PET, I think had 8K of RAM. Commodore 64 had 64K of RAM. I don't even think it had the one megahertz processor. That was exotic at that time. But as the machines got bigger and more powerful, the things that I could do with it increased as well. I took the Commodore 64 to college and did some graphics programming, little game sort of stuff. And then it's the mini computer on the college campus. And then it's in our own business, finally the personal computers become dominant. So the power just keeps increasing as I'm growing up. And that's what kept me in it. Because there was always something more you could do with it next year, next year, next year, bigger, bigger, bigger. And here we are. So that's actually now jumping to here we are. As somebody who's grown up with things changing just almost monthly, there was always, every year, I remember there was more megahertz, there was more RAM, there was more bigger drive space. Suddenly, when you were only talking about K's before, now you're talking about megabytes and you're talking about gigabytes and terabytes. How is that? Have you? And if so, how have you maintained that, I guess, almost that youthful exuberance about the enthusiasm as things have continued to change? It's now been a couple of years of continuing to do that and always having those new things. Well, for me, life for me is about learning. And I discovered this when I was 40, I laid down my life creed. I was like, why am I here? Looking at the history that has gone on so far, why am I here? I created my life creed, which is learning, intentional, fearless, empathetic. So if everything's about learning, and it wasn't that suddenly everything was about learning, really, I was codifying what has my life been about and what is it going to be about? And I've always been a learner. I mean, I've always been curious. I've always been thirsty for knowledge. So computers are perfect for that kind of thing, because there's always something new, like you said. And I always wanted to learn it. So in the very beginning, I learned machine code, then assembly language, then basic. Then in college, it was Pascal, PDP 11 assembly language, flipping switches, Fortran. I learned Fortran at Rockwell, actually, initially. And then so the languages you're constantly learning. And even at Microsoft, well, in my own business, it was Pascal, C, C++, Objective C. I became experts in all of those along the way. And then at Microsoft, it was again, C, C++. Then C Sharp eventually came along. I picked up the Lua programming language along the way in the last 10 years. And now there's Go and Rust. Each one of those things has something about it that makes you want to learn the language. Go comes along and it's like, oh, it's garbage collected, but it's really fast. And it's from Google. And people seem to be using it for web development. So if you're doing web development, it's probably good to pick up some Go. I learned Python along the way. Python, when it first came out, actually. And now there's Rust. And Rust seems to be used for systems level programming. Well, I've done system level programming before in the past, typically in C or Lua. And now here's Rust. And people are like, Rust is the way to go. It's like, all right, well, I like doing system level programming. So I guess I'm going to learn Rust. And then the things that I want to learn is like in the very beginning, I started with graphics, just putting a block on the screen and moving it around. And over 35, 40 years, I've been programming for 45 years. So throughout that, I've always been interested in graphics, even though I've never actually shipped a graphics library. I've created several. So that's a thread that continues. I'm always like, okay, how can I, I'm doing this today. I write code every day. It's like doing pushups. So this is an early interview, so I haven't written my code yet, but I will. And I'm currently working on yet another graphics thing. I'm doing a video DJ thing so you can do video mixing on your tablet. So something always draws me forward. So it's like, it's graphics or it's high speed networking. When Node.js came out, wow, it's been 10 years or more. So when Node came out, I thought, what's the big deal? So I recreated Node using the Lua programming language. And I created this project called TINN. T-I-N-N. And TINN stands for Tin is Not Node. So I created that. I was like, what's the big deal? And the big deal about Node was, oh, on a single processor and a single process, you can handle thousands of connections. Instead of, at the time, Apache and IIS were really slow and required so much resources. So I figured out, well, all they're doing is they're cooperative multi-threading within a single process. And they're eliminating blocking on IO, to be technical about it. So I can do that. So I did it. And it's awesome. And so there's always something like that, where it's like, oh, well, okay, I can do that. Where it's like, oh, well, okay, now I want to do stuff with robotics. So I guess I'm going to learn the ROS operating system and do some robotic stuff, automation. So I'm a kid. I'm curious. I'm not dead yet. So I'm going to keep learning. I'm going to keep playing, more importantly. And it turns out you can actually make money from this stuff. So that works out. I kid you not. I literally at Microsoft for the first at least 10 or 15 years, I was kind of looking over my shoulder like, they pay me for this? It's like, okay, I'm just going to play. So yeah, that's a long story to say. That's what keeps me in it. That's what keeps me just moving forward. Yeah, that truly is the, I think that is the secret to happiness. Your dream job is the one where you're like, I would do this if people didn't pay me. I would love to do this. I had one of those that sort of showed up in one of these like, learn, get to know yourself kind of quizzes not too long ago. It's like, what would you do if you, if money was no option, what would you do to keep yourself busy? I'm like, exactly what I do. I really wouldn't change it. Maybe I would mix it up a little bit. I may, maybe there's a few customer conversations I might not have because it's like, I don't need to deal with it. But generally speaking, I get up every day. Same way. It's like, Hey, I want, I've got stuff I want to do today. It's, you know, it's not that, Hey, I've got work to go to. It's like, Hey, I've got work to go to. I've got stuff I can do. And I end every day going, man, I could use a few more hours to like, you know, there's these other things I want to do. Yeah. I mean, it's not every day that I mean, I'm the same when I'm, when I'm at my best, I'm anxious for the alarm clock to go off. And I usually wake up a minute before it does because like, come on, let's get started. You know, when I start the day, there's things I got to do. There's an algorithm I was working on or whatever. Sometimes it can be drudgery though. Sometimes it's not that. Well, that's, I think that's a good and a bad part about the programming life is that, you know, you have those days where you, where it falls into place and you get to see, you know, the pretty image or the application work. And then you have those days where you like mistype one thing in a configuration and it takes you a day to go track down. Oh shoot. I had like, I had that extra space or that period or whatever it was in the, in the worst ones are when you get through that whole thing and the debugger or the logins told you exactly what it was and you just didn't believe it until it was too late. Yeah. So it's like that. Yeah. So your, your focus is something that I do want to, is where I really want to have the conversation and about, which is interesting to me. I'll give you a little more background from, from my experience with, um, you know, minorities and underserved communities. Which is why it's interesting to me to have this conversation is that of the people that I have worked with that are my, you know, my top 10 list of people that I would take them anywhere, any team, technical love them. They all know that it just, I think they hung the moon. 90% of them are minorities or, you know, and most of them are, which is sort of, when I look at it, it's really odd because a lot of the people I work with that I love are basically Gen Y millennial young black guys that I know when they were, as they grew up, it wasn't the cool thing, you know, necessarily to go and do program, but these guys have got, you know, I've gone into like masters in math and computer science and are, you know, hands down brilliant. And when people talk about not reaching out to those communities, I think about, wow, if I didn't do that, I would be missing, you know, huge, there'd be huge gaps in the skill sets of people that I've worked with. And it's sort of, you know, there's like, it's a little bit of almost like a physical pains me to think that there would be somebody like that, that doesn't have the opportunity to realize that's what, you know, that's what they want to do. Like you did, if nobody had ever been able to, you know, never given you that computer or allowed you to go down that path, I think, you know, you may be doing something where you're miserable. And so what, you know, going with that background is I just, is I guess, starting with how did you, how did you come into that being sort of your, I think, so like, maybe we'll call it your like key philanthropy that you're looking at. And obviously there's some things from your background, but maybe what you've seen, because you've been in some, you know, some of the places where you would see, I think some of the best and the brightest, but also what the makeup is and maybe even how those environments and those cultures grow people that become the ones that are then going to be the heroes and those to look forward to, to bring others in from all of these communities. Yeah. Big question, huh? So it's a, for your listeners who don't see me, I'm a black male, 57 years old, handsome as all heck. So there's a discovering talent, right? And I'll say that until I was 40, I mean, obviously I'm a black man in America and you can't avoid the social impacts of that, but for the most part, I grew up tech. I was isolated, you know, I went to Berkeley, I went into my own business. I was in the, I won't say halls of power, but I was in the mix, right? I mean, we're literally, my brother and I recorded in the computer history museum in Silicon Valley. So, you know, we were in it. Now we were in it as second-class citizens. We didn't get any VC money. They would not give it to us. So we were pure meritocracy on our part, because at that time in the eighties, it's like, hey, if you have a great idea, you know, just start your company and wonderful things will happen. It's like, yeah. And we had limited successes for, you know, a decade. But then when I went into Microsoft, you know, I literally lived in a white world for at least 15 years of my 24 years. Not a single black person did I come across in my 15 years at Microsoft. Only one, actually, I should say one. Now it's not that they didn't exist. They did exist, but they were so spread out and there were so few of us that you wouldn't you would easily not come across somebody for years. And certainly the whole cliche of I was the only one in the room and say, yep, absolutely. For, you know, more than a decade, almost two. So at some point when I was 40, I kind of had this awakening where I sat on a beach in Hawaii and went, what is life about? And that was the beginning of my journey to care about people and the makeup, the composition of the workforce around me. At that time, I was actually headed to India to teach engineers how to be engineers. And I did that for three years. So I lived in India for three years. And when you're in a place like India, you see all sorts of different kinds of people, rich people, poor people, people that go to college, people that are in agricultural settings, all that. So it's really diverse. And it's in your face every single day. That's different from my life in America, where you're fairly isolated into whatever your local community thing is. I was in the tech community. My house was 10 minutes away from work. I could travel there and travel back and never see a poor person or even anyone who didn't work in tech. It's a very narrow corridor of knowledge of the world around you. So it's easy to isolate. In India, you can't isolate. I don't care how rich you are. You step out on the street, you're going to see poor people. It's just the way that they're mixed up. So I just shouldn't mix up is the wrong word. It's the way that there's a society is composed. This is what I mean. Tanner Iskra That seems to be a good place for us to pause and we will come back next episode and continue our conversation with the William A. Adams. I hope you realize that there's already, there's a lot that he has stored as far as knowledge, experience. And now we're going to continue to talk about that, get deeper in the next episode and the one after that. This will be a three-parter. We're going to talk to him about a wide range of issues, talk about technology and advancements and similar things as we go forward with this. But yeah, it's one of those, we just had to find a place to take a break. Otherwise it would have just been one long episode and we're going to pause there. We'll come back. Don't worry. We are not done speaking with him. I'll go ahead and let you get out to your day. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor podcast. 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