We meet Stephen Kaufman, who has spent 25 years architecting solutions on behalf of Microsoft. Stephen tells us that his defining characteristic is curiosity, and how his first memory was of taking things apart and putting them back together, more or less successfully. He says how that led him to a hobby in computers which in turn led him to a computer science degree. But he chose to major in both marketing and computers, because for him success is in solving problems with technology, for people.
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Matt Egan ( .464) Hello, hello, hello.
Welcome to First Person, the show where we meet the most interesting people in IT and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts. I'm your host, Matt Egan, asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us.
And if you are an interesting person in IT, do let us know. You might be the next First Person. The next voice you hear will be today's guest. He is Stephen Kaufman, passionate about solving business challenges and building winning solutions. Stephen is a Microsoft veteran.
with a quarter of a century of experience architecting solutions for the technology giant. Stephen is definitely one of the most interesting people in IT and we are delighted to have him as a guest on First Person. So Stephen, welcome.
And first up, what is the first thing people should know about you? Stephen Kaufman (
.02) I think the first is that I am a technologist. I love solving problems. I love using technology to match with business problems and find solutions. Matt Egan (
.644) OK, that gives me great interest and excitement in the conversation we're about to have. So thank you, Stephen. And let's move into our first section, which we call First Things First.
And this is where we get to know about our guests by understanding some of their first times. So Stephen, I'd love to know, given this vast array of experience you've got, something about your first job in IT and technology. Stephen Kaufman (
.156) Yeah, so my first job, I actually was in market research. So when I went to the university, I did a double major in computer science and marketing. And I ran all of the statistical programming for that market research company.
And that's where I realized, okay, I can actually make some money in this profession. And that really was kind of the start of it. And worked there for quite a while and ended up leaving and going into consulting.
And then it just kind of exploded from there and everything took off. Matt Egan ( .02) Yeah.
So I'm interested in, you you went to college and were of a similar vintage, but, know, some time ago, choosing to study that combination of marketing and computer science. Not everybody would have done that. So what was the impetus behind that, do you think? Stephen Kaufman (
.82) Well, I think part of it was that I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I went to the university. so marketing was always interesting.
It was always interesting to me to interact with people and figure out what do people want and how do you really put it together so that you now have a package for what they want. But technology was always a hobby.
For me, starting in eighth grade, Matt Egan ( .758) Uh-huh.
Stephen Kaufman (
.076) And this is going to date me a bit, but going back to the Commodore PET computers. And so for me, it was just fascinating. And so it was kind of that combination of both parts of interest.
And I just said, OK, this is what I want to do. If one of these doesn't work, I can fall back on the other. And so that was kind of the start of it.
But as I said, once I realized, I really could earn a living from this, then that became the track and I just ran. Matt Egan (
.268) you went into the market research portion of it, you've built most of your career in the technology part of it, and even actually that piece of technology being a hobby from the start.
Is that all to do with this wanting to solve problems, is trying to find technological solutions? Is that what drives that, you think? Stephen Kaufman ( .282) Yes.
.815) So that is certainly the end result. Part of it is that I'm just curious. I always want to know how things work. I want to know, you know, what are some of the things that you can do? How do you be creative?
And part of that creativity is creativity with creating an application or creating a solution. The other part of that is how do you match what those requirements are that customers are looking for? And⦠Matt Egan ( .722) Yep.
Yep. Stephen Kaufman (
.332) How do you be creative to come up with solutions that meet their needs? Matt Egan (
.198) And you found pretty early on that you were able to have that impact. I guess I'm interested in how you get from the market research piece to being a chief architect for Microsoft, right? That is a journey, but it all follows a similar thread, I guess.
Stephen Kaufman ( .204) don't know.
.68) Yes, yes, it was definitely a journey. And, you know, part of it was the things that you learn along the way, right? It's you learn technologies, you learn ways to interact with customers, you learn what's needed. So what are some of the trends?
And sometimes those trends end up kind of directing what activities are happening, right? We're in one right now with artificial intelligence. Matt Egan ( .966) You Matt Egan (
.782) That's me.
Yeah. Stephen Kaufman (
.204) is driving a lot of, I'm going to say perceived need and need within organizations. And sometimes it's, does it fit or doesn't it fit? Is this the right solution or not? Are we doing things because it's the trend or because that's what's really needed?
And sometimes having some of those types of discussions and the ability to have those discussions with customers to say, Matt Egan ( .498) Yeah.
.419) Okay, here are the choices or here are the trade-offs. Here is why this might not work or here is why you want to go this direction.
And so being able to have those types of conversations, but also helping it, helping so that you really understand the technology, to be able to explain the technology, to be able to explain what works, how it works, why it might work here.
And what are some of the things to be aware of?
So sometimes it isn't as much about, I'm going to say, of giving a direction, but that more consultative training, if you will, to help the customers really understand what the solution could be or what the technology is and what it isn't.
And then helping them come up with some of the decisions and helping guide them. And that really helps create a level of trust, but also really helps continue relationships. And that's an important aspect, especially in technology. Matt Egan (
.462) Well, I feel like I should congratulate you as well, because you started off by saying you chose your tertiary education based on interactions with people and technological solutions, right? And what you just described was exactly that.
And, you you get a real sense of satisfaction from you about it's not necessarily the best and brightest tech, it's the solution to the problem. Right.
And guess that's, has that been like a theme and a trend for your career from from market research, from consultancy, through your many roles with Microsoft. Is that kind of a motivational thing for you, would you say? Stephen Kaufman ( .136) It really is.
Before I came to Microsoft, I was at a consulting company where I led the Advanced Technologies Group. And so a lot of the beginning stages were, let's go figure this out. Let's go work as a team. Let's go share knowledge with each other. What are we finding?
And what are the things that's working or not working? And this was around the days of two tier just getting to three tier computing. Matt Egan ( .29) Mm-hmm.
.905) And that was a big shift at the time. And so everybody was in this kind of this boat of what is this? This is a paradigm shift. How do we capture it?
How do we figure out what this is and how it works or how it works the right way? What are some of the things that work and don't work in best practices? And how do we guide? Matt Egan ( .416) Yeah.
.132) our customers through this. And I think that really at a core has been instrumental as every single trend that's come and continued, some of them have gone, but that becomes part of that foundation. Matt Egan ( .542) Yeah.
So that combination of curiosity, wanting to find solutions with technology and the people side of it means you've got the technical chops, but you're looking to find the best solution for the customer rather than just like, you know, the tech that sort of that's a great powerful combination.
.894) Well, I think part of it is that the tech is a portion of it, but it's really about how do we listen to our customers and how do we have that conversational back and forth to understand what are they trying to achieve?
Is this a pain point or is this something that they're trying to change a business process or get into new markets? It's trying to really understand what they're trying to achieve and then how do we fold that into exclusion. Matt Egan (
.902) What's the problem that needs to be solved and how do we apply technology to it? And I think I wonder if sometimes as well, you don't have to comment on this, you might even help the customer understand their problem that they're trying to solve. Right.
Because sometimes those conversations. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So so you've got this great tool set of things right back to, you know, the hobbyist and then your degree level computer science gives you a really good grounding to deal with these trends as they come.
The marketing side of it and the interaction with Stephen Kaufman ( .196) There are times.
Matt Egan (
.894) humans working in organisations means you've got the skill set to understand their problems and try and map the two together. It's a very powerful combination. But still, in getting from where you started to where you are now, you need help, right?
So I wonder if you could tell me something about a first great boss or a first mentor, or⦠you know, it doesn't have to be the best, or⦠I'd love to hear something about the people who helped you along Stephen Kaufman (
.894) Yeah, yeah, and there's been many. I think that part of what has helped is having a very strong peer group, people that you are able to work with and experiment with and be vulnerable with and learn from each other. So I think that's been essential.
I think in terms of a great boss, I had a manager that was very encouraging around make sure that you really are exploring. Figure out what this is.
What is it that you can explain and train to customers so that they understand it and they're ready to move forward? And there was a lot of support around just be curious. And sometimes there are successes and sometimes there's failures. Matt Egan ( .728) Yeah.
.021) And we've got to learn from both, right? There are things that went well. What can we repeat? And then there are things that didn't go well.
And really understanding why they didn't go well and what were some of the causes, what were some of the things that maybe were early on issues. And Matt Egan ( .574) Yeah.
.093) what things snowballed or what things led to the issues. And those are as important as any success is. Matt Egan ( .22) No, I agree.
And we'll come to that in just one second. But I also appreciate the thought of like a good manager or a good leader allowing curious people the space, particularly in this space to learn.
And a very important point, which is I think people outside of technology don't understand or appreciate how much within this industry peers do tend to support peers. We see it with our own CIO communities working for different organizations.
They will be a really good and certainly within the architecture space, I see so much collaboration. learning is a very important thing and an important thing to call out.
But as you said, I think we do learn as much, if not more from our mistakes as we do from our successes. And also, frankly, this has been too positive a conversation so far. So we'll move on to our second section, which we call First Fails.
And you mentioned making mistakes and having the space to make mistakes. But I wonder if I asked you for a big mistake or a memorable mistake, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Stephen Kaufman (
.16) Yeah, I think that it was a very specific project and it was a organization that was going through a very large transformation.
So a lot of moving parts, a lot of different projects from new applications to migrations to new infrastructure and a lot of, I'm going to say changing requirements and every day it seemed like we would show up in the morning and here were a bunch of changes.
Trying to incorporate the changes while we were actually in flight was crazy to begin with. And so we all were just scrambling. And it seemed like every day was a scramble to just bring in the scope and try to finish something.
So part of it was a great education on project management scope, scope management, but also the, I'm going to say the ability to say no. Matt Egan ( .067) Yeah.
.156) And that it's okay to say no, and it's okay to say, okay, let's figure out a plan, but we have a scope, we have to get something accomplished. Otherwise, we're going to be changing this forever and never really get anything completed, anything into production.
And for a very long time, we didn't get anything into production. And we got beat up weekly because of that. Matt Egan ( .912) Yep.
Matt Egan ( .858) Yeah.
No, I mean, it's such a key learning. It's funny. We had a conversation recently with somebody else who talked about accountability at a meeting level, right? Literally when we leave the meeting, have we agreed what everyone's going to do?
And especially when you're working with a customer or as a consultant for a third party, but even within an organization, like managing the scope, what are we trying to achieve? What are we going to do to achieve it?
It's not a technological thing specifically, but it is so important. Technology can do many things, but it will not solve a problem unless you have that agreement and manage that scope. It's such an important point.
And I guess semi-related, but a question we like to ask around this time is given all of this technology experience, given your experience working with customers, what's the first thing that comes to mind when I ask you about a time you realized something you thought you knew might actually be wrong?
.503) that happens a lot. Matt Egan (
.742) For a curious person it should happen, right? Stephen Kaufman (
.377) Yes, yes, I think that.
You know, the first time you start to think about, okay, if this was wrong, what are some of the other things that I thought I knew or things that I was making assumptions about that I have to go back and revisit and make sure that I didn't make an assumption.
And so then you start to validate and you start to question, okay, what was it that I read or that I had hands on with? And is that how it worked because that was how it was designed or? Did that just happen by accident?
And so then you start going through other use cases and other ways of, you know, trying and exploring. You know, there are things that you read and you think you understand. And for me, I tend to read to get kind of an umbrella picture of something.
But then it's go get hands on and go play with the technology and see how it works. Matt Egan ( .93) Bye.
.332) And is that the understanding that I had? are there things that, hey, this does far more? And I know that for myself, I do a lot of writing.
And so part of what I do in my writing is try to figure out how can I get across some of the things that are that umbrella topic, but yet go deep enough to be able to say, here are things to be thinking about or things that here's how it works and really try to convey that so that by the time that the reader is done, they're excited about that technology or about whatever that topic is, that they have an understanding and now they'll go do some hands-on work and dive deeper.
.504) So the learning is, know, yeah, you can only get so far by kind of understanding conceptually from book learning, I guess. And actually, you know, in order to understand the truth, you need to get hands on it. You need to try stuff and figure stuff out.
Yeah, really, really valuable lesson. OK, that's great. Really appreciate it, Steve. I'm really enjoying this conversation. I'm going to move on now because we do want to know more about you than just your professional veneer.
And the way we do that, the way we find out about Stephen Kaufman ( .611) Yes.
.146) real person is we use our random question generator. So if you wouldn't mind, Stephen, could you pick a number between 1 and 15? Stephen Kaufman ( .492) Let's go to 12.
Matt Egan ( .568) Number 12.
this is an interesting question, I think. We'll see what we get here. But what's the first thing you would save if your house was falling down? And we're to take family and any other human beings in the house as a given, right? They're being saved.
What else from within your house would be the thing you would save? Stephen Kaufman (
.972) So I have a network attached storage device on my network. And that would be the very first thing. It has all of the pictures, music, backup files, all my kids' pictures. So that would be the very first thing that I would run in to go grab.
Matt Egan ( .918) There you go.
Matt Egan ( .611) Yeah.
.884) is a great answer for a technologist and an architect, but I've got to ask, like, is it not backed up to the cloud? Like, what's going on here? Stephen Kaufman ( .872) next week.
.172) So yes, I have parts of it backed up to the cloud. But there are things that are on there that are things that throughout my career have been backed up there. And I don't have all of that saved to the cloud.
The more important things like photos and that, those are all backed up. But there's still a lot on that in Nans Drive. Matt Egan ( .079) Yeah Matt Egan (
.454) I love this answer because many people's equivalent would be the bag of the kids' things that they've got in the loft space above their house or something like that. But you are a pure architect because you have it all. That's such a great approach. OK, wonderful.
I wonder if you could try for another one. Could you give me another number between 1 and 15? Number five. OK, this is difficult, And there may not be an answer to it.
But do you have⦠anything at all that would constitute the first memory that comes to mind. Stephen Kaufman ( .97) first memory?
Well, there's a story that my parents tell me that I loved taking things apart. And yes, couldn't always get them back together, but love taking them apart.
So as you know, as I went through my childhood, you know, one of the things that my parents did was Matt Egan ( .294) Mmm.
Matt Egan ( .063) Right?
Figures? Matt Egan ( .552) I'm sorry.
.668) always had things that I could tinker with and play with. As I was growing up, my friends and I would do that. And we would always laugh when we had a couple extra screws on the table trying to figure out where are those from? What happened?
.342) Yeah, no, that's amazing foreshadowing for your professional life, really. It's an unfair question as well, because you said it yourself, right? There's a story within the family. Who knows what is the first memory and what's the first story we've been told about ourselves, right?
It's very difficult to put those two things together. But it's an interesting question to ask smart, successful people, because we always get some things. comes out of that. So I appreciate you sharing that. It does seem, it feels like you were born to do this job.
So we're having great conversation. We're having such a good time. We're going to move on, to our final section. But I'm really interested to ask you these questions.
The first piece of which would be, Stephen, given all of your experience and knowledge, what's the first piece of advice that you'd give to someone who's just starting? Stephen Kaufman ( .861) Of Stephen Kaufman (
.342) I would say be curious, get hands on, understand both the technology and interacting with people.
That is going to really be essential as you go throughout the career with trying to understand requirements and solutions and figuring out what the problems are, listening to the customer about what they're trying to achieve. is as important as the technology and as the solution.
Matt Egan ( .89) Yeah.
Maybe if not more important, right? And I do think it's a great piece of advice. You know, it is that thing of in my life as a technology journalist, I've seen so many people demonstrating technology that does cool stuff, but doesn't solve problems.
And I've seen so many people who are incredible at something technological, but can't map that to the human needs of the business. Right. And so it is the two pieces. I wonder if as we're going through this period of hyper acceleration around artificial intelligence to your point.
In a way it becomes even more critical, right? Because it does feel at this point in time, and I don't know about your experience, but like everyone's running towards this AI goal without necessarily thinking how does it actually solve our problems, drive efficiency or more productivity?
You know, like, so maybe it's, maybe it's advice that's even more apposite right now. Stephen Kaufman (
.722) I think it really is. And I think that as we go through each of these trends, it really becomes essential. And some of the things that companies are doing right now are trying to figure out what they can do and how does it work.
But the other part is there are companies that have things in production, and now they're starting to do revisions of those. And so how do we look at the full lifecycle? Matt Egan ( .024) Mm-hmm.
Matt Egan ( .556) Yeah.
.057) and really provide guidance so that we can tell them about, here are some of the things you have to think about. Here are some of the things that you have to be doing now beforehand so that we don't have difficulties later. Matt Egan (
.926) Yeah, no, it's really, really impactful advice and I think something that anybody at any stage of their career should listen to. But certainly, certainly if you're there at the outset. OK, I'm going to ask you one more question, if that's OK.
And you may blush it, but I'd like to ask you, you know, what's the first project or achievement that you would want to tell people about? Like, you're only allowed to tell them about one thing. Like, what's Stephen's masterpiece? Stephen Kaufman ( .516) Only one project?
.19) One project, one achievement, it can be broader than that, right? But, you know, if you look back upon your career so far, you know, what gives you the most kind of pride, I guess, that you'd want to tell? Stephen Kaufman (
.66) Yeah, I think for me it's the satisfaction of seeing something be implemented successfully where the customer is elated as to what was done, the impact that it had, just the benefits that come from that. It is amazing how much joy comes from that successful implementation.
And it doesn't mean that everything all went smoothly or everything went right, but it does mean that we were successful at the end together. And I think that's the piece that anytime that that happens, I think that's phenomenal. Matt Egan ( .358) That's amazing.
And it actually takes us back right back to where we started when you talked about your curiosity, leading you to want to solve problems. Right. And also the combination of technological skills, chops, experience with people skills. Right.
So you found yourself in a good spot because you're able at quite a large scale, I presume, to work with these people to help them to achieve success. It's a brilliant answer and it's been a fantastic conversation.
So my thanks to Stephen Kaufman and thanks to all of you for watching or listening to. First Person, show where we meet the most interesting people in IT and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts.
And from that conversation, as I think we've seen and heard today, we learned some great insights. I've been your host, Matt Egan, and I'm asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us.
And if you're an interesting person in IT, do let us know because you might be the next First Person. But I will sign off by saying a heartfelt and sincere thank you to my guest today, Stephen Kaufman. Thanks, Stephen. Stephen Kaufman (
.748) Thank you very much.
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