 Joseph DeCuir
Program Manager - Modems
Microsoft Corporation
Redmond, WA
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 B.S. -
Electrical Engineering/Computer Science, UC Berkeley
M.S. -
Electrical Engineering/Computer Science, UC Berkeley |
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Program Manager who
plans and drives modem support in the Windows family operating
system. |
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"Figure out what you
like to do and find a way to get paid for it. If you like it, it
won't be so hard to put in the effort it does take to get good
at it and stay good at it." |
DeCuir:
"Microsoft looks for people who are self-starters and team players because
like I say business is a team sport. Everybody works on a team. There are
very few people here who are lone guns. And self-starters. If we have to
spend a lot of time in your face figuring out what to do and telling you
what to do, we've hired poorly."
"And she offered me a job. And I went to the hotel and tossed and turned
all night because I was really excited about the job but it was
geographically undesirable. I lived in the Bay Area. I was up to my neck
in my community. I was a cub scout leader for two dens. I was organizing
earthquake preparedness in my neighborhood. I had lots of friends; lots of
infrastructure. And to take this wonderful job I was going to have to pull
up stakes and move. But, the choice was to either pull up stakes and move
here, or take a job in the Santa Clara valley that would mean driving for
an hour and a half, working 10-12 hours a day, then driving an hour and a
half. I wouldn't have my community anyway -- it would be hard to hang on
to my wife and kids -- let alone my community with a commute like that, so
I live a mile and a half from here."
Joe Decuir is program manager for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. Joseph
serves as Chair of the IEEE Communication Society, Seattle Section and is
author or editor of 12 national and 4 international communications
standards and ten patents. He studied electrical engineering/computer
science at Berkeley, graduating in 1972. In the last twenty-five years, he
has seen a lot of changes in the field. "When I graduated in '72, the
microprocessor was a year old, the 4004 did 60,000 instructions per second
on four byte numbers. . . ."
Decuir believes that lifelong learning is necessary, not only for his
company, but for the industry. "I'm trying to learn stuff that I don't
already know because I'm going to need it a year or two from now." And
that includes writing and people skills. "I figure out what needs to get
done. . . . Get people to do the work. . . . It's sort of like herding
cats, and I depend completely on my ability to listen and understand and
persuade."
Decuir reminds young engineers that there is more to life than work. "Many
of us had lives before we were engineers and continue to want to have
lives after -- and some of us don't want to wait till retirement to do
so." Part of living is making accommodations. Decuir is a single father of
three and has to juggle family and work responsibilities every day. "I
carry this cell phone on my hip. If one of my kids needs some help, I can
scramble. My job is flexible enough that I can usually do that." His
schedule is largely dictated by family life: "I work. I go home. I feed
them. I do activities with them. I bring work home on a floppy disk in my
pocket or on my notebook, and, when I put the kids to bed, I finish up all
the writing that I didn't get to do during the day. And that's what life
is like."
Finally, Decuir passes on his father's advice to him as the secret to a
happy life. "Figure out what you like to do and find a way to get paid for
it. If you like it, it won't be so hard to put in the effort it does take
to get good at it and stay good at it. You'll get positive strokes from
your job, even when times are tough."
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