- It's lunchtime, and this is
Brad Anderson's Lunch Break.
(playful music)
Two of my favorite things about Microsoft
are the smart people that constantly visit campus,
and the great fleet of shuttles.
Whenever I can, I try to take advantage
of both of these things, and grab lunch
with some of the tech industry's best and brightest.
(playful music)
This week, I'll finish up my conversation with Microsoft's
deal maker and partnership expert, Peggy Johnson.
(car accelerates) (playful music)
(gentle piano music)
So while you were at Qualcomm,
you transitioned from being an engineer
to a business leader.
- That's right.
- What do you miss about the technical work
on the engineering side?
- I loved sitting in the lab, and collaborating together
with my fellow engineers on a project.
That was really fun, and we were all doing pieces of code,
and then we'd build it all together,
I do miss those days.
And I really had a hard time
making the jump over to the business side,
because I thought about,
I'm not gonna get to code anymore
(Peggy laughs)
So I miss some of that.
- Now speaking about that, Business Insider just ranked you
as the world's most powerful female engineer.
So what does that feel like?
(Peggy laughs)
- Well first of all, I was with a ton of
super engineers on that list,
including our own Lily Chang.
- Yep. Love Lily.
- And so, so excited to share that honor with her
and the other ladies on that list.
And so it was just great to see that list
with some really good names on there.
- So you were heavily involved in the largest acquisition
of Microsoft's history of LinkedIn.
- Oh, that was a team effort.
(Peggy laughs) - Yeah, oh yeah.
- Yeah, so our part was, as it is in many acquisitions,
catching that signal early on, that this might
be an interesting acquisition for us,
it might be filling a gap, solving a problem,
those are sort of the things that we look for.
But it's truly a team sport, we work closely
with CorpStrat, Corp Dev, Amy and her finance teams,
Satya himself, the product and engineering teams
of course weigh in.
And when all of those things come together,
we often times say, yup, this is the one.
And we pull the trigger and go for it.
- That's a big trigger.
- That was a big trigger.
(Peggy laughs)
- One of the interesting things about LinkedIn
is it has, you can endorse people's skills and capabilities.
So I'm gonna read you a list of five skills,
and I want you to tell me which of these are
real endorsements on LinkedIn today.
- Okay.
- Number one, carbohydrates; Number two, paranormal romance;
(Peggy laughs)
Number three, guinea pigs; Number four, salads;
and Number 5; friendly personality.
Or, all the above.
- Okay I have to go with all the above.
- You are right. - Yes!
- People have those as not just as a skill,
but an endorsed skill.
- Hamsters?
- How do you know that?
How good must you be at paranormal romance
for somebody else to endorse that?
- That is an odd one, yes.
(playful music)
- What are you looking for,
like what are the key things you look
for in a company you're going to invest in?
- We look for a number of things.
First of all, we say, are there gaps
in our current product line that they could fill for us?
Is it a new, disruptive, exciting technology
that maybe is a little bit over the horizon
that we wanna track?
We also look for talent.
And I think all three of those were in our Maluuba,
- Yeah, for sure, yeah. - That acquisition that
we did earlier this year.
(playful music)
- A couple months ago I was driving around
with the CIO of Accenture, Andrew Wilson,
and a comment that he made was,
"Diversity is just not a goal, but it's fundamental
to the bottom line in being successful."
- I think, as a modern employer, it is absolutely essential
that we stand for all forms of diversity.
I think gender, I think race, color, sexuality.
Why? Because we serve a global world.
And all diversity exists in the global world.
How on earth can we be relevant
and bring the best of humanity
to the products and services we build
if we're not diverse ourselves?
- And how do we help more organizations understand that?
How do we encourage more, for example,
women, to continue in STEM programs and be more
technical engineers?
- I mean, that is a very good point,
and I think of it that way
because I think there's two things that come to mind.
One is when you're designing products,
you wanna design for the largest total addressable market.
- Oh yeah, totally.
- And if you have design teams that all
look and act alike, you will likely design a product
for that design team.
- Right.
- And it could be any group; if it's all homogenous,
you just will miss things that appeal
to the broader population, so I think there's one
very strong business reason to make the case
for diverse design teams, because you wanna be able
to touch--
- Have the broadest ideas touch
the broadest amount of people.
- Exactly.
(playful music)
- So, every day you make big decisions
that often unfold over many years.
- Right.
- What kind of decision-making workflow do you use
when you do things like naming a dog?
(Peggy and Brad laugh)
- You know, I have four dogs.
- I know.
- Yeah, so, sometimes there's a lot of analysis
that goes into it, and other times not so much.
(playful music)
- A piece of advice that you were given early in your career
that you wish you would've taken?
- Oh, just to be yourself.
Because I have largely,
all through my early career
worked in mostly male environments,
and I was an engineer-- - In tech.
- Yeah, in tech, and they tended to be
maybe a little more aggressive, type of environments, and--
- That was the Microsoft I joined 15 years ago.
- Yeah, that's changed so much and,
so many times when I was struggling, I thought
I need to be more, and I got advice,
to be more like the guys,
why don't you just speak up more,
and be more assertive?
And whenever I tried to be something I wasn't,
the outcome wasn't very good.
I had a boss at one point who said,
"Why don't you just be yourself?"
and that was sort of like the turning point in my career,
- That's good advice - I just became who I was,
my authentic self, and I thought,
well if they don't like it,
I'm not changing anymore.
- [Brad] Thank you again for taking the time here,
- [Peggy] Thank you, thank you for having me.
- This has just been a real joy.
- It's been super fun, thanks for driving me around.
- And next time maybe I'll upgrade the car a little.
- Okay, please.
(laughs)
Thank you--
- Again, well thank you so much.
- Thanks very much, Brad. Bye-bye.
- [Brad] I'll talk to you again soon, Peggy.
- [Peggy] Okay.
(upbeat music)
- Next time on Brad Anderson's Lunch Break;
More than a few times you've wondered,
am I better off with familiar disappointments,
rather than new adventures?
- Oh I'd go for the second one, the proof-of-concept one.
(Brad laughs)
- That's what I thought, too.
You'd get stuck with the bill at the end.
(Mauricio and Brad laugh)
(car accelerating) (playful music)