Becoming a .NET Garbage Collection Architect - Career Insights and Advice

Explore the career journey of Maoni Stephens, the .NET Garbage Collection (GC) architect at Microsoft, in this 45-minute video interview. Gain insights into building a successful career in software architecture, including finding your passion, leveraging mentorship, developing crucial skills like debugging, and transitioning from individual contributor to team leader. Learn about Stephens' experiences automating her work, adapting to team dynamics, and cultivating persistence and confidence. Discover the importance of continuous learning, soft skills development, and effective communication in advancing your tech career. Understand how to identify and make the most of career-changing opportunities, from discovering computers post-college to utilizing IRC in the 90s for professional growth.

- Maoni's path to find her GC passion.
- Trying out the PM path with GC.
- What it means to be a GC architect and working with customers.
- Building out tooling to automate her job.
- Most recent career learning - working with a team instead of one-woman army.
- How did Maoni know she had found her area and finding a critical mentor?.
- How did she decide that she needed a change in her job and put her plan into action?.
- Learning to debug as career accelerator.
- On persistence and confidence.
- Finding computers after college.
- IRC as key career maker in the 90's, AGAIN!.
- Getting the most out of a great mentor.
- Mentors for non-technical areas, learning soft skills, influence without authority.
- Instilling new habits of interactions.