A George
Myself George, the trainer at SourceLens.
If you are here to look at my resume it's here.
My short, and almost a decade old, technical blogs back in my Microsoft days
are here.
( I guess a lot of info is outdated ). My free, non-profit,
programming and debugging training videos
are here ( luckily none is outdated ).
Following is a short informal summary of the last 16+ years
of my software development career and maybe a bit into the evolution of SourceLens.
I am really glad that you are here and hope we will meet and share some knowledge soon, also feel free to connect with me on linked in. Thank you and take care!
Linked In
I remember the days back in very early 2000 when I was back in college learning C and
wondered how to create something which has a user interface like the Notepad
or the Word or the IE, that time in University we had only console applications. This quest brought me to
VC++ which was harder than I thought to learn by myself, but cracking of that world got me into
Microsoft itself in the WDK, SDK and Visual Studio team. Unlike my expectations, the job was no hunky-dory, too many technologies got pumped over me in a short period by the role. Almost 2 years of
firefighting before I could master anything. .Net framework, C/C++ / assembly, SDK, WDK and most importantly a rare and
valuable art called 'production debugging’ with strange tools like Windbg, time travel traces were some of the stuff
the role demanded to master or leave the company or the role. During this 2 years I
thought of leaving Microsoft multiple times, many times I myself questioned my own capabilities more precisely the ingenuity,
which a lot of people who knew me, including myself to certain extent, was proud of about me. Mostly ego in accepting a failure and maybe to a certain extent the brand name of having a
hard to get Microsoft full-time job, kept me going. Endurance and better focus on details certainly paid off. The third year was different,
I start asking fewer questions around and was able to answer and help some people around.
Later I started training the Microsoft fellow engineers.
When I look back, now I feel the best decision I have ever taken in my career was (or is) sticking to Microsoft the first 2 years for 2 reasons,
one there never been a better or steeper learning curve in my career or in my academic, 2 whenever I talked to someone about my career path, next question is
more than often - “why I left Microsoft?’. And now I have a less embarrassing answer. Citrix, where I moved next, I felt very similar to Microsoft,
employee pampering culture, development tools, everything in and around windows. Unlike Microsoft where I was all over
the Microsoft development stack from .net to the kernel, Citrix was interested only in my kernel and debugging skill.
So from there onwards, my career was more driven through the sides of the keyword Windows Kernel.
So the core paravirtualization, redirection and the hooking windows kernel drivers were my playground.
An interesting ( or ironic) fact about my Citrix tenure is that I had code access to the entire Microsoft Windows OS (all versions till then)
which was something I did not have in Microsoft. I had only partial access to the same codebase in Microsoft.
( Citrix has some special code license of Windows which they provide to certain engineers upon signing a special NDA. )
Anyhow, from Citrix I moved to Intel and then VMware mostly due to the remunerations these companies offered with fancy job titles, for the niche skills.
The job changes which happened almost effortless that I started to feel that, a tech career is like a giant flywheel
which I gave a huge amount of angular momentum in the initial 2 years of my tenure in Microsoft and it kept on rotating since then, whether I wanted or not.
While my full-time jobs took the paths like I mentioned above,
I was doing some other consultings and training deliveries. Helped a couple of startups
to get up
speed, a series of Windows Kernel and
debugging courses all over Bangalore and some in the United States. Out of all of these “extracurricular” kind of stuffs 'SourceLens' was special.
I started working for
sourcelens.org
in early 2008.
Apart from, my original idea
to share knowledge and to avoid repeation of same trainings which I fed up giving back to back, had a stronger trigger point which I have written here.
Just like any free, open, non-profit initiative,
things with SourceLens were not marketed well or
reached it's intended audience although it has and had great potential.
If I learned anything from SourceLens, it is the fact that it's way easier to market and sell a
non-free commodity than a free commodity which is new and counter entertaining like
learning, education etc. So that was the major change I wanted to make in the current
version which you are reading this from - the SourceLens.com.au.
Another thing I wanted to focus on was/is basics. In the
previous version, a lot of too advanced topics
were discussed such that it became the only place to
learn some niche and complicated stuff like debugging with windbg, Windows Kernel etc.
Try search 'free video training on debugging with windbg’ in Google and you
will understand what I'm talking about. This was good for professionals who
were already working in MNCs and earning 100s of $1000s yearly, but failed to reach students who were looking
for their first job or hopelessly looking for that first month of income from something.
So there is a whole lot of focus on the basics and
fundamental courses from a marketing and cost perspective.
Also, by the commercialization of SourceLens, we could achieve to be more organized and timeline oriented.
I am happy and proud to say that the coding
and more precisely reverse engineering skills
which normally I get paid, in my full-time jobs in MNCs are definitely
beaten by my teaching skills thanks to my parents, both of them are renowned teachers back in my hometown.
Other things I am into are astrophysics, badminton, and
photography. Here I have some of my shots. So don't be surprised if SourceLens is going
to have a course on Nikon D850 or General Relativity in future :-). 'Has travelled to most parts of the
world' is always my show off head line and boasts hard that, I am the most cosmopolitan man you will ever meet. Now that's
about me and we can skip ‘about me’ part when we meet and start from
‘about you’. Feel free to get in touch with me at george@sourcelens.com.au or at the linkedin ( above ) and see you soon.