Graduated in 2016 with a major in Electronic Production & Design. Principal instrument: piano.
Position: Global Product Readiness Launch Manager (project manager) at Microsoft. In this remote position, Zack manages X-box new product launches. He manages onboarding of products, making sure a customer can go to microsoft.com , buy the stuff, see the relevant videos, etc. without a hitch. He regularly works with 2 other managers; site ops & web production teams, which build up materials and upload info; a category team which manages actual product coming in from manufacturer; a design department, and a product marketing group. He manages teams but is nobody’s boss. “It’s really an operations position, making sure the workflow is smooth.”
Overview: Zack liked both music and technology. He was nervous that he lacked the personality to be a professional piano player, and was equally nervous that he woudn’t be a good fit for working in a studio. After a year, he did audio editing for television and worked in an Apple store fixing computers. In 2019, after two years at the Apple store, Zack was feeling unsure about his long-term prospects, so he sent out a bunch of resumes. He landed a cool music-related job at a company that sold custom audio systems for voice mail — the person who hired him was also a Berklee grad. Then 2020 came around, the pandemic hit, and Zack was laid off.
Zack started applying to many jobs, including tech jobs. An internal recruiter from Microsoft reached out to him and he was hired into his position in the fall of 2020.
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You can see Zack’s LinkedIn profile here.
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Choice Quotes: “These products are a household name/company and worldwide–it’s cool to see the scope of these launches. I don’t game myself, so the job is less about the gaming than the impact.”
“If you want to work as a project manager, you have to detail oriented in an alpha, I’m in charge, way. If you could plan a trip for a dozen people, booking everything and making sure everyone did what they had to do, you could be a project manager.”
“The skills I learned at Berklee were people skills and the ability to talk to just about anyone just about anywhere. I may not be so lucky to have those if I hadn’t gone to Berklee. Also the technology component of the EPD degree and all the classes and knowledge from that made the day-to-day tech component easy-peasy. You’re using tech to its fullest!”
“Coming out of college I thought I’d have it more together than I did–job set up, etc. It may not work that way, but keep forging down the path. Searching for what you don’t know, taking in information. The path will illuminate.”
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