Interview: Amanda Loh, Azure IoT Central Software Engineer II at Microsoft 

By Angela Tai

You’re currently the Azure Software Engineer II at Microsoft and you’ve also worked at noteworthy companies including Tesla, Ekso Bionics and NIO. What inspired you to pursue a career in software engineering? 

I was two years into my career as a professional dancer, I was in the professional division at Pacific Northwest ballet which is in Seattle. In my second year, I started looking for jobs and I flew to New York, Los Angeles and Portland. I auditioned for all kinds of companies all over the United States and it was definitely rough for me because I’m of Asian descent and I’m only 5’4 so I was being told that I didn’t look like the part for a specific company. When you enter a company, you enter into this ballet pool where all the dancers are supposed to look the same and I wasn’t really fitting the bill for that. Even in my own company, I wouldn't get cast in things and I wasn’t getting job offers outside. In general, it was difficult for me. On top of that, I ended up injured which was tough because I had been cast in some pretty big roles and then I couldn’t do them because I got injured - I injured my calf and couldn’t walk for a little while. So to kind of pass time, I took up a Python class, I didn’t know anything about what it was. It actually was really really fun, I think the first program I wrote was a love poem generator thing and it was really cute. I could send poems to my friends and family and I realized that that was when I could do something with my brain. I had been focusing a lot on my body and what I look like and I was really into this idea of me being known as someone who creates things and makes an impact but it’s not based on how I look, it’s based on what I’m thinking about in my brain. For me, that was an exciting idea.  I got this crazy idea which for me was making robotic muscles because I’d injured my calf muscle so I think that was my inspiration. I came across an article from the Biorobotics Lab, that’s University of Washington’s lab and they were creating artificial muscles and it was a really cool research paper. I’d never read a research paper in my life, I’d only done art, dance and ballet. That’s actually what inspired me to apply for the transfer student application for University of Washington. At the same time, I had auditioned for other things and I had this whole plan to go to Arizona to dance. I had put down a deposit and met my roommate - I was ready to go. Last August, I just cancelled everything last minute and decided to come to the University of Washington with no plan for anything, I didn’t even know engineering was a discipline at that point. I went to the advisor and was like, “I want to build robots that change the world and I read this research paper about it.” She told me that it wasn’t a field so I asked what the specific field was. She said the best way to get to the application you want to is through engineering, she had to explain what engineering was and the different disciplines. We found out electrical engineering was probably the best fit for what I wanted to do because I wanted to build real robots at that point. I hadn’t done math in years, I always enrolled in art classes so it was tough for me going back to school because I had to relearn math. I had to do more heavy lifting to get to the point where I could even take the prerequisites for the engineering classes.It was tough because it was a competitive program, you had to have certain grades to get in and I remember I couldn’t figure out what projectile motion was. It was difficult and I wanted to quit so many times but I guess I didn’t because I wanted to prove to myself that I’m a smart person. I think that was the driving force of really wanting to create. I did electrical engineering for two years and then I had this amazing opportunity to intern at Tesla which was a big deal because Tesla was blowing up at the time. Initially, I went to go to work for battery technology and it wasn’t robotics to be honest. It was a really good stepping stone for what I wanted to do so I made stepping stones, I started with battery technology and then I moved towards robotics. When I was a senior in college, I moved to Ekso Bionics which was the epitome of what I really wanted to work on. They were basically building skeletons for paraplegics so that they can walk again so it was amazing to get to that journey. One thing I omitted from this story was that halfway in, I think I was still at my first internship at Tesla, I noticed a huge line outside our admissions office when I came back to school and I asked my friend why there was such a big line at the admissions office. Then, someone told me this was the line for computer science because these are all of the people who were rejected that want to get in. That’s when I realized that computer science was a very big deal at the time and everyone wanted to get into it. I had never really explored any applications within computer science and so I started doing research into machine learning and AI and I was fascinated that that can apply to robotics as well. There’s a robotics lab inside UW that was actually in the computer science department that I was really interested in working with so it was crazy - I went in thinking I wanted to get a degree in electrical engineering but then I ended up getting degrees in engineering and computer science. I graduated with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and a bachelor’s in computer science and I ended up doing two robotics capstone just because I wanted to explore the engineering and computer science side. 

I know you’re constantly pointing out the subtle similarities between engineering and dance, especially using robotics and AI which is very similar to the work that you’ve been interested in doing. How do you hope to channel your passion and profession? 

You know, there’s that talk about whether or not you’re right-brain or left-brain focused. I think you can also train yourself to become that other side if you want to and really embrace that technical side. For me, I never really liked math from a young age. My mom said that I always picked art classes when I was a child but I think a lot of people don’t really think about this - engineering is a lot of out-of-the box thinking. They do see the technical part like the data structures, etc. but a good example of this happened last night when I was ‘on call.’ We’ll have incidents that just happen overnight and it was literally 1AM in  the morning and I got an incident and it basically said this cluster has too much data coming in, to the point where the thing has collapsed. I didn’t know anything, none of your actual skills are going to help here, it’s all problem-solving skills. You have to think about who this impacts, you know, thinking it might be impacting certain customers, etc. It’s more about creative thinking, it kind of overlaps a little with being a doctor as well. Whenever a patient comes in, the doctor has to do some out-of-the box thinking to determine what’s wrong with the patient. In the end, it wasn’t about solving the problem which would’ve been the technical part and I ended up finding out that this was a glitch in the test system that actually doesn’t impact any real customers but it’s there to prepare us just in case a real customer is impacted. That’s truly what a lot of engineering is - it’s not just the technical part but dealing with the people and out-of-the box thinking come into play. I don’t think a lot of people know that, they go into engineering thinking it’s all about the data structures and I get so many questions from girls on my Instagram, they’ll ask me what the right coding language is to start with and I keep telling them it doesn’t matter. The real thing you need to be thinking about is your problem-solving skills; I always tell them to take up a project, anything you want to do. Do you want to create a love poem generator or do you want to create something totally different? It’s your out-of-the box thinking skills that make you a good programmer because you’re able to take up a project, execute on it and figure out the design for it. It doesn’t really matter what language you use for your project, it can be Java, Python, etc. 

Technology is constantly evolving. Career-wise, are you where you imagined yourself would be when you were in school? 

To be honest, I didn’t think it would evolve as much as it actually did. When I went into engineering, I genuinely thought I would work on robotics and that was supposed to be my destiny. I don’t think people realize when you get into tech, things evolve a lot. Like you said, tech is always changing. I started in battery technology at Tesla and it was an amazing experience. I actually worked with Elon on a research paper which was an amazing experience as an intern. From there, I moved to a more robotics application which was the falcon wing doors for the Model X release in 2015 - that was very exciting! I got to learn more about how this very complex car worked, how to validate all of these scenarios and it was a really great experience. Then, I really wanted to do the whole robot thing and I did - I went to Ekso Bionics and studied exoskeletons and got to see paraplegics walk. It was amazing to see how the code I was writing was impacting people in such a profound way. But then when I was there, the big boom in Silicon Valley was happening at the time. This was in 2016 and there was a shift for me. The whole time, I thought I’d be in this robotics world and it was really cool but I’m the kind of person who wants to jump into something if I think it sounds exciting. For my first full-time job, I wanted to try autonomous driving and I was very nerded out. So, my first job wasn’t your traditional robotics but it was a really cool application that involved robotics. From there, it just kept evolving and I dealt with issues where we’d have to scale huge amounts of data. We had a lot of machine learning experts in our team but we didn’t have a lot of people who understood scale. For that, I decided to move to Microsoft because they work in Azure on scale and that’s something that I wanted to learn more about. Now, I work in a field called Internet of Things which are all devices similar to devices like light sensors and things like that. We try to figure out how to crunch loads and loads of data at scale through a pipeline which is something I wanted to learn more about because I had those issues at my previous company. It has just been a blast learning from more senior people who have solved these problems before and learning from them as well because this team is very start-up’y. Then again, there’s things that we don’t know so we go back to that out-of-the box thinking of how do we solve this problem. My engineering journey has transformed quite a bit, your trajectory changes and you don’t have to die hard from the beginning because life isn’t like that. 

You’ve been a ballet dancer for a number of years - you’ve also noted that ballet became “the one stable constant” in your life. What is it that attracts you about using movements to express yourself?

I have been a dancer my whole life, I’ve done classic ballet since I was three years old. During quarantine, I explored other dance types because I’d always done classic ballet but I wanted to break that mold. I was thinking to myself - if I’m going to be a dancer in tech, I don’t want to box myself because I want to show women that you can be a dancer in tech and it’s not only ballet. For example, I picked up shuffling which is something that’s very different from ballet. It’s all EDM music and using your feet, you don’t use your hands very much whereas ballet’s a very full-body experience, it’s just isolating the bottom-half of yourself. That was really exciting - it was almost like learning how to code again. There’s a lot of similarities between shuffling and coding, there’s a lot of repetition like there is in coding and the music itself is very electronic. I really enjoyed that and I think people should know that you don’t need to be a dancer to start dancing. You can learn a lot of these dance forms on your own.

Even in the most interesting roles, it’s easy to fall prey to what I called work “inertia” when you’re not not feeling inspired. Have you had that happen to you before? And if so, do you have any tricks when it comes to invigorating yourself? 

I think it was very difficult for me when I first transitioned. Coming from Silicon Valley to Microsoft was a huge shift because Microsoft values work/life balance a lot more than my start-ups did. I worked really hard at my start-ups and spent 100% of my time on work. It was an adjustment to come to a company culture where they valued you doing things outside of work.  People would say, “5pm hard stop!” For a while, I definitely felt demotivated and thought my team didn’t care about the work they do, they just want to go back to their families at 5pm and I wondered if they cared as much about work as I do. As a bigger company, Microsoft moves a lot slower, you have to wait for code approvals and that takes a while so I needed to really think about how to spend my time again because I was so used to only doing work 100% of the time. I think the way that I re-motivated myself was by realizing that work/life balance is important; I think that’s something that Microsoft taught me. That’s why I now have my Silicon Dancer Instagram page that represents dance and tech together. I think Microsoft gave me this unique opportunity to work my day job but I can also work on my personal projects on my own. If I wasn’t working at a company, what would I do? People who feel demotivated with their work or who aren’t feeling inspired should pick up a personal project, what’s something you’re regularly excited to do or explore? Try to give yourself a work-life balance so you at least have an aspect in your life that you feel excited about. I know it’s not realistic to say, “I’m not feeling motivated so I’m going to quit my job and find a new one.” Having something small to look forward to after 5PM is important, just having something that makes you excited at the end of the day. 

What are some of the misconceptions in engineering that you hear a lot? 

There’s a lot of stereotypes surrounding people who work in computer science and tech. It’s usually that they love coding, love staying indoors, they’re introverted and they geek out about random stuff. That is the misconception that a lot of people have about engineers. I even went to LA last week for some dance opportunities and it’s funny because when I tell people that I’m an engineer, the first thing you get too is “oh wow, you’re so smart you must study all day.” You know, you can still have a balance and be an engineer. You don’t have to be in your house all day studying. I think the nice thing that I found from this Instagram thing is the women. I’ve met women who are crazy smart engineers but they’re absolutely stunning and they do photo shoots and dress up too. They wear amazon outfits and a lot of them dance - that’s the kind of community that I’m building. They don’t fit that mold, they still have amazing jobs at Microsoft, Nasa, Google, etc. but they also have a life where they dress up and they’re beautiful and fabulous. They feel empowered to show that. I feel like a lot of women don’t feel confident enough to dress up, I was that kind of person who didn’t want to dress up at work because I was worried that I’d stand out. I’ve gotten comments from male coworkers before and I think over time, I just didn’t care anymore. That’s how it is and unfortunately, you’re going to get this weird attention because as an engineer, you’re supposed to look a certain way but I think over time, I realized that I need to be myself and if I want to wear a dress or make-up to work, nobody should think less of me. 

Would you say from your own experience working in the industry, that you’ve seen improvements in diversity over the years?

I definitely think I’ve seen it within Microsoft. I’ve been here for almost two years now and I think it’s amazing our company prioritizes diversity hiring, we always have email threads about it. That means people are talking about it and recruiters are involved and we’re really trying to make an effort. The second thing is, we have intense trainings for culture, the way you respond and talk to different types of people whether you’re female, male, non-binary, binary, etc. How you interact with people culturally is amazing training too. I think we had to do it for four to five hours. We had to attend this seminar where we go over culture and we’ve also hired D&I experts to help us with this sort of thing. I definitely have seen improvement in those areas. But still, I am the only woman on my team right now and I’m the only woman that’s Asian on my team too. I still feel like we still have some work to do, I’m usually either the only woman at meetings or there’s one other woman with me. That's kind of been my experience so I definitely would love to see more women on the team. 

We’re huge fans of your tech company series on Instagram! It’s cool that you were able to represent tech giants like Facebook and Giant through your videos. What did you hope to impart to your audience on social media with those tech dance videos?

I first started with the coding languages, if dancers were coding languages to be more specific. I think what I wanted to get across there is that coding is cool, I wanted to give some life to these languages because they’re all different. Software engineers always joke about the different languages but I feel like normal people don’t get it. When I go out with my friends (usually they’re all guys), their girlfriends don’t understand all the jokes and I thought about how amazing it would be if the girlfriends could understand the jokes. I figured they’d be able to understand if I explained it through dance since dance is pretty expressible which is where the inspiration came from for what tech companies would look like if they were dancers. If I could express the company culture of the company through a dance, could it help people understand what it might be like to work there? I think all of this is trying to get people who maybe don’t do tech to have an avenue into tech or pique their interest. For me, the best thing is when someone watches one of those videos and asks me how to get into tech. That’s the ultimate goal there! 

Your most recent Instagram post piqued our interest. You noted that your whole life, you’ve been shy and reserved and told to never be sexy. Was there an inflection point in your life that made you come out of your shell?

I think there was a turning point for me. I had always danced in my bathroom and would put on a sexy song to feel confident and it would make me feel good but I’d never share it with anyone, especially on the internet. I actually viewed people with bikinis on the internet as being too risque. Then, I met this amazing dancer named Jojo Gomez through the internet and in January, she did a free class over IGTV and this was to a song called Scars by Alessia Cara. In this thing, she had us close our eyes and dance the movement. So, that was the first time I’d ever posted anything super emotional about myself or showcasing this “I’m beautiful and confident” mindset. This woman was amazing and she supported me through everything I was building. She’s a very sexy person, if you google Jojo Gomez, she has all of these sensual, sexy videos. For me, it’s not too much, I like how she exudes her energy and she’s confident and sexy. What a lot of people don’t know about her is that she's not this risque person. I had an amazing opportunity to meet her boyfriend in LA and he’s an amazing, sweet guy. She's in a super committed relationship and they’ve been together for years. She has very strong values and morals and I don’t think a lot of people know that just from looking at her videos. I like how she doesn’t care what other people think and it’s surprising she doesn’t get a lot of hate comments and I think it’s just because she’s so confident. That definitely inspired me to start posting this kind of stuff and this happened a lot more when I went to LA, I went to LA for 10 days to actually train with her. I got an amazing opportunity to work with her for many hours and she helped me to train this into my channel and into my dance experience so now I feel super confident posting this stuff. 

What do you consider to be the essential qualities that a candidate for any software engineering role must possess (technical and soft skills)? 

Absolutely. I think two of the traits that I kind of had before I came into engineering were integral. The first thing was perseverance - as a dancer, you can’t give up, if you have a show and you’re exhausted, you have to keep going. It’s that constant repetition of again, again, again because you typically have three shows a day. The same is true for engineering that a lot of people don’t know, even when you’re interviewing and get these lead code problems, you have to go over them again and again. It's not a one-time thing where you understand a raise and you’re good. Usually in engineering, you have to go over these things again and again until you get it down. It’s like muscle memory but for your brain. So, it’s the same thing in engineering, I feel like that helped me out a lot. In school, I had the work ethic to go over problems again and again and again so when it came to test-taking time, I knew exactly what to do. I think the second skill I had was as a dancer, we don’t talk but communication is super important. Talking to other people you’re dancing with is so important, you have to make sure that you’re situated correctly, it’s all about alignment which is in a physical form but in the software world, a lot of reasons we have bugs that fail is because there was a lack of communication. I feel like that one translated really well because I feel like I’m good at communicating which is surprisingly something that a lot of people lack in the software world. You have to have really good communication with your peers and I think now in the interview process, its gotten a lot better where I think people are interviewing for communication skills now which I’m really glad about. When I interview people now, I look for communication. I give them a problem and expect them to ask me questions. Instead of “okay I’ll solve the problem” and they solve it all wrong which is something that I wasn’t looking for. 

How have you tried to shape how you interview talent in the realm of diversity & inclusion? 

At my previous company, I was a big lead with the diversity and inclusion hiring. I was really involved in it and I started creating the whole interview deck because I wanted it to be more authentic. Essentially, I didn’t like the way that we interviewed. I had problems in my own day-to-day job and that’s what I really wanted to come through in the interview. I kept a notebook and would write down what the problems were and how I solved it and then I would go back and pull a fake problem out of it that was almost exactly the same but would get the same concept across. Actually, those are the problems that I used with my candidates back when I interviewed them. I would always start the interview by saying “I think this helps psychologically for a lot of people.” I would always tell them, we’re solving this problem together, I’m your peer and we’re going to work through this. Then, I would say that we’re going to work through it like we’re coworkers. 

Microsoft is notorious for giving some of the most difficult job interviews. Additionally, what are the biggest challenges you face in this role? And, what are some of the tips you might have for people who are currently going through a tech interview? 

Absolutely. Yeah, the way I feel about the interview process to be honest is that it’s not ideal. You’re being asked on a phone screen, that’s the first interaction you get with an engineer is to basically solve a problem you would never really get on the job. I tell people that it’s a separate skill, I wish it wasn’t but it is. It’s something that you have to study for and it takes time which is unfortunate. You need to be prepared at all times because if you lose your job, then you’re going to have to have that skill so you’re ready when you have to do more job interviews. I think it’s a two-part thing, it depends where you are in your career. The bread and butter is in algorithms and data structures so that’s going to be lead code, just do the free lead code online to study for interviews. You just have to practice, it’s not brute force practice like you need to do 600 problems, that’s not going to help you. You need to be smart about what problems you select, the recruiter will tell you what you need to study. You need to be able to recognize patterns and that’s the most difficult part because you’re going to get a problem that you don’t know how to solve. So, it’s tough because you can’t just brute force it, it’s a little bit more of how you detect the type of problem-solving that they’re looking for for different sets of problems. To be honest, I struggled with this too, I still don’t have it down. When I interviewed out of Silicon Valley, I got rejected from every company that I applied to during the first-round and it was really difficult. I think I applied to maybe 20 companies and getting 20 rejections was really difficult. I failed a lot of them at the phone screen round just because the problem was so difficult and I was frustrated because I felt like a lot of these problems didn’t represent who I was. For people who get rejected, don’t take it so hard because a lot of it is also luck. A lot of it is just figuring out the patterns and applying to tons of companies, you just have to keep going. 

There are fewer women working in engineering than men - what would you say to girls who might be interested in a career in engineering?

I always tell these women that they should do it! I always say to execute on it, even if you’re slightly interested, take a class. I always promise that after the class, you’re going to be super excited. I would say to take a class, even if it’s through your community college or what not, take it. I have people who contact me from all over the world too and for some of them, it’s not realistic to take a class or they live in a country where they wouldn’t have something like that. For people like that, I recommend a lot of open source projects they can do and try to coach them through it to the best of my ability because I know that not everybody has resources. I always say to start with a project if you don’t have the resources but go to community college and take a class if you have that ability.