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started out in unicycling by reading about it on the Internet of all places fl there was

newsgroup rec.sport.unicycling and there was guy in there who was mountain unicycling

and 1...had unicycle and had been riding with my kids and had been riding around at work

soT took out to the and came back with on face Cause its really
it trails big grin my it

challenging and lot of fun

Uh Im not big Net surfer uh actually the

newsgroup read is
rec.sport.unicycling

Unicycling. .is not at all like working at Netscape Unicycling lot of fun ...Actually

Netscape...is lot of fun at times too but uh unicyclings really uh way of getting away and

uh and riding unicycle generally on the trails you have to be very focused on where you are

or youll fall And uh so in that way its nice escape -\ \\

\3 5S\
No code writing is
very cerebral activity when Im writing code actually have no

concept about where am or what Im going Im just very focused on my machine if you

looked at my office in downtown Santa Cruz youd see that theres table chair and

computer And theres not much on the walls and there isnt else and was thinking
anything

about that
yesterday the the fact...that its empty is that Im Im really not in that
space Im
in the computer when Im working on the
computer and when Im on my unicycle Im really in

the environment so its exactly the

probably opposite

...I drove out to Colorado this summer to pick it

up

Yeah really its nice my Dad did full restoration on it

CUT
i3 Q3

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Outdoor noises

cokVfr
Lovely

Tara Oh good you spilled paint everywhere

Just on my sunglasses you know

Tara Theres rags on the desk on theG thing the table

Theyre too big Ijust havent bothered to fix them

Tara Whats too big

My sunglasses

Tara Oh

Tara Just squint

Tara Shes my painting buddy

Yeah

Tara Weve spent what two full weekends

Two yeah

Tara to do just the bathroom

That was so much fun

Tara That was lot of fun Paint fights

It was three chicks

Tara Oh yeah It was complete gossip session with paint brushes

Us Gossip

Tara Hey

Hey

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Tara My mom and did the office and that took full weekend but my mothers lot more

talented than we are

Hey

Tara Well shes had more practice

OhOK
Where does your mom live

Tara She lives down in Southern California uh in Ojai Shes got this great big house on top

of the hill And uh every once in while shell come up here and make fun of me and

and well do housework So shes Moms big gardener She has uh two acres

thats more or less she did the work for the most part
completely landscaped all herself

Terraced it off .. walk walkways and retaining walls on the other hand kill plants so

uh so much for genetics

How long ago did you go to Santa Cruz

Tara Between 1989 and 1993 Took me four years and Its funny
quarter to complete cause

my grandmother was really upset when was going to come to Santa Cruz uh because

she thought Id never come home and kept telling her oh no Grandma Ill come home

dont worry about it my aunt Maria...came here and never went home and well Im

still here So she was Cruz

you_neveryuver
C-
right leave Santa

Do lot of people who work in the Valley live here

Tara Most of my friends that went to school with uh in the computer program still live in

Santa Cruz um but they tend to work in Santa Cruz

Scotts Valley

Tara Yeah Scotts Valley Lot of local started out Borland which
companies at was in Scotts

Valley

Wheres Scotts Valley

I3 15 17oS

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Tara Yeah its about fifteen minutes away its up Highway 17 about miles Borland

and and uh Seagate are the two big companies that are up there course Borlands not as

big as it used to be

And neither is Seagate

Tara Neither is Seagate

Do you work in the high tech business too

No Im Im dresser

Uh-huh

Tara Entertainment industry

Where

Im in the San Francisco Wardrobe Union...I dont know how fell in with geeks

Tara Were mote interesting

Yeah can actually hold an intelligent conversation with you with syllables and stuff

Tara Im getting paint on my grass Thats all right

Do you mind the commute

Tara You know...I really dont Um most of dont its its kind of nice for me because

spend the time its real pretty drive except if its raining and theres mudslides uh

but spend the time uh getting into and out of work mode on the
way to work 1ll just

sort of mentally out remember what meetings need

plan my day to go to and which

need to go smack around for and on the way

people whatever home stop thinking

about it so by the time get home Im home and Im not uh getting distracted sort of

mental thing developed When lived in lived in Mountain View for year when

first got the Netscape job and uh was always working was only two minutes from

work never stopped thinking about it And that got kind of got after
aggravating

while Hard on your nerves

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Tara was always in work mode Yeah So here Im really close to the beach take walk my

dogs down the beach were uh have yard its not very nice yard anymore because

dont take very good care of it

You have two large dogs

Tara have two large dogs The dogs take of the yard So its nice And its know on the
you

weekends when was living in Mountain View used to

go into work all the time cause

was very easy and now its not convenient

pop in
it
to just bop

How did you become such good release engineer

Tara Me Diplomatic dont know about that Ill tell

you uh had hard time

graduating urn

Its the word

Tara BOh.Shush c-
didnt say it

Tara IiIhard time graduating from college went in as double

literature/history

major rny parents were real thrilled about that cause you dont graduate with much

so into Yeh was

workability got computers kind of by accident actually Chris the

one who got me into computers we went to school together but because had such

hard time by the time out was used to real hard And t...never
got working took

anything for granted as far as how easy thought it

was going to be always assumed

everything was going to be really hard and sort of came at it from that approach And

tried to plan plan my way through things and when youre doing product

development from release perspective our the job is details And making sure

everything gets done Just pushing your way through all the problems that that come

up as far as organization and technical difficulties and dont know got into it
by

accident when youre in college no ones ever heard of release engineering Guess thats

sort of weird job And even now to its kind of hard

trying explain it to explain you do

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little bit of everything but it think its lot more fun now that Ive been doing

it this long dont want to get into regular application development because couldnt

handle looking at the same piece of code over and over again for
years This way Im

look doing lot of different things and the job changes from week to week .. miss

any spots

Describe whats different about Netscape now as opposed to when started

you

Tan Right and was the first release engineer .the code base was so much smaller and

the number of engineers working on it...was lot fewer And because of that

everybody had pretty good idea of the different pieces of the code base the NSPR

people knew what was going on with Java and the front end and vice-versa there

were advantages and disadvantages to that the advantages were if there was some

obscure bug it was to fix cause understood how the pieces moved
pretty easy people all

together The disadvantage was was because the back end people understood how front

end worked they put lot of code in the front end shouldnt have
that they probably and

vice versa uh which leaves us with the lovely code base we have today now we

have the problem that theres so many people that theyre working inC distinct
groups

they dont understand how work outside of their functional

really things area and it

makes our job as the release engineering team little harder because we now have to

coordinate all of those teams together to make sure the right things happen from on

technical standpoint fl and just the the sheer numbers of engineers we have working

on the code just makes things little daunting at times

Is that true of the world in general

technology that it just keeps getting more complex and

difficult

Tara Well thats how its become at but its not doesnt have
definitely Netscape it it to be

that
way urn hopefully as you become more mature as development organization you

structure
your code base so that it becomes more modular and its easier to work

with in small pieces that and you can plug them

are just more distinct in and take them

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out as you like and thats whats really hurt Netscape is we dont really good

ability of doing that we never really took the time toe to make that happen it was

always we were always moving so quickly that

you know it takes couple months

to do something like that we never had couple of months And now the Nets to
going

do for us Cause theyre going take one look and Thats

it
hopefully to at this go yech

gross split it
up

Make it modular

Yeah Otheise no ones going to be able to work on it

Tara Oh good

Tara OK .. back in the

garage..

you making mess Tara

Tara What

Are you making mess

Tara never make messes

Describe the environment of Silicon Valley

dont know about the business of it Ive done

creating side never that myself but Don Milton

said that while

something ago that really rings true its to lot of engineers Silicon

Valley is one big corporation with different peopIZiito move around

divisions quite

bitanaiaaitionally people tend to move in packs.oull find

group of people that like
you

wkng with and tend follow each other from And

company to
company lot of thee the

very early engineers came over from SGI are now working together at and before
Netscape

that they worked other companies IBM what have you and even
together at
you know me
Ive only been in the industry for about five years now but theres that same group of people that
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tend to work with on my team Marcus Irvin and Shawn Su and those guys weve known each

other for long time and we drag each other along to different companies We like working

together The work environment is so different think from other industries theres lot of play

involved and you .. yourself into it But at the same time you have to train yourself not to

get too attached right time to be at one company think in the high tech about
long industry is

years So compared
_I
to other industries thats not very long but if youre at
company more

than of
years people start wondering either youre making lot
money or doing really well or

maybe you lost

your edge You know

Qi Nhere pressure to maintain that edge

Oh its intense You cant you cant start slacking It things move too quickly we had this

whole joke people started about and how

talking Netscape time you could fit think

some...magazine articles were talking about how we would fit months worth of work in

week and wed do it for weeks at time Thats really true you you have to move quickly

everything especially .. the World Wide Web is gotten so huge the whole Internet commerce

and applications electronic commerce guess um things move so quickly and so many people

are looking at it if youre not always on top of the You

technology youre falling behind daily

know especially when it comes to things like and cross-platform and kinds of other
security all

stuff that.. Im completely behind as far as actual application development since was in

school we did everything in .. then everybody was doing in now are in

it
people doing it

Java or what have you were dont think

scripting it
all even could be an application

developer now if wanted to be Thats OK

Does that bother you

Nah Theres theres certain fundamental skill set that you have uh that you need which is

the to
ability adapt quickly certainly everybody on my team has that ability now out of

desperation given the amount of work that we do the interesting thing think if ever

were were to leave Netscape was that Id find the least bit interesting You
finding company

know Im used to working on 26 distinct platforms or whatever cross-platform support

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automation ft working in
really dynamic environment Theres not that many companies out

there like that Ive heard of Things are things are tend to be little bit more quiet at least as

far as most companies will tend to pick platform you know they will only Windows or

theyll only do Macintosh Very little open platform support

Where do you want to end up Can pace Can anybody

you keep up this

dont think do dont know about anybody else And theres some guys whove been

doing it for really long time have this have aS an agreement with myself that by the

time Im 35 Im either going to be high school teacher or bartender but something anything

other than in position in the high tech industry otherwise Ill probably die by the time Im
40 But dont dont think Im the sort of person that could do this for 20 years

Why is that

Chris Yeh would say its because dont know how to work less than 200% So Im doing my 40

years worth of time in you know 10 or 15

Do you think other people burn out as they from doing this
get older

youll see most of the most of the first line engineers are going to be fresh meat you know in

their mid to late 20s maybe early 30s as you get older what you would graduate into what

call
they principle engineering or architect engineering positions where its much more

intellectual you much more higher level of thinking about application

development. .designed in sort of flow chart kind of way and then you pass down the design

and then other engineers pick it

up and code it and thats not something that Im Im

particularly interested in myself lot lot of guys do it its its much more theoretical

and Im not much of theory person have lot more fun with the hands-on stuff But beca

have more fun with the hands-on stuff its harder me

for to let
go of that to move into it

therefore when Im 35 Im out Im done Ill do something else

tO 2-i_
J_I

Coach soccer or something

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Whats it like being woman in this industry

Yeah its funny you should mention that ...it probably didnt used to be nearly as friendly

its uh have never had problem know Ive Ive been fortunate in
you very coming

when have and one of the things do actually is give talks at seminars and

conferences for girls in math and sciences in fact Im doing one in Santa Rosa on the 25th

sort of ongoing
just encouragement to get more girls out of the middle school and high

school into the science degrees and and when they go to college and to get them in the high

tech industry Guj theres certainly lots of opportunity out there And think its getting lot

more friendly all the time One of the best engineers we had at for time was
Netscape long this

woman named Lisa .. in Security and the thing that was great about her is she was so even-

keel all these guys would be going off getting all excited about something and shed you

know she was very good at bringing us all back to reality really sharp programmer its like

OK heres the facts You cant get around these things you need to
go figure these things out

first before you go off to.. the moon So And certainly you know .. the benefits packages that

we get now as far as maternity leave and that kind of thing are all at least the companies have
at

been very positive support type of things So dont know Like Im sure plenty of women

have about Ive

experienced negative aspects being in this sort of work but never seen it

thankfully

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