From ISE Anxiety to VS Code Every Day with Paula Kingsley

Paula Kingsley, a senior IT leader, longtime consultant, automation and PowerShell enthusiast, eight-time Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server, and happy generalist, joins Andrew for a wide-ranging conversation about her tech journey and what it actually looks like to grow from deep hands-on work into technology leadership. They kick things off with a topic near and dear to a lot of PowerShell folks: the ISE-to-VS Code migration. Paula was terrified of it, put it off for as long as she could, and now uses VS Code every single day.

From there, the conversation opens up into what consulting taught her about solving problems, how being a generalist can be a genuine advantage, why documentation and communication matter as much as technical skill, and what it means to keep the human side of technology alive as you move up. Paula also drops some solid practical PowerShell wisdom along the way, from always including WhatIf support in your functions to the very important reminder that Get is safe and Set is something else entirely.

Key Takeaways:

• Making the jump from ISE to VS Code feels daunting, but the move is absolutely worth it. The secret is forcing yourself to open it first and just leaving it open until the habit takes hold.
• Being a generalist isn't a weakness. The ability to see across systems, communicate up and down, and translate technical work into business outcomes is a real and undervalued skill.
• Always build yourself an escape route. WhatIf and ShouldProcess aren't just best practices, they're the difference between a confident deployment and a very bad afternoon.

Guest Bio:
Paula Kingsley is an outcome-driven senior IT leader, technology operations and engineering expert, eight-time Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server, and self-described happy generalist. Her path into tech started with a liberal arts degree and eventually led through boutique IT consulting, enterprise infrastructure, global production operations, automation, cloud, AI, and a deep appreciation for PowerShell. Paula has built her career around solving problems, simplifying workflows, removing friction, and helping technical teams work better at scale. She is senior enough to shape strategy and steer practices, still hands-on enough to fix things herself, and yes, she even likes regex. You can find her on GitHub as lanwench and on LinkedIn.

Resource Links:

• Paula Kingsley on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulakingsley/
• Paula Kingsley on GitHub – https://github.com/lanwench
• Connect with Andrew – https://andrewpla.tech/links/
• PDQ Discord – https://discord.gg/pdq
• The PowerShell Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WLNVCW7S8BE