From ISE Anxiety to VS Code Every Day with Paula Kingsley

From ISE Anxiety to VS Code Every Day with Paula Kingsley

From The PowerShell Podcast by PDQ.com

May 4, 2026 · 1h 13m · Episode 228

About this episode

Paula Kingsley discusses her transition from ISE to VS Code and shares insights on technology leadership and the value of being a generalist.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Andrew

Guest: Paula Kingsley

Topics covered

  • PowerShell
  • VS Code
  • technology leadership
  • consulting
  • generalist skills
  • documentation
  • communication

Keywords

  • ISE
  • VS Code
  • PowerShell
  • consulting
  • generalist
  • documentation
  • communication
  • WhatIf
  • ShouldProcess

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Microsoft, Exchange Server

Products: PowerShell, VS Code, ISE

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