On my first day at Microsoft in Sunnyvale, the person at the desk adjacent to me was having her breakfast wearing a headset while deeply engrossed in a Teams meeting.
I recognized her as one of my interviewers - Susan Carrie. I hadn't actually done very well in her interview, so I was afraid she would be shocked to see that I got the job.
She wouldn't have noticed me if I wasn't clumsy enough to drop the Surface laptop box I was carrying. She snapped her head and her eyes widened. She smiled faintly and went back to her work. It didn't bother her at all that I got the job. In fact, she would go on to mentor me on many topics and helped me by interviewing the candidates for positions reporting to me.
Her desk was cluttered with papers and a bunch of small cubes that I would learn later were patent cubes - she had earned so many. she would joke that she stopped applying for more patents as she was running out of desk space.
My lasting memory of her is our lunch together as a group. She always used the staircase, and would walk and talk - she discussed compression algorithms and technology.
She was very passionate about work, and she is the reason Microsoft today has custom silicon in the datacenter. .
We miss her in the office. Hope her family and friends are inspired by her wonderful memories!
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