Kelsey Hightower

Another engineering team knows that they're going to need budget for something, and they need someone that has a little bit of political capital, a little bit of weight in the organization to help endorse them.

That can be executive sponsorship, or you might be assigned to one of the largest customers the company has.

But that executive set of duties means that you're going to be making impact above and beyond yourself, typically to support other parts of the organization.

So I grew into that at Google.

Microsoft was like, we want you to start there.

And here's the thing, I didn't think about my role that way there.

I'm still the old Kelsey from CoreOS days, right?

I'm just doing well here.

And I wasn't going to interview at Microsoft.

I'm like, for what?

I'm at Google.

I mean, I had a lot of freedom at Google.

I was making impact at Google.

I had a good reputation there.

And so I'm like, no, my trajectory is fine.

I'm not doing that.

And to be honest, I don't like Windows.

I didn't like Azure.

I don't like .NET.

I like GitHub.