Being from the US, growing up in a border town in Washington and having family roots in NS, this makes me so sad but I get it. I'm buying more Canadian goods and recently went to NS. Elbows up. In Canadian: Sorry.

I think she's right. There is a deep feeling in your heart when you hug a loved one for the last time as they're passing away from a preventable disease.

Yeah. A lot of things happened that caused me to ignore the company after my departure. First layoffs being one. Bill was still on the board, but that was now Steve's company. The primary reason for my departure. The rudderless years (IMHO).

And no one had ever been layed off at MSFT during my tenure. I left MSFT about a year after Bill, stopped paying attention to the company during the Balmer years. Perhaps it was then?

We did need more non-US workers, but I can say in my B.U. it wasn't for cost savings. We simply weren't getting enough qualified candidates. Now, the circumstances could have been different in Product Support, but in Office Dev, we needed talent, not cost savings.

Not sure your source on this. I was a leader in the MSFT Analytics B.U. during the Bill years and when I hired a non-US citizen I was required to provide written documentation proving the new-hire's pay was the same or higher than other people on my team doing the same work. Bill left before me.

My car. In Florida. T-shirt arrives today. Wishlist: magnets.

Pretty certain it was Department of the Interior.