What it’s like to receive a job offer directly from Satya Nadella. @kelseyhightower, former Google Distinguished Engineer, on the Microsoft offer that revealed a pay tier he didn't know existed: “I got this email from Satya, the CEO of Microsoft. He wrote this nice email: 'Kelsey, heard you had a good experience with the team' - remember I did the interview at the Microsoft headquarters - “heard really good things from the team, just wanted to let you know, you're going to be respected here. We're going to support you as a team.” I'm like, damn, support as a team? Coming from the CEO? So, number one, what an honor. This is the CEO of Microsoft. He has so many more important things to be doing than to be emailing me about a role. I opened the PDF - not very often in your career does a zero get added to the equation. And so you're looking at this like, I didn't even know that they do that. We know that it happens. But the person that graduated from high school in 1999, that chose the A+ Certification didn't know that was available. Even while I was at Google having all the success. Google paid me pretty well too, but I didn't know you can add another zero still. And I'm like, wow. I showed my wife and she was the one that said you should just go interview, like put your ego to the side and let's go see what's out there, so shout out to my wife. And so I get the PDF, and I'm like, okay, this number is perfect. Honestly, I don't know what to say, but let’s just find out, is this really the only number? So I remember giving a counter: you know what, I think it should be this. The funny thing is, Microsoft countered back higher, like we're not playing around. I'm like, oh, whoa. Now I understand that I don't understand this part of the game.”