If you really going to work in Seattle the first thing you should do is going for a Microsoft’s employees’ house cruising tour on Lake Washington.* That’s what I told A. today when we had lunch together. I don’t think A is going to do it. She’s right now waiting for a letter from Seattle to become a Microsoft employee herself. I was surprised to hear that A. was not following an academic career as she seemed – at least from an ignorant distance – well suited for it. She told me one of the reasons was a more philosophical one. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, founder of academic research in the US is the US army. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was especially interested in the field A. was working in: robotics.
* When I was there, Steve Ballmer was still CEO and he had written “Keep Off” in big letters on his kids’ water slide.