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Enter Kathy I t was 1979. Jimmy Carter was the President. '79 was the year of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Event in Pennsylvania, China's new 1 child per family law, and the Iranian radicals attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran taking 63 Americans as hostage. Music that year included Pink Floyd's “The Wall”, Michael Jackson's “Off The Wall”, the Clash's “London Calling”, and Donna Summer's “Bad Girls” albums, not to mention the hit by the Knack, “My Sharona”. It was also the year Sony came out with the Walkman and the sports network ESPN was launched. I was living in San Francisco and working as a computer programmer. I was liking and doing well in my job at GBS. My social life outside of work involved hanging out with a few friends, like Mark and Larry. Like the Pisces I am, (two fish swimming in the opposite direction) I had a foot in two different worlds. I had a life in the working hi-tech professional world where people were making good mo...

  Getting Ahead at GBS I was good at what I did and in fact, I was considered to be one of the stars of the company. At that point I hadn't fully realized that, but I knew I was good enough. I came in early almost everyday mostly so I could grab a computer and get some work done while it was still quiet. Early in Silicon Valley is before 9:00 and I was there by 8:00. The company VP (Phil) generally came in about 8 and he would see me working in the computer room when he came in the back door and up the stairs to his office. Most days I would be the only one in there at that time. I n the IT world I was quite underpaid. I didn't think much of it for awhile, after all, I was making more than all my non IT friends, the friends who I spent the most of my non-work time with. But after getting to know others doing the same job I was doing and finding that their salaries dwarfed mine it began to get to me. This experience helped me to understand professional athletes want...