I went from my first job at a small company to a developer on Microsoft’s most important project in under 18 months and I am no Isaac Newton.

Before completing my third year in the industry I had shipped two Microsoft products that I wrote singlehandedly. One was the earliest version of the SQL Server Management Console. It was called GUIDE.

So I believe you.

It’s not just intelligence. I am no genius. But I can focus, and back then we weren’t interrupted three times a day with pointless meetings.