What impact will your career make? - JobsBlog: Life at Microsoft

The phrase "life's work" is one that seems to be fading into obscurity with each passing year. The ideal of seeing a finish line and giving your all to get across it sometimes seems romanticized -- until you meet someone like Fil Alleva. "I started working in the speech area in 1977," explains the affable Partner Group Engineering Manager. Alleva was planning to be a chemical engineer in his undergraduate years at Carnegie Mellon University in the late '70s when he befriended Professor Raj Reddy in an introductory programming class. Soon after, he found himself taking a 2-an-hour job programming computers, if only because it was a better gig than working in the school cafeteria.