Microsoft’s CFO admits she joined the tech giant without even knowing her salary—and then missed her first day of work

As an economics undergraduate at Duke University in the 1990s, Amy Hood had no master plan that would one day land her the top finance job at one of the world’s biggest tech companies. In fact, now Microsoft’s chief financial officer, Hood, said her career has looked more like a roller coaster than a ladder—and the lesson she told the class of 2026 still resonates today. “As you start out, many successful careers are rarely—if ever—a straight line,” she said at Duke’s commencement ceremony this past weekend. “Your next step doesn’t have to be a perfect one. It just has to be an opportunity.” Hood learned that the hard way. After graduating from Duke in 1994, she built her early career at Goldman Sachs and later obtained her MBA from Harvard. But over time, she realized corporate banking wasn’t how she wanted to spend the rest of her life. So she quit—without much of a plan of what would come next. She considered going back to school for a third degree, but eventually stumbled upon what seemed like a perfect reset: an internship with the National Park Service. “I thought, this is perfect. It’s a sign—I’ll get assigned to Yosemite or Yellowstone, someplace iconic,” Hood recalled. “I’ll work outdoors, I’ll live somewhere beautiful, and feel the space and energy that nature provides.” Instead, the then-30-year-old was assigned to a less glamorous spot: Alcatraz Island, or as she called it, “a prison on a rock.” Not the manifestation she had imagined, she quit after a single day. Months later, after an extended job search, a friend called and asked whether she wanted to interview at Microsoft—even though she had already faced two rejections from the company. This time, she landed a role in investor relations and accepted the offer without even asking about the salary. “It was a job, a step forward, and truthfully, I needed a paycheck,” she said. Even then, her start at Microsoft in 2002 was rocky. Hood admitted she missed her first day after