O Thanasis Microsoft. A real story

Every day we hear about young people who have left or are leaving Greece, because it won’t… inherit the earth or will be recognised as abroad.
The titles of the newspaper source: “The Greece dries from the best minds in the”, “he waves a handkerchief, the first of the pan-hellenic,” “he took the Harvard”, “Global distinction to NASA for a Greek scientist” and other similar.
Time to leave acting. Well they do and these people are going abroad. It is certain that there will be able to perform in accordance with their value, would devote themselves to science and in particular if they work hard enough and deserve it, will emerge without the notoriety of “excellence”, or the help of other external factors.
With all of this, I remembered Thanasis from Athens.
Thanasis, a friend and colleague at the National Technical university of Athens, was a Captain of War Materials of the Greek Army, of the Military academy. Excellent child with moral values and patriotism, a high sense of humor, kind person, but also what we call “big mind”. Despite his genius, he was always low-key and only cared about personal improvement and development.
As a military man, faced hostility because I just got out of average. Not their colleagues, and soldiers who had under his command, but from the political and military leadership. You see in Greece, it is hard to accept that someone is better than us, much more when he is leaving us. If today it was active, I was a lieutenant Colonel, probably a commander of some Unit dealing with the preparation of the hot spot instead of the mission.
Thanasis has resigned from the Armed Forces, but it cost him dearly. Not so much financially (he knew anyway), but morally, as the system came after him and has plagued him as long as he could until he be removed. No one asked him why he’s resigning. The worst part of all was that even in those days, while the fame of it had spread, no one had taken care to exploit the abilities and skills of the.
But even at the University became interested. No one wondered who is this that produces scientific wonders. Nobody cared for someone who was excellent. Maybe the mistake was that it remained low-key. I remember some testing, Thanasis comes half an hour before the exam. Due to some problems, he had not read. What we write us asking? “…” we say. Taking notes and skimming through it for 10 minutes. Thanasis aced when 80% of the department had been cut (including mine), from a professor who had a discount because he wanted to, that few will continue (we changed course and we took care of him)! He was Thanasis!
Thanasis was unlucky. I had contacts with parties, so I was appointed as the cleaners in a desired location. Was not general, since it never has attached itself to the chariot of a superior. I acquired a phd, since he had friendly relations with their teachers.
That I saw in him the Greek Army and the University, saw the Microsoft. After a short passage from the company in Greece, Thanasis today is one of the top executives of Microsoft in the united states.
Is there already 2 years in Seattle, and Microsoft, thanking us warmly that we studied and we got rid of him. As we extend our thanks to the American way of entrepreneurship, because with minds like Thanasis, the retired no longer Major of the Greek Army, he manages to evolve and maintain the mantle of global entrepreneurship.
Thanasis a tip from the tilegrafima business report: stay in Seattle, you won’t miss any of them!
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