Fran Katsoudas has worked at the same company for her entire life.

When she tells young people how long she's been at Cisco, they gasp. She laughs just thinking about it, between sips of coffee at The Plaza Hotel. "I could see how foreign of a concept it is for them," she told Newsweek one late-September morning.

Katsoudas' career at the San Jose-based tech giant began 29 years ago, when she showed up to the wrong interview. At the time, the California native thought she was applying for a business development position—not the tech support role that Cisco was looking to fill. But during the interview, Katsoudas decided that it was a good thing that she showed up. Through that job, she realized, she could learn something entirely different from what she knew. So, she convinced them to g

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