The GE employee was an editor in the technical publication department. She told Pauline about a vacancy in her department for a manuscript typist, and suggested she apply with an eye toward at least getting a foot in the door. Word processors were unheard of in those days. All manuscripts were typed on IBM Selectrics. "She said, 'Do you know how to use one of those?'," Lo Alker recalls of the incident that would turn her life around. "I said, 'No, but I will learn!' I went out and rented a Selectric and practiced for a month and applied for a job. I knew how to type, I didnšt know how to use a Selectric. I applied and got the job."
That was in the summer of 1965. Within a month and a half an opening came up in the programming area, exactly the kind of job Pauline wanted. "I applied together with four other people." She was interviewed and given a programming aptitude test. She was chosen.
"All of a sudden I got what I wanted," Lo Alker says, briefly reliving her earliest, most deeply felt professional triumph. "That was my dream. I've been living that dream ever since. The rest is history."
Her work consisted of applications programming for the payroll department. It wasn't until the last few months of her career at GE that she was able to do some systems programming in machine language. The only computers then in use were humongous punch-tape gobbling mainframes.
Lo Alker's abilities and ambitions weren't fully utilized in the relatively staid environment of GE, however. Her talents made her an attractive enough talent for startup Amdahl Corporation to lure away as its 37th employee. While there, in 1972, Lo Alker gave birth to son Kevin. By the mid-70s Lo Alker was divorced from Kevin's father, but for Kevin's sake she still keeps Lo as her middle name, away of maintaining a clear connection with his father.
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In 1974 Pauline Lo had proven herself sufficiently to be hired away again as software engineering manager by a young company called Four Phase Systems. Her drive and tough-guy determination won her a quick promotion to head up the software marketing department.
She was quickly developing a keen instinct for companies that were going places. In 1977 she jumped ship once again to head up Intel's 16-bit development systems department. By now the micro-computer fever was beginning to sweep Silicon Valley, and Pauline Lo wasn't immune. In 1979 her boss left to co-found Convergent Technologies, a maker of workstations. The following year she was lured away to become its 19th employee as vice president of marketing.
That job was Pauline Lo's transition into the big-time. In her four years at Convergent she sold a half-billion dollars worth of workstations to companies like NCR, Burroughs and Gould-SEL. The feat earned her the position of Convergent's vice president and general manager of the special products division.
In 1984 Pauline married the man who would provide her current last name. Their wedding was held in a private Japanese garden in Saratoga with 50 family members and close friends in attendance. It was a mere formality as she had been living with Steve Alker for some months prior to that. Steve too had been previously married, with two grown children. He had worked as comptroller in two Silicon Valley startups.
"It was decided that one of us will go out and work and one will keep the home fire going," Lo Alker says philosophically. "We decided he would stay home. He was an entrepreneur early. I guess he got burned out." That decision was made soon after they were married.
Steve provided the stability and domestic presence that was important in raising Kevin who was then about to enter his teens. Steve provided moral support for his ambitious wife to go all out for wealth and glory in Silicon Valley's overheated climate by starting her own company.
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