Photo: Ashley Gold/Axios
Welcome to our recess edition of lunch with an insider! Ashley and Maria sat down at Cafe Fili with Gerry Petrella, Microsoft's new-ish general manager for U.S. public policy.
- Before joining Microsoft, Petrella served as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's policy director. He led Senate Democrats in negotiating the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, the bipartisan infrastructure deal and other big legislative packages.
- We didn't talk about the cloud in this interview! Just fun stuff.
Most misunderstood thing about working on the Hill: How arduous the process in the Senate is from a parliamentary and procedural point of view. People are just like, "Oh, that bill just came out of committee, why don't you just do it, do it right now, bring it to the floor," and it's not that easy.
- It's like putting together a road map, and we really pushed the envelope in the last Congress to the point where I think we nearly killed everyone. The parliamentarian, the committee staff, myself included. And we still weren't able to get to everything.
- I always get into arguments with friends and family back home about this — they just think all politicians are corrupt, [but] it's like we literally don't make money. We all could make more money doing other things.
- The people there, especially the staffers, they're so misunderstood. They are doing it for the right reasons whether you agree with them or not.
- You know, I disagree with my Republican friends all the time, but they're all good people trying to do good things for the country.
What's the most annoying thing about the Hill now that you're in the private sector? Now that I'm on the other side of this and learning all the great things that we're doing as a company, the complexity of it, I probably wouldn't have appreciated in my old job. It's really difficult.
- Also there's so many requests for meetings. There was at my old job too, but I could kind of just say no to people back then. Can't say no to people now.
Do you have any hobbies? I love baseball. I'm a huge sports fan. The Mets are my passion — it's character building to never win.
- I'm a diehard Mets, Giants, Knicks and Islanders fan. I love bike riding and working out. The city has great trails. I do the Anacostia trail quite a bit.
- The H Street Corridor doesn't get a lot of respect around town, but it's got a lot of great restaurants. ... I gotta be honest, the sauce [at L'Ardente] is really close to what my grandma made.
