Month: November 2009

I can only offer my in sites on this one but it is one of the most common questions I am asked.  When I started Billg was already a celebrity.  But remember the company was small (7500 people) and he still made every big decision.  In customer service we had people come over from the Product Group  nearly every week talking about the next release of the Microsoft Mouse, Works, Excel, etc..Without fail they would always say they recently had their Billg review.  In those days no product moved forward or shipped without Billg’s approval.  In some instances Billg would even make code modification’s.  What I would learn later is in these reviews Billg would ask a lot of questions.  If you were on the receiving end of his Q&A it was ok to say “Bill I don’t know, I will get back to you”. However if you tried to talk your way out of it, Billg would rip your heart out and eat it.  Bill was more volatile back then and I would say a lot more fun.  A writer for Wired magazine who was reflecting on those days said something to the affect “In those days a Bill Gates interview was one of the most exciting interviews you could do, if you did not come prepared with intelligent questions he would throw you under the bus in a heartbeat”.  I remember reading some of those interviews in Infoweek where a reporter was not prepared.  It started poorly and ended quickly,  I miss that Billg, but he was young, arrogant, single and mega rich.  The Microsoft mission statement was the classic “A PC in every home and on every desktop”.  It was Bill (and Paul Allen’s) vision and dream.  Today I don’t think most people at Microsoft know what the mission statement is.  In those days everyone knew what the goal was and we were all driving towards Bill’s goal.  In one of our training rooms a quote hung on the door from Billg “Someday we will all look back at this and see what an amazing journey it was”.  When I die I won’t be able to argue with that.

Another thing that was definitely a big part of Microsoft and I learned this on my first week was philanthropy.  Microsoft had just finished its annual United Way campaign.  I think if you look back at Microsoft history you can largely attribute this to Bill’s mom, Mary Gates.  It was her United Way meeting that led IBM to Microsoft, but that’s another story   It is a cool part of Microsoft’s culture that still survives to this day.  A lot of people have said through the years that Bill only became interested in charity after he got married.  A bunch of garbage is all it amounts to – the Gates family has a history of charity and Bill brought that with him to Microsoft.

Well that is all for this early Saturday morning.  I have kids soccer to coach, middle child’s hockey practice, a house to clean and football to be watched.  Makes me wonder how I ever had time to work.  Have a nice Saturday everyone.

We went through our two weeks of training and then went to Ridgewood F where I would spend many years in inside sales.  We were all assigned a mentor. Mine was a girl named Heather Rosenquist.  She was very bright and energetic girl.   There were 4 groups on our floor all in Customer Service.  This was before the time of outsourcing and offshoring.  A lot of talent came out of this group that continue to serve Microsoft to this day, but given how things work these days those diamonds in the rough will be harder to find in the US.  In the future it is more likely they will come from India or elsewhere.  But in life timing is everything.  I digress, but then again I said I would.  Our four teams had fun names like “Hotstuff:, “Hotdogs” “Hotshots” etc…  The average age was probably 27.  The woman frankly were all hot, hence the name of the teams (I cannot back that up).  I can say that openly.  Unemployed people have no HR department, only you my readers.  It was nerve racking at first and Heather jumped in and helped me a lot.  I really did not know a lot about computers and computer technology at the time, but the best way to learn is to be thrown into the lion’s den.  Most of the stuff was pretty generic – people wanting the latest maintenance release for Word 1.1a.  This was before we had service packs.  Sometimes you got a more challenging call – “I need to write to COM 1 or COM 2?” – Answer MSDOS ships with a tool called qbasic that allows you to write to these ports.  Some times you got request for old replacement parts which you had to hand enter on paper, like I need to replace my Mach20 board.  Another was I need disks for the game “Olympic decathlon” – a game I had played on my friends Apple IIe with the DOS 1.0 Boot disk.  For the most part it was a great education.  My main tools were three things – DEC VAX, InfoBase (we downloaded this every day) and MS Mail 3.2.  Infobase was essentially a knowledge Base with info on all our products.  System requirements in those days was very important info to know.  Networks in those days was 10gb and my PC ran Windows 3.0 had 2 mb RAM with a 20 mb hard disk. We ran Microsoft Office which was the basics (Excel, Word, and Powerpoint).  MS Mail was a big deal, email in those days was limited to corporate networks, not like it is today.  So being able to communicate through this new medium was pretty exciting.  It was not as fast as it was today as this was before client-server.  So all mail messages were downloaded to your desktop.  Around 8:30 the network would slow to a crawl.  The queue light on your phone lit up from the moment the trunks were opened up in the morning until we left at 5;30 PST.  I also started to get familiar with new terms lile “beta” software and got excited about loading a beta program before it’s general release.  The first big release happened shortly after I started in November which was the launch of Windows 3.1.  the killer feature was the new File Manager – much simpler way to find files on your desktop than opening up new windows as you dug deeper into a file folder.  I know it sounds “thrilling”, but it was pretty cool in 1991.  Well I have done a lot today.  While writing this blog entry I successfully navigated unemployment in Washington.  Turns out I am going to get paid while I sit on my duff.  I am thinking my next entry will be about the rise of Microsoft Office, Billg the early years or the executive make up of the company – depends on how I am feeling when I sit down to write again.

Probably before we get to my first days on the job it might be good to have a view of the landscape and what the industry looked like from the Microsoft point of view at the time.  It was  a far cry from  what it is today.  It was much simpler.  The primary focus was really three things: the operating system, the word processor and the spreadsheet.  On the OS side there were really two things from a competitive standpoint, one more relevant than the other.  Apple was still a round but they were dazed and confused.  Without the dynamic Steve Jobs at the helm they had lost there swagger.  Yes, they still had their ever loyal user base (which in time should be thanked as without them Apple would never have made it to where it is today) – but the question of what was next?  How would they compete with Microsoft?  These questions had not been answered.  Sure attempts had been made, but they were led by a former Pepsi executive, John Scully.  My point hereon Mr Scully is having some corp folks come and help run a technology company is one thing, but in technology you need people with visions of the future, not MBA business models.  Make no mistake the MacOS was superior to Microsoft Windows, but the  best technology does not always win and if you don’t think that applies today let me ask you “have you ever text messaged on your phone?” Apple lost to DOS, they should be ashamed of themselves. The other more interesting story is that of IBM and OS/2.  The OS/2 story actually started at Microsoft.  A brilliant technologist named Gordon Letwin (the famous original picture of Microsoft a shaggy Mr. Letwin) went on a cruise and brought his PC.  Picture this; a super geek goes on a cruise and remember this is not todays laptop world – it’s a PC.  Heavy and big.  When he departs the cruise he has coded the foundation for OS/2. I do not think Mr. Letwin was tan.  As the story goes Microsoft and IBM started jointly working in OS/2 when Microsoft had a change of heart and decided to go the Windows route.  Bill and Steve often talk about how nervous they were before the meeting to inform IBM of their plans. the decision was made and Microsoft released Windows 3.0 and IBM planned to move forward with OS/2 2.0.  It was not much of a battle in the end but more on that later

On the Word Processing front it was all about WordPerfect, there were a few others out there (WordStar and Wang).  WordPerfect owned the world of DOS – but for whatever reason they were not big fans of the GUI.  They had entered the Mac World with WordPerfect for Mac but when sales lagged they exited.  It always amazed me how some of these competitors did not see the bigger picture.  When Apple came out with the Mac, Microsoft embraced it as an opportunity to create better software. To me this was not so hard to get.  Wordperfect was not sure about Windows.  Looking back at this period I do not think many understood the power of the OS.  The one thing Wordperfect had going for them was free 800 support.  Long term that could never work, but I did talk to a number of people where that tipped the scale.

Finally there was the spreadsheet – three companies Microsoft, Borland and Lotus.  The biggy was Lotus.  Led by Jim Manzi.  Spreadsheets were one of those things tha quickly boiled down to a feature war.  I think the big “sticky” thing Lotus had was Macros.  A lot of early spreadsheet guru’s used the Lotus macro language to automate and customize their spreadsheets.  Once again there was that GUI thing that they failed to recognize.  Quatro Pro was in third and they were run by the mad Frenchman, Philippe Kahn.  I am not going to spend much time on them but they were in many regards the strongest competitor, but when we talk about other topics we can come back to them.

There are a lot of other things we need to cover – Networking, Email, Programming Languages, Databases, etc..but for now I will call it a night.  I hope you may find some enjoyment in my therapy.  It is bringing back some fond memories that I hope to share in the coming days and weeks.  For those who never worked at Microsoft it should provide a better picture of a companies early days and rise to greatness.  Good night.

My first day at Microsoft. It was just nice to have a full-time job with benefits. I had had a few run ins with paying my own health care so I knew a bit about the risks of not having health care.  I had been playing a lot of soccer post college on Men’s teams and Co-Ed teams – so naturally a few injuries came with the territory.  I digress and as a “blogger” I intend to do that many more times.  We had to do the normal things – back then unlike today at Microsoft there was no MS 101.  The Customer Service new hires went to Ridgewood F and we were met by Cindy Tu (ironic that I just ran into her a few months ago in Bldg 92).  I cannot remember all in my class but I shall try – Kari, Melissa, Bob, Tyler, David and Tom. There were more but it was 18 years ago so cut me some slack.  Cindy welcomed us led us to a small room where we got a box lunch.  I was young and new to the business world, but this idea of getting a “free” lunch?!?! This must be the greatest company on the planet and the boxes were nicely wrapped too.  Remember at this point in life I was poor.  My expectations were low, my ideas were big.  When we get to my 456th box lunch I will be singing a different tune.  The thing I remember about Cindy was she really loved Microsoft.  She talked about all the fun events, contests, benefits – she was a happy person.  I find people like that engaging.  We then went to a class room to do our Microsoft studies.  Our key system we had to learn in Customer Service were  a system know as “Buck” and “Darla” – these were essentially two DEC VAX  systems housed in bldg 11.  You were assigned one of the two .  I was assigned “Buck”.  What these systems did was track user software registration, because in those days it was prudent to register your software.  If you needed to order a replacement disk you would call CS and do that through “Buck” or “Darla”.  We also learned about the different products and how to handle certain calls – if it was a call regarding Lan Manager or SQL 4.2 –> Transfer.  What were the basics?  Excel 3.0, Word for Windows 1.0, Microsoft Office, Works, Basic 7.0, COBOL, FORTRAN, C 6.0…Windows 3.0, DOS 5.0 etc.. In those days we certainly did not have the scope or breadth of software products that Microsoft has today, which made it a great way to learn and grow with the company.  It was at the end of the first day we had to go over to corporate (Ridgewood was located in Bellevue) and get our badge.  We went to bldg 8 (Billg’s building for those who do not know) to get our picture and then our badge,  Security was in the basement it was like a dungeon.  I walked out with my blue badge.  I was now a fulltime Microsoft employee.

I remember this day well. But maybe a little background before we get to that day. I was a little over a year out of college having graduated from Washington State University ( Go Cougs!!) in May of 1990. In April of 1991 I had started temping for at Microsoft. My first job was manning the phones to take orders for the Windows 3.0 resource kit. From the get go it was very busy. The queue light on the phone was lit up all day. This was in the early days if tech so as temps we did not get a computer. We got a terminal for our email, which was Xenix Mail and all orders were put into a hand written form – only “blue badges” had computers. The resource kits were funny in themselves all the details about how to get certified on Windows 3.0 – all contained in a 3 ring binder. But what I remember best were the people I worked with and the fun we had together in our tiny little cubicles.  There was a group of six of us that worked and played together – Steve, Erin, Jovanna, Andrea and Glen.  We went hiking, went to parties, went drinking – some of us got hired by Microsoft eventually.  I know Steve went back home to Minnesota, but the others are in the “where are they now category”.  I hope they are all doing well as the year we hung out together was a memorable period in my life and one I am thankful for.  Back to the job.  I eventually got promoted in my temp job.  You see all those orders we were taking for Resource Kits had to be taken over to Ridgewood F (remember Ridgewood F it plays an important role in my Microsoft journey). I guess I was the most qualified to walk across the parking lot. So I took them over to Audrey Bennet a Customer Service Manager and Jeff Corwin her admin.   When I got the courage to apply for a customer service job Audrey had Jeff put my resume on each hiring managers desk.  It also helped that Audrey was a die-hard Crimson and Grey fan.  To prep for the interview my temp agency, Remedy, let me come into the office and play around with this thing called Windows 3.0. It did not seem to me it did a lot, somehow OS’ never change.  At the time I was living on Eastlake in Seattle with a few roommates  (Mike Dahlin was one, we went through a few other roommates so I am not sure who the others were at the time).  I got the call and the offer, which I accepted since I had no other prospects.  Which leads us to my first day at Microsoft….