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> A decade later in 1996 I started at Microsoft, which virtually all of my peers thought had run its course. People thought Microsoft had run its course, one y

> A decade later in 1996 I started at Microsoft, which virtually all of my peers thought had run its course. People thought Microsoft had run its course, one year after the release of Windows 95? Just as MS Word was dominating WordPerfect? And the likes of AutoCAD were dropping support for AIX, Solaris etc? When Photoshop had just released for Windows, and Apple's market share had dropped to about 3% ? Wow! I know they were kinda late to online stuff, but still - strange how these things turn out, in hindsight!

tomcam 3y ago
> People thought Microsoft had run its course, one year after the release of Windows 95? Not sure if I made this clear, but I am referring to industry publications, and to what seemed to be a vast majority of my colleagues at Microsoft. Experienced business watchers who could read an SEC filing, and who had a mature grasp of business, knew better, but it wasn’t sexy to keep printing opinions like that. I’m sure Department of Justice problems weren’t helping either. So these kids were exercising stock options like crazy because of the bad press. These were people in their mid 20s who had entered these amazing jobs just out of college, and who had experienced several years of astonishing growth. They were both internally and externally very good at taking criticism. I think they just overcorrected at the first sign of trouble. I was a decade older, and had been studying business on my own for about 20 years by that point. I had also worked for many companies that were nowhere near as well put together as Microsoft. Microsoft makes its share of mistakes, but never in ways that jeopardize the company’s existence. That may sound trivial, but if you’ve ever run a company, you’ll understand that it’s a surprisingly rare trait. Just managing not to fuck up too badly is exceedingly rare in the business world, and I think they didn’t quite understand that. Because they were open to criticism, they really couldn’t understand how special the company was at that time. Since they came in fresh from college, they had nothing to compare their jobs to. To them it was what any job should be.
throwaway828 3y ago
There were rumours that the following year would be the year of Linux on the desktop. It had just taken, and was taking, the server world by storm. Windows 2000 was really important for MS staying relevant in anything outside consumer. It really set up the next two decades.
- tomcam 3y ago
  Next year is totally the year of Linux on the desktop!
bombcar 3y ago
If you lived through it, at a young age, you were on Slashdot or similar places, and Linux was riding high on the server (it was absolutely massacring Unix, and for kids at college, Linux + Samba was a quite powerful combination compared to even a few years before (think: Novell Netware). Few college kids have experience with really massive enterprise setups and solutions, and so those were just entirely discounted out of hand.

tomcam 3y ago

> People thought Microsoft had run its course, one year after the release of Windows 95? Not sure if I made this clear, but I am referring to industry publications, and to what seemed to be a vast majority of my colleagues at Microsoft. Experienced business watchers who could read an SEC filing, and who had a mature grasp of business, knew better, but it wasn’t sexy to keep printing opinions like that. I’m sure Department of Justice problems weren’t helping either. So these kids were exercising stock options like crazy because of the bad press. These were people in their mid 20s who had entered these amazing jobs just out of college, and who had experienced several years of astonishing growth. They were both internally and externally very good at taking criticism. I think they just overcorrected at the first sign of trouble. I was a decade older, and had been studying business on my own for about 20 years by that point. I had also worked for many companies that were nowhere near as well put together as Microsoft. Microsoft makes its share of mistakes, but never in ways that jeopardize the company’s existence. That may sound trivial, but if you’ve ever run a company, you’ll understand that it’s a surprisingly rare trait. Just managing not to fuck up too badly is exceedingly rare in the business world, and I think they didn’t quite understand that. Because they were open to criticism, they really couldn’t understand how special the company was at that time. Since they came in fresh from college, they had nothing to compare their jobs to. To them it was what any job should be.

throwaway828 3y ago

There were rumours that the following year would be the year of Linux on the desktop. It had just taken, and was taking, the server world by storm. Windows 2000 was really important for MS staying relevant in anything outside consumer. It really set up the next two decades.

tomcam 3y ago
Next year is totally the year of Linux on the desktop!

bombcar 3y ago

If you lived through it, at a young age, you were on Slashdot or similar places, and Linux was riding high on the server (it was absolutely massacring Unix, and for kids at college, Linux + Samba was a quite powerful combination compared to even a few years before (think: Novell Netware). Few college kids have experience with really massive enterprise setups and solutions, and so those were just entirely discounted out of hand.