I know for sure swing around the wing. It looked to me like Richard and Hans but I don’t know if they did those “sports”. My intent was to add the names as we get more confirmations.
I remember one time when it was either HR or PR that came through the building, and rounded up a requisite number of unicyclists and jugglers to go hang out and casually "play", just in time for a couple of busloads of Japanese executives to pull up for a tour.
Insert cliche here about cameras instantly coming out.
That’s super funny. There’s a photo of ScottRa in the brochure and behind him is a “Slow Children At Play” road sign. That’s actually my sign. The Recruiters thought Scott’s office was too spartan so they took the sign from my office to make for a better recruiting photo!
This is a great read Steven - nice start to the story! A few quick questions:
- It sounds like you weren’t immediately drawn to Bill Gates’ calling you to do the hard sell for the job. Was he known but not revered yet? Or you weren’t swayed? Wondering what similar person today would be comparable.
- The brochures talking about MS’s campus make it sound quite a bit like Googles 2000s one with all the recreational activities and games etc. Did the brochure paint a rose-coloured glasses picture?
- Would love to know if when you joined and started there, did you know you were somewhere that was really going to achieve great things & some of the future success was almost taken for granted?
Looking forward to the next ones! Seems like Steve Ballmer was a character even back then ;) (the smashing tables / iPhones etc came later!!)
That is true! I was just a kid getting a job. There was really nothing like “tech” or anything. No one I knew really understood computers, software, or even Seattle. It was just like the brochures...that’s for sure.
Congrats on the newsletter. It's like we coordinated our launch date! Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Your initial offer makes me feel even better about mine. I was the first designer to get stock options. 😲 And I too had to call my uncle for a primer. 🙄
Great start to your story! I love the notion that Microsoft wasn’t as well known as Radio Shack. And the answering machine story. I wonder why, given your Mac credentials, you weren’t assigned to the Mac apps team. Certainly by 1989, plenty of Microsoft folks, including Bill, were suspicious and contemptuous of Mac adherents.
Apparently Apple really didn’t hire a lot of people from college back then. They didn’t have a presence for hiring on college campuses but were happy to sell us Macs and take our resumes. A short time after I graduated college a classmate of mine became the first person I knew to work at Apple and she is still there!
Most of the people hired into Apps (who were also mostly from college) came with Mac or Unix backgrounds. There was very little DOS and no Windows programming on campus back then. DOS people tended to be in physics or math where they used software not available on Macs or worked with hardware devices that connected to PCs, which was something PCs were good at doing.
I left the Bay area for The Seattle area in '83, because I read an article in Esquire that Seattle was a good place in which to disappear. That didn't last long. A few years later('87, I think), I was riding down an elevator at Seatac with only Gates and Balmer. Gates was upset and screeching at Balmer: "Don't they know it's about communication!" As a subscriber to Infoworld, Byte, PC, PC Week, and others, I guessed they just got back from IBM and were referring to OS/2. Balmer noticed I was paying attention and shushed Gates. Funny to think now, but Gates and Balmer were not expecting to be recognized back then, at least until Gates got a full-body foldout in PC World.
I joined in ‘93 and also tried (unsuccessfully) to negotiate salary... i joke that in retrospect what I should have asked for is 50 more options... after splits and the stock rise in the 90s, that would have been worth it! I also remember that time when tech wasn’t everywhere — I can remember if you heard someone talking about code or computers on a bus, you’d look at them to see where you knew them from. Great stories, looking forward to the next installlment.
What a great story. Thank you so much for sharing!
What struck me as amazing was that Bill Gates was already the CEO of a 3,000-person company that did business in 50+ countries with $800m in sales and $3b in market cap when he *personally* called you - repeatedly - to convince you to join Microsoft!
Clearly Steven Sinofsky was a special talent that Microsoft absolutely had to hire :)
Brings back memories! I graduated college with BS in Chem but went to work at Radio Shack (Tandy Business Products), where I had earned money during school. I dreamed of working for MS. I got certified in MS Xenix!
Great start - can't wait for more. One misconception from your first post ... by the time you joined MSFT stock had already quadrupled from the IPO in a little over three years. Unprecedented.
I should have said it quadrupled for sure but all everyone talked about was how it had been flat for two years.
Plenty of books covered that period and not so kindly.
So people don’t get the wrong impression, the new car of choice was the new Miata. Yes there were some exotics but a group pulled together for a fleet purchase of Accords :)
That is so funny! Paul Davis and both had Miatas on order and totally geeked out when they arrived. I was so excited about mine, and then about 12 months later I was driving it to Redwood City ...
Not me. After my 77 Scirocco died, I had an 87 Alfa Romeo Milano for a couple of years until I got the 90 Miata. The Alfa was really fun to drive and as an added bonus the dealer (Exotic Motors) was within walking distance of MSFT. A scenario repeated often with an Alfa.
So much of Microsoft's success depended on hiring the right mix of people, and keeping them happy at their job. That’s a given in tech these days, and Microsoft is still at it, but back then it wasn't so obvious.
Thanks for pulling this all together. So many fun memories!
This was great. It's so interesting to contrast with my experience in 1981. Not so different even after going public! The brochure when I was recruited had the memorable tidbit that "Bellevue has no parking meters!"
I have this strange feeling that is a bit like walking into the middle of a film at the cinema. I know that's odd. And the stories are great. I expect to enjoy the continuing installments.
There were similar thrusts and different kinds of innovations when my mainframe experience (begun in 1958) worked its way through to midrange and then minicomputers until finally kit microcomputers (building my first Heathkit H8 in 1978 although I had seen my first Xerox Alto and Smalltalk by then). Gordon Letwin's initials were in the boot ROMs for the H8 and the H19 terminal. I ran Microsoft software on my CP/M-80 'puters though, and Turbo Pascal, spreadsheets, and modem software where the cats meow. I didn't get a PC until 1985 and I eventually ran Windows 1.03 on it :). So a different trajectory.
The emergence of a software industry was unparalleled. Before, firms that built software tended to contract to commercial clients or computer manufacturers, having to contend with the bundling of mainframe software and the acquisitive nature of IBM. That IBM could not close the barndoor on PC clones and then failed to reclaim their dominance via PS/2, OS/2, and MCA owes a lot to Microsoft of course, as well as Intel and Compaq. There were also the changes in Copyright to include software and some degree of patent protection as well. Surf's up!
It was careless of me to not mention CP/M-80 WordStar and also a text editor from the same folks, especially since document processing would be a feature of my career. On MS-DOS, I used Borland for much, including Sprint, although my favorite text editor was ME, the Microsoft Editor. I would prefer Microsoft Works until being where Microsoft Office became part of the culture. I remember the first edition of Outlook (and how it buried Ecco), even though its ability to synchronize over a network (email?) was pretty painful and the feature disappeared until Windows was fully Internet capable. The connection with Exchange then shaped it although I am still on the desktop, apart from a brief flirtation with Office 365 for Business and having orcmid@msn.com from like forever. Social networking for me began with MicroNet (later CompuServe and I never swallowed the AOL pill).
Haha and ouch I think. First we have to get through “Languages” which is when we met.
Who are those people on the recruiting poster?
Richard Ward juggling (I think)
Hans Spiller jousting
Rick Powell, Tom Saxton, and Ben Waldman golfing in the Swing Around the Wing (tm)
I know for sure swing around the wing. It looked to me like Richard and Hans but I don’t know if they did those “sports”. My intent was to add the names as we get more confirmations.
Strangely enough, I recognized Tom and Ben in the Swing pic, but didn't recognize myself. My wife had to tell me, "Yes, that's definitely you."
Rick!
I remember one time when it was either HR or PR that came through the building, and rounded up a requisite number of unicyclists and jugglers to go hang out and casually "play", just in time for a couple of busloads of Japanese executives to pull up for a tour.
Insert cliche here about cameras instantly coming out.
That’s super funny. There’s a photo of ScottRa in the brochure and behind him is a “Slow Children At Play” road sign. That’s actually my sign. The Recruiters thought Scott’s office was too spartan so they took the sign from my office to make for a better recruiting photo!
The person juggling looks like Jeff Johnson, who I know was in Office for quite awhile, but I'm not sure if he was at MSFT back then.
We think juggler is Richard Ward. Def not JeffJo.
100% Richard Ward. He was my first hire and we became good friends after working together for a long time.
This is a great read Steven - nice start to the story! A few quick questions:
- It sounds like you weren’t immediately drawn to Bill Gates’ calling you to do the hard sell for the job. Was he known but not revered yet? Or you weren’t swayed? Wondering what similar person today would be comparable.
- The brochures talking about MS’s campus make it sound quite a bit like Googles 2000s one with all the recreational activities and games etc. Did the brochure paint a rose-coloured glasses picture?
- Would love to know if when you joined and started there, did you know you were somewhere that was really going to achieve great things & some of the future success was almost taken for granted?
Looking forward to the next ones! Seems like Steve Ballmer was a character even back then ;) (the smashing tables / iPhones etc came later!!)
He didn't believe it WAS Gates...
That is true! I was just a kid getting a job. There was really nothing like “tech” or anything. No one I knew really understood computers, software, or even Seattle. It was just like the brochures...that’s for sure.
A little nitpick - did not realize that the chapter/post ended with the line "Explaining what software was and that Seattle was not just a forest.".
Maybe a line in the end or something obvious that the post is done? Had to click through to the website to make sure I did not miss anything.
This read is engaging and has great detail which makes it very special - looking forward to reading more of it!
I can do that. Sorry.
Congrats on the newsletter. It's like we coordinated our launch date! Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Your initial offer makes me feel even better about mine. I was the first designer to get stock options. 😲 And I too had to call my uncle for a primer. 🙄
Ha!
Great start to your story! I love the notion that Microsoft wasn’t as well known as Radio Shack. And the answering machine story. I wonder why, given your Mac credentials, you weren’t assigned to the Mac apps team. Certainly by 1989, plenty of Microsoft folks, including Bill, were suspicious and contemptuous of Mac adherents.
Apparently Apple really didn’t hire a lot of people from college back then. They didn’t have a presence for hiring on college campuses but were happy to sell us Macs and take our resumes. A short time after I graduated college a classmate of mine became the first person I knew to work at Apple and she is still there!
Most of the people hired into Apps (who were also mostly from college) came with Mac or Unix backgrounds. There was very little DOS and no Windows programming on campus back then. DOS people tended to be in physics or math where they used software not available on Macs or worked with hardware devices that connected to PCs, which was something PCs were good at doing.
Mr Sinofsky is hilarious I'm looking forward to reading more
I left the Bay area for The Seattle area in '83, because I read an article in Esquire that Seattle was a good place in which to disappear. That didn't last long. A few years later('87, I think), I was riding down an elevator at Seatac with only Gates and Balmer. Gates was upset and screeching at Balmer: "Don't they know it's about communication!" As a subscriber to Infoworld, Byte, PC, PC Week, and others, I guessed they just got back from IBM and were referring to OS/2. Balmer noticed I was paying attention and shushed Gates. Funny to think now, but Gates and Balmer were not expecting to be recognized back then, at least until Gates got a full-body foldout in PC World.
I joined in ‘93 and also tried (unsuccessfully) to negotiate salary... i joke that in retrospect what I should have asked for is 50 more options... after splits and the stock rise in the 90s, that would have been worth it! I also remember that time when tech wasn’t everywhere — I can remember if you heard someone talking about code or computers on a bus, you’d look at them to see where you knew them from. Great stories, looking forward to the next installlment.
What a great story. Thank you so much for sharing!
What struck me as amazing was that Bill Gates was already the CEO of a 3,000-person company that did business in 50+ countries with $800m in sales and $3b in market cap when he *personally* called you - repeatedly - to convince you to join Microsoft!
Clearly Steven Sinofsky was a special talent that Microsoft absolutely had to hire :)
Brings back memories! I graduated college with BS in Chem but went to work at Radio Shack (Tandy Business Products), where I had earned money during school. I dreamed of working for MS. I got certified in MS Xenix!
So real... (best part is the trnsparency)
Great start - can't wait for more. One misconception from your first post ... by the time you joined MSFT stock had already quadrupled from the IPO in a little over three years. Unprecedented.
I should have said it quadrupled for sure but all everyone talked about was how it had been flat for two years.
Plenty of books covered that period and not so kindly.
So people don’t get the wrong impression, the new car of choice was the new Miata. Yes there were some exotics but a group pulled together for a fleet purchase of Accords :)
That is so funny! Paul Davis and both had Miatas on order and totally geeked out when they arrived. I was so excited about mine, and then about 12 months later I was driving it to Redwood City ...
I remember when you got that. I seem to remember you having a black Nissan 350Z before that, didn't you?
Not me. After my 77 Scirocco died, I had an 87 Alfa Romeo Milano for a couple of years until I got the 90 Miata. The Alfa was really fun to drive and as an added bonus the dealer (Exotic Motors) was within walking distance of MSFT. A scenario repeated often with an Alfa.
So much of Microsoft's success depended on hiring the right mix of people, and keeping them happy at their job. That’s a given in tech these days, and Microsoft is still at it, but back then it wasn't so obvious.
Thanks for pulling this all together. So many fun memories!
This was great. It's so interesting to contrast with my experience in 1981. Not so different even after going public! The brochure when I was recruited had the memorable tidbit that "Bellevue has no parking meters!"
I have this strange feeling that is a bit like walking into the middle of a film at the cinema. I know that's odd. And the stories are great. I expect to enjoy the continuing installments.
There were similar thrusts and different kinds of innovations when my mainframe experience (begun in 1958) worked its way through to midrange and then minicomputers until finally kit microcomputers (building my first Heathkit H8 in 1978 although I had seen my first Xerox Alto and Smalltalk by then). Gordon Letwin's initials were in the boot ROMs for the H8 and the H19 terminal. I ran Microsoft software on my CP/M-80 'puters though, and Turbo Pascal, spreadsheets, and modem software where the cats meow. I didn't get a PC until 1985 and I eventually ran Windows 1.03 on it :). So a different trajectory.
The emergence of a software industry was unparalleled. Before, firms that built software tended to contract to commercial clients or computer manufacturers, having to contend with the bundling of mainframe software and the acquisitive nature of IBM. That IBM could not close the barndoor on PC clones and then failed to reclaim their dominance via PS/2, OS/2, and MCA owes a lot to Microsoft of course, as well as Intel and Compaq. There were also the changes in Copyright to include software and some degree of patent protection as well. Surf's up!
It was careless of me to not mention CP/M-80 WordStar and also a text editor from the same folks, especially since document processing would be a feature of my career. On MS-DOS, I used Borland for much, including Sprint, although my favorite text editor was ME, the Microsoft Editor. I would prefer Microsoft Works until being where Microsoft Office became part of the culture. I remember the first edition of Outlook (and how it buried Ecco), even though its ability to synchronize over a network (email?) was pretty painful and the feature disappeared until Windows was fully Internet capable. The connection with Exchange then shaped it although I am still on the desktop, apart from a brief flirtation with Office 365 for Business and having orcmid@msn.com from like forever. Social networking for me began with MicroNet (later CompuServe and I never swallowed the AOL pill).