|
Availability: This title usually ships within
24 hours. HARD DRIVE charts Gates'missteps as well as his successes: the failure of OS/2 and the embarrassing delays in bringing Windows to the marketplace; the highly publicized split with IBM, which then forged an alliance with Apple to battle Microsoft; the public relations fallout over various Gates exploits,and the current, ongoing investigations by the Federal Trade Commission. Wallace and Erickson also examine the combative, often abrasive side of Gates'personality that has alienated many of Microsoft's rivals and even employees, and led to his being labeled "The Silicon Bully" by Business Month Magazine. They report: In the early '80's, Microsoft's Multiplan lost out to Lotus 1-2-3 in the marketplace. According to one Microsoft programmer, a few of the key people working on DOS 2.0 had a saying at the time that "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run." They managed to code a few hidden bugs into DOS 2.0 that caused Lotus 1-2-3 to break down when it was loaded. "There were as few as three or four people who knew this was being done," the employee said. He felt the highly competitive Gates was the ringleader. The first two female executives hired at Microsoft in 1985 were recruited to meet federal affirmative action guidelines so that the company could qualify for a lucrative Air Force contract. One source says,"They would say, 'well, let's hire two women because we can pay them half as much as we will have to pay a man, and we can give them all this other crap work to do because they are women.' That's directly out of Bill's mouth...." Gates treated one of these executives so badly that she asked to be transferred away from him. Microsoft managers used the company's electronic mail system to secretly spy on employee work habits. Only those employees who worked weekends could collect bonuses. In time word got out and some employees logged into their E-Mail on weekends with a modem from home so it would appear they had come in. From the Publisher : At the age of thirty-seven, with a net worth of over $8 billion, Bill Gates is the richest man in America, and Microsoft Corporation, which he co-founded in 1975, is currently the most successful software company. All should be right with Bill Gates'world. Yet two allies from the early years of Microsoft's stunning success have turned against the company, pre-trial hearings have just begun in Apple's $5 billion copyright infringement lawsuit, and IBM is fiercely trying to displace Microsoft's DOS with its own OS/2. More ominous still, the Federal Trade Commission is investigating the House that Gates Built and could possibly break up Microsoft, as it did AT&T. How did Microsoft get to the top and will it stay there? To what extent does the Microsoft corporate personality reflect that of its eccentric and hard-driving chairman and CEO, Bill Gates? Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire is the first biography of the controversial Microsoft chairman. Despite Gate's attempt to discourage people from talking, authors James Wallace and Jim Erickson, reporters for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have interviewed his closest friends, associates, and former employees, as well as many of his business rivals, to provide a comprehensive portrait of this complex computer wunderkind, the company he made, and the industry he continues to shape. In early days when Microsoft was located in Albuquerque, after long, nighttime programming sessions, Gates would relax by speeding through the foothills in his Porsche 911. On a few late nights Gates and a friend would go to a road construction site and, after learning by trial and error to operate the complex machinery, drive them around. One night they held a bulldozer race (although neither could claim to be the winner) and another time Gates nearly backed over his Porsche. Under intense pressure by Gates to ship the long overdue Windows software, employee dedication quickly turned to fanaticism. One of the Windows testers showed up at the office with a sleeping bag. For a month he camped in his office working around the clock and sleeping only when he couldn't stay awake. The microkids found diversion by building bombs, setting off rockets, and holding full-volume jam sessions which brought the police. One ex-Microsoft employee said, "you felt you were at the center of the universe. That was the motivation, that and just trying to get clean code out there. It was an invigorating feeling to be working for Microsoft. And all this pounding by Steve Ballmer, and yanking by Bill, was the price you paid to be there." From Brainchild to Billionaire Born outside Seattle to socially prominent parents, Gates was a gifted child with a photographic memory. He first encountered computers as a seventh-grader at the prestigious Lakeside private school, and quickly outstripped his instructors in expertise. As a Harvard student in 1973, he spent most of his time playing with computers -- and winning at high-stakes poker -- but he never graduated. Instead, education took a back seat to ambition. In 1974, Gates and his friend Paul Allen developed a BASIC language for the Altair 8080, the world's first personal computer. Surviving on catnaps and working on a Harvard computer rigged to mimic the Altair -- a machine they had never seen -- their program ran successfully the first time it was tried."It was the coolest program I ever wrote," Gates said, and it set the industry standard. In 1975, with a vision of a computer in every home and the conviction that the fledgling computer industry was about to soar, the two formed Microsoft.Ironically, it was in collaboration with IBM -- a company that dwarfed them in size, represented an entirely different corporate culture, and would later become a bitter rival -- that Microsoft hit upon its greatest success to date. When IBM needed an operating system for its new PC, Big Blue turned to Microsoft. Gates turned to Seattle Computer products, a small, local computer company and, in what was one of a long series of brilliant business deals, purchased the rights to DOS for $50,000. Now labeled MS-DOS, it too became the industry standard and generates more than $200 million a year, helping to make Microsoft the most successful start-up company in the history of American business and enabling Gates to proceed with such projects as Word, Multiplan, OS/2 and Windows. When Microsoft went public in 1986, its shares were traded with a frenzy virtually unprecedented on Wall Street, and many of its employees became paper millionaires. Microsoft Continues to Grow Situated on a 260 acre, college-like campus with over 10,000 employees (2,000 of which are millionaire stock holders), with revenues of $1.8 billion, and commanding 90% of the PC software market, one might expect Microsoft to be settling down, growing staid. Yet, like its chairman, there is a restlessness at Microsoft and a sharp entrepreneurial edge. The company is still grabbing at an even larger slice of the expanding computer market. Candid, yet balanced in its treatment of Gates, Hard Drive is both a riveting corporate success story and a penetrating look at the man who sets the standard in the computer world. About the Authors James Wallace is a special projects and investigative reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Previously he was night city editor of the P.I., an investigative reporter and then city editor of the Yakima Herald-Republic, and a reporter for the Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser. Wallace lives in Seattle, Washington. Jim Erickson covers the Washington State Legislature for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He previously covered Microsoft and the high-tech industry. He lives in Olympia, Washington. |
|
|
