Skip navigation
Microsoft First Generation
Book

Microsoft First Generation

The Success Secrets of the Visionaries Who Launched a Technology Empire

Wiley, 2000 more...

auto-generated audio
auto-generated audio

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Overview
  • Background
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Taking a Studs Terkel Working-style approach to the world’s most powerful company, Cheryl Tsang presents Microsoft as seen by 12 people who worked there before 1990 and participated in its creation. Given that she words everything with cautious courtesy and that her husband, Rick Tsang, is a Microsoft higher-up, one wonders if the author dared to be sharp or critical. Still, she clearly has inside knowledge and strong internal relationships at Microsoft. If you’re interested in Microsoft - and since it is so frighteningly powerful, you kind of have to be - you will learn some interesting things here, even if many salient points are buried in overly polite language. But perhaps the book’s most valuable asset is its insight into Microsoft’s no-holds-barred management style - a confrontational process that flies in the face of much current management theory. getabstract.com won’t bother you now with quibbles about nepotism: Face it, this is must reading for Microsoft junkies. (getAbstract.com note: Despite the 2000 copyright date, nary a word to be found about that little antitrust matter.)

Take-Aways

  • The wealth of Microsoft wasn’t created only through the efforts of Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer.
  • Microsoft hires very carefully and workers must survive a very confrontational management style.
  • Microsoft’s management style is meant to get answers to serious problems.

About the Author

Cheryl Tsang  is an award-winning business journalist and fiction writer. She lives in Bellevue, Washington.