Microsoft employee perspectives

I'm an ex-Microsoftie from back in the NT Kernel days.  We got a lot done without many people.  When I joined Microsoft were about 200 developers, testers, product mangers etc.  From that group came Office on the PC and Mac, Windows, Windows NT, and the development tools such as Visual C++ and VB.  (We also did OS/2 but that has been removed from the Official Microsoft history, but at one time that was the largest software project in the history of software and many of those 200 people were on that project).  That relatively small team built the core that is Microsoft today, and what much of the computer industry is today.

Having worked for Microsoft in Redmond during the critical transitions made to Windows NT I thought some of these Microsoft employee blogs where interesting.  Mini-Microsoft  This is a pretty rich blog and the comments can get too negative, but the employee blog entries themselves are what I found interesting.  People wanting to create great software and trying to figure out a way to do it in a large company, which can be difficult to do at any large company, it is certainly not unique to Microsoft. 

All successful software companies grow from their core and face the same challenges Microsoft does. Rapid success is not always good, growth comes fast and internal structural changes come slower creating a company that could be out of balance.  Hiring can go too fast, where the quality of available to hire talent is not large enough to meet the needs of the business.  That is a tough point for a company.  One of the HP founders apparently said a company should only grow as fast as it can find quality people to hire, but if you do that do you miss markets? I am not sure, but I have found its better to grow at the rate at which you can hire great people.

At first I did not want to post this blog reference as it may make me look like I was bashing Microsoft, but after reading the blog entries based on the title of the blog it was clear that this blog is worth sharing "Let's slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine! Mini-Microsoft, Mini-Microsoft, lean-and-mean!"