What do you mean we don’t know how to have fun! As a matter of fact, we were just working on that very project last week, but we got pulled off it to throw...

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  some extra headcount into this other thing that’s missed 3 ship dates.Fun? Hell, you don't know what fun is until you’ve slept in your office for 5 days in a row and survived on nothing but soda, Dove bars, and Force Feedback. Talk about pumped! That’s about as pumped as you ever want to get without medical intervention! So just give us a few days and we’ll get back to you on that relaxation thing. We’ll pull a team together, write some specs, and see what compiles. In the meantime, you might want to take a look at this cool story I found on the internet about 10 absolutely legal team sports you can play with night-vision goggles and fire extinguishers. 

The computer revolution has no chance of changing the world if it reaches only the privileged few. We’re working to bring the power of technology to people...

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  of all cultures in all corners of the world, and especially to those who have little hope of gaining access without help. The rewards are obvious: the more we can enable people everywhere to fulfill their destiny and realize their potential, the better off we’ll all be.

There is a vital step in the development process that comes just after “Ship It” and just before “Start Over Again” It’s called “Let Off Steam.” Life at Microsoft...

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  would be pretty sedate if this step always occurred when it was supposed to, because then we could throw a drop cloth over the furniture and have the fire extinguishers ready. But the need to let off steam is a lot like steam in the sense that it is sometimes hard to contain. So pranks and practical jokes sprout like mushrooms everywhere around here, and there is nothing predictable about them, from their timing to their execution. Some of them are incredibly dumb and sophomoric; others are as brilliant and quirky as the people who dream them up. Only one thing is certain: if you leave your office for more than an hour—even if it's to do something as innocent as swimming a few leisurely laps around Lake Bill—you may not recognize it when you return. And don’t forget to bring an extra towel from home.

The 20th century has been a time of tremendous economic inequality, sometimes due to the vagaries of climateand geography, and other...

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  times as the result of cultural clashes, oppression, and was that have blighted the chances of generations who can barely remember the original cause. Now, the technology revolution is allowing developing countries to play catch-up and leap into the new century.

Missing the turnoff is no fun. It’s embarrassing. Microsoft almost did that with the Internet thing. Maybe we were too busy trying to find a good station...

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  on the radio. Or, as usual, we just had a lot on our minds. It wasn’t the first time it has happened, so we had a pretty good formula for recovery. It went like this:

  1. Hit the brakes.
  2. Slam that sucker into reverse.
  3. Back up carefully, avoiding any slow-moving followers, some of who may be closer that they appear in the mirror.
  4. Find the place where we went wrong.
  5. Accelerate like crazy toward the new destination.
  6. Try not to wreck Daddy’s car.

  This thing still handles pretty well for a big American beast.

Okay, so who did invent the Internet? Theories range from Al Gore to Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, to the U.S. Air Force and MIT in a whirlwind of Cold War...

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  defense preparedness. The discussion finally seems to have outlived its usefulness. Especially since George Dyson, in his book Darwin Among the Machines, points out that the first person to envision the Internet was the English writer Samuel Butler, after he witnessed the arrival of the first telegraph in New Zealand in 1862:

  We will say than that a considerable advance has been made in mechanical development, when all men, in all places, without any loss of time, are cognizant through their senses, of all that they desire to be cognizant of in all other places, at a low rate of charge, so that the back country squatter may hear his wool sold in London and deal with the buyer himself—may sit in his own chair in a back country hut and hear the performance of Israel in Ægypt at Exeter Hall—may taste an ice on the Rakaia, which he is paying for and receiving in the Italian opera house Co vent Garden. Multiply instance ad libitum—this is the grand annihilation of time and place which we are all striving for, and which in one small part we have permitted to see actually realized.

  The Internet has definitely emerged from wherever it was hanging out, waiting for us to catch up with it, and it’s here to stay. Our researchers and developers, content to let others worry about who was first out of the virtual gate, are busy developing useful tools for exploring this most spectacular synthesis of mind and machine.

You can tell that a rivalry is a real thing when hockey enters the picture. That’s what happened in 1999 when the Exchange and Windows development...

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  teams wisely decided to sublimate their competitive urges in a charity hockey match. The game was such a success that they did it again in 2000, battling it out in front of 3,500 cheering fans before a Seattle Thunderbirds game. Once again, the Exchange team—which was fortified with several former college and high-school stars (blame Canada)—prevailed by outscoring the Windows team 7-4. The event raised more than $750,000 in donations to Ronald McDonald House in Seattle, which provides lodging for families whose children are being treated in the hospital. And they can look forward to more of the same since Brian Valentine and his never-say-die Windows team have vowed to keep on playing until they either win or learn to skate, whichever comes first.

Getting lost is a way of life when you work at the Microsoft campus in Redmond. At least for the first couple of years. And, in spite of a very efficient campus shuttle system...

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  some of the buildings are so remote that they are referred to as Deep Space Nine. John Shirley, former president of Microsoft, remembers when the company footprint was much smaller. “We had a few buildings on one side of Highway 520 in Bellevue and another, bigger one on the other side. And I remember one evening Bill said, “I’d like to just have one spot where we can get everybody together and you don’t have walk underneath the freeway to go from one place to another.”

All right, let’s admit it. Everybody loves to make jokes about how many times Microsoft has reorganized. Especially the people who work here...

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  After all, they’re the ones who have to play musical offices and exchange job titles every time the company reinvents itself. But does anybody actually worry about it? Not really. There may be a few things wrong with Microsoft, but this isn’t one of them.
  Nothing except outer-space movies happens in a vacuum. We live in a world that is defined by change, and the change is happening faster all the time. If you can’t adapt, your can’t change. So when the paradigm shifts, we adjust, because if you don't, you’re dust. Considering how big this company is the miracle is not that we’ve survived all these changes but that we’ve been able to make them in the first place. Think of re-orgs as corporate calisthenics. It always pays to stay nimble.