Finance-Software

Although the book has certain flaws, I heartily recommend it because the author defends Microsoft on the basis of its virtues: that Mr. Gates hires intelligent individuals and employs them for their rational capacity to create. Part one, titled "Microsoft Basics," is in three sections: "Sitting and Thinking," "Smarts," and "The Model in Their Head," where Mr. Stross argues that Microsoft is founded on "old logic skills," which is the reason he names for Microsoft's dominance in the marketplace. The author ties the attacks against Microsoft to an anti-intellectual mentality in America and he demonstrates that the attacks are ridiculous because they are baseless. Mr. Stross indicates that Mr. Gates and Microsoft are hugely successful because they reject this disdain for rationality and use their smarts as the key to their success. For these reasons the book is worth reading. The flaws in the book bare their ugly head whenever the author strays from his own field, which is history, into economic analysis--Mr. Stross' economics are thoroughly socialist. Fortunately, he mostly stays on topic in the main part of the book, but the afterword "Legacies" contains nearly every major fallacy of economics spouted by the collectivists. The author believes that good products, if they are too good, are bad products: "For example, the technological success of radial tires had become a business disaster because radials lasted so long that customers purchased replacements much less frequently" and that what Henry Ford did "was establish the principle that workers should be paid high wages because mass production requires mass consumption--the two cannot be separated. ... For all to prosper, other employers also had to let go of the notion of paying their own workers the bare minimum." In the end, he concludes that "even a fair-playing winner may need to be restrained [by anti-trust legislation]--and ultimately Microsoft may indeed turn out to be precisely such a winner" and so, he calls on Mr. Gates to "help persuade others to adopt a course that would improve the lives of others in ways that could never be achieved by even the wisest disposal of his own personal wealth." If it was not for his principled defense of Microsoft on rational grounds, I would ignore this book. But as it stands, if you will pass by his economic comments and skip the afterwards completely, then you will be treated to a clear picture of Microsoft and why it should be admired for its success.

Stross' book goes beyond explaining the ways of Microsoft to man, but explains what it takes to stay up-to-date. As is oft said, the leader of one revolution can not be the leader of another. Because Stross have had a total archival access that's why the reasons why Microsoft company is in the high stakes high technology business are very clear.
Tongue and cheek aside, this book is a real way of thinking in a company. Bill Gates is not the ruthless taskmaster that some people try to denonciate.

I purchased this book when it was first published, but went back and reread it recently. The book is broken down into four sections, the first being my favorite. As an entrepreneur I find the initial organization, growth, and recruiting patterns at Microsoft to be extremely valuable. I think that any company can learn from this section, especially companies with investments in intellectual capital.

The rest of the book is pretty good, but not as valuable as the first section was to me. It did have interesting discussions about Microsoft's early entry into the Personal Finance market going head to head against Intuit. This should have helped dispel many of the anti-trust issues as it shows that Microsoft is not alone in aggressively marketing their products.

If you are looking for a real history of Microsoft or the rising of Silicon Valley (this was my case), then this is not the book you are looking for. Instead, this book contains some articles of Ted Lewis (written between 1993-1998) that shows the evolution of the hi-tech industry.

Each article looks beyond the possibilities (in the time it was written) and the possible effects (let's say predictions) that in most of the cases were right and leaded to the actual present we are living. It was a very interesting reading although it was not the kind of tales that I was looking for.