Shows
Breaking ChangesWhen Windows Hit The Wall: Reinventing a Dominant Product in a Changing Market with Steven Sinofsky I PostmanIn this episode of Breaking Changes, Postman Head of Product-Observability Jean Yang interviews Steven Sinofsky, former Microsoft executive, diving into his journey in engineering leadership and the hurdles faced during the Windows 8 rewrite. Gain valuable insights on team dynamics, the essence of shipping software collectively, and Microsoft's adaptability in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
For more on Steven Sinofsky, check out the following:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sinofsky/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevesi
Personal Website: https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/
Company Website: https://a16z.com/
Follow...2024-07-3154 min
Boz To The FutureThe Future According to Steven SinofskyIn today’s episode, our host, Meta CTO and Head of Reality Labs Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, is joined by technologist and author of Hardcore Software Steven Sinofsky to talk about the recurring lessons of standing up new platforms, as well as writing and how AI may benefit the craft. Together, Sinofsky and Bosworth cover a range of topics, from the massive effort needed to build a new computing platform to the difficulty of building novel technologies in an era where everything “just works.” They look at how we’re once again at an exciting time in computing, where new for...2024-01-0558 min
Console DevToolsDev War Stories, with Steven Sinofsky (a16z, ex-Microsoft) - S04E01In this episode, we speak with Steven Sinofsky, currently a board partner at Andreessen Horowitz and previously of Microsoft. We discuss what it was like shipping code at Microsoft in the early days, what he learned from Bill Gates, how it applies to software development today, what the big Windows 8 rewrite was like, and why the Copilot AI naysayers are completely wrong. Although the software landscape has changed dramatically since Steven’s early days at Microsoft in the 80s, he shares some of the lessons he learned along the way which are still as relevant today as they were ba...2023-04-2740 min
Podcast Notes Playlist: Signal From The Noise: By Podcast NotesEP 36 - Marc Andreessen and Steven Sinofsky Talk Sentience, Ethics, Job Impacts, and the Future of AIAarthi and Sriram's Good Time Show
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In this episode, the gang gets back together! Marc Andreessen and Steven Sinofsky are back to talk about all things AI. We cover the rise of ChatGPT, Bing's AI powered chat Sydney, AI ethics, sentience, whether AI will take over jobs, the economic impact, AI startups vs tech incumbents, and whether it is time for AI to become sentient. This was an incredibly fun episode!
Marc Andreessen is an...2023-03-0600 min
The Aarthi and Sriram ShowEP 36 - Marc Andreessen and Steven Sinofsky Talk Sentience, Ethics, Job Impacts, and the Future of AIIn this episode, the gang gets back together! Marc Andreessen and Steven Sinofsky are back to talk about all things AI. We cover the rise of ChatGPT, Bing's AI powered chat Sydney, AI ethics, sentience, whether AI will take over jobs, the economic impact, AI startups vs tech incumbents, and whether it is time for AI to become sentient. This was an incredibly fun episode!
Marc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur, venture capital investor, and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley...2023-02-251h 16
The Aarthi and Sriram ShowEP 26 - Steven Sinofsky on leading Office & Windows at Microsoft and the art of writing wellThis week's special guest is Steven Sinofsky, one of our favorite techno-optimists responsible for shipping Windows and Office products at Microsoft used by billions of people. He is also the author of one of the most popular Substack books - https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com
In this episode we talked about Steven's early days at Microsoft, his famous internet memo, working with Bill Gates, and the traits he sees in good leaders and founders, how to set company culture, his experience leading Office and Windows teams at Microsoft, and the secret behind his ability to write well.
Follow Sriram:
https://www...2022-12-171h 54
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)108. The End of the PC Revolution [Epilogue]Welcome to the final installment of Hardcore Software. It has been an amazing journey in the 115 or so sections including bonus posts. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to those of you that have followed along the journey of the PC and my own growth and lessons. Thank you very very much.I have a few more bonuses planned, including a compendium of Microspeak and a bibliography of books and magazines that I collected. For paid subscribers I will be sending out an update on how billing will end and for “True Blue” subscribers please expect an e...2022-12-0454 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)107. Click In With SurfaceHappy Holiday to those in the US. This is a special double issue covering the creation and launch of Microsoft Surface, an integral part of the reimagining of Windows from the chipset to the experience. To celebrate such a radical departure from Microsoft’s historic Windows and software-only strategy this post is unlocked, so please enjoy, and feel free to share. I’ve also included a good many artifacts including the plans for what would happen after Windows 8 released that were put in place. The post following this is the very last in Hardcore Software. More on what comes next...2022-11-201h 26
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)106. The Missing Start MenuThis section was the most difficult to write. At least people look back favorably on Clippy. The Windows 8 Start screen lacks any kitsch or sentimental value. It was the wrong design for the product at the wrong time and ultimately my responsibility. This is not the story of the design. There are better people to write about the specifics. This is not a story of ignoring feedback or failing to heed the market, but a story of just what happens when you’re out of degrees of freedom. This is the story of the constraints and the rationale for ho...2022-11-1350 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)105. New Ultrabooks, Old Office, and the Big Consumer PreviewThe previous section detailed the release of the Windows 8 platform, WinRT, for building Metro-style apps. In the reimagining of Windows from the chipset to the experience, we’ve covered all the major efforts. In this section, we will describe the latest in PCs that will contribute to Windows 8, which Intel called Ultrabook™ PCs We will also introduce the Windows Store where developers could distribute apps. The really big news will be the Consumer Preview or beta test for Windows 8 where millions will experience the product for the first time. It might surprise readers, just as with the Developer Preview, that...2022-11-0656 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)104. //build It and They Will Come (Hopefully)Imagine building a computing platform that powers a generation. Now imagine taking the big step of building the replacement for that platform while the original needs to keep going for another decade or more. This is the story of unveiling the new Windows 8 platform for building modern apps, WinRT, at the first //build conference. The difficulty in telling this story is how everyone knows how the world came to view Windows 8. The developer conference of 2011 was a different story entirely. We still had to work through the big issue within the world of .NET developers and their extreme displeasure wit...2022-10-301h 00
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)103. The End of Windows SoftwareA reasonable question to ask is “Why did Windows 8 need to create a new platform?” Not only did Microsoft have Win32, the tried-and-true real and compatible Windows platform, but the company had pioneered the .NET platform and with Windows Phone 7 extended that platform to phones with Silverlight. This post is my take on the history and how we ended up at this point. It takes us way back and shows how sometimes what emerges as a major strategic problem can trace its origins back much earlier than one might think. In the next section we will unveil the platform to d...2022-10-2337 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)102. The ExperienceA challenge that comes with writing down experiences occurs when writing about events that readers lived through, have strong opinions about, and feel they know the full story. My purpose here is to share what we were thinking and doing at the time, how a broad set of people reacted, and then to offer my views of the reasons leading to the results. That is a way of saying this section is going to start with what we set out to do, not where we ended.Back to 101. Reimagining Windows from the Chipset to the Experience: The...2022-10-1657 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)101. Reimagining Windows from the Chipset to the Experience: The Chipset [Ch. XV]Welcome to Chapter XV! This is the final chapter of Hardcore Software. In this chapter, we are going to build and release Windows 8—reimagining Windows from the chipset to the experience. First up, the chipset. Then there will be sections on the platform and the experience. Following that, we’ll release Windows to developers and then the public. Then a surprise release of…Surface. There is a ton to cover. Many readers have lived through this. I’m definitely including a lot of detail but chose not to break things up into small posts. There are subsection breaks though.Thi...2022-10-091h 08
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)100. A Daring and Bold VisionHardcore Software has shared the vision planning process for five releases of Office and Windows 7. Though not detailed we followed the same process for two waves of Windows Live Services as well as Internet Explorer 8 and 9. Windows 8 went through this same process, though by now as a team we had become pretty good at it. This section details the resulting Windows 8 plan, The Vision for Windows 8. As part of that, I wanted to take a bit of a journey into the alignment between Windows Phone and Windows 8 and the challenges we saw there. In doing so, I will describe...2022-10-0258 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)099. The Magical iPadThe launch of an innovative new product is always exciting. The launch of an innovate new product from a competitor is even more exciting. But what is it like when your main competitor launches an innovative new product at a moment of your own fundamental strategic weakness? That’s what it was like when the iPad launched on January 27, 2010. On the heels of the successful Windows 7 launch during a time when Microsoft was behind on mobile and all things internet and in the midst of planning Windows 8, Apple launched the iPad. Many would view the iPad (and slates and ta...2022-09-2531 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)098. A Sea of Worry at the Consumer Electronics ShowThe planning for Windows 8 was moving right along. But something wasn’t right as we wrapped up Windows 7 activities at CES 2010. It was looking more and more like the plans and the way the ecosystem might rally around them would yield a watered-down result—it would be Windows and a bunch of features, or perhaps irreconcilable bloat. The way the ecosystem responded to touch support in Windows 7 concerned me. How do we avoid the risk of a plan that did too much yet not enough? Oh, and Apple scheduled a “Special Event” for January 27, 2010, just weeks after a concerning CES....2022-09-1832 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)097. A Plan for a Changing World [Ch. XIV]Welcome to Chapter XIV. This is the first of two chapters and about a dozen remaining posts that cover the context, development, and release of Windows 8. Many reading this will bring their own vivid recollections and perspectives to this “memorable” product cycle. As with the previous 13 chapters and 96 posts about 9 major multi-year projects, my goal remains to share the story as I experienced it. I suspect with this product there will be even more debate in comments and on twitter about the experiences with Windows 8. I look forward to that. This chapter is the work and context leading up to t...2022-09-1133 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)096. Ultraseven (Launching Windows 7)In the era of “boxed” software release to manufacturing was a super special moment. The software is done, and the bits permanently pressed onto a DVD disc. That disc, the golden master, is then shipped off physically to duplicators around the world and then combined with another artifact of the era, a box or in the case of Windows 7 a plastic anti-theft DVD contraption. While Windows 95, the excitement of computing and the newness of internet set a high-water mark for launch events, the completion and launch of Windows 7 was a major worldwide business event. The industry was looking for opti...2022-08-2824 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)095. Welcome to Windows 7, EveryoneWhile it is incredibly fun to do a first demo of a big product as described in the previous section, there is something that tops that and even tops the actual release to manufacturing. That is providing the release, actual running code, to a product’s biggest fans. It was time to welcome everyone to Windows 7 and put the code that the team had been working on since the summer of 2007 out for the world (of techies) to experience.Back to 094. First Public Windows 7 DemoSeattle summers are notoriously difficult on product development. After a lo...2022-08-2126 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)094. First Public Windows 7 DemoIn an era of huge software projects with a zillion new features in every release, there’s little more exciting than the first public demos. Such demos are also incredibly stressful to pull off. In addition to all the work to just get the code to demo-ready condition, there’s a lead-up to public disclosure, briefing reporters, and aligning partners. The first demo of Windows 7 was all those things and more, because we’d (or just I) had been so quiet for so long. This is the story of unveiling at least one small part of Windows 7 along with my own...2022-08-1425 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)093. Netbook ManiaThe Windows team was plugging away on Windows 7. The outside world was still mired in the Vista doldrums. Then in the summer of 2007 there was a wakeup call in the announcement and shipment of a new type of computer from upstart Asus, called a Netbook, a tiny laptop running Linux and a new chip from Intel. Would that combination prove to be a competitive threat or a huge opportunity for a PC world fresh off the launch of the iPhone?Back to 092. Platform Disruption…While Building Windows 7When a project like Longhorn drags on, the bu...2022-08-0726 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)092. Platform Disruption…While Building Windows 7 [Ch. XIII]Welcome to Chapter XIII! In this chapter we build Windows 7 and bring it to market. We start with all the forces that were shaping up to “disrupt” Microsoft (in the now classic sense) including the launch of the iPhone, cloud computing, consumer internet services, and even the perception of bloat (in Windows this time.) Each of these on their own would be significant, but they were happening all at once, while we were rehabilitating the team, hoping to ship on time for once. To add to the chaos of the moment, these forces appeared during the largest runup of PC s...2022-07-3142 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)091. Cleaning Up Longhorn and VistaWhenever you take on a new role you hope that you can just move forward and start work on what comes next without looking back. No job transition is really like that. In my case, even though I had spent six months “transitioning” while Windows Vista went from beta to release, and then even went to Brazil to launch Windows Vista, my brain was firmly in Windows 7. I wanted to spend little, really no, time on Windows Vista. That wasn’t entirely possible because parts of our team would be producing security and bug fixes at a high rate and con...2022-07-2440 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)090. I’m a MacAdvertising is much more difficult than just about everyone believes to be the case. In fact, one of the most challenging tasks for any executive at any company is to step back and not get involved in advertising. It is so easy to have opinions on ads and really randomize the process. It is easy to see why. Most of us buy stuff and therefore consume advertising. So it logically follows, we all have informed opinions, which is not really the case at all. Just like product people hate everyone having opinions on features, marketing people are loathe to...2022-07-1734 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)089. Rebooting the PC EcosystemThe word ecosystem is often used when describing Windows and the universe of companies that come together to deliver Windows PCs and software. Providing a platform is a much trickier business than most might believe. Bringing together a large number of partners, along with their competitors, who might share one large goal but differ significantly in the tactics to use to achieve it is fraught with conflict. The Windows ecosystem had been dealt a series of painful blows over the years resulting in a loss of trust and collective capability. Where partnerships were required, the ecosystem had become a...2022-07-1040 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)088. Planning the Most Important Windows EverOne of the main challenges in leading a big team is that nothing ever seems to finish—there’s always more to building a team. Even at milestones, one looks ahead and sees more work to do. In the first few months I had been working on Windows so far, we re-organized the team in a huge way and shipped Windows Vista, only to then have to figure out how to plan a product release with this entirely new organization, while building an improved engineering culture. The planning work began in earnest in December 2006 and concluded July 2007. This is the...2022-07-0344 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)087. Reorg! Why Are We Together, Exactly?After thinking and writing to provide context to BillG, SteveB, and KevinJo, I had to begin the real work of changing the team. As much as I would have liked to avoid the second step of the “Three Envelopes” (having skipped the first) I found myself planning a reorganization. Not just a reorg though—Microsoft was by many accounts in a perennial state of “reorg hell”—I was planning an organizational change and cultural transformation that would have an effect on every member of the team, almost immediately. That meant more writing. More communicating. A lot more. Back to 086...2022-06-2630 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)086. The Memo (Part 2)The previous section detailed the raw observations on Windows and Services culture I saw after weeks of hearing about the situation from as many people as I could. I could not just put that out there without specifics of what I thought could improve. I had to put some structure on what I learned and to offer optimism and aspirations.Back to 085. The Memo (Part 1)Reflecting on this moment of both optimism and fear, today I look at the candor I expressed with a bit of amazement. I wrote with detail and assertiveness yet seemed...2022-06-1943 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)085. The Memo (Part 1)Everyone in their career should have one memo that they think of as the most consequential. For me, it is a memo I wrote after a about six weeks on the Windows team. Under intense time pressure to figure out what comes next with Vista rapidly approaching final release (not formally, but it was going to soon be all but impossible for code changes to make their way into the product) I had to come up with next steps. Over the next four posts, I want to share not just the memo but more about what it is like...2022-06-1221 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)084. How Many On the Team, Exactly?Much of what Hardcore Software has been about was what we were building (and why). This chapter is about how. Specifically, I wanted to delve into the management structure and what we worked through to restore efficacy and build a new kind of Windows team. Over the next few posts, we will journey through understanding of the cultural challenges the team faced, figuring out a plan to lay the foundation to address those, and then putting that plan into action. This first post gets to the core of understanding what precisely the team is building by figuring out how...2022-06-0536 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)083. Living the Odd-Even Curse [Ch. XII]Welcome to Chapter XII, where Hardcore Software turns from Office and enterprise customers to Windows and consumers (and PC makers). For many readers, this will also be a bit more of their own lived experience. As such it is worth a reminder that I am sharing my experience and observations, not any sort of omniscient history (if such a thing even existed). Importantly, by waiting a decade to write, the history becomes much clearer and less influenced by the emotions or immediate reactions. That’s certainly been my experience so far in writing HCSW. These next four chapters (about 25 se...2022-05-2933 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)082. Defying Conventional Wisdom to Finish OfficeAs we conclude the story of Office12 and the major redesign of the product, Microsoft of late 2005 to early 2006 is in a bit of a lull which for better or worse is good for the launch of Office. Longhorn continues to stretch out and the lack of clarity continues, which is putting a drag on everyone. There’s something very special, yet bittersweet, about this release of Office.With the conclusion of this chapter, Hardcore Software, will start to get into Windows. I have about 30 stories planned. As my roles have changed so too have the stories. Wi...2022-05-2237 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)081. First Feedback and a SurpriseWe’d been working on Office12 for almost two years and the product had made enormous progress. The team was buzzing, and everyone was very excited. This product was different. We were building something we could all feel. It was a product that was good for individuals, not just organizations. Still, no one outside the company had seen it or knew of the monumental changes we were making. The user interface in Office was not just a user interface for the PC, for many many people for the past 15 years it had been the interface for the PC...2022-05-1535 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)080. Progress From Vision to BetaThis section tells the story of a plan coming together and the breadth of the release. We did have a bit of a speed bump early on. I was told to align schedules with Windows Longhorn (the next Windows release). The difficult reality of Longhorn had not yet sunk in. The new user interface for Office12 had surprising upsides. While we were confident, we did not know at the time just how positive the changes in Office12 would prove to be.Back to 079. Competing Designs, Better DesignOrganizationally, we had become a (relatively) well-oiled machine...2022-05-0828 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)079. Competing Designs, Better DesignA common belief in big companies with resources to spare is that innovation works better when there is a competition between multiple efforts with the same goal. It is a luxury most companies don’t have. If you’ve lived through competing designs, then you also know this is a horrible way to innovate and it is odd that such a process persists. When we began work on the redesign of Office, we wanted to iterate over designs quickly while also making sure we had multiple perspectives. It was not competing designs per se, but it had many of the...2022-05-0123 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)078. A Tour of “Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past”Welcome to “Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past.” This section is one of the more deeply product-focused of Hardcore Software. I hope to make it fun. In this section, I will go through the history and evolution of the Office user interface. While there were numerous innovative user interface systems and approaches across the industry, what we developed in Office by virtue of the breadth of usage and position of influence was viewed by many as a standard to be followed. Many readers have experienced the innovations discussed here. By stepping through over 20 years of user interface designs for Micr...2022-04-2438 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)077. What Is Software Bloat, Really?In this and the next five sections, the story of Office12 (Office 2007) unfolds. This is really the story of the development of the new user interface for Office, which became known as the Ribbon. To many readers, this will seem much smaller today than it was at the time, and that is understandable. I hope to put this work in the context of the day so readers can see just how big a deal this was. The graphical interface was the paradigm of computing. The menu bar was the manifestation of that. The addition of graphical buttons or toolbars...2022-04-1735 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)076. Chasing The Low-End Product [Ch. XI. Betting Big to Fend Off Commoditization]Welcome to a new chapter. As we approached the launch of the massive Microsoft Office System 2003, it was time to plan a new release and that started by drawing a proverbial line, at least I felt so. We pivoted way too much to enterprise and clearly lost the “personal” in “personal productivity.” It was not that we needed to go back to just building features for individual users editing documents, but our entire product was just too enterprise focused. While the product group owns responsibility, the whole company focus on enterprise meant that no matter what we did, as the prod...2022-04-1035 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)075. Scaling and TransitionsWrapping up the development of Office 2003 was an enormously challenging time for me personally, while the team continued to do well finishing a release with an unprecedented breadth and depth. At the executive level the company was under enormous strain, not because of a lack of business results (quite the opposite), but from what the NY Times called a "popularity problem". The core business was less dependent on Windows than ever before and in fact the percentage of Microsoft revenue or profits from Windows likely peaked. In addition, the Server business and Office were doing extremely well. Few companies...2022-04-0333 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)074. Outlook Pride, FinallyEach module of Office deserves a shot at being the hero of a release. That’s how a healthy product bundle should move forward, rather than relying on a single anchor. Excel 5.0, Word 97, PowerPoint 2000, Access 2.0 anchored Office Professional. While Outlook was top of mind for IT infrastructure managers, it remained complicated and frustrating for regular end-users. Embarking on a radical redesign of a major product is a career opportunity and also a big bet for a critical business that continued to be half of Microsoft. That would be difficult enough, but nothing is that straightforward. Outlook would still face in...2022-03-2730 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)073. **DO NOT FORWARD**As readers of this chapter have seen, the theme of Office11 continues to be enterprise, though now it is turned up to 11 so to speak. Despite my concerns about end-users and reviewers, the unstoppable force at Microsoft remained enterprise customers and meeting their needs or the needs of our growing sales force serving them—whether those needs were technology, positioning, or strategy, as expressed by customers or the field sales teams. A key attribute of enterprise software strategy is connecting the dots and making sure one part of the full enterprise stack uses (or leverages) another part. A cynical vi...2022-03-2024 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)072. Notes on Tablet PC InnovationFew products have captured as much attention as Microsoft’s Tablet PC (except perhaps Xbox, which coincidently launched the same year). The company’s history working to deliver the form factor goes back to the earliest days of Windows. BillG’s intense focus on handwriting recognition led to one of the first extensions to Windows, Windows for Pen Computing (1992), and a bitter lawsuit with then perceived leader, GO Corp. Subsequently, handwriting recognition was among the very first groups chartered in the new Microsoft Research organization. The small Windows-derived handheld devices, PocketPC, were pen-centric. Then finally in the early 2000s Micros...2022-03-1342 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)071. Resolving NetDocs v. OfficeWith the announcement of .NET, Microsoft was overflowing with projects, many not yet products, destined to become the next big thing in one area or another. Everything had a “Net” somewhere in the name and everything was in the press or in an enterprise strategy deck. There was plenty of optimism, but collectively the company was well ahead of itself. There was simply too much going on to have a coherent strategy or roadmap, even though BillG was 100% focused on that, having assumed the role of Chief Software Architect. The push-pull of “be more innovative” and “ship real soon” meant that m...2022-03-0633 min
Money MemosHardcore Software (HS), Intro – Steven Sinofsky (MM #15)Introducing "Hardcore Software": Inside the Rise and Fall of the PC Revolution (a serialized work)
by Steven Sinofsky – January 28, 2021
*audio version, 2022*2022-02-2809 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)070. Office.NOTWelcome to the only project I worked on that had the plans upended at the last minute after one executive meeting. This is a journey that starts back at the 1999 Company Meeting and the unveiling of “Software As A Service” bet the company strategy. With many excerpts and artifacts, we will go through planning Office.NET where you’ll really get to experience the product planning process in Office. Followed by a last minute change putting all that work at risk.Back to 069. Mega-Scale, Mega-ComplexityIn the fall of 1999 Microsoft held its annual Company Meeting at the...2022-02-2744 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)069. Mega-Scale, Mega-Complexity [Ch. X]Welcome to Chapter X! The turn of a new century and survival of “Y2K” begins a massive expansion of the Office product line, a dramatic change in the products we built, and a reinvention of how we market Office, while simultaneously tripling and quadrupling down on enterprise customers. The result of this transformation sets the stage for the most formative years culturally for the Microsoft that takes us to today’s products (365, Azure), but unknowingly constrained us going forward. Back to 068. The XP eXPerienceOne early company meeting as the CFO Mike Brown...2022-02-2027 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)068. The XP eXPerienceThe last months of a product development cycle the scale and length of Office10 are moments of calm punctuated by moments of terror. The calm comes from the lack of code changes as thousands of people test the product while hoping not to find anything requiring code changes. The terror comes from issues that arise when you have little time to change them because we’re still dealing with the physical world. Something that seems so trivial like a product name requires a month of more of work to get right, then rolled out around the world. Office10 did no...2022-02-1324 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)067. MYR-CDG: Product Meets SalesMicrosoft was often viewed as a Borg-like structure though we’ve already seen when it came to product development it was decidedly of two cultures. The huge and growing global sales force so dominated by SteveB (now CEO) represented a third, one completely defined by the unique combination of massive global scale and local empowerment and respect for culture. What happens when a Redmond-based software engineer-turned product group executive meets this culture head-on? What about when that happens in front of his new boss who previously ran the field and created the process we’re about to see unfold? 2022-02-0625 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)066. Killing a Killer Feature In Outlook, AgainEnterprise software customers learn about roadmaps and plans long before the development team has robust execution plans. That’s part of the business. No matter how much these discussions with customers and partners are caveated, a failure to deliver is a big deal. Customers, partners, and salespeople all have a vested interest in those slides (promises!) coming to life when we said they would. When a project is spread across two separate and large development teams, failing to deliver or “cutting a feature” as we called it as if to minimize accountability, the cross-team dynamic is brutal. When B...2022-01-3016 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)065. SharePoint: Office Builds Our Own ServerI admit up front this will be one of my favorite sections to offer. SharePoint was a remarkable point in the history of Office as we expanded the product line from desktop Win32 applications to include servers, a prelude to services. Within Microsoft this was by many accounts not only heretical, but also impossible. How could a team made up of “UI programmers” develop a server? Strategically, the inherent conflict between a server tuned for information workers and the actual server business was intense and fraught with difficulties. I would learn another lesson in bundling versus stand-alone product, and endl...2022-01-2349 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)064. The Start of Office v. NetDocsMicrosoft went through so much in the first year of the millennium. It began with SteveB taking on the role of CEO and BillG taking on a new role as Chief Software Architect. Over the first months of the year a new set of technical leaders convened under the direction of Paul Maritz leading all of the product groups to define essentially the next Windows. The group was producing the plans for NGWS, next generation Windows services as outlined in memos from BillG and SteveB. The DOJ trial was complete, and we awaited the verdict, but everything we did...2022-01-1630 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)063. Managing the Antitrust VerdictBack to 062. Split Up MicrosoftWe received little guidance regarding how to talk about legal matters. I was never under orders to avoid speaking about the trial, though that seemed like common sense. Once the verdict came down, teammates were starting to ask questions, wondering what the case meant for Office. I knew enough to know that absent anything official, people made up their own reality. I was worried that this could become a local press issue, with people talking to friends and friends talking to friends, ending up in the Seattle Times.I organized...2022-01-0906 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)062. Split Up MicrosoftWriting about the antitrust court case and the final judgement can be difficult. The topic has been covered extensively and by my own count, of the dozen or so books about Microsoft almost all of them are primarily focused on the trial years and Microsoft achieving monopoly status. If you’re interested in the legal details or stories from competitors those sources are all better. These two sections are about the most dramatic years from the time of the initial Findings of Fact to the resolution. In all the years Microsoft was involved in litigation, before and after, this ti...2022-01-0924 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)061. BSoD to Watson: The Reliability JourneyHappy New Year! I want to offer a short but sincere thank you to all the subscribers, readers, and sharers who have made the past eleven months of Hardcore Software an incredible experience in sharing, learning, and remembering. It is an honor to continue to share the stories and more importantly the lessons of the PC revolution as experienced in the early days.This is a free post for the new year as a thank you but also because so many have struggled with the topic over the years. Sometimes when talking about PC crashes, I feel...2022-01-0236 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)060. ILOVEYOUViruses were nothing new in the late twentieth century, but we were about to cross a line where they were far more than annoyances. This is the story leading up to and crossing that line and the very difficult decisions we had to make relative to the value propositions in our products and that customers appreciated. It sounds easy today, but at the time it was enormously difficult. Breaking your own code is never a trivial matter. This story is also a bit of a sleuthing adventure as tracking down this virus is an important part of understanding the...2021-12-2637 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)059. Scaling…EverythingIt is one thing to change a product in order to meet market needs, but entirely another to change the culture. Scaling the teams and processes to meet the needs of our high-paying enterprise customers was another effort, and one that came right when most external indicators made it seem like we were doing everything right, thus making change more difficult. In practice, we had significant challenges meeting the needs of enterprise customers—product, support, quality, and overall enterprise-ness. We needed to bring not just our software to enterprise readiness, but our organizations. The best way to do that is...2021-12-1935 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)058. SynergyWelcome to planning Office10 and going inside the strategy, synergy, unification engine that characterized the early 2000s Microsoft (beginning in late 1998). This is a beefy post (too long for email) and even includes an embedded PDF (a new Substack feature 🔥) of the entire Office10 Vision document.This post is not paywalled. Perhaps consider sharing it with friends or coworkers. 🙏 Sync with Windows 2000. Sync with Whistler (the codename for Windows XP). Sync with Windows Server. Sync with Exchange Platinum (codename for Exchange 2000). Sync with Exchange Titanium (the one after that). Sync with SQL 2000. Sync with the one af...2021-12-1232 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)057. Enterprise Agreements [Ch. IX]Welcome to Chapter IX, taking place 1999 to 2001 where the world realized just how dependent it had become on email and the PC when viruses became a mainstream part of the technology vernacular. In the halls of Microsoft, it became apparent that being early was as strategically deadly as being wrong. PCs sell more than 100 million units for the first time in 1999. Things start to heat up on the antitrust front. We are learning to plan a release in the context of a massive change in the business of selling software to the enterprise.Back to 056. Going Global…Mot...2021-12-0521 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)056. Going Global . . . Mother TreeLaunching a product in a local market, natively so to speak, is an extraordinarily special experience. It is so special that for nearly every product I worked on I chose to be outside the US and participate in some aspect of the global launch, most of the time in Asia. With this love of the market came a learning curve and some fun times. Office 2000 was my first chance to launch a product as an executive and in Asia—it was a dream come true.This is the final post of the millennium and concludes the chapter an...2021-11-2122 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)055. Office 2000 is Good to Go!Office9 (aka Office 2000) was the very first release of Microsoft Office built by a team that began the project and ended the project as one. Well, almost as there was that pesky Outlook challenge. That said, the project was coming to a close by the end of 1998 and it was late. It was not terribly late or out of control as I reflected on my 1:1 with SteveB, but late nonetheless. The way old-timers would talk about projects to me was that product development slogs “really sucked” and then you ship and that is the “best feeling ever” and it is worth...2021-11-1415 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)054. Steve and Steven Get New JobsSteve Ballmer was named Microsoft president in July 1998. There was not much fanfare because it seemed an entirely natural progression of his role at the company, partnership with Bill, and recognition of the incredible accomplishment in building a world-class sales force over the past few years leading that effort. At the start of his tenure, he set out on a schedule of 100 one-on-one meetings with people across the company. Just as I was about to meet with him, I was promoted to general manager of Office. How did the meeting go? Back to 053. Strategy Tax: Outlook Storage...2021-11-0716 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)053. Strategy Tax: Outlook Storage, First AttemptMost tend to think of Microsoft strategy as the march from BASIC to DOS to Windows to Azure. While that is a robust external narrative, the more interesting view is how the company changed strategically and organizationally as we transformed from a consumer to an enterprise company. We changed from relatively independent (and culturally unique) Apps and Systems organizations to increasingly interconnected strategies with a growing list of top-down initiatives. The ultimate expression of these strategic goals came in the form of the transformation of the senior leadership who increasingly emerged from the System/Platforms teams. No single initiative...2021-10-3124 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)052. Alleviating Bloatware, First AttemptWhat happens when your biggest strength and greatest asset as a product development organization becomes your biggest weakness? Perhaps that is inevitable. With so many potential disruptive forces, at least that’s what we were hearing, it was almost too much that the very thing we really excelled at—building new features—would become a problem. While the idea of software bloat or even the phrase bloatware was hardly new, it was being applied increasingly to Office. This is the story of the first attempt at doing something about this issue.Note to readers: Substack introduced a new fe...2021-10-2419 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)051. HTML: Opportunity, Disruption, or WedgeWhile we knew the time was wrong to build a whole new Office out of one of the new disruptive technologies, we did need to arrive at a strategy for HTML. After the debacle of the file format changes for Office 97, the allure of HTML was everywhere. The enterprise customers we intended to impress were fed up with the traditional (and ever-changing) binary file formats in Office. HTML had achieved the status of “magic beans” and could solve any (and all) problems. But how?Back to 050. The Team’s Plan in the Face of DisruptionFirst...2021-10-1725 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)050. The Team's Plan in the Face of DisruptionWith the looming threat of disruption, at least according to everyone at the company and the desire to get moving on adding new features to the apps, there was a need to have a strategy in place. Putting together a plan is never easy, and at Microsoft in the late 1990s you’d be challenged to find something that looks like a complete product plan combined with an execution plan. Starting from Basic for the Altair through DOS for the PC and even Windows itself, Microsoft asserted what a product was with little more than a meeting, some slides, or...2021-10-1023 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)049. Go Get This RockThe most difficult thing to do in a big company is change a core belief. Microsoft was going through a late 1990s change, and rather unevenly. We were moving from a company primarily or almost exclusively selling products to consumers to one selling to IT professionals. The unevenness was seen in customer engagement, product roadmaps, release dates, and cross-company strategic alignment. It was also seen in how various executives perceived each team, and importantly how Office was viewed now that our management chain at the executive level was rooted, for the first time, in Platforms history and not Office...2021-10-0332 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)048. Pizza for 20 Million PeopleFew recall our products being developed at the end of the 20th century, but they were the foundation of modern Microsoft: Windows NT 5.0 (Windows 2000 Server and Workstation), Office9 (Office 2000), and Exchange Platinum (Exchange 2000). These products had none of the glitz or bang that consumers experienced with the 1995 wave of products, but the company used the intervening years to mature and “pivot” from that consumer company to an enterprise company. It has been said (by many) the best products don’t always win, but the products that win become the best products. Take these relatively uninspiring products and launch them with a...2021-09-2628 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)047. Don’t Ship the Org ChartThe Microsoft sales force had a ritual of reorganizing every fiscal year, like clockwork. The Platforms teams always seemed to be in some state of organization change, at least to me. Office, on the other hand, had been relatively stable except for two deliberate changes. As successful as Office 97 would prove to be, the product still reflected the development organization more than the value proposition. We needed to change that. To change that required us to develop a more robust planning process that was relevant to everyone that mattered.Back to 046. Prioritizing a New Type of Customer...2021-09-1925 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)046. Prioritizing a New Type of Customer [Ch. VIII]This new chapter begins the middle of the PC era, starting in 1998, as I experienced. In a very short time, the industry from customers to suppliers, went through enormous change. It is easy to look at the products to see the change as we moved from 8-bit or 16-bit systems that could hardly power the software we wrote (that practically did not work) to 32-bit processors with 32-bit operating systems. Or to consider the change from character mode to graphical and to client server mode (both the fragile model as implemented across all the major platforms, and the loosely...2021-09-1218 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)045. Incompatible Files, Slipping, Office 97 RTMBack to 044. Our First Big M&A Deal (Beating Netscape)Please keep the feedback rolling in. This post concludes with shipping Office 97. It represents the end of the first era of the PC, where the focus was on features, retail consumers, tech enthusiasts, and mostly just getting stuff to work and shipping. The next couple of chapters represent a major shift in the PC as the focus turns to the enterprise business and the primary customer the business itself and professional IT.Office96 was quickly becoming the biggest slip to an Office or Apps release...2021-09-0525 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)044. Our First Big M&A Deal (Beating Netscape)Office had been early and aggressive inserting Internet technologies across the product, including hyperlinks (so new!) and HTML, as well, sort of, email with Outlook. We started to notice a challenge for us—web sites were not single documents but collections of documents. Office was not particularly useful for dealing with collections of documents (except for the failed Binder experiment). We were about to enter the fray, going head-to-head with Netscape to acquire a “hot” internet product being developed in Boston. Back to 043. DIM OutlookWe enjoyed a very fancy and atypical dinner at Dan...2021-08-2923 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)043. DIM OutlookI’ve received so much positive feedback which I do not thank readers enough for. A few have asked for more sooner, so I am going to see about a slightly increased frequency and how that goes. Please do not hesitate to send feedback at any time, steven@learningbyshipping.com.Due to the rising importance of email, Outlook, which originated in a separate division from Office, ended up becoming a second anchor tenant of the Office Suite early in the Office96 cycle. Arguably the reason that it became possible for Office (in combination with a service-based Exchange ma...2021-08-2226 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)042. Clippy, The F*cking ClownAs a company gains success and grows, taking risks becomes, well, riskier. The costs of failure come front and center, as the ability for a company to play out scenarios where something would not work overwhelms the naïve optimism that used to characterize efforts. It is like one day, suddenly, everything becomes more difficult and scarier. Clippy, née Clippit, needs no introduction as the failure, the evolution to kitsch, and the resurrection as a technology ahead of its time have been baked into even mainstream consciousness. If you would have asked me in 2000, three years after the de...2021-08-1530 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)041. Scaling the Office Infrastructure and PlatformPerhaps more than any particular feature in what would become Office 97, though there were a lot of features, the biggest innovation was building the organization and culture supporting a shared infrastructure and platform team. Before Office 97, Microsoft decidedly switched to selling Office, yet we continued to build Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and we were organized that way. The Office96 product cycle, starting in 1994 (in parallel with what became Office 95) built out the new team, OPU the Office Product Unit, and new approaches to creating shared code and infrastructure. Not only did this come to define the Office product and...2021-08-0931 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)040. Creating the First Real Office [Ch. VII]Welcome to Chapter VII, 1995 to 1997 and Office 97. As PC sales surge, growing at a rate of 60 percent in 1996, the enormity of the internet becomes widely realized and will soon dwarf the impact of everything that came before it.The Apps and the Office team were 110% focused on what should have been the last months of Office96 as part of our 12/24 plan of parallel releases. The product turned out to be much more difficult to finish and the new Office-centric organization met with much more resistance than planned. On top of that, Office 95 took our entire Test team...2021-08-0120 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)039. Start Me UpIt has been 26 years since the Windows 95 launch and still no launch from any company has come close to the global scale and impact of the event. There have been big events and massive opening weekends for many products, but nothing like August 24, 1995. Even from our supporting role in Office, it was an event of a lifetime.While we signed off in July, our focus immediately turned to continuing to build Office96. The world would treat Office 95 as though it was a major new product from Microsoft, but we knew we had put most of our development...2021-07-2613 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)038. Designed for Windows 95A quick story about something that felt like a corporate or ecosystem tax, the “Designed for Windows 95” logo.Back to 037. Capone and Email Without TyposBy early 1995, the most essential elements for the Windows launch were determined. Chicago had picked an early summer RTM date. For Office, what had been “no more than 30 days later” was simultaneously shipping, which was awesome for the retailers and for the business. Windows had chosen the name Windows 95 and the idea of using the Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up in future ads was floated. Things were really hopping, and everything w...2021-07-2310 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)037. Capone and Email Without TyposAll we wanted to do was bring the rich formatting and lack of typos people experienced with Word to email. We saw how email was replacing many uses for Word and figured it seemed like a good idea to reuse all that code to make for better email. That put Office right in the mix with every other division—each of which had their own idea for how email should be done. While the WWW and browsers were killer applications for consuming all that was out there, email was the killer application for communicating with friends and family, and in...2021-07-1917 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)036. Fancy Wizard and Red SquigglesOffice94 (still the working name for what would become Office 95) was primarily about working with Windows 95 and shipping on the same day. That led to the constraint of having a relatively small team, less than 20 software engineers across the product compared to almost 60 on just Word 6.0. We knew that simply working with the new operating system would not be enough to get people to shell out a couple of hundred dollars (at the time, about 1 in 10 PC owners were also legal owners of our apps). The apps were also constrained by not changing the file format, which limited fancy...2021-07-1222 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)035. Windows 95, August or Bust [Ch. VI]1994 to 1995: Sharing code and processes to build Office pays off and the concept of the suite takes hold in the market. The Windows schedule becomes a death march to finish what is hoped to be a revolutionary new operating system. Netscape IPOs in the summer of 1995, weeks before the public availability of Windows 95. This is the first of five sections in this chapter on building Office 95.Back to 034. Office 94, 96Office94 had a plan in place, with a date and resources, as well as the major architectural bets of 32-bits and suite. There was...2021-07-0221 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)034. Office94, Office96With the Office Product Unit in place, and the outline of a plan to release with Chicago in about a year (whenever Chicago was finishing, which was unclear) and a second major release of Office a year after that, we still had to sell the team on the whole approach. This included allocating resources both to OPU as well as the app teams. From the Windows (and thus Microsoft) perspective, anything less than betting 100% on Chicago was seen as a hedge, yet that was exactly what DAD intended to do. This was decidedly about managing the applications business instead...2021-06-2516 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)033. Creating the Office Product Unit, OPUThe most difficult transition for most new companies is going from a single product to multiple products, something Microsoft managed to pull off fairly early. Inevitably, the next transition is one based on combining products into a suite or bundle in an effort to deliver a better deal to customers while also simplifying (making more efficient) sales and marketing. In 1993 it became clear that Office for Windows would be as successful as Office for Macintosh, and the numbers from 1994 were proving that. The problem was there was a mismatch between what Microsoft was selling (Office) and what Microsoft was...2021-06-2119 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)032. Winning With the SuiteStrategically, the bundling-unbundling arc or cycle is one of the most common dynamics in technology. Something that starts off as a single product or category inevitably becomes part of a bundle of features or products. Only later that bundled product faces intense competition from a stand-alone product introducing a different point of view. Choosing when to compete with a bundle and how to innovate within category occupied our collective mind in Applications in 1994. A big bet was made to market the Office Suite (or bundle) while the categories were still in play. Organizationally and culturally, we were still very...2021-06-1421 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)031. Synchronizing Windows and Office (the First Time) [Ch. V]Welcome to Chapter V. Subscribers, if this were a printed book then you’ve just read through a typical trade press book by word count. Since we’re only in 1994, now you know one good reason why Substack makes for a better approach.1993 to 1994: The rise of the internet dramatically accelerates the growth of the PC, the Windows PC in particular, as it soon becomes a must-have home appliance and an essential business tool for most every profession around the world. Windows PC unit sales have doubled since 1989 to over 40 million units and the growth rate was incr...2021-06-0719 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)030. My Performance Review (and an Expense Report)Summertime at Microsoft was also performance review time. I was also busy trying to figure out what job to do next and was quite stressed. While this is a brief look at my own performance review, there was a great lesson for being or managing staff that I carried with me for my career. This goes beyond the Rumsfeld-like Rules I crafted and to the relationship between the support staff and leader.Back to 029. Telling the Untold StoryIn July 1994, after almost 18 months as TA, NatalieY, head of recruiting but also in many ways the...2021-06-0409 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)029. Telling the Untold StoryA more interesting aspect of being in a staff role is how your perspective changes from day-to-day execution to strategic milestones. From this perspective, one doesn’t see the daily progress as much as the experience of what the starting point was and then results. There are meetings and demos, and (tons of) daily builds in the middle (my favorite), but the experience lacks the context of daily trade-offs or even the realities of product development. It is very easy from a staff role to assume people don’t get it or they are messing up, but it just isn’...2021-05-3027 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)028. Pivotal OffsiteThere was no shortage of energy around the internet. It was clear that a bunch of stuff would happen. Turning that energy into something resembling a strategy was an open question. For all the excitement, each group seemed to have its own way of defining the Internet, or its own view of how it could subsume the Internet into existing products. Convening an offsite of the 20 or so most senior product leaders in the company was a big deal. All I could really do was create an opportunity for leaders to lead and strategy to emerge. The rest was...2021-05-2613 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)027. Internet EvangelistI’m about to get my first lesson in disruption. It wasn’t called that yet, the first HBR article is a year a way and the book and phrase “innovator’s dilemma” more than three years away. Trapped in the snow seeing the power of the loosely connected, mostly University-created, software almost immediately turned me into a zealot. I don’t use that term lightly. I had seamlessly transitioned from character to graphical interface, even from mainframe to PC, without suffering the pains of disruption. I had no business to run or customers to keep happy. I was just a kid...2021-05-2315 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)026. Blue Suede PumasMicrosoft was now big enough in early 1994 that it was easy to know the really old-timers (10 years was really old, 5 years was the period of doubling year over year), but anyone hired after you outside of your immediate group (or school) became more difficult to know. Working as Technical Assistant gave me a chance to meet people at every level in every product and technology group. By far, the strongest bonds I built were with people who were more peers than anything else. James “J” Allard (JAllard) just authored the memo Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet and...2021-05-1616 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)025. TrappedImagine having all the confidence of an early twenty-something at an incredibly successful technology company leading the industry and lucky enough to be in a job giving you access to the leaders that made that happen. Now imagine getting trapped in the snow at a university and experiencing a software experience cobbled together by a tiny number of people using free code from other universities. That would be one thing. But what if that experience collided head-on with the grand vision the company was working towards.Back to 024. Discovering Cornell is “WIRED!” [Chapter IV]Feeling nost...2021-05-1218 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)024. Discovering “Cornell is WIRED!” [Ch. IV]Welcome to Chapter IV. The next series of sections detail one of the most interesting, exciting, and to many, troubling eras in the history of Microsoft. While Microsoft was busy developing Chicago (Windows 95) and rallying the entire company around that massive project and opportunity, an unprecedented and unstoppable force was taking root, the modern internet (back then it was called the Internet). Today we would refer to this as a disruptive technology change—a less capable, cheaper, alternative to all the things we were building, but the notion of a disruptive technology change was still years away from becoming bu...2021-05-0910 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)023. ThinkWeeksPeople always seem to want to know the habits or techniques used by CEOs for managing the company. I’m not sure if that helps or not, but at the very least it can be interesting. Before I became Technical Assistant, Bill started on his own process of organizing time to get away and “think” which eventually became ThinkWeek. I put a good deal of energy into making ThinkWeek a more structured and productive time as the rise of email had a way of substituting email activity with the kind of deep learning Bill intended. Over the years, ThinkWeek achiev...2021-05-0221 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)022. Injecting New Ideas and IQ: The Information SuperhighwayIn 1993, it would have been difficult to overstate the hype surrounding the “Information Superhighway”. Whatever definition or capabilities it might have, it consumed the imaginations of everyone from Wall Street to Main Street with magazine covers, morning news show pieces, investor conferences, and more. Microsoft had risen with the juggernauts of MS-DOS, Windows, and soon Office and found itself, surprisingly, at the nexus of Hollywood, newspapers, cable TV companies, and telephone companies each believing they would come to dominate the highway. Only one thing was missing and that was some software to power it. Could Microsoft be that “vendor” or would...2021-04-2719 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)021. Expanding Breadth versus Coherency: The EMS ProjectBack to 020. Innovation versus Shipping: The Cairo ProjectThrough Microsoft Office, even the first versions, Microsoft sold a primitive form of email that worked for small groups of people in the same physical offices. Delivering enterprise email that worked for a company the size of Microsoft, and many times larger (though it would be years before companies would use email the way Microsoft did) was a massive undertaking. The product would become known as Microsoft Exchange and formed the cornerstone of the entire Microsoft enterprise strategy. If you’re looking for an analogy, Exchange was to Windows Se...2021-04-2324 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)020. Innovation versus Shipping: The Cairo ProjectBack to 019. BillG the ManagerAs technical assistant I spent most of my time navigating our operating system strategy and progress during late-1992 to mid-1994. There were three main OS development projects going on at the time. Chicago was the code name of the successor to Windows 3.1 (shipped April 1992), rooted in the MS-DOS architecture and trying to build up from there. Windows NT building a portable, secure, and robust operating system from scratch aiming for the workstation and server market (version 3.5 to ship September 1994). These were both products under development unified by the Win32 API strategy announced...2021-04-1924 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)019. BillG the ManagerThe breadth of the Microsoft product line and the rapid turnover of core technologies all but precluded BillG from micro-managing the company in spite of the perceptions and lore around that topic. In less than 10 years the technology base of the business changed from the 8-bit BASIC era to the 16-bit MS-DOS era and to now the tail end of the 16-bit Windows era, on the verge of the Win32 decade. How did Bill manage this — where and how did he engage? This post introduces the topic and along with the next several posts we will explore some specific pr...2021-04-1521 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)018. Microsoft’s Two Bountiful GardensBack to 017. Eyes On Competition, Architecture, and Left FieldOne of the first things I did as Technical Assistant was to set up time with each of the leaders of the Office of the President and key executives to see what they could tell me that would help me to work with Bill. Mike Maples offered me a great and lifelong lesson in being in a supporting role while also explaining in his unique way the culture that was at the root of Microsoft—the culture across Apps and Systems where I would spend my whole career....2021-04-1222 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)002. SteveSiIf you missed the first post, start with 001. Becoming a Microsoftie (Chapter I). A Prologue has been added offering just a bit about my own history with computing. There is also a Roadmap/Table of Contents. If you need an overview and guide to subscriptions with discount codes, see Introducing "Hardcore Software".Back to 001. Becoming a Microsoftie [Chapter I]When I first arrived in Redmond, I lived about three blocks from campus, in company-provided temporary housing at an apartment complex called Bellevue Meadows, a block from the Residence Inn I had almost burned down during m...2021-02-0417 min
Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky (Audio Edition)001. Becoming a Microsoftie [Ch. I]Welcome. This is the first serialized section (yay!) The book is broken into 15 chapters and an epilogue. Each chapter has a number of sections, which are the posts you’ll receive in email. Occasionally I will add some context or an update at the top of a post like this. The Roadmap will maintain links to posts and will be an easy way to track the whole work. There will be additional posts and ask-me-anything threads (a Substack feature) which will also be mailed out and listed in the roadmap. The first posts are about what it was like st...2021-02-0114 min