Microsoft Secrets: An Insider's View of the Rocket Ride from Worst to First and Lessons Learned on the Journey

By Dave Jaworski

A great deal has been written about Steve Jobs and Apple. Not nearly as much has been produced about Bill Gates and Microsoft, especially in the ten-year period that Dave Jaworski was at Microsoft. Microsoft was the company that drove the hardest and built the fastest. He was there during this rapid rise to the top. Dave kept meticulous notes and took lots of photos and documented the risks taken, the dreams shared, the lessons learned, the hopes realized, and the mistakes made. Many of the issues at the time are similar to issues confronting leaders in business today. All can learn from Microsoft’s past.

Dave also details several secrets—some only his family knows. Some of these secrets were known to only a handful of people within the company at a time when it went through its explosive growth period: like the secret recipe for Coca-Cola or Colonel Sanders’ chicken recipe, these secrets were literally changing the competitive landscape in the technology industry and were rewriting the business rules of the day. Understanding these secrets and the thinking behind them can provide strategic insights and advantages to professionals and their businesses. Better still, they can help them define their own secrets to accelerate them past competitors and over hurdles to success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781683504214

Book preview

Part One

A PERSONAL JOURNEY

ONE

Oceanography to

COMPUTER SCIENCE

My first love was God. My second was music. My third was water.

Jacques Cousteau was a famous underwater explorer and innovator. His stories inspired me as a boy. The idea of engaging with the animals of the oceans, especially whales, enthralled me. So I decided I would pursue a career in oceanography.

Swimming lessons had taught me how to help someone who is drowning, how to breathe properly for longer periods under water, and many other life skills that I first thought only applied to my time in the water. Lessons can be learned at all points of our life journey, and we can glean many from the journeys of those who have gone before us. Jacques’ adventures as well as my own lessons in the water taught me how to deal with unexpected and even life-threatening situations; how to handle my emotions and make decisions in times of uncertainty and rapid change; how to pioneer in unchartered waters; and how to persevere in the face of failed experiments. These lessons would prove useful in ways I never imagined at the time.

St. Paul’s High School, a Jesuit school located in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada, provided a formal education and a principled foundation for my personal and professional life. The education I received and friends made during those years impact me to this day. Two technology breakthroughs were introduced to me at St. Paul’s and made a significant impression on me. One was the electronic calculator. This handheld device could be programmed and could do so much more than simple math. The second was the computer. A small group of students under the leadership of the school’s math wizard professor, Fr. Leslie Marosfalvy, were able to use this new technology. Special access was required to even enter the computer room. It was guarded and remained behind locked doors, which added mystery and intrigue to the machines the room housed. I was fascinated by the fact that these amazing machines could run processes that a person’s mind conceived. I did not take the computer programming class because I incorrectly assumed only math wizards could apply. Yet the seed planted would germinate almost immediately after I graduated from St.