Microserfs Read Free

I've met who work at Microsoft. If I recall her philosophy from the conversation she had with her younger sister two weekends ago, it goes something like this:
    "It's never been, 'We're doing this for the good of society.' It's always been us taking an intellectual pride in putting out a good product - and making money. If putting a computer on every desktop and in every home didn't make money, we wouldn't do it."
    That sums up most of the Microsoft people I know.
    * * *
    Microsoft, like any office, is a status theme park. Here's a quick rundown:
    • Profitable projects are galactically higher in status than loser (not quite as profitable) projects.
    • Microsoft at Work (Digital Office) is sexiest at the moment. Fortune 500 companies are drooling over DO because it'll allow them to downsize
    millions of employees. Basically, DO allows you to operate your fax, phone, copier - all of your office stuff - from your PC.
    • Cash cows like Word are profitable but not really considered cutting
    edge.
    • Working on-Campus is higher status than being relegated to one of the off-Campus Siberias.
    • Having Pentium-driven hardware (built to the hilt) in your office is higher status than having 486 droneware.
    • Having technical knowledge is way up there.
    • Being an architect is also way up there.
    • Having Bill-o-centric contacts is way, way up there.
    • Shipping your product on time is maybe the coolest (insert wave of anxiety here). If you ship on time you get a Ship-It award: a 12-x-15-x-l-inch Lucite slab - but you have to pretend it's no big deal. Michael has a Ship-It award and we've tried various times to destroy it - blowtorching, throwing it off the verandah, dousing it with acetone to dissolve it - nothing works. It's so permanent, it's frightening.
    * * *
    More roommate profiles:
    First, Abe. If Abe were a Jeopardy! contestant, his seven dream categories would be:
    • Intel assembly language
    • Bulk shopping
    •C++
    • Introversion
    • "I love my aquarium"
    • How to have millions of dollars and not let it affect your life in any way
    • Unclean laundry
    * * *
    Abe is sort of like the household Monopoly-game banker. He collects our monthly checks for the landlord, $235 apiece. The man has millions and he rents! He's been at the group house since 1984, when he was hired fresh out of MIT. (The rest of us have been here, on average, about eight months apiece.) After ten years of writing code, Abe so far shows no signs of getting a life. He seems happy to be reaching the age of 30 in just four months with nothing to his name but a variety of neat-o consumer electronics and boxes of Costco products purchased in rash moments of Costco-scale madness ("Ten thousand straws! Just think of it - only $10 and I'll never need to buy straws ever again!") These products line the walls of his room, giving it the feel of an air-raid shelter.
    Bonus detail: There are dried-out patches of sneeze spray all over Abe's monitors. You'd think he could afford 24 bottles of Windex.
    * * *
    Next, Todd. Todd's seven Jeopardy! categories would be:
    • Your body is your temple
    • Baseball hats
    • Meals made from combinations of Costco products
    • Psychotically religious parents
    • Frequent and empty sex
    • SEGA Genesis gaming addiction
    • The Supra
    * * *
    Todd works as a tester with me. He's really young - 22 - the way Microsoft employees all used to be. His interest is entirely in girls, bug testing, his Supra, and his body, which he buffs religiously at the Pro Club gym and feeds with peanut butter quesadillas, bananas, and protein drinks.
    Todd is historically empty. He neither knows nor cares about the past. He reads Car and Driver and fields three phone calls a week from his parents who believe that computers are "the Devil's voice box," and who try to persuade him to return home to Port Angeles and speak with the youth pastor.
    Todd's the most fun of all the house members because he is all impulse and no