The software industry is littered with the carcasses of companies that Microsoft has put out of business. Microsoft's strength directly or indirectly threatens every company on the globe - including yours. If Microsoft goes directly after your company's business, your company can, at best, hold on to part of it's former market. At worst it will have to close it's doors.

Microsoft has brought about a change in the business community greater than the change due to global competition that has occurred over the last 20 years. This new change is more severe. It requires a change in the mind-set of every manager and employee in your company. Because Microsoft does have every employee 100% focused on taking your market away. And if Microsoft has not set it's sights on your markets, there will be companies that have learned a lot from Microsoft that will go after your markets. Other companies are learning from Microsoft and are using these lessons to dominate every market.

In fact, a Bill Gates would never get promoted to a senior position in the average large company. Someone so nakedly aggressive would be recognized as way too dangerous and the entire herd would ensure his demise.

Microsoft's strength directly or indirectly threatens every company on the globe. If Microsoft sets it's sights on another company's business, that company can, at best, hold on to part of it's former market. At worst, it
will have to close it's doors.

Every Microsoft employee knows in their gut what their primary goal is. And that is to win 100% of whatever market they are going after. The unofficial but clear corporate motto is - "Total World Domination."

Microsoft is very comfortable losing money year after year to keep going after strategic markets.

They consistently attempt to hire people who are in the smartest 5%...

Microsoft announced that they were cutting a billion dollars from their R&D budget because they could not hire enough good people. They did this rather than hire from the second 5%.

Very few companies are willing to bet their future unless they have no choice. Even though they don't need to bet the company, Microsoft chooses to do so, and truly does do so, year in and year out. And doing so is taken for granted.

As soon as a Microsoft product owns a market, Microsoft starts looking at how to eliminate it with a better product. They killed DOS with Windows. They are trying to replace Windows with Internet Explorer.

In 9 months Microsoft went from having no Internet strategy to being an Internet-focused company. And at the time of this writing, it's pretty much over for Netscape. Could any other Fortune 500 company change course 180° ? in 9 months? Or even in 9 years?

At most large businesses, to succeed is good but to fail is unacceptable. What happens if you fail at your company? Odds are, it's a major problem for your career. At Microsoft, failures are expected and as long as they are not exceedingly stupid, they are basically forgotten. And success is required.

When a manager and an employee disagree at Microsoft, it's not pre-determined who will win the disagreement.

The primary qualification for managers at Microsoft is their expertise within a particular field. Management and people skills are of secondary importance.

Ok, so you created a new business unit, entered a new market segment, and dominated it. So what? That was yesterday. What are you going to do for me today?

When success is the only measure, then excuses become irrelevant. And at Microsoft success is what they measure things by.

Never, never try to bullshit the employees. Employees are smart and know when they are being fed a line.

When a job at Microsoft absolutely, positively needed five people to complete it, four would be assigned... But if there are never enough people available, there is no one sitting around to create a make-work job. The giant savings here is not the direct salary cost of people doing nothing. The savings is the lack of bureaucracy imposed by people trying to create work for themselves.