American History 1988
Chapter 260 - 252 Velvet Sweatshop

Chapter 260: Chapter 252 Velvet Sweatshop

When Teresa arrived in Seattle, Microsoft was still quite small.

Back then, she worked for Microsoft as a contractor, and when she became a full-time employee, Microsoft already had more than four thousand employees.

And it occupied a rather large industrial park in the northeast area of Seattle.

"People come here because they love this kind of work," Teresa once told reporters.

Indeed, this is how the "Seattle Times" described Microsoft at the time.

"The break rooms were filled with free soda, nearly every office had windows, and there were two computers on every desk.

During workdays, there often were lunchtime soccer matches, or the executives engaging in comical competitions by jumping into the nearby lake."

Money made everything wonderful, Teresa admitted that working at Microsoft was a joyful thing back then.

When she became a full-timer, Microsoft hadn’t gone public yet.

So she was lucky enough to have received the option to purchase several thousand shares of Microsoft stock in the recruitment plan.

Later, as Microsoft’s business soared, those early employees all turned into millionaires or multimillionaires.

They would wander around the office in T-shirts with the Microsoft logo, and buttons on their collars engraved with "F.Y.I.F.V."

Which meant, "F**k you, I’m fully vested."

Although Teresa was also one of the early employees, she envied those with such personality.

Being a woman, it took her three years to transition from a contractor to an official contracted employee.

She cherished her job, so she dared not commit such an impropriety.

After so many years at Microsoft, free soda and stock options were no longer so enthralling.

On the contrary, what became the main theme of life was the unbearable long working hours.

Teresa had several profound impressions: if someone missed a meeting, Gates would always yell at them without hesitation.

Additionally, Gates had a habit of working from home via email until late at night.

And those on his email contact list had to be ready to reply at any time.

So Teresa understood early on that at Microsoft, the company did a lot to create a comfortable work environment, but work always came first.

In her first two years at Microsoft, she was so busy with work that she never even went to the Seattle downtown area.

It was a velvet-sweatshop, glamorous but with blood flowing through every pore.

A few more years of work, and once she had earned enough money, she would move to Florida to enjoy the leisurely sunshine.

Teresa always comforted herself with this thought, and before she knew it, she had become a project group leader.

Since the beginning of the year, she had been entrusted by Gates with a task, she only remembered him tossing a floppy disk to her.

"We want to make this kind of software, and kick them out of the game."

That was Gates’ only requirement for the project, he was used to that.

Teresa took the floppy disk, which read "Quicken" on the packaging.

She knew this software; people in the industry were sensitive to most software on the market.

From the moment she saw it, Teresa knew that Microsoft’s next target was the financial software market.

After observing a moment of silence for the company behind this software, Teresa began gathering a team to dissect and analyze Quicken.

She was just a middle-level employee with a bit of authority, she couldn’t change much.

That’s how Microsoft grew, and then the velvet sweatshop began to operate.

After nearly a year of emulation and testing, Microsoft Money was ready.

Teresa breathed a sigh of relief, her work was done.

Although it was a bit later than planned, she hadn’t fallen too far behind schedule.

Now it was up to the operations department, and there was nothing more for her to worry about.

"Danny, give the master disk to Steve. Tell him the software has completed its final update and is ready for the market."

"OK," taking the floppy disk from Teresa, Danny hurried out of the office.

Watching the young man’s retreating figure, Teresa smiled; she liked this youngster.

Maybe after getting the bonus for this project, she could start thinking about settling down.

But before Teresa could leisurely enjoy a cup of coffee, Danny suddenly ran back in, his face stricken with panic.

"What’s wrong, Danny?" Teresa had a bad feeling.

"Teresa, you should look at this." Danny handed her a newspaper.

"Intuit? Byte Company? They’ve announced a strategic alliance?" Teresa was still a bit slow to react.

"Intuit! That’s them!" Danny held out a CD with the word Quicken on it, right in front of Teresa.

"Danny, do they have some grand move?" Teresa’s sense of foreboding grew stronger, her heart rising to her throat.

"They’re planning to add basic financial features to Wortitle and then withdraw from the enterprise tax software market next year."

With this news, Teresa’s anxiety eased. Although Byte Company’s momentum was strong, fortunately, Microsoft’s response wasn’t too late.

"But," Danny finally said the word Teresa least wanted to hear.

"But their partnership is comprehensive. Intuit has joined Byte Company’s sales channel.

Which means Quicken can now be sold in every corner of America, in fact, it’s already started."

Danny pulled out another newspaper, "Over a hundred sales outlets across America and countless distributors can now offer Quicken software.

This even includes its after-sales service, and all this began to happen a week ago.

Yes, Quicken had already completed a massive roll-out, and now they’re just spreading advertisements across America."

Teresa felt a tightness in her chest that made it hard to breathe, her head spinning again and again.

Previously, Microsoft had never worried about Intuit.

Because they had a fatal flaw, which was their small scale and lack of distribution resources.

After Microsoft introduced a similar product, they could easily crush it with a flood-like distribution tide.

But now...

"I need to see Mr. Gates!" Teresa clattered out of the office in a quick trot.

...

Lately, Gates often felt out of breath, and he seemed to be shouting at his employees more than before.

Latter, he finally found the reason, yes, it was all because of that Irishman.

Ever since Byte Company went public, Gates had felt a nagging unease.

He had missed out on this company of great potential, while Dean’s skyrocketing wealth had also stolen much of the limelight.

And then there was the RAS CALL thing... Forget it, just thinking about it made Gates feel a chill on his neck.

Later, ranking second on the Forbes 400 list improved his mood a lot.

But that cursed Dean even threatened him! This scattered the joy Gates had to smithereens.

There was also that inexplicable phone call not long ago, Gates was surprised that he had actually so meekly answered questions posed by that Irishman.

But he soon pushed these matters to the back of his mind, because the past year had been action-packed for Microsoft, a doubtless crucial year.

Let’s not talk about the core business of Window 3.0 for now, Gates even expanded his horizons into the tablet computer domain.

He believed the tablet computer market could be the next big thing, just like personal computers once were.

So with a little sleight of hand, he stole inspiration for a creative pen-based operating system from Go Corporation.

The developer version of Pen Windows had already been released, and next year it would officially launch.

Then there was Microsoft Money, another of Gates’s proud creations.

While other companies in the industry were still struggling to find new points of business growth.

Gates had already keenly perceived the robust demand in the financial software market, having studied Intuit thoroughly.

This quiet company, although modest, had an astonishing profit margin and an absurdly high customer retention rate.

Old habits die hard, after the marketing department conducted a survey, Gates decisively decided to enter this niche market.

He adopted the "Big Blue" strategy, which is not to rush into being the innovator, but to be the second to market.

This was the business philosophy Gates came to embrace after studying IBM’s way of doing business.

For an emerging market, they don’t need to do anything.

If the small company that first invented it succeeds, they can rely on their strong technical reserves to overtake later on.

IBM’s PC compatible machines only stepped into the ring after seeing Apple’s success and rapidly snatched three-quarters of Apple’s market.

Similarly, Microsoft, upon seeing Intuit’s profits, now decides to personally enter the fray.

Cough~, actually, they were planning to mimic Teams in the same manner, but things haven’t been going smoothly.

Regardless, this is Microsoft’s style of doing business, and precisely what infuriates Silicon Valley – the insistence on engineering purity.

Microsoft isn’t very innovative; it always imitates and releases flawed and cumbersome products.

Then it uses its massive size advantage to swiftly crush competition, and finally improve its product little by little.

Microsoft doesn’t care about user experience; they just want to eliminate rivals as quickly as possible.

Looking north from California, the colossal entity based in Seattle appears like it’s from another world.

It watches Silicon Valley with predatory eagerness, like an alien mothership from an invading hostile planet, constantly desiring to devour the entire software market.

But Gates scoffs at Silicon Valley’s perspective, Microsoft’s first product may not be perfect, but it is just a "vaporware".

"Vaporware" refers to products that are marketed before development is complete.

Gates treating Microsoft’s initial software release as "vaporware" is enough to indicate it’s just a work in progress.

"The company releases a new product first, then waits for the feedback to come in. Think about how bad this thing is, then chase after the right target."

Gates always encouraged the company’s development team in this way, not considering it plagiarism, but as a part of a greater act of creation.

The same goes for Microsoft Money, release a preliminary version first, crush Intuit and deal with imperfections later.

It doesn’t matter if it’s imperfect; these issues can be gradually addressed afterwards.

"Mr. Gates!"

Deep in thought about Microsoft’s strategy, a hurried calling came from the doorway.

Gates looked up, and it was Teresa, the head of the Microsoft Money project team.

"Teresa, we’re ready to crush Intuit at any time, right?"

"Mr. Gates..." Hearing his words, Teresa almost cried.