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1. What Fallows Reveals For many years, journalist James Fallows was frustrated by the design of software programs for writers. But unlike most of the rest of us who like to complain about computers, Fallows did something about it, proposing to Microsoft that he help design the next generation of its software. Surprisingly, the company accepted and entered an agreement with him in which he worked on Microsoft Word and other elements of Microsoft Office, while he retained ownership of any new software features of his own devising that the company chose not to use. Unfortunately, Fallows' agreement with Microsoft also included another stipulation that was as inevitable as it was disappointing -- he promised not to reveal most of what he learned about the company as a result of working for it. From Fallows' description, it sounds as if he suggested this restriction himself, most likely because he knew that Microsoft would never consider his proposal, otherwise. As he puts it, in addition to promising to protect trade secrets, "I also volunteered not to publish a memoir or an 'inside Microsoft' confessional -- or not to do so without allowing the company to read and approve it ahead of time, which is the same thing as agreeing not to do it. In exchange Microsoft allowed me to 'draw on my experience' at the company in future writing about technology. It is a hazy distinction, but I think we understood each other." Based on this agreement, Fallows was given entrée into one of the outer rings of Microsoft's inner circle, working at the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters during the first half of 1999. He has now offered an account of this experience at the Atlantic Monthly web site and, given the agreement, it isn't surprising that his article is careful not to reveal too much or sound overly critical of Microsoft. While it contains some negative references, the tone is generally positive and upbeat. But the more one reads this piece, the clearer it becomes that there is something more, here, something that has been deliberately understated and buried in the text, as if Fallows is trying to signal us about what he learned, while not violating his agreement with Microsoft in an obvious way. In other words, it appears that what Fallows has crafted is a work of disguise. In place of a direct and coherent narrative, he divides his critical observations into separate, mildly worded, statements that appear to have little relation to each other. In a number of instances, he even says something about Microsoft and then "unsays" it, as part of a larger tendency to counter-balance criticisms with qualifiers and more positive observations, to reduce the negative impact. Fallows also uses another, even more transparent, device to superficially conform to his agreement -- he tells the reader that he will provide only a general account of the things that surprised him about Microsoft. As he puts it (with my italics added): "what I can try to convey, in a form that matches the 'generalities only' spirit of my agreement with Microsoft, is the instructive surprise of the experience....Just before leaving Microsoft, I gave a talk 'on campus' about what I'd learned. These are the things that I told them had surprised me:" But what Fallows reveals isn't general and not all of it is surprising. In fact, when you pull his criticisms out of the text and put them together, you end up with a fairly devastating portrait of Microsoft that is specific and consistent, and that reinforces other things that have been said, even if Fallows has been forced to leave out a book's worth of details. More importantly, you discover that Fallows may be telling us he now has firsthand knowledge of some of the factors that have interfered with Microsoft's ability to create better software. What then are the things that Fallows reveals, which, in his words, are the things that surprised him? To begin with, he says (and these are his italics, which he uses to summarize his main points) that he discovered, "The people are nice". Fallows admits "this sounds like a high school bromide", but argues that it also came as "a surprise, given both the public's and the software industry's impressions of the company". Of course, as he acknowledges, he was working with Microsoft, not competing against it. In the language of biological metaphor that aptly describes so much of the computer world and the marketplace, he was helping Microsoft reproduce, not competing with it for food or trying to consume it, and that makes a crucial difference when it comes to the kind of response it shows. Nevertheless, Fallows ends up offering an observation of some interest: "Viewed from within," he says, Microsoft "was about as collegial and nonbackbiting an environment as I've ever been part of." But it seems that Fallows also found something else that is a little more awkward, since he tells us that, "A small but noticeable group within the Redmond work force would have to be considered geeks: grossly over- or under-weight, weirdo hair and clothes, various hygienic oddities." Some had unusual habits, such as the person (or people) who placed "several thousand empty soft-drink cans" in an office. In some ways, Fallows sounds like he is describing a college dormitory, here. Lest anyone be offended, however, he makes sure to say that "even the oddest people seemed generally to have a sense of humor about themselves". But, having told us about this "small but noticeable group" who we are compelled by reality to see as "geeks", Fallows then says something that should offer a serious alert to the careful reader that something is amiss in his descriptions. He tells us, (with my italics added) that "at least as large a group seemed happy, well balanced, normally proportioned, and so on". It sounds like a complement. But if the group of conventional-seeming people was only "at least as large" as the people with atypical weight, hair, hygiene, and habits, then Fallows is saying Microsoft's headquarters is full of unconventional characters. Later, he again refers to the "superficially oddball developers" pulling together to do the work, so he does seem to be trying to tell us that, as he sees it, the atypical makes up a large part of the norm at the Redmond headquarters. Things get a little more to the point when Fallows says he also discovered "the pace is slow". We get a sense of the egg shells Fallows had to walk on -- and is still walking on -- when he tells us, "I figured out, not quite soon enough, that it drove my colleagues crazy to hear this observation, so eventually I stopped mentioning it. Nonetheless, it was true: the work week seemed less grueling at Microsoft than at other organizations I've been part of. There was a noticeable thinning in the parking lots by the middle of Friday afternoons. It seemed as if every week or so work shut down for some campus-wide or division-wide party. " But, having offered this observation (which, once again, makes the place sound like a college dormitory), Fallows then effectively takes it back, suggesting that Microsoft's work habits are only found wanting when measured against those of grueling organizations. Thus, he tells us, "the people at Microsoft seemed to average fewer hours a week and a lower percentage of all-nighters" when compared to people at "very hard-driving organizations." Then comes the clincher: "Compared with other companies of more than 30,000 employees, of course, Microsoft keeps up quite a brisk pace." As with the description of the number of unconventional characters at Microsoft, this depiction of the company as both idle and fast-paced doesn't add up. Once again, Fallows' reinforces what appears to be his real view later in the article when he tells us that, "Half the time developers are shooting Nerf cannons at one another", while they wait for instructions -- an observation that he phrases as a general description of the software business, although it is clear he is referring to Microsoft. Readers can turn to Fallows' article to see the other qualifiers and reversals he uses to undo his observation about Microsoft's work habits. What they will not get from the article is the logical conclusion one can draw -- the pace was slow, at least in part, because Microsoft faced limited or no competition on a number of its most important software programs, having used intimidation and other tactics to achieve a monopoly position. Fallows doesn't pull any punches when it comes to Microsoft's monopoly status, saying he has been a critic of the company, but no where does he connect the dots and reveal that what he saw may have been effected by it. But it is Fallows' observations of the software design process where the plot really begins to thicken. Here, he tells us, in his italics, that he discovered, "The planning process is radically 'bottom-up' and surprisingly nonpolitical", which makes it sound populist and full of integrity. What he found, he says, (and now we're switching to my counter-italics) was a "quite amazing process in which programs were decided on, shaped, revised, and implemented almost entirely by people at the working level, without the need for big shots to resolve arguments." More specifically, Fallows tells us the decision-making process "seems to be: 1) persuade your colleagues that a certain feature will be popular, and that it can be created, and 2) create it. If there is something you love or hate about Microsoft programs, don't thank or blame Bill Gates; some specific member of the Microsoft team decided to 'own' that feature and include it in a program." A moment later, he offers the most important sentence in the piece: "I didn't always, or even usually, agree with the list of features that survived this process." Fallows acts as if this is merely a lead-in to a more positive point, since, in the next sentence, he says: "But I was struck by the dispassion and apparent lack of scheming that went into deliberations about what to include." But, if no one and everyone was in charge, and the end result was one in which Fallows "didn't always, or even usually, agree with the list of features that survived this process," then what he is describing isn't "a quite amazing process", as he refers to it, but a failed design process. Fallows' observation may explain a good deal about Microsoft, such as why some of its software is packed with unexpected features, even while it lacks more essential features and fails the ease-of-use test. Since Fallows left mid-year and it is unclear how much decision-making took place that he was unaware of, we can't know from this piece, alone, how important this observation is. Fallows offers a number of other observations that round out this portrait. He tells us the people he worked with were well off, enjoying the bounty of Microsoft stock options. In fact he claims he was the poorest "nonjanitorial worker" in his building. Many of the employees were focused on money and buying things, he says, as well as on whether their Microsoft stock was going up or down. Fallows also tells us (with his italics) that, "Microsoft understands exactly who its most important customers are. Unfortunately, that group does not include people like me." What it does include are big computer companies that sell Windows preloaded on new computers and big corporations and other organizations that buy Microsoft Office, the suite of programs that includes Word. "What these two big categories have in common," he says, "is that individuals are not the significant customers." Finally, Fallows describes Microsoft as insular and driven by financial success, characteristics that he says remind him of Japan. Like Japan, "The company is self-contained and thinks of itself as separate from the rest of the industry," he says. "It cares about market share above all else. Its talent pool is remarkable at the low end for how competent the weakest person is". It should be noted again that this account of Fallows' article accentuates the negative. It does so because, if Fallows weren't restrained, he almost certainly would have done the same thing, even if he would have balanced his criticisms with more positive observations. As noted, he also would have woven together his criticisms into a coherent narrative, instead of offering a list of surprising Microsoft characteristics. When you do put all this together, you have a fairly unpleasant portrait of America's dominant company as insular and often idle (which many people will find an appealing work environment, of course), with rich employees focused on their company stock and a haywire design process that lacks adequate direction from above. Some of this, perhaps much of it, may be related to Microsoft's status as a monopoly, which could help make all this possible by creating a work environment and a product that have significant protection against competition. In addition, Fallows tells us this insular company is focused on satisfying other giant companies and institutions at the expense of individual users. This too may be connected to Microsoft's monopoly status since it has gotten away with this partly because of the scarcity of competition. And it has used this practice as one element of a larger strategy to control important players in the marketplace that could challenge its monopoly status. But this is speculation, pending more information on the behavior of other companies. The fact that Fallows tells us many of the people who worked there were "geeks', with unconventional habits and appearance, obviously isn't unique to Microsoft or a product of its monopoly status. But it too may fit into a coherent picture of where the company has gone wrong. After all, some of these people are probably from the segment of the population that has advanced computer skills, while it is weak in interpersonal skills, including the ability to take the role of the other and understand how things look to other people. That skill is essential if you are designing something that other people who don't have your knowledge or the same needs as you are going to use. Balanced against these negative observations, Fallows tells us the Microsoft headquarters is a collegial workplace with a lot of collaborative meetings, and it is effective, if not obviously efficient with its use of time. But this last positive evaluation is limited, at best, since Fallows makes clear that he believes what Microsoft is effective at is making money, not setting the right goals for its products or being a good citizen in the marketplace. It is, he says (with my italics), "an organization that knows how to succeed", while Bill Gates will "probably rank as the greatest American business strategist of the twentieth century" Fallows fishes around for analogies that might illuminate these characteristic and he comes up with two -- Microsoft is not only like Japan, he says, but it is also like the U. S. military in the period during and after World War Two. Here's another analogy that has something in common with these -- Microsoft is a sophisticated and successful version of another monopoly -- the federal government. It is insulated, feels misunderstood, and some parts of it apparently are on a light schedule. It holds a lot of meetings, is tolerant of unconventional employees and is led at the top by very tough competitors. And what it produces often doesn't work the way it should, even if its products are light years ahead of what is usually produced by government. Given the fact that Fallows does reveal all this, you have to wonder if he went inside intending to tell this kind of story? He certainly entered into a deal that was based on what he says was a "hazy distinction" between not doing a "confessional" and being allowed to draw on what he learned. He says he made that agreement because he "couldn't accept a blanket prohibition against ever saying anything about the interaction." At the very least, it is clear that Fallows intended to write about his experience. He did what reporters always do -- he found a way to gain access and then revealed what he learned. Fallows tells a vignette that is relevant to this point. He says (with my italics) that he, "got into a little psychological cold war with one manager, who considered me a spy and wouldn't talk to me. I took every opportunity to glower at him in the halls." Given the piece Fallows ended up writing, that guy was perfectly justified in being suspicious (although Fallows doesn't explain how he knew this person thought he was a spy if the guy wouldn't talk to him). The image of Fallows aggressively glowering at this Microsoft manager in the halls is one of numerous keys that should cause us to look deeper at Fallows' complex relationship with Microsoft. To do so is to switch our focus away from the surface story he tells and the disguises he uses to partly conceal it, and onto the far more complicated realm of interpersonal strategy, psychodynamics, and communications that may be partly disguised or hidden even from the communicator.
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You will also find in the Atlantic Monthly's "Post & Riposte" section, a post on Fallows' article that offers additional ideas (and a number of the same ideas). What's Wrong With the
Internet: Written circa 1997, this is an early
piece suggesting that many of the people who create software programs
don't know how to take the role of the other. |
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