The executive crucible
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Microsoft's chief executive from 2000 to 2014; in 1991 running the division Jonathan Hare's group sat under.
Recorded as one of the executive crucibles of Hare's early career — the 1990s Microsoft culture being, by his account, an education in high-stakes corporate psychology conducted at volume.
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Hare's matrix line ran to Ballmer as the decision-maker for anything involving Windows; they met about five times on the strategy for embedding asynchronous networking in Windows and Windows NT. The licensing pitch to vendors — embed for free, keep the high end, or be made irrelevant by whatever Microsoft made native — was, in Hare's words, what Ballmer told him to tell them.
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Building 1, 1991 — the nucleus, and where the coordination problem was named
Open →colleagueArchitect of Windows NT, in the next chair
Open →ran the group beneath the matrixDirector of the Client-Server Applications Group in the Network Business Group; Hare reported to him directly, and on a matrix line to Ballmer
Open →Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-154The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
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Read the source →Primary source · S-180The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
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