Barians Led by Bill Gates:

Barians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft From the Inside: How the World's Richest Corporation Wields Its Power

Edstrom, Jennifer & Marlin Eller. (1998). Barbarians led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the inside: How the world's richest corporation wields its power. New York: Holt.

On the surface, the text Barbarians led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the inside: How the world's richest corporation wields its power seems to hold within its covers a contradiction. On one hand, the authors continually lambast the Microsoft Corporation's narrow worldview and greed. On the other hand, they also admit that Microsoft, at least by the standards applied to most capitalist enterprises, is a resounding success, in terms of its profitability and its technological innovations. It did learn from its mistakes and capitalize upon many market opportunities that came its way, however serendipitously. While authors Jennifer Edstrom and Marlin Eller allege that Microsoft often bungled many aspects of the core functions of managing -- planning, organizing, leading, and controlling -- they also say that because of luck, and convergent cultural and marketplace circumstances, Microsoft has triumphed, and success creates more success.

In terms of the planning of the company, Edstrom and Eller do present evidence that Microsoft has shown more than occasional poor foresight, such as its initial belief that the Internet would only be a passing fad. "It didn't turn Gates on, it was too mundane" (Edstrom & Eller, 1998, p. 10). Its quality controls have also been poor, in terms of its dissemination of bug-ridden and virus-prone applications to the public. Microsoft has generated almost as much public animosity as it has generated sales, even from disgruntled users who have little choice, other than Macs, than to use its product.

Microsoft's organization has often been chaotic and ridden with Balkanized power plays and conflicts, and its leadership is often more focused on besting the competition, particularly Apple, rather than showing true excellence. Gates is portrayed as wanting to 'beat' Apple more than learn from Apple's unique strengths. And yet, despite all of these factors, Microsoft continues to flourish. Edstrom and Eller do acknowledge that Microsoft has occasional 'bolts' of genius. Gates was the first individual to understand the power of having integrated machine languages, of which BASIC was the first. At times, their picking at the various glitches inherent in Gates' technology seem like score-point making with the value of hindsight -- of course, computer vulnerabilities such as "the problem with running in protect mode is that when one program starts seeping instructions into another, the computer crashes" seem obvious in retrospect (Edstrom & Eller, 1998, p. 75). But the breadth and scope of the company's ambition is so large, mistakes that might have destroyed a smaller company are absorbed by its colossal market share.

It is clear that the authors have an axe to grind -- Edstrom is the daughter of a once-prominent Microsoft executive, Pen was booted from Microsoft after his work on a project proved unsuccessful. But perhaps the main reason the book seems like 'scorekeeping' is that the first and primary 'lesson' to be learned from the book, according to the authors is the seeming virtue of luck. Over and over, it is stressed that Gates was not necessarily the only person to come up with the ideas behind modern personal computing, even while they grant he was often technologically insightful. Market circumstances more than managing genius favored his company. Microsoft triumphed, but this was not necessarily by design. Microsoft is an intensely factional company, and often only after certain key power-players within the firm were able to advocate for the importance of the Internet was Microsoft able to gain a late advantage, with its introduction of Internet Explorer. The creation of the major features of the Windows operating system was similarly accidental and only arose after much corporate in-fighting.