Exams more interesting than expected. :)

[TheVader]

Today I've done my English exam. It included a part of Douglas Coupland's novel Microserfs, which is about Microsoft. I found it pretty interesting Has anyone read this novel?

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Microserfs
FRIDAY
Early Fall, 1993
This morning, just after 11:00, Michael locked himself in his office and he
won’t come out.
Bill (Bill!) sent Michael this totally wicked flame-mail from hell on the
e-mail system – and he just wailed on a chunk of code Michael had written.
Using the Bloom County-cartoons-taped-on-the-door index, Michael is
certainly the most sensitive coder in Building Seven – not the type to take
criticism easily. Exactly why Bill would choose Michael of all people to
wail on is confusing.
We figured it must have been a random quality check to keep the
troops in line. Bill’s so smart.
Bill is wise.
Bill is kind.
Bill is benevolent.
Bill, Be My Friend … Please!
Actually, nobody on our floor has ever been flamed by Bill personally.
The episode was tinged with glamour and we were somewhat jealous. I
tried to tell Michael this, but he was crushed.
Shortly before lunch he stood like a lump outside my office. His skin
was pale like rising bread dough, and his Toppy’s cut was dripping sweat,
leaving little damp marks on the oyster-gray-with-plum highlights of the
Microsoft carpeting. He handed me a printout of Bill’s memo and then
gallumphed into his office, where he’s been burrowed ever since.
He won’t answer his phone, respond to e-mail, or open his door. On his
doorknob he placed a “Do Not Disturb” thingy stolen from the Boston
Radisson during last year’s Macworld Expo. Todd and I walked out onto
the side lawn to try to peek in his window, but his venetian blinds were
closed and a gardener with a leaf blower chased us away with a spray of
grass clippings.
They mow the lawn every ten minutes at Microsoft. It looks like green
Lego pads.
F
inally, at about 2:30 A.M., Todd and I got concerned about Michael’s not
eating, so we drove to the 24-hour Safeway in Bellevue. We went shopping
for “flat” foods to slip underneath Michael’s door.
The Safeway was completely empty save for us and a few other
Microsoft people just like us – hair-trigger geeks in pursuit of just the right
snack. Because of all the rich nerds living around here, Redmond and
Bellevue are very “on-demand” neighborhoods. Nerds get what they want
when they want it, and they go psycho if it’s not immediately available.
Nerds overfocus. I guess that’s the problem. But it’s precisely this ability to
narrow-focus that makes them so good at code writing: one line at a time,
one line in a strand of millions.
When we returned to Building Seven at 3:00 A.M., there were still a few
people grinding away. Our group is scheduled to ship product (RTM:
Release to Manufacturing) in just eleven days (Top Secret: We’ll never
make it).
Michael’s office lights were on, but once again, when we knocked, he
wouldn’t answer his door. We heard his keyboard chatter, so we figured he
was still alive. The situation really begged a discussion of Turing logic –
could we have discerned that the entity behind the door was indeed even
human? We slid Kraft singles, Premium Plus crackers, Pop-Tarts, grape
leather, and Freezie-Pops in to him.
Todd asked me, “Do you think any of this violates geek dietary laws?”
Just then, Karla in the office across the hall screamed and then glared
out at us from her doorway. Her eyes were all red and sore behind her
round glasses. She said, “You guys are only encouraging him,” like we
were feeding a raccoon or something. I don’t think Karla ever sleeps.
She harrumphed and slammed her door closed. Doors sure are
important to nerds.
Anyway, by this point Todd and I were both really tired. We drove
back to the house to crash, each in our separate cars, through the Campus
grounds – 22 buildings’ worth of nerd-cosseting fun – cloistered by 100-
foot-tall second growth timber, its streets quiet as the womb: the foundry of
our culture’s deepest dreams.
There was mist floating on the ground above the soccer fields outside
the central buildings. I thought about the e-mail and Bill and all of that, and
I had this weird feeling – of how the presence of Bill floats about the
Campus, semi-visible, at all times, kind of like the dead grandfather in the
Family Circus cartoons. Bill is a moral force, a spectral force, a force that
shapes, a force that molds. A force with thick, thick glasses.
am [email protected]. I am a tester – a bug checker in Building
Seven. I worked my way up the ladder from Product Support Services
(PSS) where I spent six months in phone purgatory in 1991 helping little
old ladies format their Christmas mailing lists on Microsoft Works.
I am single. I think partly this is because Microsoft is not conducive to
relationships. Last year down at the Apple Worldwide Developer’s
Conference in San Jose, I met a girl who works not too far away, at
Hewlett-Packard on Interstate 90, but it never went anywhere. Sometimes
I’ll sort of get something going, but then work takes over my life and I bail
out of all my commitments and things fizzle.
Lately I’ve been unable to sleep. That’s why I’ve begun writing this
journal late at night, to try to see the patterns in my life. From this I hope to
establish what my problem is – and then, hopefully, solve it. I’m trying to
feel more well adjusted than I really am, which is, I guess, the human
condition. My life is lived day to day, one line of bug-free code at a time.

[fungi]

It's good stuff...

What questions were you asked?

[TheVader]

Some general things about the story, such as whether Michael asked his collegues to get him some food. Very easy, the text was interesting though.

[plenderj]

Having worked with Microsoft in Ireland, and having known the management in Microsoft for so long, I just have this nagging feeling that the above passage isn't true.

Bill Gates - if that's who they're referring to - wouldn't contact a single developer directly...

[plenderj]

Though actually looking at the date, the company wasn't as big as it is these days so perhaps something like that could have happened 10 years ago...