Tag Archive | 1980’s

Microsoft Millionaires

Jan21

My ‘Forrest Gump-esque’ experience in the 1980’s

January 21, 2025

A Tuesday Newsday Classic Updated

Paul Allen and Bill Gates in the late 1970’s and how I picture both of them in my memory.

When this young man dropped out of college, I’m sure it was a huge disappointment to his family. After all, he’d scored a perfect 1600 on his SAT’s and graduated from the prestigious Lakeside School in Seattle. But the world was changing rapidly in the early to mid-1970’s and he had bigger visions than attending classes and frat parties.

Of course, we all know his story. Along with a close friend, he went on to become a co-founder of one of the world’s most successful computer software development companies: Microsoft.

Early 1980’s Company Logo

But I’m not writing about Bill Gates. This is about Paul Allen, the less ‘famous’ of the Microsoft pair. And without whom Microsoft would never have existed.

If he were alive today, he would be celebrating his 72nd birthday.

According to the Infallible Wikipedia:

“He attended Lakeside School, a private school in Seattle where he befriended Bill Gates, with whom he shared an enthusiasm for computers, and they used Lakeside’s Teletype terminal to develop their programming skills on several time-sharing computer systems. They also used the laboratory of the Computer Science Department of the University of Washington, doing personal research and computer programming; they were banned from the laboratory in 1971 for abuse of their privileges there.

Gates and Allen joined with Ric Weiland and Gates’ childhood best friend and first collaborator, Kent Evans, to form the Lakeside Programing Club and find bugs in Computer Center Corporation’s software, in exchange for extra computer time. In 1972, After Evan’s sudden death due to a mountain climbing accident, Gates turned to Allen for help finishing an automated system of Lakeside’s entire class scheduling procedure. They then formed Traf-O-Data to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. According to Allen, he and Gates would go ‘dumpster diving’ in their teenage years for computer program code.

This photo purports to be from 1984. If so, it was likely right after the company moved ‘across’ I-520 to Corporate Campus East. This would have been my final year at Microsoft.

Allen attained a perfect SAT score of 1600 and went to Washington State University, where he joined the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity.”

Allen was hired by Honeywell, located in Boston, as a computer programmer and left WSU. Gates, now attending nearby Harvard, and Allen reconnected. It was Allen who convinced Gates to leave Harvard, move to Albuquerque, New Mexico and form Micro-Soft (To combine the two terms microcomputer and software). In January 1979, the company moved to Bellevue, Washington.

Also from the Infallible Wikipedia:

“The relationship became less close between Allen and Gates as they argued even over small things. Allen effectively left Microsoft in 1982 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, though he remained on the board of directors as vice chairman. Gates reportedly asked Allen to give him some of his shares to compensate for the higher amount of work that Gates was doing. According to Allen, Gates said that he ‘did almost everything on BASIC and the company should be split 60–40 in his favor. Allen agreed to this arrangement, which Gates later renegotiated to 64–36. In 1983, Gates tried to buy Allen out at $5 per share, but Allen refused and left the company with his shares intact; this made him a billionaire when Microsoft went public. Gates later repaired his relationship with Allen, and the two men donated $2.2 million to their childhood school Lakeside in 1986. They retained a friendship for the rest of Allen’s life.”

Being that I keep anything which might be historical in nature, I still have several Microsoft employee address lists and a few of my business cards. When I joined the company in early January 1983 there were 205 people at corporate and 21 field sales reps. Which means I was one of the first 250 employees of Microsoft.

Allen went on to do many great things for the world including donating over $2 Billion towards science, technology, education, wildlife conservation, the arts, and community services.

You can read more about Allen’s extraordinary life and find links to his biography here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen

In the past eight years of writing my Tuesday Newsday blog I’ve shared only a few stories about my ‘Forest Gump-esque’ experiences at Microsoft. I was hired there in early 1982 as part of a group of three young women who would be launching a retail telemarketing division for the company.

Our trio faced nearly insurmountable odds – which we did not know when we took the jobs – as we were tasked with calling out to every retail store in our region (I had the west coast. The. Entire. West. Coast.), working in conjunction with Microsoft’s field sales reps, to sell such programs as Basic, Fortran, and Cobol compilers, the always popular Flight Simulator and Typing Tutor, and the early spreadsheet program, MultiPlan.

The phone calls were often brutal with the stores’ buyers either not taking our calls or, more often, asking if we sold Lotus 1-2-3, our competitors sizzling hot multi-functional program which dwarfed Microsoft’s Multiplan. Word Processing program? Bah. Didn’t exist then.

There was nothing sleek OR sexy about the early Microsoft products. But they were green…

We worked hard, we played hard, and the burnout rate was high.

I left Microsoft, having experienced that same mentioned burnout, in the fall of 1984 and went to work for another computer company located in Kirkland six weeks later. One day, likely the summer of 1986, my then boss, Tom, took me to lunch for my birthday. We went to a favorite Japanese sushi place in Totem Lake called Izumi.

We sat up at the small sushi bar, the only people in the restaurant when we arrived. We had just gotten our food when a group of 4 or 5 men also arrived, and took a table nearby. I didn’t pay much attention to the group as Tom and I were talking. Tom, being a loud and gregarious individual, dominated the exchange and the room.

Izumi was a favorite where the hubby and me liked to go

Somehow our conversation got on to Microsoft and Tom asked why I had left the company. Before I could answer, I noticed the table of nearby men had gone silent and were all looking at us, and one of them said “I can’t escape it, no matter where I go.” That man was Paul Allen.

Perhaps that moment, more than any other, illuminated how he felt about Microsoft – at least in 1986 when he and Gates were still working to repair their relationship – and summed up for me my Microsoft experience also. For anyone living in the Seattle area, you either worked for, know someone who worked for, or you once worked for, Microsoft. It was inescapable. And not particularly pleasant.

I wanted to say something to Paul Allen that day, but felt that if I had it would have been about as welcome as a drunk fan asking a movie star for an autograph. Instead – as if by mutual agreement – he returned his attention to his group and Tom and I changed our topic.

I left Applied Computer Sciences and the corporate world in the late 1980’s, putting my energies in to raising my kids and doing volunteer work.

If I had any regrets in leaving Microsoft it was, perhaps – unlike Paul Allen – that I was never eligible for stock options, a nice perk that would have made life a bit easier.

I did, however, learn something much more valuable and it is a mantra I’ve carried through my life which goes like this:

Bill Gates and Paul Allen were wildly successful. Microsoft was wildly successful. But just because I worked for the company, however, was not enough to make me wildly successful. It is up to each of us, individually, to follow our own path, pursue our own dreams and interests, and find those things which bring us joy and fulfillment. That, I think, is the true definition of success.

It was a hard lesson but I’m forever thankful for learning it and those brief, brutal, and impactful, Microsoft years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft

Star Wars: The Original Trilogy Experience

May25

“I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This”

May 25th

A Tuesday Newsday Classic

From the moment these words first scrolled up the movie screen – along with the dramatic opening chords of John William’s soundtrack – moviegoers were immersed in a fictional world full of drama, conflict, intrigue, good vs. evil, and – ultimately – a cliffhanger ending to the first of what was to become, arguably, the most successful franchise in movie history.

Star Wars: A New Hope was released on May 25, 1977. From the Infallible Wikipedia:

“After a turbulent production, Star Wars was released in a limited number of theaters (snip), and quickly became a blockbuster hit, leading to it being expanded to a much wider release. The film opened to critical acclaim, most notably for its groundbreaking visual effects. It grossed a total of $775 million (over $550 million during its initial run), surpassing Jaws (1975) to become the highest-grossing film at the time until the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

“When adjusted for inflation, Star Wars is the second-highest-grossing film in North America (behind Gone with the Wind) and the fourth-highest-grossing film in the world. It received ten Oscar nominations (including Best Picture), winning seven. In 1989, it became one of the first 25 films that was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’. (snip) Today, it is widely regarded by many in the motion picture industry as one of the greatest and most important films in film history.”

It was, in many ways, the quintessential ‘cowboy’ movie but updated for an audience who had watched men land on the moon in 1969. It appealed to, particularly, the male need for adventure. Its heroes were simultaneously recognizable, yet also fresh: Luke Skywalker – still a boy – who chooses to leave his boring home and seek out adventure; Obi-Wan Kenobe, the sage elder who takes Skywalker under his wing and teaches him the ways of the freedom fighting Jedi; Princess Leia who redefines the idea of a damsel in distress; and, especially, the bootlegger Han Solo whose swashbuckling antics left millions of women with serious crushes.

Rather than recount the plot of the movie for those who have never seen it, the Infallible Wikipedia offers a summary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_(film)) or you can Google ‘Star Wars A New Hope’ which produces 24.9 million results.

Harrison Ford, Peter Mayhew, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher in their roles as
Han Solo, Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker, and Princess Leia.

Personally, I think every person should watch at least the 1977 movie through the lens of the classic American cowboy movie. The weapons and horses may be different but the formula is still the same.

I must also admit that I did NOT see the first movie that year. At age 19, I thought the movie was for kids. In fact, I cannot say for sure when I did eventually see the film. The second movie, The Empire Strikes Back, arrived in theatres on May 19, 1980 and the third, The Return of the Jedi, on May 25, 1983.

All of this is mentioned for one reason. As far as I’m concerned, episodes IV, V, and VI ARE Star Wars. The original cast, the campiness, and the fun of those movies were not to be replicated.

By early 1983 pretty much everyone had seen the first two movies and eagerly awaited the release of The Return of the Jedi. The hubby and me were no different.

R2D2 and C3PO

Finally the day arrived. Of course it was a Wednesday and with the need to show up at our jobs the next day, we were not going to be a part of a midnight showing. Instead we waited a couple of weeks for when Microsoft reserved the ENTIRE UA150 theatre in Seattle for an exclusive showing for its employees (of which I was one).

That’s when the hubby and I hatched a plan. Across the street from that venue on 6th and Blanchard in downtown Seattle was the UA70 which was showing both of the first two movies. On the day of the event, we arrived that morning – like at 9 a.m. – to view movie number one. We may have been two of only a handful of people present when the place opened. This was immediately followed by the second movie and then, after grabbing a bite to eat, we joined the Microsoft crew for Jedi. Now, we were not quite as crazy as some of the Microsofties who arrived dressed in costume and sporting light sabers. Although some people thought our marathon Star Wars day was over the top.

I still experience the Microsoft event in my mind when, as soon as the iconic ‘A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,’ appeared on the screen a cheer rocked the theatre. For the next two hours and 13 minutes, the venue was filled with cheers and gasps and applause as our heroes eventually won the day.

The UA150 in Seattle during the 1980 release of The Empire Strikes Back. From the Seattle Times archives

We loved doing the Star Wars ‘triple’ and learned a few things: Harrison Ford is much sexier than Mark Hamill; the line ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ repeats multiple times throughout all three movies; the hubby does an amazing job sounding like a wookie; and ewoks may be cute but they are totally annoying.

Eventually we purchased VHS, and then DVD, versions of the three movies and introduced our kids to them. We also watched a couple subsequent Star Wars movies in the theaters but, truly, it was never the same. After enduring the obnoxious Jar Jar Binks character, we quit watching and were content to occasionally revisit the three originals and that galaxy far, far away from the comfort of our living room.