Inside Microsoft.

• Author: HOLTZMAN, HENRY
• Position: Review

The Microsoft Edge: Insider Strategies for Building Success By Julie Bick, Pocket Books New York, NY, 1999 172 pages, $20.00

Despite what you may think, Microsoft's business edge is not lying, producing vaporware and restraining trade. At least not according to Julie Bick.

She survived and thrived at Microsoft for five years, a truly formidable task. That's because, first, she had to survive Bill Gates' inevitable first question after a presentation, "Did you even get to the third minute of thinking about this?!" Second, she had to learn how to play hardball with competitors whose goal was to eat Microsoft's lunch-without becoming Microsoft's dinner.

Even though Bick is a Cornell magna cum laude and a Wharton Business School graduate, she believes that her real business education took place at Microsoft. She notes that her background and experience at the company wasn't unusual, which may be one reason why Microsoft's managers are pursued by companies in all types of industries.

Amid a growing number of Silicon Valley tell-all books, The Microsoft Edge is refreshing. It's not a forum for airing dirty linen, but the highlights of how people work within the most successful corporation in the world.

The author has used her own and other Microsoft managers' experience to provide insight into how 21st Century companies can work, even if they don't always live up to the ideal. For example, in a segment of the book devoted to communicating with coworkers by e-mail, Bick urges everyone to break their addiction to the "reply-all button." She states:

"Don't feel that you have to respond to prove you've read the mail. Also, sending the words 'I agree' to 50 recipients is not a good way to make friends. And look really closely at who is on the reply-all list. At Microsoft, influential industry magazine editors have been (sent e-mail) by mistake on confidential corporate decisions because, way back on the e-mail thread, their opinion was solicited...