After she left, she concluded there were "too many funny stories" and too many good management ideas from inside Microsoft that she could share. So, she wrote All I Really Need To Know In Business I Learned At Microsoft: Insider Strategies to Help You Succeed, which was recently reissued in paperback.
Some ideas she writes about are already well-known ("eat your own dog food" -- the rule that requires Microsoft employees to use Microsoft software), and there are less well-known ideas like "if you can't win, change the rules."
Paul Schindler talked to Julie about Microsoft, survival there, and the impact of the man who runs it.
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Product manager, Microsoft Word & Microsoft Office
Group Manager, 20 CD-ROM products
Cornell University, magna cum laude,
Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, M.B.A.
Microsoft, since 1991
All I Really Need to Know in Business I Learned at Microsoft; Insider Strategies to Help You Succeed
"They don't just fire the person that screwed
up, or demote them. ... They really figure, well, if this person can
sort of dust themselves off and learn from the
experience and go on -- they'll be smarter."
"It's kind of like asking the slugger on a baseball
team not to hit for the fences. It's like I know you can
probably hit a home run, but don't even try, why don't
you just try for a double."
"I think the only way the culture is not amenable
to women is that the company will take every ounce of
your energy that you will give it, and if you have small
kids at home who will also take every ounce of energy
you will give them you're kind of going to run up
against a problem."