Renegades of the Empire: How Three Software Warriors Started a Revolution Behind the Walls of Fortress Microsoft

From Chapter 1 ALEX IN WONDERLAND His five-year romp through Bill Gates's Camelot was over. Microsoft security would be walking in any moment to clean out his desk and scan his computer's hard drive. No sensitive materials could leave the building. Alex St. John could almost hear the bootsteps. He knew what to do. He grabbed a handful of Hershey's kisses from a friend's office and dumped them on his desk with a note -- "Help yourself!" St. John, one of Microsoft's fabled "evangelists," was fired that day. He and two colleagues had built DirectX, revolutionary computer-game technology that had turned Windows-based PCs into the world's most popular game platform. The three were now building controversial Web technology, a "browser on steroids" code-named Project Chrome. While he had helped feed hundreds of millions of dollars into Gates's software Empire, the fact remained that St. John was a rogue soldier who didn't understand how to follow orders and had never paid much attention to the chain of command. Management had any number of reasons to terminate him. Once, after Gates had just inked a major deal with three Sega executives, St. John had piled the visitors into his customized, purple Humvee and torn across the company's manicured lawns -- in front of several horrified senior Microsoft officers. Like the man who buys a pit bull for its ferocity only to have the animal attack him later, Microsoft had it coming. Before the Empire called, St. John was happily self-employed as a computer consultant on the other side of the country. Then his name began pinging on the radar screens of Microsoft talent scouts. St. John had cultivated a reputation in the industry as an innovative and charismatic programmer -- an articulate nerd who could charm even better than he could code. True, he had snapped at previous bosses over what he thought were impractical business decisions. But Microsoft wanted an evangelist, a breed that's sometimes hard to handle. The Empire began calling in fall 1992. St. John was working at home when an independent recruiter phoned to ask him, if he could work for any company, which would it be? St. John was reluctant to answer because he wasn't interested in working for a boss again and doubted any company could pay him as much as he was making on his own. The headhunter stroked St. John's voluminous ego, reminding him of his talents and how those talents could pay handsomely. St. John was a Macintosh programmer, impressed with Apple Computer Corp.'s elegant operating system, a system he thought superior to the early Windows kluges Microsoft was pushing at the time. He conceded that he would once have considered working for Apple, "but they're dead," he told the recruiter. When pressed, St. John said he might be interested in Adobe Systems Inc. and, maybe, Microsoft Corp. Maybe. After some cajoling, the recruiter set up an interview for St. John with a local Adobe representative. The session went well, and the Adobe rep said he'd refer St. John to the company's California headquarters. But Adobe never called back and St. John didn't make any follow-up inquiries. Just about the time he had put Adobe out of his mind, Microsoft called. St. John says he kept stalling, but Microsoft kept calling and he finally agreed to meet a company rep in Boston. "They said they were looking at me for a number of positions," he recalls. "This was very surreal. They never explained what it was exactly they wanted me to do." St. John had been a fan of Microsoft since Bill Gates outmaneuvered IBM in the operating-system realm and usurped Big Blue's monopoly. Think of a computer as a sports stadium. The operating system is the playing field or platform on which all the programs run. All computers need an OS or platform to run word processors, spreadsheets, databases, whatever. Without operating systems, comDrummond, Michael is the author of 'Renegades of the Empire: How Three Software Warriors Started a Revolution Behind the Walls of Fortress Microsoft' with ISBN 9780609604168 and ISBN 0609604163.