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Microsoft, without a doubt, is the world's largest software maker. However, despite the serious efforts of the company to go beyond the world of software and the desire to deal with hardware products, this company will always be recognized as a “manufacturer of the Windows operating system”.
At the moment, almost 95 thousand people from all over the world work in the Redmond company, but with the purchase of the Nokia mobile unit, this figure will now increase to 125 thousand. In other words, the already one of the largest companies in the world has become even more. But all these new employees will definitely come in handy to her, because Microsoft’s client base is in the tens of millions of users all over the world.
Many of you are very likely to be at least partially familiar with the history of Microsoft, and you definitely know how it came about. However, there are some interesting stories that some of you may still have not known about. The purpose of this article is precisely to acquaint you with the ten less known facts about the company, which continues to feed about 90% of the personal computer market with its operating systems.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates was arrested several times
Being one of the most famous philanthropists in the world, Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and one of the richest people in the world, was under arrest several times in his youth. The first time he was arrested was in 1975, when the police caught him for speeding and for Gates’s lack of driving rights. Two years later, he was arrested again. It happened in the city of Albuquerque, where a young and hot Gates was rolling around the crossroads at a red light. And again without rights. His last arrest took place in 1989, when he almost became head of Microsoft. He was detained with the charge of drunk driving.
Now old Billy has settled down and literally is a real positive example for many. In most cases, of course, thanks to his work in a charitable organization, which he and his wife founded. Chet Gates is investing huge amounts of money from her personal accounts to develop vaccines that could help treat many diseases in poor countries such as Africa, for example.
Microsoft employees love pizza
If you would like to know what is the most favorite dish of an average Microsoft employee, the answer will be very simple - pizza. Employees of this company for the year eat just a huge amount of pizza, for which, by the way, each of them could be proud of.
According to statistics from Microsoft itself, employees of the company eat at least 554 thousand slices of pizza and at least 250 thousand whole additional pizzas in a year. The second favorite dish of the software gurus are sandwiches. Every year in the dungeons of the cafeterias of the company they eat one million. The most popular type of sandwich is a turkey sandwich. According to the company, 225 thousand are eaten each year.
Free drinks for everyone!
After such a dense pizza feast, the organisms of Microsoft employees, like any other person's body, require the replenishment of liquid stocks, therefore people in this company need a huge amount of affordable drinks. But for them it is not a problem. All drinks that are offered in cafeterias and Microsoft vending machines are provided free of charge.
According to the same statistics, Redmond employees drink nearly 12 million liters of various beverages annually, 40 percent of which is Coke Zero. Sugarless.
M & M's one and all!
Pizza, coca-call, and what's for dessert? The correct answer is chocolate candy M & M (AM & E), but only in honor of some anniversary. Microsoft employees celebrate each anniversary of a major event by eating a huge stock of this delicious delicacy. At the same time, the employees themselves bring these candies to the company. Some people from the company, leading public blogs, have repeatedly said that for every Microsoft employee who has worked for the company for the next year, there is an unspoken rule to bring about 500 grams of M & M sweets to work with to share with their colleagues. Thus, if you, for example, have worked at Microsoft for 8 years, then you should have at least 4 kg of M & M with the taste of your choice.
Redmond campus is filled with rabbits
Like to find Easter eggs in Microsoft products? But the company itself is not so happy when someone mentions anything related to this “Easter tradition”. It turns out that the campus of the Redmond giant literally flooded rabbits. Once, Microsoft even had to ask local authorities to help them control the population of these Fuzzies. According to some unofficial sources, it all started back in the 90s of the last century, when someone released several dozens of rabbits near the campus and they began to do ... their rabbit things (if you know what was going on) that quickly big problem for everyone.
To date, the fluffy population has declined, but they can still be found almost everywhere around the Redmond campus.
The original Windows operating system was called Interface Manager.
We all know that Microsoft’s operating systems are called Windows because they use, uh, windows. However, there was a time when Bill Gates and Paul Allen considered a very different name for this OS.
The first version of Windows, which ended up with the simple name of Windows 1.0, was launched on November 20, 1985, and Bill Gates originally wanted to sell it under the name of Interface Manager. The reason was quite obvious: the new operating system used an interface that allowed users to work with various files. Of course, this OS was still based on MS-DOS, but it introduced a number of significant innovations at that time.
Roland Hanson, head of marketing at Microsoft, is the very person who suggested the idea of calling the new operating system "Windows", pointing out that this name will help more effectively promote the new product.
Bill Gates never wanted to create a 32-bit operating system
Microsoft’s co-founder, and now CTO, Bill Gates, back in the 1980s, said that “the company will never make a 32-bit operating system”. Despite the fact that at that time this statement seemed really serious to many, Microsoft in 1992 released the 16-bit and 32-bit versions of the Windows NT operating system, that is, almost 10 years after Bill made the statement.
Since then, the company has continued the development of 32-bit operating systems, including Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1. It should be pointed out that 64-bit versions of Windows are selling much better, but the fact remains that talking about 32-bit versions turned out to be one of Bill's unsuccessful predictions.
75 percent of company employees are male
As stated at the beginning of this article, at the moment Microsoft employs almost 94 thousand employees worldwide. With the purchase of Nokia, the number of employees of the Redmond company will increase by another 25 thousand. Despite the fact that in the modern world, the highest positions are becoming more often occupied by women (an example is, for example, Yahoo head Marissa Meyer), 75 percent of all Microsoft employees are men.
Of course, there are several ladies who hold high positions in Microsoft, to take at least Julie Larson-Green, who is now head of the Windows department (after leaving Stephen Sinofsky).
Candidates are asked strange questions during a job interview.
Finding a job at Microsoft is not difficult if you have all the necessary skills for the job opening. However, candidates for work sometimes have to answer very complex and unusual questions during an interview. For example, some applicants indicated that candidates were asked questions about why the manhole covers are round and not, say, square. Others were interested in the weight of the Boeing 747 airliner.
But this is still not the most tricky examples. One such question is, for example, a question during an interview (found on pingdom.com):
“You have a basket with chewing candies. Red, blue and green. You close your eyes and take out two candies of a certain color. How many candies you need to get out of the basket so that the probability that you will get two candies of the same color is 100%? ”
Apple in 1983 accused Microsoft of stealing the concept of a drop-down menu
Microsoft and Apple are still irreconcilable rivals in the market, but in 1983 the tension between the two companies was such that it came to litigation. At that time, Steve Jobs, the executive director of Apple, was very upset (and in fact - almost torn and metal) when he learned that the new Windows 1.0 operating system has a lot in common in appearance with its own Macintosh operating system. Apple co-founder was ready to sue the software giant for stealing font ideas and a drop-down menu for a new OS.
In turn, Bill Gates was able to protect the user interface of Windows 1.0, explaining that he used the design concept invented by Xerox, but decided to omit some details about the elements that he also used in Windows 1.0 to avoid litigation.
The article is based on materials .
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