Steven Sinofsky

Authored and published "Hardcore Software: Inside the Rise and Fall of the PC Revolution". Through this first-person account of my time at Microsoft, I aim to convey to you an insider’s story of growing influence and corporate obstacles, the evolution of technology that changed the world, and most of all the people that made it happen.

Hardcore Software shares the ups and downs of building massive software projects used by billions of people around the world. The scale of the software… Show more

Authored and published "Hardcore Software: Inside the Rise and Fall of the PC Revolution". Through this first-person account of my time at Microsoft, I aim to convey to you an insider’s story of growing influence and corporate obstacles, the evolution of technology that changed the world, and most of all the people that made it happen.

Hardcore Software shares the ups and downs of building massive software projects used by billions of people around the world. The scale of the software increases as the narrator and participant grows, starting as an individual contributor on pioneering tools for building Windows applications then rising to leading Microsoft Office and then Microsoft Windows. Sinofsky shares his experiences creating and managing successful software as well as the lessons that come from failure. We learn the inside story of how Microsoft tackled the challenges of the rise of the internet, the creation of Windows 95 and Office 95, and the wildly successful pivot to building enterprise products as Sinofsky works for Chairman/CEO Bill Gates as technical assistant and then as a member and eventual leader of the Office team. Following this is a period of challenging management and morale through the development of Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Sinofsky then moves to managing the Windows team and sees the team through the creation of the successful and stabilizing Windows 7 product followed by the controversial and ultimately unsuccessful product aimed at competing with Apple, Windows 8. Through all of this, candor and insider are the words that best describe the colorful and detailed analysis of what went well and what could have gone better.

Released weekly on Substack with hundreds of archive materials, photos, articles, and memos all from my experience at Microsoft 1989-2012. Later compiled and released as an eBook availablea on most major eBook platforms. Audio narration by the author is also available. hardcoresoftware.substack.com Show less

Board member representing Andreessen Horowitz in the firm's investment. http://a16z.com/2016/01/14/everlaw/

Advisor representing Andreessen Horowitz investment in company. http://a16z.com/2014/06/22/tanium-magic/

http://blog.box.com/2013/08/welcoming-steven-sinofsky-as-a-box-advisor/

As a non-employee, serve on boards for select portfolio companies representing the firm as determined by investing partners. Assist and advise portfolio companies as they scale with management and strategy, mentoring, advising. https://venturebeat.com/2013/08/22/former-windows-guru-steven-sinofsky-joins-andreessen-horowitz-as-board-partner/

Board member representing Andreessen Horowitz investment in company. http://a16z.com/2014/10/08/producthunt/. Product Hunt was acquired by AngelList December 2016—https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-01/angellist-buys-product-hunt-a-marriage-of-two-beloved-silicon-valley-sites.

Board member representing Andreessen Horowitz investment in company. http://blog.pmarca.com/2013/08/28/bringing-the-shared-economy-to-the-enterprise-2/

Company was acquired by Avis Car Rental. http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/25/zipcar-buys-fleet-management-startup-local-motion/

In Fall 1998 helped to teach class full time on campus. In 2013, helped similarly as a Visiting Scholar. In between had many interactions in classrooms and outside with students.

Learn from the concepts, capabilities, processes, and behaviors that aligned around one strategy with the hard-won, first-person wisdom found in One Strategy.

Challenging traditional views of strategy and operational execution, this book-written by Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky with Harvard Business School professor Marco Iansiti-describes how you can drive innovation by connecting the potential of strategic opportunities to the impact of operational execution.

Lessons from… Show more

Learn from the concepts, capabilities, processes, and behaviors that aligned around one strategy with the hard-won, first-person wisdom found in One Strategy.

Challenging traditional views of strategy and operational execution, this book-written by Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky with Harvard Business School professor Marco Iansiti-describes how you can drive innovation by connecting the potential of strategic opportunities to the impact of operational execution.

Lessons from the unique combination of real-world experience managing a large scale organization with academic research in strategy and innovation
Reveals what it takes to align a complex organization around one strategy, manage its execution, and reach for "strategic integrity"
Written by Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky with Harvard Business School professor Marco Iansiti-a combined forty years of management and research experience
A unique perspective on strategy development, alignment, and execution
Drawn from Sinofsky's internal Microsoft blog where he communicated some of the management processes the team put to work while developing a 4,000 person, multi-year project-Microsoft Windows 7-One Strategy shares the hard-won insights you can use to successfully make the leap from strategy to execution. Show less

At the height of the Cold War, I worked in the "data processing" facility for the Martin Marietta plant that was making all sorts of cool things like the Pershing Missile, ADATS, TOW Missiles, and more. Mostly I wrote batch scripts for a mainframe, some PL/1 and COBOL code, and spent a lot of the summer helping Managers and Generals understand the new funky IBM PC XT/3270 that was replacing their "terminal". I gained valuable experience working in a hyper-secure environment.

Repeated… Show more

At the height of the Cold War, I worked in the "data processing" facility for the Martin Marietta plant that was making all sorts of cool things like the Pershing Missile, ADATS, TOW Missiles, and more. Mostly I wrote batch scripts for a mainframe, some PL/1 and COBOL code, and spent a lot of the summer helping Managers and Generals understand the new funky IBM PC XT/3270 that was replacing their "terminal". I gained valuable experience working in a hyper-secure environment.

Repeated the following summer as well June—August 1985. Show less

First paid programming gig. Wrote custom business software for area small businesses that owned the Osborne Computer running CP/M. Met with owners to figure out what they wanted and leveraged by extensive experience in business operations (none) to determine needs. Wrote a talent agent client management system, a bank fraud detection system, and a real estate listings management system. Used Osborne with dBase and BASIC.

Making pizza, prepping to make pizza, cleaning up after making pizza. Ask me about my manager, he had an El Camino with 5 speakers.