Journaling about a Book

Our local library holds quarterly book sales where they sell used books for 50 cents or a dollar each. One of the many books I bought back then was "All I Really Need to Know in Business I Learned at Microsoft" by Julie Bick, a former product manager for Microsoft Word and Office.

Microsoft has been in the news lately with their intent to acquire Yahoo! This acquisition is part of a larger strategy to surpass search-engine giant Google. Having broadened its base to a variety of markets (including gaming and music), Microsoft will still remain a force to be reckoned with the the years to come.

Say what you want about how it got its way to the top, but that it was able to grow into a multi-billion dollar business deserves, if begrudging, respect (but certainly not fear unless as a businessman/competitor, you want to set yourself up for failure).

Now I decided to pick up the book as my next reading, keeping in mind that this is a book about a company, or more specifically the ways of a company, written by someone from THAT company. The last time I read a book like this, I wasn't very much impressed with the content. And I'm pretty sure being in the middle of a 14-hour flight from LA to Taipei had nothing to do with my not liking it.

Since the book is organized into lessons in outline-bulleted style, I decided to allot a blog post for all those points just so I could refer to them. I'll update the post as I reach newer lessons.