Ensemble's Age of Empires caught his eye right away. He set up an interview and toured the games area, where he got a sneak peek at products. The prospect of running Microsoft's games division sounded like the perfect two-for-one deal: He'd climb to the next rung up the ladder and manage an area that excited him. He kept up with consoles like the PlayStation and Super Nintendo, and PC games. Around the same time, Fries bumped into an employee from the games group, who mentioned that Tony Garcia, general manager, was on his way out.įries's passion for games had never waned since his days writing and selling clones of Frogger. The next step for employees interested in climbing Microsoft's corporate ladder was to run a business within the company. He had been a development manager for going on six years between Excel and Windows. Younger users, such as kids writing school papers, probably had never heard of any alternative.Īs Word flourished in early 1996, Peters talked to Fries about what he wanted to do next. Microsoft held approximately 85 percent of the market. By the late '90s, the option to open WordPerfect documents vanished from Word. Its competitor, stagnating in DOS, lacked that compatibility. Word continued to add more features such as the ability to save and open documents in WordPerfect's format. Microsoft Word for DOS.īy the late summer of 1992, WordPerfect, a one-product company, held only 30 percent of the Windows market. From now on, anyone who purchased a computer that came preloaded with Windows also received Office, giving them no reason to try out or return to WordPerfect. As the battle intensified, Microsoft leveraged its relationship with PC manufacturers to bundle Office, a suite containing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, with their machines. WordPerfect failed to transition for a year, ceding ground to Microsoft. Naturally, Word made the jump to Windows first. Over five years and several updates, Peters, Fries, and their army gained ground. ''My direct vice president above me in Office said, 'Why would you leave Office, one of the most important parts of this company, to go work on something no one cares about?''' -Ed Fries On Word, his opponent was WordPerfect, the de facto word processor of choice because of its availability on an array of computers and operating systems. He and the Excel team had emerged victorious against Lotus 1-2-3, the PC's first killer app until myriad technical issues and delays enabled Microsoft to erode its user base. I knew nothing about Word when I went over, but I knew how to manage programmers."įries knew how to wage battle against bigger opponents. "The development manager was more the manager position over programmers, whereas the technical lead is the guy who understands everything about a project's system. It was the next logical step for Fries's career. Peters asked Fries if he'd like to fill the vacant position. When his manager, Chris Peters, got promoted to run the Word team, Peters quarreled with Word's development manager, leading to the manger's resignation. Five years, three versions of Microsoft Excel, and one lead developer credit later, he managed a roster of 50 programmers working on the next version of the spreadsheet program. LIKE A SPREADSHEET WITH THE right formulas plugged into its cells, Ed "Fast Eddie" Fries's career options multiplied.
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