Microsoft’s original source code

I’m a 90s kid (born in 1989), and I remember the days of the anti-trust lawsuit, “Internet Exploder,” the Slashdot Borg icon, and resentment from Mac users, WordPerfect users, Netscape users, and others who strongly disliked the Microsoft monopoly.

Still, there’s something about Microsoft of that era. Bill Gates was “one of us,” a passionate nerd. This was an era where nerds like Jobs, Woz, and Gates ruled. The 1990s and the 2000s felt exciting, and it felt like technology was making the world a better place.

I must admit, even though I was firmly in the Jobs and Woz camp in the 2000s, I also fondly remember Windows 2000, Visual Studio 6, and pre-ribbon Microsoft Office. Contrary to Steve Jobs’ opinion, I believe Microsoft has occasionally exhibited great taste :). For better or for worse, the 1990s was peak Microsoft.

Something happened in the 2010s. It seems like the tech industry has become just like any other industry that has gotten entrenched, and today’s tech leaders simply don’t inspire me like how the leaders of previous eras did. Today’s Web media companies are far scarier than 1990’s Microsoft ever was.

Then again, I was a mere child in the 1990s, and I became an adult in the 2010s, and so I could be looking at the 1990s through childhood memories.

As a fellow 90s kid... I feel the same. I remember when Sony Ericson launched their first camera phone and how we used to go through PC upgrades like crazy. My dad would go to the bookstore to buy magazines with new linux distros included for free. Now I have laptop thats 4 years old and Im not excited to buy my next (heck I dont even need to buy my next... I can run LLama.cpp just fine on my current).

I do think the barrier to entry in tech has significantly increased. There was a wave of internet companies like Uber, (and their global equivalents) that benefited massively from providing local internet services. In the 2000s and 2010s the tech companies benefited massively from global poverty alleviation efforts to get users in remote regions on line. The push to get people online meant that millions of people in poor countries had access to social media and ads but not basic needs like toilets. As the tech companies saturated the emerging markets, covid began to hit. The stark inequalities began to be rubbed in. The big tech companies also dont really have any real material asset to fight over anymore. Their markets have been largely captured. As a big tech firm the game is now to maintain your lead. The industry is now run by MBAs, not hackers anymore.

Now those poor people are online globally and can scroll Instagram.

I think what you are remembering is just nostalgia, people tend to remember the good things and shut out the bad ones.

I still remember how Microsoft, under Gates, acted like a robber baron to the whole tech community. You had a nice product? It was instantly copied by Microsoft, and they pulled the rug under you because they could.

You wanted open standards? It was a war purely because Microsoft wanted it to be. It was either Microsoft's way or the highway.

I consider pre-2008 and pre-iPhone launch to be the peak of the Internet, but it's all downhill from that year onwards.

Yes, agree. Bill Gates was never ”one of us”. He came from extreme privilege and used his advantage to kill off much more innovative technologies. BeOS, anyone?

There's a throwaway quote about the school Gates was attending spending a few thousand dollars a year on a terminal and computer time.

The inflation factor is around 5X, so that's maybe $15k to $20k in modern money.

There were very few schools in the world with a five figure budget for computer experiments for a handful of pupils in the early 1970s.

>It seems like the tech industry has become just like any other industry that has gotten entrenched, and today’s tech leaders simply don’t inspire me like how the leaders of previous eras did. Today’s Web media companies are far scarier than 1990’s Microsoft ever was.

Three letters: MBA

When the MBA's came into the tech industry everything got stale, 'safe' and unexciting as they want to leech their fucking hands over everything in the name of maximal profit.

Private Equity follows MBAs so you see more PE firms getting into tech during the same period. Same story, fucking leeches leeching makes the leeches happy at the expense of society. In fact, it seems PE firms and MBA grads love making the world an actively terrible place

I hate business bros. They ruin god damn everything.

and?

To be fair, much of the coding community is highly educated - especially in the top companies, which generally hire from top schools - and therefore likely to be privileged.

As if IBM, the big bad monopolist boogeyman of the '60s-'80s, or DEC or HP or Sun or Compaq or any of the other giants of that era were free of MBAs?

While I agree with your sentiment, I think a useful mental model thinks of business bros/MBAs et. al. as natural consequences of growth-at-all-costs capitalism. By our economy’s very nature there’s demand for more every quarter, with substantial money riding on that more occurring on time and as expected. So there’s of course then demand for the services of professionals specialising in more. One can still dislike them of course, as one might the police as an institution, for example, but I don’t find it useful to hate them as people. Ultimately most of us are drawn by incalculable circumstance and survival pressures into happenstance careers, and alienating other humans doesn’t do anything to progress a cause.

Before posting this I feel it’s worth clarifying I didn’t take you to say you do hate them as people, please excuse the ramble.

The tech industry (well frankly any industry) of the 60s-80s were different entirely. So was the way the government regulated things, and the expectations people had about corporations and their role in society.