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The prevailing belief in Seattle held that the secrets to Microsoft’s success—drive, focus, high intelligence, endless energy—would be transferred via these retirees to the rest of the region. Schools—where many young Microsoft retirees devoted their attention—would become wired, efficient, more effective; government, notorious for stifling process, would become a juggernaut, delivering unprecedented return on the taxpayer’s investment; new businesses would bloom in Seattle, many of them recreating the outsized success of Microsoft (the phrase “the next Microsoft,” in fact, was heard everywhere) as the Pacific Northwest moved entirely into a “new economy” of high-tech businesses run by founders with a new kind of intelligence so powerful as to be virtually mistake-proof.

Microsoft alums stood out by virtue of an affected manner characterized by rapid speech, frequent interruptions of others, and demands that meetings stay “focused” or “on track” and lead quickly to a set of “take-aways” leading in turn to resolution or success. The anointed tended toward impatience with mere mortals, who were by definition less intelligent than those “forged in the crucible” of the company, as one young retiree put it in a conversation with Robinson. Long-time philanthropists and board members of charitable organizations were appalled at the arrogance of these newcomers, who seemed to believe that their presence and brainpower alone were worth far more to society than their money. “One could argue,” wrote Robinson, “that overconfident overachievers have been Microsoft’s most significant contribution to the world thus far.”

Lured by the prospect of putting in a few years’ hard work and long hours in exchange for retirement by age 40, people began leaving mainstream businesses for jobs at startups with no products, customers or apparent means of ever making money. Writers and editors I knew started drifting out of journalism to work for Medio , a Microsoft-alum-founded company publishing a “magazine” on CD-ROM. Others went to work for an array of electronic publishers creating everything from multimedia educational products on CD-ROM to electronic reference works to CD-ROMs that taught you how to play the guitar. Companies siphoning marketing and engineering talent away from the Boeings of the world included Virtual Vision, which manufactured a head-mounted television set slightly larger than a pair of eyeglasses; Virtual i/O, manufacturer of a head-mounted video display for movies, games, and television; startups making video displays for exercise equipment that would make it possible to run on a treadmill through video-rendered landscapes or to play tennis against the digital video image of a pro tennis star; and on and on and on and on.

By far the most prolific father of new companies, buildings, yachts, jets, and other visible assets bought with Microsoft money was Paul Allen, who proved more than profligate in the 1990s. His purchases of a Boeing 757, another jet, two massive yachts, a 387-acre camp on Lopez Island in the storied San Juans, an entire San Juan island, the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers, a Montana ranch, and various other land parcels, companies, buildings, technologies and toys kept him almost constantly in the news.

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Source:  OpenStax, Seattle and the demons of ambition. OpenStax CNX. Oct 26, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10504/1.4
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