Managing Humans: More Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

© Michael Lopp 2021

M. LoppManaging Humanshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7116-2_33

33. Hacking Is Important

Encouraging disruptive acts

Michael Lopp¹  

(1)

Los Gatos, CA, USA

 

Back in the early 1990s, Borland International was the place to be an engineer. Coming off the purchase of Ashton-Tate, Borland was the third-largest software company, but, more importantly, it was a legitimate competitor of Microsoft. Philippe Kahn, the CEO at the time, was fond of motorcycles, saxophones, and brash statements at all-hands meetings: “We’re barbarians, not bureaucrats!”

At the time, Kahn was not only navigating the integration of Ashton-Tate, he was in the midst of moving the product suite from DOS to Windows. All the products were complete object-oriented ...