Steven Sinofsky
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Steven Jay Sinofsky (born 1965) is a former president of the Windows Division at
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
from July 2009 until his resignation on November 13, 2012. He was responsible for the development and marketing of
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
,
Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...
, and online services such as Outlook.com and SkyDrive. Sinofsky is currently a board partner at
Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen H ...
, where he serves on boards of investments.


Early life and education

Steven Sinofsky was born in New York City in 1965 to parents Marsha and David Sinofsky. Growing up, Sinofsky attended
Lake Brantley High School Lake Brantley High School (LBHS) is located in Altamonte Springs, Florida, a suburban community approximately 13 miles (20 km) north of Orlando. It is a public high school serving grade levels 9–12 in Seminole County, FL, operated by Se ...
in
Altamonte Springs, Florida Altamonte Springs is a suburban city in central Florida in Seminole County, Florida, United States, which had a population of 46,231 at the 2020 United States Census. The city is in the northern suburbs of the Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford Metro ...
. Subsequently, he attained his
Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...
from
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
, after graduating cum laude in 1987, in the fields of chemistry and
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...
. Furthermore, he pursued his postgraduate education at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...
, where he acquired a Masters of Science in computer science in 1989. He also spent 3 semesters learning Russian while he was in college.


Career

In July 1989, Sinofsky joined Microsoft as a software design engineer. In 1994, when the Office Product Unit was formed, Sinofsky joined the team as the director of program management, and led the design of the shared technologies in
Microsoft Office 95 Microsoft Office 95 (version 7.0), also known as Microsoft Office for Windows 95, is a major release of Microsoft Office which was released on August 24, 1995, shortly after the completion of Windows 95. It was the successor to both Office 4.2 a ...
and
Microsoft Office 97 Microsoft Office 97 (version 8.0) is the fifth major release for Windows of Microsoft Office, released by Microsoft on November 19, 1996. It succeeded Microsoft Office 95 and was replaced by Microsoft Office 2000 in 1999. A Mac OS equivalent, ...
. In 1994, during a recruiting visit to his alma mater, Cornell University, Sinofsky met a student, Sumeet Malhotra, who showed Sinofsky how he had helped in making Cornell “wired” by building a digital business-in-a-box system (called “Bear Access”) which comprehensively enabled most of the important higher education business operations at Cornell (including student account access, student grading, communication between different departments, faculty and students) during those early internet days. Sinofsky reported this back at Microsoft, which led to the creation of the “Internet Explorer”. Sinofsky spent about four years as a software design engineer and project lead in the Development Tools group, where he helped lead the development of the first versions of the Microsoft Foundation Classes C++ library for Microsoft Windows and
Microsoft Visual C++ Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) is a compiler for the C, C++ and C++/CX programming languages by Microsoft. MSVC is proprietary software; it was originally a standalone product but later became a part of Visual Studio and made available in both tri ...
. He previously oversaw the development of the
Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketi ...
system of programs, servers and services, responsible for the product development of
Microsoft Office 2007 Microsoft Office 2007 (codenamed Office 12) is an office suite for Windows, developed and published by Microsoft. It was officially revealed on March 9, 2006 and was the 12th version of Microsoft Office. It was released to manufacturing on Novem ...
and its new ribbon UI. Prior to that he also oversaw the development of
Microsoft Office 2003 Microsoft Office 2003 (codenamed Office 11) is an office suite developed and distributed by Microsoft for its Windows operating system. Office 2003 was released to manufacturing on August 19, 2003, and was later released to retail on October 21, ...
,
Microsoft Office XP Microsoft Office XP (codenamed Office 10) is an office suite which was officially revealed in July 2000 by Microsoft for the Windows operating system. Office XP was released to manufacturing on March 5, 2001, and was later made available to ret ...
, and
Microsoft Office 2000 Microsoft Office 2000 (version 9.0) is a release of Microsoft Office, an office suite developed and distributed by Microsoft for the Windows family of operating systems. Office 2000 was released to manufacturing on March 29, 1999, and was made av ...
. Sinofsky was actively involved in recruiting for Microsoft. His particular task was to convince engineers not to move to Google. Sinofsky has blogged in detail about his efforts a
Steven Sinofsky's Microsoft TechTalk
about what it's like to be a
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
employee, and what new hires in general most of the time never suspect or know about Microsoft,
Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
, Steve Ballmer, and
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
.


Sinofsky at the Windows division

Steven Sinofsky became the president of the Windows division in July 2009. His first heavily involved projects included Windows Live Wave 3 and Internet Explorer 8. Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan also headed the development of the next major version of Windows to come after
Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
,
Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...
. Sinofsky's philosophy on Windows 7 was to not make any promises about the product or even discuss anything about the product until Microsoft was sure that it felt like a quality product. This was a radical departure from Microsoft's typical way of handling in-development versions of Windows, which was to publicly share all plans and details about it early in the development cycle. Sinofsky also refrained from labeling versions of Windows "major" or "minor", and instead just called them releases. Under Sinofsky's leadership, the Windows Division successfully shipped the successor to
Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
,
Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...
, which had a rapidly growing user-base of over 450 million. The success of Windows 7 contributed to record-breaking
revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive reven ...
earnings for Microsoft in 2010. Sinofsky's leadership style influenced many other Microsoft divisions to follow his principles and practices on product development. Sinofsky and Windows executive Jon DeVaan worked as editors for th
Engineering Windows 7
blog. Sinofsky worked on Windows 8 and regularly blogged about the feature set and the process of developing the new OS in his blog
Building Windows 8
Sinofsky left Microsoft on December 31, 2012. His departure was described by both parties as a mutual decision, but widely seen externally as the result of a power struggle or friction between himself – tipped as a future leader of the company – and CEO Steve Ballmer. Technology website Ars Technica drew attention to the sense of staffing changes after a major project – the
Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...
rollout, but also noted the abrupt and exceptional manner of departure and a similar analysis of recent politics within Microsoft by
ZDNet ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication. His ...
. Sinofsky was succeeded by
Julie Larson-Green Julie Larson-Green (born 1962) is the former chief experience officer (CXO) of the Office Experience Organization at Microsoft, where she worked 1993 through 2017. She subsequently joined Qualtrics as their CXO. Larson-Green notably managed the ...
and Tami Reller. Larson-Green will run the engineering function of Windows, while Reller will oversee the business operations. Microsoft disclosed in an SEC filing that Sinofsky would have a one-year non-compete contract in exchange for an estimated $14M of stock.June 2013 Microsoft SEC filing
/ref>


Book

''One Strategy: Organization, Planning, and Decision Making'', published by
John Wiley & Sons John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, ...
in November 2009, was co-authored by Sinofsky and Marco Iansiti of Harvard Business School. The book discusses Sinofsky's struggle with refocusing the Windows Division after the Vista debacle, and the planning and development of the next major version of Windows that would come after Vista. Sinofsky talks about the focus of making a desirable high-quality product, while making no promises to the public, and shipping and delivering that product on time.


References


Further reading

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External links


Steven Sinofsky's Microsoft TechTalk
– Blog about working at Microsoft
Steven Sinofsky
on
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sinofsky, Steven 1965 births Living people Microsoft employees American business executives Microsoft Windows people Businesspeople from New York City Cornell University alumni University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni Lake Brantley High School alumni