Flying on the Delta Shuttle with Bill
Gates 12 years ago, I asked, "What Microsoft competitor worries you
most?"

    "Goldman Sachs." I gave Gates
a startled look. Was Microsoft about to try the investment banking business?
"Software," he said, "is an IQ business. Microsoft must win the
IQ war, or we won't have a future. I don't worry about Lotus or IBM, because the
smartest guys would rather come to work for Microsoft. Our competitors for IQ
are investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley."

    I spent five days traveling the country
with Gates, and he must have talked about IQ a hundred times. Getting the
brightest bulbs to work at Microsoft has always been his obsession. It's paid
off. Microsoft does close to $40 billion in sales and has some 60,000 employees.
That's a whopping $650,000-plus of revenue per employee, topping IBM's sales per
employee twofold.

    Along comes Google, with its revenue
run rate of $6 billion and about 4,000 employees. Google's sales per employee
are $1.5 million, or 2.3 times that of Microsoft. This is like comparing Babe
Ruth to Home Run Baker. Google now beats Microsoft in the IQ war.

    One must state the obvious here--that
IQ is a touchy subject. A 1971 Supreme Court ruling, Griggs v. Duke Power,
discourages IQ tests in the workplace. Microsoft famously wiggled around Griggs
by subjecting job applicants to verbal brain teasers. For example: If a spider
fell to the bottom of a 50-foot well, and each day climbed up 3 feet and slipped
back 2, how many days would it take the spider to get out of the well? (Hint:
The answer's not 50 days.) Google grabs its share of IQ by nabbing scientists
and engineers from Stanford, MIT and Caltech.

    Microsoft remains in the 99th
percentile of high-IQ companies. I'd bet Microsoft has the
highest-IQ-per-employee rate of any company with more than 50,000--or even
20,000--employees in the world. But Google now tops the software giant. Why? One
reason is that Microsoft's stock has been stuck in a trading range for five
years. Gone are the days when you could join Microsoft, work 80 hours a week for
five years and get rich with stock options. Google has become the place to get
rich.

    But that argument goes only so far. It
can't explain why Kai-Fu Lee, a Microsoft executive, joined Google this
summer--after the IPO bonanza--to become head of its new R&D center in
China. Microsoft quickly sued Google over Lee's departure, claiming Lee had
violated a noncompete agreement. (On Sept. 13 a U.S. court let Lee start his job
at Google.) You can guess what Lee's motivation to jump ship was. At Google one
works to change the world; at Microsoft one works to protect the Windows and
Office profit margins. Which mission do you think high-IQ people prefer?

    Microsoft is caught in a classic
dilemma. Nearly all of its $12 bil-lion in annual profits come from two
products--Windows and Office. These must be defended at all costs.

    One of those costs is backward
compatibility. For example, Windows Vista must be able to run older versions of
Office. That's a laudable goal, but it carries a huge penalty.

    Microsoft needs a Russian army of 7,000
to 10,000 engineers to grind out the 50 million-plus lines of code that will
constitute Windows Vista. The complexity of the Vista project has created its
own management challenges. Last month Microsoft shook up its top ranks in an
attempt to become faster and leaner.

    That may or may not work. For Microsoft
the longer-term challenge is the one that keeps Bill Gates up at night: the IQ
war. The best and brightest are not satisfied to defend legacy. They want to
change the world.

   
软件业巨擘微软对于高智商人才的追求曾经达到疯狂的地步，现在却在智商大战中逐渐输给Google。《福布斯》杂志发行人之一的里奇·卡尔高（Rich
Karlgaard）日前撰文认为，如今的微软已经不再是渴望创新的天才的天堂。

    据美国《福布斯》网站10月31日援引里奇的文章说，如今的微软对于软件工作者来说，已经纯粹成为一块致富的宝地。大多数人抱着如下的态度来到软件帝国：每周工作80小时，努力拼搏5年，之后得到公司的一部分股票，名利双收后卷铺盖走人。但是对于曾经通过智商大战留在微软的软件开发者大多不满足于成为碌碌无为的员工，仅仅维护Windows和Office这种已经成就的“霸业”。他们更愿意投入到新兴企业如搜索引擎Google的门下，今年7月中旬前微软中国研究院院长李开复转投Google的举动就是例子。

   
文章说，十二年前在与微软帝国灵魂人物比尔·盖茨一同旅行的时候，里奇曾经问盖茨：“哪些公司被您视为微软的竞争对手？”
“投资银行Goldman Sachs”，盖茨的回答让所有人吃惊，因为投资银行的业务与微软可谓是风马牛不相及。盖茨解释说，因为最聪明的人在选择软件领域雇主的时候，都会聚拢到微软旗下。所以反倒是投资银行领域的高智商企业，如Goldman
Sachs和摩根士丹利对微软构成了威胁。

    文章说，在接下来的5年时间中，盖茨曾经上百次地提到智商的概念。微软对于高智商人才的追求已经到了疯狂的地步，这也最终成就了软件帝国的霸业。据统计，微软旗下的员工为6万名左右，而销售额已经达到了400亿美元，平均每位员工身上的销量折合65万美元，这个数字足足是IBM的两倍之多。

    然而，搜索引擎巨头Google的横空出世让盖茨开始感到了前所未有的压力。据统计，虽然Google目前的营业收入仅为60亿美元，但其旗下仅有4000名员工，平均下来每人创收达到150万美元。在当前的智商大战中，Google已经击败微软取得了胜利。

   
文章最后说，尽管微软帝国未来的目标似乎仍是智商大战，但最优秀的人才希望创造属于自己的世界，而不是围在遗产旁昏昏入睡。

    （李远）