The path to the top at Microsoft is not for the timid. Anyone hoping to make the ascent must be able to match wits and arguments with two of the most formidable and combative intellects in corporate America: Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder, and Steven Ballmer, its chief executive.

Eric Rudder, a senior vice president, demonstrated that skill not long after he arrived at Microsoft. In 1992, Rudder, then 25, had a confrontation with Gates, recalled Brad Silverberg, a former senior Microsoft executive. The dispute centered on some now-forgotten technical matter in a version of the Windows desktop operating system.

Rudder took the offensive against his boss. "Bill, you're absolutely, totally wrong," Rudder said, according to Silverberg. "And here's why."

After hearing him out, Silverberg said, Gates conceded the point, saying: "You know what? I guess you're right."

Careers at Microsoft are built on such episodes, proof of the right stuff.

Yet more is required to climb up the executive ladder: notably, a deep understanding of technology and a deft grasp of business.

"And you have to deliver, you have to be in charge of building products that generate huge growth in revenues and profits," observed Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied Microsoft for years. Continue At Source

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