I’ve written in the past about the cultural mismatch between Microsoft and IBM during the collaboration on OS/2, with the Microsofties viewing their IBM colleagues as mired in pointless bureaucracy and the IBM folks viewing Microsofties as undisciplined hackers.¹

One of many points of mismatch was the organizational structure.

A colleague recalls that while he was assigned to the IBM offices in Boca Raton, Florida, there was a dispute over what key should be used to move from one field to another in dialog boxes. The folks at IBM were not happy with my colleague’s decision to use the TAB key, so they asked him to escalate the issue to his manager back in Redmond.

My colleague’s manager replied, “The reason you are in Boca is to make these decisions so I don’t have to be in Boca.”

My colleague rephrased this reply in a more corporate manner before passing it on to IBM: “Microsoft supports the use of the TAB key for this purpose.”

Unsatisfied, the IBM folks escalated the issue up their organizational…