"A Flick of the Switch" part 1

Chapter 13 of Mystic Microsoft

Aug 16, 2025

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This chapter (in two parts, slightly edited) is from my memoir, Mystic Microsoft: A Journey of Transformation in the Halls of High Technology (written as Kraig Brockschmidt). I’m sharing it on the tails of the self-sacrificer to self-transcender transition explored in recent posts because it provides an example of choosing to be a channel for God’s grace. Enjoy.

Chapter 13: A Flick of the Switch

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, let me sow pardon.
Where there is discord, let me sow unity.
Where there is doubt, let me sow faith.
Where there is error, let me sow truth.
Where there is despair, let me sow hope.
Where there is sadness, let me sow joy.
Where there is darkness, let me sow light.

—Saint Francis of Assisi

“You have 672 new messages.”

Long before “spam” even existed it was not uncommon to see this sort of alert when we checked our morning email. Since its early years, Microsoft’s lifeblood—its primary means of internal communication—has been email. Millions of messages course through its veins every day. From the senior executives down to the folks on the manufacturing floor, in the mailroom, and in the cafeterias, everyone at Microsoft has email.

It was entirely possible to spend your whole day doing nothing but reading, responding to, and deleting email messages. No matter who you were you could expect to receive at least thirty meaningful messages every day—if not several hundred. Many people received even more. I remember a friend of mine once having nearly two thousand unread messages in his inbox—and those were only the ones marked “urgent.”

Despite this torrential flood of messages, we all loved email: it was integral to our work rather than an annoying distraction. It was vastly more efficient than paper mail and wasn’t disruptive like the telephone. It was also usually much more efficient to send email than to find someone by phone or in person—oftentimes a co-worker would call or come by your office only to say “check your email.” What’s more, people who happened to be out of town usually checked their email several times a day while outright ignoring their telephone voicemail.

One of the best features of our email system, and the major reason why we got so many messages, were the “group aliases” (now “distribution lists,” which work the same). An alias is a single email address that automatically maps to any number of other addresses, including other aliases. The drg alias, for example, mapped to everyone in Developer Relations; sysmktg to all of Systems Marketing. We had aliases, in fact, for every part of Microsoft’s organizational structure.

With this powerful feature you could send a single message to a single alias and get it out to hundreds or thousands of people without needing to know individual addresses. This was especially true for the msft alias, the one that sent mail to everyone in the company.

Group aliases also allowed us to form various discussion or information groups irrespective of organizational boundaries. The olecore group, for instance, included everyone who was deeply involved with the OLE technology1 no matter where they were in the company or, for that matter, the world. There were also aliases for varying groups of vice presidents, program managers, administrative assistants, and so forth. If you could think of any reason why you might want to email a particular group of people, there was usually an alias for it.

Our discussions were not restricted to company business. There were group aliases for everything from home buying and car maintenance to bungee jumping, punk rock, Dungeons & Dragons, and every religion known to modern man. Name an interest and there was an alias for it. And all it took to join a group was—what else!—sending a piece of email to the alias administrator. You could then look forward to even more messages in your inbox every morning.

A fun part about the whole thing was that all aliases were equal: the email system never asked if you really intended to send a message to a large group.2 So messages that were meant for only one or two people occasionally got sent to many, many more. One day, for instance, a woman sent a very loving (G-rated) message to her fiancé (many couples within Microsoft take care of family business in this manner). Whoops! She accidentally sent the message to an alias with four hundred members. Her message was so sweet, however, that it charmed everyone who read it. Soon her own inbox was full of congratulations on her upcoming wedding and many other words of support. And the whole incident was so touching that it eventually made the back cover of Micronews, our weekly printed company newsletter of the time.

The group alias involved was one to which I belonged. Its name was soleil (French for “sun”) which stood in this context for “Sharing Our Life Experiences Is Loving.” Its unofficial name was the “personal growth alias” and was where people discussed things like psychology, spirituality, metaphysics, inspirational books, alternative medicine, yoga, tai chi, meditation, ecology, charitable works, UFO’s, and whatever else you care to imagine. Indeed, soleil represented such an unorthodox menagerie of subjects that I referred to it as the “weirdo alias.” But that’s what made it fun. We’re all weird in some way or another—why not enjoy it?

Conversations on soleil were nearly always interesting, uplifting, and rich with attitudes of compassion and open-mindedness. In this loving and supportive environment, individuals commonly asked the whole group for recommendations of some kind—a good naturopath, a nice place to stay at the ocean, an honest mechanic, or a non-profit organization that needed volunteers. And because everyone in the group habitually approached each new message with an open heart, there were often a dozen or more responses to such requests within an hour or two.

On February 1st, 1996,3[2] about 11:30am, one of our group’s most active members sent this message:

Can anyone recommend a divorce lawyer who knows about dealing with Microsoft stock options? The couple involved don't want to have to cash in the options for the non-Microsoft partner.

Not surprisingly, a reply came within minutes—addressed to the whole group. But it wasn’t a helpful recommendation, it was a scathing condemnation. Though very short in and of itself, the message was essentially a righteous tirade on the evils of divorce and its sole responsibility for dysfunctional families and everything else that’s wrong in the world. It also held a strong tone of judgment against the couple themselves for even thinking about separation.

“Whoa! Where did that come from?” I thought, startled. Soleil was founded for sharing love—it was a complete shock to see such negativity.

Again, the message was but a few short sentences. Nevertheless, it had this enormous negative power. You could feel its anger: after reading only a single sentence I had this sudden, sickening, sinking feeling in my gut: something was very wrong. “Run away! Run away!” my mind screamed. But it was already too late. I had opened the message with my usual receptivity and before I knew it, I found myself infected with terrible emotions.

And it wasn’t just me…everyone else who had read even a little bit of the message had become infected themselves.

You know what happened next: “the battle was joined” and the bombs began to explode. Within only a few minutes a barrage of counter-attacks assaulted our inboxes as every reply was sent to the entire group. And then came the counter-counter-attacks. Then the counter-counter-counter attacks. Minute by awful minute people were taking sides and jumping into the brawl. My inbox was literally inundated with new responses.

Responses? Hardly…they were tirades. They were venomous maledictions. They were hellfire and damnation. And, of course, everyone believed that Truth was on their side: there was no hope for even so much as a cease-fire.

It was incredible to witness how quickly the whole thing got out of control. Cherished opinions were being attacked and the natural reaction was to fight back. Victory, as the combatants seemed to believe, was a matter of who had the biggest gun, the strongest fist, or the loudest voice. Anger beget anger; insult beget insult. And the bright land of soleil, once flowing with the sweetness of milk and honey, was now plagued with darkness and bitter poisons. Love was nowhere to be found. Even the few crying pleas to stop the bloodshed were corrupt with anger and negativity: they succeeded in only escalating the carnage further.

The great spiritual teacher Paramhansa Yogananda once wittily said, “you can’t beat the darkness out of a room with a stick….” Well, everyone seemed hell-bent on proving this principle wrong. The man who started the whole thing was trying to beat out the darkness of divorce with a stick of condemnation and righteousness. In response, others were trying to beat out the darkness of his condemnation with their own sticks of judgment. And as the war intensified, others picked up sticks of reason, sticks of emotion, and even sticks of compassionate understanding. But no matter what the motive they were still sticks, they were still used for beating, and none of them were doing any good whatsoever.

I was right in the thick of it all myself, fully ensnared by anger and fury. Within five minutes I picked up my own stick of self-righteousness and started writing—or, more accurately, SHOUTING—my own declaration of war!4

(To be continued)

"A Flick of the Switch" part 1

Chapter 13 of Mystic Microsoft

Chapter 13: A Flick of the Switch

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