http://mashable.com/2013/07/11/julie-larson-green-xbox/
Former Windows head Julie Larson-Green now holds the top spot for the Xbox division. The new job comes as part of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's aggressive company restructuring plan, which he announced Thursday morning.
Larson-Green fills the void left by Don Mattrick who departed last week to become the CEO of floundering mobile game company Zynga. Mattrick's departure was a bit of a shake up for Microsoft, which is less than six-months away from the release of the next-generation Xbox One console. Ballmer was left in charge of the Xbox division while the company searched for Mattrick's replacement.
Despite a long career with Microsoft, "Larson-Green" is not a household name when it comes to console gaming. Here are five things everyone should know about Microsoft's new head of devices:
1. She Was Rejected by Microsoft on the First Pass
Larson-Green is a 20-year veteran of Microsoft, but it may not have been in the cards at the start of her career. According to Wired, Larson-Green was pursuing a computer science degree in college, but had to switch because her night job waiting tables kept her from the computer labs for coding time. Her degree in business administration didn't have enough technical background when she first applied, so she was not hired.
But this story has a happy ending. Larson-Green was working customer support for another company, and that so inspired her to improve her technical skills that she taught herself to code during her off hours, then pursued her master's in software design. She was hired by Microsoft after dressing down its code compiler in a room that contained some company employees.
2. She's Responsible for Office 2007's Radical Design Change
When Microsoft Office 2007 launched, users were flummoxed by the design change that migrated all the functionality from drop-down menus at the top to a ribbon of icons. Since it's been a few years and people have figured out how to work modern Office products, that design change is now generally considered a "good thing."
Whether you loved or hated that change, you can blame Larson-Green, who worked on Office XP and 2003 before redesigning 2007's look. Microsoft awarded her its 2008 Outstanding Technical Excellence Award for the redesign.
In Microsoft's memo, Larson-Green said, "The breakthrough arrived with contextualizing the user interface and realizing that all of the product's features didn't have to be present all the time."
3. She Shook Things Up for Windows
Microsoft saw very sluggish sales and poor reception for Windows Vista, and after her successes with Office, Larson-Green was transferred over to help reorganize the Windows team.
According to an interview in The Telegraph from 2009. Larson-Green made fundamental changes to the engineering structure for Windows 7's creation, preventing engineers from being siloed off and making them interact with technologies that complimented their own projects. What Xbox fans should learn from this is that while Larson-Green hadn't worked on operating systems before Windows' launch, she adapted to her new surroundings quickly.
"I'd been working on Office and had never worked on an operating system before. I spent a lot of time learning about the market, the challenges, the people on the team," she told the The Telegraph.
4. She Took Over Windows After Sinofsky's Departure
Steven Sinofsky had been responsible for bringing Larson-Green over to the Windows division, so when he departed last year, she was promoted to the top job.
Still, it's hard to tell what impact Larson-Green had in that role, since her jump to the Xbox team occurred only seven months later.
5. She Could Have Ballmer's Job One Day
With a rising trajectory like Larson-Green's, it wouldn't be a shock. There's also this tidbit from the end of the Wired piece:
And it’s interesting that when ex-Wired editor Michael Copeland asked Larson-Green about replacing Ballmer at our business conference this past May, she was uncharacteristically blunt. “I wouldn’t rule it out, but I’m not in a hurry,” Larson Green said. “Give me a year and ask me again.”
What do you think of Julie Larson-Green's promotion to the head of Xbox? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Image via Brad Barket/Getty Images for WIRED
