Teens tell Microsoft where to go today

Gen-X consultants help middle-aged Microsoft with new strategies

REDMOND, Wash. (AP) - Computers and the Internet are still a wonder to many adults, but to teen-agers, they're simply a part of life. And so the world's largest software maker is turning to a pair of teens to tell it how to run the company.

Young'uns: Microsoft consultant Matthew Furdyk, 17, (above) was a dot.com millionaire by age 16. Jennifer Corriero, 19 (below), was a computer consultant by age 15. Both have been hired by Microsoft to work on its "Next Generation Knowledge Worker Project", a program that explores the different ways people work and live with the Internet.

Michael Furdyk, 17, and Jennifer Corriero, 19, are the newest consultants at Microsoft Corp. Of course, teen-age wunderkinder are nothing new in the high-technology industry - this summer, many tech firms will play host to whiz kids who can build databases and write funky programs for Web sites.

But Furdyk and Corriero are different. This isn't just another college internship program. Their generation is growing up with the Internet, and Microsoft believes they will integrate this new medium throughout their lives.

The company envisions a generation of people who are nearly always connected to the Internet, either through a PC at work or home, or via a wireless device everywhere else. So, in an exceedingly rare move for a major technology company, Microsoft has asked Furdyk and Corriero to tell its middle-aged executives how all this will come to pass.

''It used to be that the knowledge was held at the top of the company ladder, but that isn't happening with these new, successful companies,'' said Bart Wojciehowski, director of strategic marketing for Microsoft's Business Productivity Group. ''Everybody has access to knowledge via the technology and can run with it. There's a lot more independence among these workers and we have to give them the tools to make the most of it.''

Furdyk and Corriero, who are earning both paychecks and educational credits for their work at Microsoft, won't be trying to tell the company which wireless protocol will work best in local-area networks, or any other kind of technological esoterica. Their job is to explain to Microsoft executives the new generation's philosophy of work and play.

''People's lives used to be all about education, then work, then retirement or fun or whatever,'' Corriero said, quickly drawing three distinct circles in her notebook to make her point. ''But what's happening with us is that all three of these things are all mixed in together.'' She then drew a series of interlocking circles.

''We're always learning, we like our work so we're working more and we're working when we want to, and we're having fun now as opposed to later,'' she said.

Jonathan Zittrain, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, said that while some workers today might bristle at the constant connectivity and demands of work, the next generation of workers will thrive on it.

''I do see a revolution in the works here,'' Zittrain said. ''If you're young and you've grown up with this stuff out there, it seems natural.''

Furdyk is a perfect example. He started his first company, MyDesktop.com, when he was 15 with a friend from Australia whom he never met offline. The company was sold a year later, and he now works with his second company, called BuyBuddy.com, which helps users understand and purchase technology products. He plans to continue working for the Toronto-based company via the Internet while working with Microsoft here.

''You can do pretty much anything you need to do to run a company without necessarily being there,'' Furdyk said. ''Sometimes it's good to be face-to-face, but I can do most everything I need from here.''

The lanky, sometimes laconic entrepreneur plans on finishing high school, too, but isn't quite sure when. ''I think they'll give me a little classroom credit for working here,'' he said.

Corriero, an intense, talkative young woman with near-boundless energy, is gaining college credit at York University's Schulich School of Business in Toronto while working at Microsoft. However, business may end up taking a back seat to a career in law, communications or computing.

''I don't think they really teach what I want to end up doing,'' Corriero said. That, of course, fits right in with the neo-Renaissance view of the future worker.

Tammy Morrison, the Microsoft product manager guiding the two teen-agers in their work - ''sometimes they tell me what to do,'' she said - saw a good example of new work methods firsthand while visiting a company run by twentysomethings.

Two young people at the company were talking nonchalantly about a particular aspect of their work when they had a good idea and decided to have a meeting. Instead of heading to the conference room, they headed back to their computers and had their meeting in a chat room.

''They preferred running meetings online than in person,'' Morrison said. ''It was a real eye-opener.''

The reason for the online meetings were varied. The young workers wanted to have a thoughtful conversation without a lot of wasted time, and they communicated by writing out their thoughts one at a time. They didn't spend time sitting around during the meeting - many participants worked on other projects between chat responses. And at the end, there was a written record of the decision-making process.

Microsoft has intently studied this integration of technology into work and lifestyle. For example, the company recently put a number of people in their late teens and early 20s into a lab to see how they used computers and the Internet to fulfill tasks.

But Furdyk and Corriero could be the key. They are now working full time, running focus groups, writing reports and attending seminars, all in hopes of chronicling their generation's shift in the way they use technology. This, they say, is their opportunity to tell Microsoft how they and their generation want to work and play.

''They understand this, they get it here,'' Furdyk said. ''They may be older, but they get it.''

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