{"id":112298,"date":"2026-05-05T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=112298"},"modified":"2026-05-05T07:53:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:53:18","slug":"20260505-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20260505-00\/?p=112298","title":{"rendered":"A dispute over the <KBD>TAB<\/KBD> key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft and IBM organizational structures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"The Microsoft\/IBM joint development was built on mutual respect, wait, is respect the right word?\" href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20240827-00\/?p=110186\"> I&#8217;ve written in the past<\/a> about the cultural mismatch between Microsoft and IBM during the collaboration on OS\/2, with the Microsofties viewing their IBM colleagues as <a title=\"Be careful with that thing, it's a confidential coffee maker\" href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20220426-00\/?p=106528\"> mired in pointless bureaucracy<\/a> and the IBM folks viewing Microsofties as undisciplined hackers.\u00b9<\/p>\n<p>One of many points of mismatch was the organizational structure.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s decision to use the <kbd>TAB<\/kbd> key, so they asked him to escalate the issue to his manager back in Redmond.<\/p>\n<p>My colleague&#8217;s manager replied, &#8220;The reason you are in Boca is to make these decisions so I don&#8217;t have to be in Boca.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My colleague rephrased this reply in a more corporate manner before passing it on to IBM: &#8220;Microsoft supports the use of the <kbd>TAB<\/kbd> key for this purpose.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Unsatisfied, the IBM folks escalated the issue up their organizational chain for several levels, and replied that their VP (who was around seven levels of management above the programmers) was absolutely opposed to the use of the <kbd>TAB<\/kbd> for this purpose, and they wanted confirmation from the equivalent-level manager at Microsoft that Microsoft stands by the choice of the <kbd>TAB<\/kbd> key.<\/p>\n<p>My colleague replied, &#8220;Bill Gates&#8217;s mother is not interested in the <kbd>TAB<\/kbd> key.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This apparently ended the discussion, and the <kbd>TAB<\/kbd> key stayed.<\/p>\n<p><b>Note<\/b>: This upcoming Sunday is Mother&#8217;s Day in the United States. You probably shouldn&#8217;t ask her for her opinion on the <kbd>TAB<\/kbd> key.<\/p>\n<p>\u00b9 There was probably merit to both arguments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I want to speak to your manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-112298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>I want to speak to your manager.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112299,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112298\/revisions\/112299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}