Microserfs

Microserfs is a novel by Douglas Coupland, published in 1995.

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Factually, it provides insight into two tiny, but globally significant subcultures of the 1990s. The first glimpse is into the lives of employees of Microsoft: the people that create the technology that sits on the majority of office desks in the world. We see the role of both technology and the personality of Bill Gates in their lives. The second is a view of the same characters after they have moved to California to work as a tiny start-up company. We get an intimate view of this phenomenon—the struggle for capital, to get to the market first.

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Thematically, the book explores ideas of identity, man's desire for independence, and above all, the desire to belong.

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The book involves a fictional simulation program, "Oop!", short for object-oriented programming.

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Novel: A novel (from French nouvelle, "new") is an extended fictional narrative in prose. Down into the 18th century, the word referred specifically to short fictions of love and intrigue as opposed to romances—epic-length works about love and adventures. Having become one of the major literary genr...

Douglas Coupland: Douglas Coupland (born December 30, 1961) is a Canadian author and cultural commentator, raised in Vancouver, British Columbia....

Microsoft: Microsoft Corporation is the world's biggest software company, with over sixty thousand employees and a physical presence in over sixty countries as of 2005. It was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA. Microsoft develops, manufactures, lic...