milar to the military; this provides the greatest common knowledge of the tasks at hand. By using these types of people as managers, small workgroups could become large workgroups but still function as efficiently. Microsoft also thought that all of its development should be performed at one site, this allowed project groups to share information and test their specific programs together with the least amount of downtime and hassle. Microsoft's workgroups are also organized by the product they are designing in order to allow these groups to function together and exchange technical information easily, people in these jobs work in multifunctional teams organized by product, with some mechanisms to integrate across the product groups. Microsoft not only has a formal organizational "chain of command", but also what they consider a "brain trust" of employees from every level who work together to create product ideas and "plans of attack".
             Microsoft also does a good job of retaining its employees by giving them a large quantity of stock options and retirement plans to fit everyone's own personal investment style. While Microsoft's salaries may seem a bit on the low end of the scale and the fact that they pay no overtime might discourage some, more than a few of the companies employees are millionaires. Approximately three thousand out of Microsoft's 17,800 employees are millionaires due to the stocks they own. Microsoft has biannual bonuses of up to 15 percent and allows employees to use up to ten percent of their salary to buy stock at 85 percent of the market value. Most employees work very long hours sometimes for a few days straight, Jim Conner said of Microsoft employees "You get weird cases where people actually move into their offices... I would have to order people to go home because they were exhausted. They would work for three or four-day's straight, and not want to quit. With an organizational setup !
             where everyone k...