Microsoft used to threaten to send weak programmers to work on a bizarre app about dogs

In the early nineties, when Microsoft was still working on Windows 95, the pressure was high.

And so, when programmers weren't performing up to snuff, Microsoft's managers would threaten to throw them to the dogs.

Specifically, that they'd be reassigned to work on Microsoft Dogs, an obscure 1995 CD-ROM the company made to inform dog owners of the proper care and feeding for 500 different breeds of dogs.

"That's the threat you would use if you wanted to tell someone that maybe this operating system stuff isn't cut out for you," says Raymond Chen, a long-time Microsoft Windows engineer who joined the company in 1992. 

This story comes from a video posted by Microsoft this week, chronicling a walkthrough of Microsoft's massive Microsoft Archives - where the company stores products, memorabilia, and one-of-a-kind curiosities from its 40-year history.

Chen, along with fellow Microsoft veterans Andrew Richards and Chad Beeder, take an hour-long look at the company's history, reminiscing over artifacts from the company's history.

Microsoft Dogs was absolutely a real thing. Check out this video:

 

Other tidbits from the walkthrough video:

• In the early nineties, Microsoft had two competing operating system groups: The ambitious, enterprise-focused Windows NT, codenamed "Cairo," and the more consumer-focused Windows 95, codenamed "Chicago." According to Chen, "Chicago" was chosen because "We might not make it to Cairo, but we can make it to Chicago." 
• Similarly, when Windows NT 3.51 came out in 1995, it carried the internal codename "Tukwila," a town located just outside Microsoft's hometown of Redmond, because that's as far as they thought it had come toward the Cairo vision. 
• Windows ME, a stopgap release between Windows 98 and Windows XP released in 2000, was so notoriously dead on arrival that even Microsoft employees dissed it. When Microsoft employees lined up to get their complimentary copy on release day, one employee quipped to Chen that "I bet this is the longest line of people ever waiting for a copy of Windows ME."
• Microsoft Neptune, an attempt at completely reinventing Windows back in 1999, had interesting features that most operating systems still don't have - for instance, it saved files automatically as you were working on them.
• The collected Microsofties agreed that the development of Windows Vista, Microsoft's most prominent flop ever, was "troubled." But they also think it could have really taken off "if it had been released two years later, on slightly bigger hardware." Chen jokes that "[Vista] is going to be the subject of a VH1 Behind the Music documentary someday."
• Chen shared a story he had heard from Microsoft's early days: Back when the company sold software printed on paper tape, a customer placed an order for Microsoft Focal, a programming tool. But when they went down to ship the order, they couldn't find the master, and couldn't even make a copy. Which means that there's at least one Microsoft product lost forever.

It's a fascinating look at the company's history. If you want to watch the whole hour-long extravaganza, here you go: