Microsoft makes you work from the moment you step on the bus!
If you thought BlackBerry was a curse because of accessibility then wait till you get a load of this. Executives of Microsoft just lost out on the most famous excuse for being late... “Stuck in the Traffic Jam” …
Context & Ripple Effects
This item lands mid-arc in Microsoft's 2008 mobility story. Earlier that year, the company had introduced a tool for avoiding traffic jams — positioning itself as solving the commuter's problem. By September, analysts were asking whether Microsoft was missing the boat on mobile entirely. This piece sits between the two: Microsoft's own executives are the demonstration case for always-on mobile work, using connected devices to turn bus time into office time.
First-order effects
- Microsoft executives lose the 'stuck in traffic' excuse — their commutes become working sessions, with email and documents handled en route rather than at the desk.
- The company effectively showcases its own mobile productivity stack in daily use, making its leadership the visible proof point for connected-device work.
Second-order effects
- If the top of the company works from the bus, that expectation cascades downward — employees face pressure to be reachable during commute hours, echoing the BlackBerry-era 'curse of accessibility' the piece references.
- Rivals in mobile email and handheld productivity — BlackBerry chief among them at the time — see corporate demand validated even as questions mount about whether Microsoft itself can win in mobile hardware and services.
Third-order effects
- The commute stops functioning as a boundary between personal and professional time — an early data point in the longer shift toward always-on work culture that later reshapes expectations around remote and hybrid work.
- For Microsoft specifically, fluency in mobile work habits among insiders contrasts with its struggled mobile product execution — a gap that coverage through 2012 kept flagging as management lost ground in the smartphone era.
The trend: Ubiquitous mobile connectivity is dissolving the commute-work boundary, converting transit time into productive hours and normalizing always-on availability across the workforce.