Steven Snyder

Steven Snyder
Photo by David Sherman
Born	(1954-11-22) November 22, 1954 (age 63) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	Management Consultant, Snyder Leadership
Spouse(s)	Sherry Stern
Children	One
Website	Snyder Leadership

Steven Snyder (born 22 November 1954) is a notable figure in high technology management. He was an early employee of Microsoft where he was Microsoft's first business unit general manager, leading the Development Tool Business. He was also founding CEO of Net Perceptions, a leading company in recommender systems during the late 1990s.

Steven Snyder was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Drexel University and a M.B.A. from Harvard. He then consulted at Touche Ross & Co.

Snyder joined Microsoft in 1983, and was made responsible for turning around the relationship with IBM, which had been faltering over the delivery of an operating system that could work with the networking features of the upcoming IBM PC-AT computer (Manes & Andrews 1993, p. 267). The problem was that as of 1983 Microsoft was slipping behind on its delivery schedule and was delaying the release of the AT badly. After delivering the news to IBM on a tough phone call, Snyder and his team got the project back on schedule and saved the relationship with IBM, which was crucial to Microsoft at that time in its history (Gates 1984).

Snyder was then promoted to be the first general manager in Microsoft history, with responsibility for the Development Tool Business, helping develop the products into industry leaders, as evidenced by winning the PC Magazine annual awards competition two years in a row (PC Magazine 1987).

After leaving Microsoft in 1988 Snyder joined the Ph.D. program in Psychology at the University of Minnesota. His thesis was Task Strategy Development during Transition to Self-Managing Work Teams.

While working on his dissertation at Minnesota, he consulted with accompany called Personnel Decisions International (PDI), which helps companies develop the talent of their employees. At PDI Snyder helped the company develop a computer-based coaching program that would enable leaders to develop specific leadership competencies. The product had an innovative user interface for presenting the components of leadership development: assessment, a personalized development plan, and an everyday learning process. These ideas became the basis of a US patent, held by PDI (Snyder 1995).