
Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond - timr
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/213808.asp
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InclinedPlane
Many of these complaints are the same reasons I left Microsoft about a year
ago. It's becoming less and less a place where good work is rewarded; where
engineering reality trumps corporate BS; where you feel empowered to make the
best products; where you look forward to spending time at work.

As more and more talented people are pushed out or leave, as the compensation
continues to stagnate, as the corporate culture continues to rot all of this
will snow-ball. People will find that they no longer enjoy work because all of
the good people on their team have left. They'll no longer be bound by MS's
golden handcuffs because their compensation won't be any better than a dozen
competing companies in the same city. Etc, etc, etc. Increasingly I get the
feeling that the exodus is just beginning from MS.

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mikecane
The problem with Microsoft isn't a lack of bright talent. It's "Who's Next?"
People are jockeying for political positions, not concentrating on products.
Ballmer won't be there forever and everyone wants to be the next Ballmer. If
Steve Jobs passed away tomorrow, there could be similar jockeying at Apple --
we've already seen how product introductions lacking Jobs have been split up
among several people. We don't know how many of those people got the idea from
that experience that they could be "the next Jobs."

Jobs also once criticized company leadership in general (someone else can go
find this), stating that what happens after a founder leaves is that a
marketing person ascends to the top -- and he pointed to Ballmer as an
example. It's interesting to note that Palm began to sink also when a
marketing person was leading it -- Ed Colligan.

~~~
gfodor
Eh, Ives is almost certainly heir to the throne.

~~~
dieterrams
I don't know anything about Ives' business skills, but I'd worry that making
him CEO would be promoting him to his level of incompetence. He's a fantastic
designer, and I'd rather not see him distracted from that role.

But it might be wise for him to have final approval over product designs, the
way Jobs presumably does now.

~~~
philwelch
I think the most probable succession plan is to put Tim Cook in charge of the
company with Ive in charge of design and aesthetics. Who has what job title is
hard to predict.

~~~
dieterrams
You know, Jobs keeps insisting Siri is an AI company...

"Hey virtual Steve, should we add this feature?"

"Get rid of it."

"Should we keep this feature?"

"Get rid of it."

"What do you think about--"

"That's shit."

~~~
cubicle67
like this, you mean? <http://quietcode.com/virtualsteve/>

I just bought virtualsteve.com, but didn't have time to set up hosting for it,
so I've just put the page here for the moment.

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Anechoic
Before succumbing to schadenfreude just remember that this will eventually
happen to your favorite tech company in the future, be it HP, Dell, Apple,
Google, Yahoo, Fog Creek, Amazon, Y Combinator, etc. Companies have ups and
down.

Hopefully MS will see this as a learning experience, become a better
competitor and then we as consumers will benefit.

~~~
lanstein
/ did happen in the past (Apple)

~~~
Anechoic
Sure, and it's arguably happening right now to some of the companies I
mentioned (Dell, Yahoo) but if/when they recover it will likely happen again.
Apple will likely face bad times at some point in the future.

~~~
timr
Don't tell anyone, but I think it's happening to Google _right now_. It's just
early stages (like MS in 1995), and Google still has more good products than
bad, so it isn't exceptionally noticeable.

But the recent, high-profile launch disasters, the clutter that's slowly
creeping into the result pages, and stuff like the search page background
goofiness...they sure _feel_ like early MS-style mistakes.....

~~~
nostrademons
MS in 1995 still had many, many years of good work ahead of it. Remember that
they won the browser wars, after everyone had written them off as being too
big and clumsy to adapt to change. That was also when we got Win2k and WinXP
(arguably the best versions of Windows ever) and their Office product matured
into its familiar form.

I'd say Microsoft started going downhill after 2002, when they disbanded the
IE team and embarked on the disaster that was Vista. But I remember that when
I started college in 2001, I _hated_ Microsoft and yet virtually all the
software on my computer was by them. It's a sign of market dominance when your
customers hate you and yet use your products anyway. ;-)

~~~
timr
_"MS in 1995 still had many, many years of good work ahead of it. Remember
that they won the browser wars, after everyone had written them off as being
too big and clumsy to adapt to change. That was also when we got Win2k and
WinXP (arguably the best versions of Windows ever) and their Office product
matured into its familiar form."_

Eh. We also got WindowsME in 2000, which was arguably the worst version ever.
And to be fair, Office has been mostly re-arranging the furniture and re-
painting the walls since Office95. And...let's not forget Bob. Bob was
Microsoft's Buzz, circa 1995.

That said, sure, it's not like MS got to their current state on January 1,
1996. And there's no way I'd argue that they (or Google) are going away soon.
My point is only that Google is starting to show signs of lumbering corporate
giant-hood, and that it has happened pretty quickly, in comparison to MS.

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robryan
You'd have to think they would be better off giving up on owning the mobile
platform, given that they are up against Android and iOS/iPhone I don't think
they could possibly come up with something compelling enough to get mobile
companies to pay for a license over the free Android OS which iterate much
faster.

Possibly they could form a partnership with the aim of bringing other products
to a platform. They could support Android, build it into there development
tools and release mobile versions of their software there, integrate with xbox
ect. Would probably be a bigger opportunity than the dead end that is windows
mobile.

I think there would be a lot of businesses at Microsoft that could be cut in
order to regain some focus. Although the same could be said about Google and
they seem to be doing pretty well at the moment.

~~~
rbanffy
> they would be better off giving up on owning the mobile platform

They can't afford that. Their strength comes from the lack of viable options -
each of their product lines reinforces the dependency on other product lines.
If you use Exchange, you probably won't be able to use anything other than
Outlook, which runs on Windows and is part of Office, which makes using
Sharepoint more or less painless, which runs only on top of Windows servers
and requires Microsoft's database...

Their value proposition is based on dependency loops. Break the loops and the
value disappears (or becomes negative).

~~~
MartinCron
I agree with everything but your comment about Sharepoint. Nothing can ever
make that painless.

~~~
rbanffy
After being responsible for a large SharePoint deployment at her company, my
wife agrees with you.

But both of you have to admit that using SharePoint through Office sucks less.

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Tichy
It's all a symptom of too much money and too many resources, I think. Focus
get's completely lost.

Isn't there a way to run a big company? Is anything known on how Apple does
it? How big are their development teams, even?

Would it make sense to manage internal teams a bit like startups, that is they
would have to succeed on their own and pitch for investments?

~~~
city41
According to Wikipedia, Apple has 34k employees. Microsoft has over 100k.
Maybe at that scale, 34k and 100k aren't very different, or maybe that's like
night and day.

~~~
Tichy
34K still seems a lot, but how many are really involved in developing the core
products? A lot of them would probably be sales people etc?

Maybe MS would do better with 34K than 100K people...

~~~
jorgeortiz85
Yeah, Apple probably has a lot of retail employees for their Apple Stores.

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ryanjmo
It looks like pg was right 3 years ago:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html>

~~~
watmough
Yeah, Microsoft was relevant to me when the launched Access in about '96 or
so. Then there was a brief spell of relevance with .NET and all the cool stuff
attached to that.

Since then, Linux or OS X have become the OS' of choice for many techies, and
open software has eaten the lunch of MS when it comes to internet development.

MS are on life support (though in a quite comfortable state!) kept alive by a
HUGE installed and locked-in base. There are flickers of life in Office and
Windows 7, but they may be fighting a losing battle in future markets, likely
to be more cost sensitive than the high productivity and high-priced US.

~~~
lenni
I think they will go the way of IBM: Relevant and profitable but not the all-
encompassing mega-monopolist.

~~~
rbanffy
Microsoft has to mature a lot to become an IBM.

Check what IBM's basic research did and compare it with what Microsoft
Research outputs.

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todayiamme
I don't think that even if Microsoft layed off 60% of its staff it would
become competitive as Apple or Google. The more I read into their problems the
more I think that this is not a management issue. No they have rigid
management controls to ensure that stuff doesn't go wrong like the other
giants, but due to the lack of a vision.

If you ask an Apple, Google, old HP, or any employee of an innovative company
they will be able to tell you what their company is about. They will be able
to define what they are contributing towards at in work. They know what their
company's mission is and what that company stands for in respect to their
product line and their positioning in the market. This has stopped happening
in Microsoft.

An interesting question is whether _all_ failing companies have similar blind
spots of vision.

As someone once put it; management is knowing how to cut down trees
efficiently, vision is about knowing if you're in the right jungle in the
first place.

~~~
nostrademons
I think a lot of Microsoft's problem is that they succeeded in their mission
statement. "A computer on every desk, all running Microsoft software" was
incredible hubris in 1974. It's reality now. What can Microsoft do to top
that?

It makes me wonder about what the world will look like in 15 years. Google's
mission statement is "Organize the world's information, and make it
universally accessible and useful." Right now, I'd tend to think that Google
is safe from many of Microsoft's woes, because I couldn't imagine how they
could possibly _finish_ their mission statement. But I would've thought the
same thing about Microsoft in the 1970s.

~~~
todayiamme
I agree with what you say, but a part of having a vision also means looking
beyond your own accomplishments. I have noticed something in how I think/do
things everything feeds to the next thing. Unrelated things become connected
somehow and just continue some undefinable chain. 'What's next?' is really the
question they can't seem to answer.

Maybe, the problem over here is that the dreamers have stopped dreaming and
they're now concentrating on spreadsheets?

Look at Elon Musk after he exited PayPal he could have coasted in that
paradigm. Done incrementally better things, or just continued looking after
it. He didn't do that. Instead, he asked himself what's next for me, and put
his money where his mind was. In a lot of ways to me that defines a vision.

Or, we could take the perennial example, Steve Jobs, Apple could have coasted
after the iPod, or the iPhone but they somehow keep on pushing on and they've
started creating an ecosystem where all the other products feed into one
another. It is true that his dictatorial style helps him, but someone had to
_see_ this possibility to work towards it, and that's where the challenge lies
in my opinion.

~~~
whatusername
Or the key dreamer decided that "what's next" was to cure the world of
malaria.

------
known
Splitting Microsoft into 3 companies would have helped.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Penfield_Jackson>

~~~
rbanffy
In retrospect, not splitting it will prove to make it fail faster.

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tmsh
Can you think of a project, a product or a company that succeeded with a
somewhat negative-sounding name (even if meant somewhat ironically or as sort
of a renegade mentality)? I'm drawing a blank.... It's odd that I can't think
of a single one though. Even among game studios, etc.

~~~
astrange
What do you mean "a somewhat negative-sounding name"? Products succeed with
embarrassing names like "Wii" all the time.

~~~
tmsh
I mean like Evil. Or Gloom. Or Danger. Embarrassing is a much wider set.
Anyway, just curious...

~~~
Tichy
Doom

~~~
tmsh
Ah nice, that's what I was looking for.

~~~
tmsh
I can't seem to reply to the comment below me in response. But basically re:

 _Danger, one of the sample words you mentioned, is the name of a company that
Microsoft bought._

That's why I asked the question. My thought is that there is a psychological
excuse to have low expectations for a project, product, or company if it has
negative connotations (and not 'making fun of' or 'humorous' connotations).

I've seen projects fail with clever negative titles (mostly via acronyms). Not
because the developers were bad -- but because, I think, it might give the
management or business side an excuse to look for failure. Or it may create
other headaches psychologically for the people involved.

That's the only reason I asked the question. I admire people who take those
risks. But it may be worth thinking it through. Or maybe not..

------
aresant
Yes, MSFT lacks focus but they are virtually forced to compete across dozens
of fronts hoping that someday all the nodes add up to the former glorious
whole.

