
PM at Microsoft (2005) - tosh
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techtalk/archive/2005/12/16/504872.aspx
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bunkat
From what I hear, the roles are quickly collapsing at Microsoft. In the
service orgs especially, the role that was previous done by a Test team is now
handled by the Dev team. They are also increasing the ratio between PM and Dev
(less PMs and more Devs) and many PMs are being asked to code in some fashion
(prototypes and tooling). Be interesting to see how long the unique role of PM
remains at Microsoft.

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grouma
I work on Bing at Microsoft. What you have stated is correct. We have already
done away with our test and operation teams. Moreover, a number of PMs were
let go last week. Developers are now expected to wear many more hats. We are
also reducing the number of middle managers in the name of agility. All good
things in my eyes.

Another interesting thing to note is that we are trying to reduce the size of
projects and break apart the notion of "cores" within an org. The idea is to
allow features that span several different areas to be implemented with
greater ease. I like the idea but I am concerned with how these features will
be maintained after they are completed.

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pbh101
My impression is that most all developers have their own office at MS, or at
least share an office with 1-2 other devs (not sure if this is different
inside bing teams or not either)

Has this 'more-hats' change you describe (specifically ops) changed that at
all? Where I work, I hear an argument against offices: that they promote and
encourage isolation in what can be an ops-heavy role at times (I see the
merits but think there are better ways to combat that)

My company is at orders-of-magnitude different size than MS, wondering if
something similar occurs there.

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turtles1
I also work in Bing.

Most people are in offices or in an area with a few people, but (at least for
me) our team is scattered around, so we're not nearby each other at all. It's
not easy to stop by or ask a quick question without going for a short walk.

Personally I like the office arrangement - you can make it silent, control the
temperature, etc. I do wish that teams were grouped more closely together but
that doesn't seem to be a concern for anyone higher up.

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tdicola
This was written almost 10 years ago by someone who was pretty polarizing
inside the company (and ultimately left after spearheading the original vision
for Windows 8), so take it with a grain of salt. Many of the recent MS layoffs
have been in the PM organizations because the company is redefining the role.

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antics
Sinofsky was brought in as President of the Windows division after the failure
of Vista, during which he spearheaded (among other things) Windows 7 and IE8,
both to extraordinarily great praise.

Yes. He was divisive. Yes. He had failures. But really what you should do is
take this for what it is: a successful person talking about success. The real
trap is not that he is divisive or wrong about the future, it's that he almost
certainly suffers survivor's bias.

~~~
randomfool
Windows 7 was a quick iterative release. He did a decent job, but there was
little where things could go wrong. I firmly believe that IE8 was the worst IE
release- no tabbed browsing, horrible accelerators feature and a bogus
'perceived performance' mantra.

Sinofsky's triad model is the epitome of Microsoft beauracracy- I left the
company to escape it (I'd have put money on Sinofsky becoming CEO)

~~~
joe_the_user
Having used Win8 just long enough to blank the machine and install Linux, I
found the beast just horrifying.

I think there was a point where win8 actually cut into MS' sales - and MS has
a pretty tight monopoly on the low-end PC market.

And Win8 is where the things Sinofsky talks about - being aware of how
ordinary users actually get thing done - were palpably tossed out the window.

In the discussion of what lead to Win8, the perceived virtues of the Mac were
monomaniacally pursued. Static design - having an impressive, beautiful look -
was everything. Doing tasks was nothing.

And I think earlier MS for all its other evil, had a pretty good record of
producing good, usable programs (buggy too but they were careful at finding
the features people needed and wanted).

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bcbrown
I never had a great impression of PMs when I was at Microsoft. The enduring
image is, after asking a pointed question or raising an objection, watching
some PM respond with a bunch of meaningless verbiage while nodding their head
as if they're agreeing, when in fact they're disregarding every dissenting
view.

That said, PMs at MS have a very challenging job, at least in the parts of
Windows where I worked. The joke about MS being a bunch of separate orgs at
war with each other was very real, and PMs were the ones who had to cajole,
convince, and sell other teams on why they should spend their time doing
something that would enable the PM's team to do something they wanted to do.
They were the ones who chased people down and got them to agree to do
something necessary.

~~~
kyllo
In other words they play the politics to free up the devs to focus on writing
code. Yep, that's what PMs are for.

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javierluraschi
Focus on getting rid of the politics, right? Otherwise you end up having to
PM-up and hire more PMs to out-PM the other org. Fun times.

~~~
kyllo
Well, you can never get rid of politics, they're like death and taxes. You can
only make the politics more equitable by setting up a system that distributes
power more evenly and resists its concentration in the hands of the greedy.

~~~
javierluraschi
I agree, politics will never disappear completely. In a democracy, we vote, we
elect representatives, etc. But the amount of people in society that dedicate
their lives completely to politics is low. Maybe 1% of the population works in
politics at most? Anything higher than that in a corporation, is probably a
sign of inefficiency.

~~~
kyllo
Agree, many workers having to spend a large portion of their time politicking
is highly inefficient. Someone has to put their head down and do the actual
work at some point.

But at the same time I think understanding politics and power, and having a
little political skill, is important for everyone because it's how you
convince others to help you get things done. People who see office politics as
an inscrutable evil just get frustrated when they can't convince anyone to
listen to their opinions. And they're easier to exploit and manipulate.

Knowing how the political game works is the best way to protect yourself from
those who would play it against you. And if you're too busy doing actual work
to play the game, then you _need_ a good PM who you really trust to play it on
your behalf.

~~~
javierluraschi
Who "exploits and manipulates" developers? If the answer is their dev
manager/lead, good, that's their "job" (being sarcastic here); but yeah, I
expect from my boss to give me some direction when needed.

However, I think you are pointing out that devs get "exploited and
manipulated" by, surprise, other PMs. I really can't think of someone else
that is good at this. So yeah, just remove PMs that are specialized in
"politics".

Now, if you remove "politics" PMs then you could argue that customer support,
cross-team requests, etc. will impact developers. In this case, dev
managers/leads should prioritize those requests and it should be painful to
take away dev time to serve other tasks. If it's painful you will probably
invest time in fixing the customer support issue rather than managing your
customers. If you are spending too much time serving marketing requests, maybe
you just have a bad product that needs improvements before it gets shipped,
etc.

I really don't believe easing politics is the way to go.

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javierluraschi
My personal point of view: The Program Manager role should be replaced by more
specialized roles, or no role at all.

I see PMs having 3 main responsibilities: Project management, user experience
and defining requirements.

The problem with this role is that it's REALLY hard to find PMs who are GREAT
at all these different skills.

I would rather have a project manager role, user experience researcher role,
designer role, business analyst role, etc.

If the project is too small to define each position, then I wouldn't define a
role but rather get people to wear multiple hats. There are devs that are very
capable at project management, designers that are also good frontend devs,
etc. Or bring external help to support the specific needs of your project.

~~~
jackgavigan
I think a problem with splitting the roles up is that you can sometimes end up
with a leadership void, where lots of different people are responsible for
individual pieces but nobody is responsible for the product as a whole.

There are a lot of project managers who can craft a beautiful Gantt chart but
know very little about technology. There are a lot of business analysts who
are very good at going to a user, asking "What are your requirements?" and
then diligently writing down everything the users says and creating a
beautifully-formatted requirements document, but who don't have an in-depth
grasp/understanding of what the user really needs the product to do. That can
bethe difference between a product that meets users' requirements and a
product that delights the user.

I think you need to have a single person who is responsible for ensuring that
the product should delight the user.

~~~
kyllo
I'm sorry, but "delight the user" is the most gag-inducing phrase in the
software industry. Please never use it.

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jackgavigan
What do you propose I use instead?

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kyllo
Works for the users? Solves the users' problems? Impresses the users?

To say that our purpose is to "delight" users just sounds so corny and
diminutive, it makes the software we build seem frivolous.

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cpeterso
Steven Sinofsky's (post-Microsoft) blog is also a good read:

[http://blog.learningbyshipping.com/](http://blog.learningbyshipping.com/)

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shanselman
This is almost 10 years old. The title should include the year.

~~~
dang
Thanks! Added.

