

Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way - jeffwidman
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/31/microsofts-office-why-insiders-think-top-management-has-lost-its-way/

======
ibdknox
As a recently departed (read 5 months) ex-PM at Microsoft, I think MS's
problems, at least in my division, stem from three things: a lack of
vision/leadership, too inward of a focus, and the ridiculous bevy of
meaningless communication. I think the article touches on each of these in a
certain way, but not exactly in the same way I mean them.

One thing I noticed about the middle management at MS was that they never
defined a direction. No one ever set out a vision. The result of this was that
each little section of a product would decide what the best possible direction
for the product would be and build features to that vision. The summation of
this effort is a frankenstein product with a user experience that is equally
as scary. No one worked together unless they were forced to and even when they
did, they never really worked toward a common goal. Based on my experience, I
believe that a single charasmatic, intelligent, and visionary person could
have easily turned our division around. All it would take is strong leadership
and a crystal clear vision. We had neither.

The article makes a point of MS being focused too much on itself, and I
wholeheartedly agree. One of the things I was praised for was knowing what the
rest of the tech world was doing (I worked on VS). What astounded me was how
little others knew about non-MS technologies. We were beaten to the punch by
other products nearly every time because we only ever focused inward and not
on what the world itself was doing. Moreover, when people did look out the
window they focused on the wrong things and instead of trying to innovate saw
it as a need to start chasing tail lights.

Lastly, I got several hundred emails a day as a PM. Despite that deluge of
written communication, I felt that no one was really ever saying anything of
value. Sadly, most people aren't great communicators and the result of a
culture that promotes a ton of communication is a torrent of useless
discussions that take away from what really matters. It seemed to me that most
managers were there solely to deal with the fact that no one was working
together or communicating properly. I would argue that at least 1/3 of a
person's workload at MS is the direct result of this inability to communicate
and it absolutely destroyed many of the efforts I would've liked to have seen
succeed.

I don't believe replacing Ballmer is some magic bullet. I think the company
needs to be 1/10 of the size to reduce communication and to get people working
together. I think it needs someone with a vision for the way things should be
that isn't based on what's already out there. And I think Microsoft has a
chance if it could only take a step back and see that it's no longer an
innovative company, but instead a peddler of last year's model.

~~~
kenjackson
_The article makes a point of MS being focused too much on itself, and I
wholeheartedly agree. One of the things I was praised for was knowing what the
rest of the tech world was doing (I worked on VS)._

I have to admit that I find this odd for a few reasons:

1) VS is one of the best products MS ships. And its probably best in industry.

2) VS has done a fair bit of really good work in the past few years. The work
in C# has definitely been ahead of its peers in the industry. The debugger
continuously seems to get better. And even where it plays catch up, like
ASP.NET MVC, its doing so rapid and smartly.

3) VS is where it seems like there are a lot of people who look outside the
company. I've never met Scott Hanselman, but he seems like the type of person
who could rattle off every open source project in existence.

4) Scott Guthrie seems pretty visionary and he's in VS isn't he?

I'm not doubting any of what you said, but it seems like VS is the one place
in MS that I'd tell the rest of the company to look for inspiration --
although as an insider it appears otherwise.

~~~
ibdknox
1) I agree. It's probably one of the best IDE's out there and C# is
undoubtedly a fantastic language.

2) In what ways is C# ahead of its peers in the industry? I think Async is a
great step forward, but it's been in other languages for a while now.

3) He could and he has no impact on VS whatsoever. Scott is essentially a
community PM. He talks for a living about stuff. He's a great guy and he's
done some good on the web side, but he has no influence on the core of VS.

4) He's actually on the platform, not VS, though he does take a lot of
interest in the core component itself. I like ScottGu a lot, I've worked with
him a couple of times, but he's driving something very specific (.NET
framework and its components).

MS is quite good at building platforms and not nearly as good at building
interfaces. A big part of what I did before I left was prove that most people
don't understand how to use VS. Moreover, there's a lot you don't see - all of
the failed attempts to do things even more amazing than async. While VS itself
seems like a model citizen, I would argue that's because it started out as the
conglomeration of fairly strong original products and hasn't needed to move
too far from where it started to be "best in industry."

~~~
kenjackson
I think in general we agree -- you just have an insider perspective so you can
see some of the strings that I can't.

The only big contention is "In what ways is C# ahead of its peers in the
industry?" This comes down to a language war where there is no winner, but the
way C# has put together great feature sets around key scenarios. Generics done
right, much improved co/contravariance, nice lambdas, dynamic support which is
actually pretty useful, extension methods, and of course async. While async
exists in some languages, it doesn't exist in what I'd consider peers (other
popular languages) from Common Lisp, Python, Ruby, Java, C/C++, and
Javascript. And frankly, I think this probably isn't all that important -- and
more religious than anything else.

But I am curious about one thing you said, _A big part of what I did before I
left was prove that most people don't understand how to use VS. Moreover,
there's a lot you don't see - all of the failed attempts to do things even
more amazing than async._

Could you expand?

~~~
mattmanser
There's a big difference between the c# language team and visual studio. The
c# language has left java for dust, they are doing a bloody brilliant job but
on the other hand were essentially playing catch up with python and ruby until
4.0. The dynamic CLR stuff has really changed the game.

VS, on the otherhand, has stagnated, between 2005 and 2010, apart from
integration with the new hotnesses like Silverlight, MVC and LINQ, I can't
really point out any improvements. While I must admit I love MVC over ASP.Net
(keer-spit), even now you feel the meddlers interfering and making it do
unnecessary magic.

Its javascript integration is still shockingly bad. It doesn't even highlight
brackets or braces and the auto-indenting is erratic. Javascript is so key to
web programming these days and yet for the first time I find myself juggling
VS with Notepad++ because that free open-source program is actually a lot
better.

~~~
altano
"Its javascript integration is still shockingly bad."

Sooooo very shockingly bad. =(

------
slackerIII
The fundamental problem at Microsoft is that building your career is a better
(more lucrative) use of your time than building your product. You can be
successful there without ever making a successful product. Microsoft acquired
my startup and I spent 2 years there wondering what the hell was going on
until I came to that realization.

~~~
Lazlo_Nibble
Yup. You get the behavior you incent, and my impression is that the incentives
to play politics at Microsoft are far more pervasive nowadays than the
incentives to build good product. In fact, one of the biggest incentives to
build good product seems to be the additional leverage it gives you
politically...

------
ozziegooen
Some good quotes from the comments:

"I personally know two women got promoted to be managers, not because of their
performance, but because they each is a higher manager's mistress. In short,
Microsoft's is a fear-based culture. How could Microsoft not fall rapidly?"

"I'd attend a meeting where we needed 3 or 4 relevant people to discuss
something but 30 or more would show up, to represent their group's interests,
even if they had no real idea of what was going on. It was nearly impossible
to reach any consensus, all decisions ultimately got made by whatever
interested PM had the most clout - often not the PM with the most expertise or
relevance"

" I recall the sole-sucking Business Process Reviews we'd go through. The
culmination would be a Bill/Steve meeting. It was the 30 people developing 98
slide powerpoints with 2 point font (again, no exaggeration). It was game over
for me once I sat through that."

------
simonw
"""

Yet Ballmer & Co. remain in denial, they say, because the great gushers of
cash Windows and Office generate means they don't feel the urgency they
otherwise would –shielded from the pain of its many disappointments by two of
the more successful franchises in the history of business. """

That reminds me of an article about Pixar (which I can't find now) which
talked about how the management team are especially careful to seek out
problems when the company is being successful. If stuff is going well, it's
easy to gloss over problems with morale, teamwork etc.

~~~
alexqgb
I believe Ed Catmull refers to this as 'keeping your crises small.' That is to
say, it's much better to actively surface problems before they leave the shop
than it is to ship with issues, and try to deal with implosions after the fact
(ahem, Vista).

Here he is, giving a really good talk at Stanford Business School, in which he
covers this (among other good ideas). About an hour, but worth much more.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc>

Interestingly, an ethos like this suggests that the fate of Microsoft is NOT
inevitable. It's only becomes that way when you no longer care about shipping
garbage. Exhibit B: Detroit in the 70's and 80's.

------
ajays
To quote Steve Jobs: "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no
taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I
mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas,
and they don't bring much culture into their products. "

This is so true. With other leading companies, you'll often see a product and
it'll be so well designed and everything will be so thought out, that it'll
bring an instant smile to your face. With Microsoft's products, on the other
hand, you're often frowning the minute you open them.

Just today, I fired up Entourage (MS Outlook for Mac) over a really flaky
connection; and the first thing it does is update the Bulk Mail folder.
Really, Microsoft? Would that be my first priority when I open an email
client, to see what new junk mail has arrived? Then it proceeded to update
other sundry folders, and near the end it did it update the Inbox (which is
what I was waiting for).

~~~
goldmab
Making usable software is extremely difficult, and I don't think Microsoft has
been much worse at it than any of the other big companies. They have both
well-designed products and poorly-designed products.

It's such a huge company with so many different development teams of varying
quality that it's silly to attribute the behavior of Entourage to all of
Microsoft, as in, "Really, Microsoft?"

~~~
ajays
This is just but one example. I could give dozens more.

The reality is: using MSFT products _often_ leave one frustrated and
exasperated. These little paper cuts add up.

------
kkshin
One of Microsoft's biggest problems that contributes to their insular view is
that they are located in Redmond. They're insulated from the rest of the
highly competitive technology field (except for Amazon). This works out great
for them when it comes to retaining talent in Redmond as employees are usually
not willing to uproot their lifestyle to head to 'greener pastures'.

Contrast this to how Google handles compensation and employee retention.
Granted, Google is a much smaller organization and can afford to be more
nimble, but part of it has to do with with the fact that being in the valley
means that its incredibly easy for talented, motivated engineers to move to
the next hot startup once they're dissatisfied with their current job.

In Redmond, however, these options don't really exist and creates a culture of
stagnation. People goto their jobs because they have and leave as soon as it
is culturally acceptable.

I fear a lot of Microsoft's future as I just don't believe that they are able
to recruit top young talent anymore. Not only is Microsoft not a "hip" place
to work anymore, but their compensation is generally below market. Its pretty
standard for funded startups to give more BASE salary than Microsoft. Google's
base is roughly 50% more than what Microsoft pays. New hires at Google make
more money than level 64 Microsoft engineers (5 levels from starting).

Microsoft will continue to execute and create good products, but until their
internal culture drastically changes they will slowly slide into irrelevance.

~~~
MartinCron
I'm not going to claim that Microsoft isn't too insular (it is) and I live and
work in Seattle on purpose, so I'm a little biased about this, but I don't
think it's just about the location. Besides Amazon being a huge presence, more
and more established tech companies are opening development offices here
(Google, Facebook, Zynga) just to take advantage of the talent that's here.
Not to mention the fairly healthy startup culture that feeds from and back
into the beast in Redmond.

Leadership, culture, and politics are all much bigger problems than geography.

~~~
potatolicious
I agree leadership, culture, and politics are bigger problems than geography,
but it's still an issue.

Sniping younger people from MSFT is sometimes trivially easy because of its
remote location in Redmond - surrounded almost exclusively by nice, quiet
suburbs. I know a lot of MSFTies braving the commute across the lake daily
(1-1.5h each way!), but people get tired of it _fast_ , and by and large the
young want to live on the west side, in the city proper, not out in the
'burbs.

There's a reason why Google is now in Fremont, Facebook is downtown by the
Market... I know personally (and some others who feel the same way) that
there's not a chance I'll take a commute over the lake every day, and likewise
no chance I'll _live_ on the east side.

~~~
MartinCron
I totally agree with the East-side West-side thing. I commuted across Lake
Washington once and I'm never going to do it again. In fact, I turned down
what seemed like a promising position at a cool startup because they were
threatening a move from Fremont(!) to Bellevue(!?).

Of course, two years later, they're still in Fremont.

Microsoft has done some good work with their connector shuttles. I could
actually take a little shuttle van from my neighborhood straight to Redmond if
I worked out there, and spend the commute time playing Tiny Wings on my iPad
instead of driving.

------
marshray
What I found most interesting about that article was how, unlike most articles
on CNN, the comments were dominated by people saying approximately "Yes I
actually worked there from xx to yy and I fully agree with the substance of
this article."

------
d4nt
I've often thought that Microsoft would have done much better if the justice
dept had broken it up. Being everything to everyone just doesn't work as a
business strategy. But separate Windows/XBox and Office/enterprise apps
companies could focus on their respective markets.

------
mw63214
I still don't get how all these articles frame the debate as Microsoft playing
catch-up with all the "innovation" coming out of Apple? I get the management
culture and internal struggles and "analysis paralysis" that comes with the
cover-your-butt mentality, but as far as I can tell, Microsoft is one of the
very few companies that has entire departments dedicated bringing cutting-edge
technologies to market. The only other companies that comes close(that I've
seen) are Google and perhaps Philips. Talk to researches at elite technology
schools, and I would venture to guess that they would put Microsoft far ahead
of Apple, and maybe Google, in the innovation race. However, if you talk
management or P/E people, they would probably give you a different answer. So
I guess I'm in agreement that there's an internal problem at Microsoft, but
that it lies with the culture, not the actual scope of their ability to
innovate.

~~~
danilocampos
> Microsoft is one of the very few companies that has entire departments
> dedicated bringing cutting-edge technologies to market.

So where are these technologies? And why isn't Microsoft hauling huge sacks of
money home each year from multiple products that didn't exist in the 90's? As
far as I can tell, they make money from vendor lock-in with Office and
Windows, and a gaming division founded by a visionary who left because he
couldn't stand working there anymore.

~~~
schwabacher
Kinect is pretty impressive, and I think WP7 is innovative in its ability to
display content on a small screen in a natural way.

I don't know if I agree that they are ahead of Google and Apple, but they have
come up with a few cool things.

~~~
danilocampos
Kinect is awesome, but as I said here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2420579>

 _They bought Kinect from another company – the hard work of getting approvals
and resources and everything else to start on it had already been done outside
of Microsoft.

It's definitely an impressive bit of tech, but would it have been possible
were its genesis subject to the byzantine internal politics of Microsoft? I
dunno. I wouldn't put money on it._

As to WP7, it's actually more of an indictment of Microsoft than it is a
credit to them. Consider how much of a clusterfuck their mobile strategy has
been for the last four years. It took them forever to get their bureaucratic
shit together and actually ship something that resembled a next generation
smartphone, and once they did, they did a piss-poor job supporting and
improving the platform, despite the very high standard set by both Google and
Apple for the same. It's a perfect example of their inability to execute or
respond to changes in their industry.

------
bad_user

        A survey of more than 1,000 Microsoft employees 
        conducted in October by Glassdor.com showed that 
        only 51% of them approved of Ballmer's performance 
        as CEO.
    

I'm familiar with these types of corporate surveys -- the questions are more
likely phrased with bias, like "Do you agree that Ballmer is a good CEO?"
(careful, he's watching your answers).

And then they do an all hands in which results are discussed with team-level
granularity to keep anonymity, but if the team has 5 people, out of which
you're most likely to speak your mind (and everybody knows it), then everybody
knows it was you who criticized the CEO.

I've seen such a survey end up with 80% in favor of everything, even though
the people were actually discontented with the way the company was being
managed -- 51% is pretty bad ;-)

~~~
GoodIntentions
My former employer did these types of surveys a couple times in the last few
years I was there. Supposedly 100% anonymous but the survey link mailed to
each employee had a hashed (unique) query string. People not taking part in
the survey got follow up notices till they complied.

No one believed any of it was anonymous. The results were worthless, but
quoted regularly. It was that type of place.

------
dsuriano
"Windows Everywhere" is a bad strategy for Microsoft. I still don't think
_Windows Phone 7_ was a good name. Why didn't they just go with _Microsoft
Phone_ or something?

~~~
rbanffy
I believe that kind of misperception happens when you ask your employees the
important questions rather than asking your competition's customers.

~~~
me_again
I have to disagree. You think Apple polled Windows Mobile users what to call
the iPhone?

~~~
rbanffy
No, but Apple has Steve Jobs. Microsoft has Ballmer.

There is a difference. ;-)

~~~
kenjackson
But the name of the iPod originally came from a freelance marketing guy, not
Jobs himself. After the success of the iPod, the iPhone name was pretty easy.
With that said they could have called it the Apple Phone and probably not lost
a sale.

~~~
stevenj
"Good artists copy, great artists steal."

-Picasso

Jobs is an artist. Ballmer isn't.

------
ozziegooen
It seems like most of Microsoft wants Steve Ballmer to make a major change to
Microsoft. I'd really like to see him follow the "New Detroit" idea and
announce a major re-thinking of the company. But, I'm sure he won't. They'll
complain, his approval ratings will get worse, Microsoft will decline, and he
will stay in denial. Peter Drucker is rolling in his grave.

~~~
anamax
> I'd really like to see him follow the "New Detroit" idea and announce a
> major re-thinking of the company.

How about we wait until "new Detroit" actually succeeds before using it as a
model?

Folks are constantly doing "major re-thinking" of various things and most of
the ones that get implemented turn out to be disasters, especially the urban
ones. ("The projects" were one such "re-think".)

------
VladRussian
everybody/everything is subject to natural lifecycle. At 35 one is completely
different from the one at 15. The complex living system like a large company
is subject to it as well. You go through life, you change, you age [the undead
of course are exception from the rule, like vampires or IBM]

~~~
Luyt
+1 for the mention of the undead. COBOL is the undead. It refuses to die,
billions of lines of COBOL still run today and will still run 50 years from
now, probably much longer. In my nightmares I see an Undead Arcane Mage
cranking out PROCEDURE DIVISIONS for centuries to come.

------
DanielBMarkham
This is the natural end-game of being a hugely successful company: you box
yourself in. You make so many rules about what can happen and how it all has
to work that nothing can escape.

They have to break up. I just don't see any other way around it. Each little
new idea that might help somebody competes with dozens of special interests
all looking out for some little fiefdom or concern that may or may not be
important -- nobody knows. The place becomes a huge echo chamber where
outsiders can't be heard except through marketing studies and sales staff
reporting through the chain of command.

I wish this situation was unique to Microsoft, but it is not. Any large shop
that makes software ends up creating their own prison.

The open question is whether Google and Facebook will also end up in this same
spot.

~~~
kenjackson
_The open question is whether Google and Facebook will also end up in this
same spot._

As you said, everyone will end up here. There's virtually no way a rational
company can avoid it. It's textbook Innovator's Dilemma. Eventually you're
faced with a situation that there is a new product/service that is
cannibalizing your product. You can hasten the cannibalization of your cash
cow and maybe succeed in this new space (or maybe not), or you can milk you
cash cow for all its worth. If you do the math its almost always better to
_NOT_ hasten your own demise for an uncertain future.

But even if you were to break them up, there's really no good way to break
them up that really helps all that much. Windows and Office? Nothing else can
really exist on its own. Now you have two big monsters that have the same
problems, but spread out in two companies.

I think you have to let nature take its course. Which probably means some
breakout technology that lets them continue their cash cow while providing new
scenarios. If Windows 8 can actually merge the desktop, tablet, and phone in a
way never even envisioned, that would be a shot. But it's such a long shot I
wouldn't hold out much hope.

~~~
justanotheratom
But Apple in contrast has turned out to be surprisingly nimble and my
impression is that their employees are quite happy.

~~~
lukev
I imagine Apple as an absolute monarchy, with Jobs handing down dictates from
on high. If I imagine decisions at MS, I imagine a committee process.

I think the results the companies are having bear out those impressions.

~~~
stretchwithme
Its interesting to me that one of the most successful absolute monarchies,
Great Britain, in the end became ruled by committee.

And eventually lost its empire, with the next great power ruled a committee
constrained by a constitution. And that constitution eroding away has led to
the committee pretty much pissing it away.

So, yeah, committees are not good. A system governed by sensible rules that
rewards smart action, punishes bad actors and forgives errors is better.

~~~
archangel_one
True, but there is no evidence that such a system can remain for any
significant length of time (or in most cases even come about in the first
place) in practice. If you look at any country of significant size they mostly
appear to be ruled by a committee or an absolute dictator. The committees
could be said to generally be doing a bad job but nowhere near as bad as the
worst cases of the dictators, but nobody has this ideal system governed by
sensible rules - possibly because when you get enough human beings together in
the first place they can't agree on what any sensible rules would be.

~~~
cabalamat
An absolute ruler who is competent can get a lot done. An absolute ruler who
is incompetent or bad for his people, OTOH, is hard to remove.

~~~
stretchwithme
I think those absolute rulers whose territories are small and whose
populations can easily leave probably make more sound decisions. Singapore
seems well run, for example. The people can remove a ruler by removing
themselves.

------
Osiris
Google has apparently taken this lesson to heart. With Page taking over, it
looks like his goal is to allow each group to act more independently, like
startups, and to reduce the management structure so teams have more
flexibility to do what they want to be successful.

------
metageek
> _its people knew the competition so intimately that the best product
> managers could rattle off the birthdays of the CEO's kids._

That's not competitive research, that's stalking.

------
ascendant
Microsoft lost its way once Gates left. He was the visionary that started the
company, and Ballmer was just a businessman. They need a visionary to lead,
and from what I've read they need to do away with the internal turf wars. I
know I've read a lot of blog posts from insiders saying that great ideas get
smothered by other divisions all the time when they feel "threatened" by them.

