
Amazon, Google employees bullish; 25% of Microsofties say things will get worse - scholia
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/survey-amazon-google-employees-bullish-future-25-microsofties-worse/
======
zalzane
I'd be absolutely mortified if I was a Microsoft employee.

Microsoft's monopoly on desktop PCs may become worthless in the near future as
the average consumer realizes they can do everything on a tablet and not have
to bother with "slow and hard to use" PC.

Office/word are becoming more easily replaceable with the advent of google
docs and many free/cheaper alternatives.

If their main revenue streams decline, they would have to enter a new market.
Oh wait, the last time Microsoft broke into a new industry successfully was
with the Xbox over 10 years ago. Ironically, Xbox is one of the few Microsoft
products that I think have a long and healthy life ahead of it, but I don't
think it will be enough to support much if everything else comes crashing
down.

I hope someone corrects me on this because there's nothing more horrifying for
me than the possibility of someone like Oracle buying up Microsoft IP/patents
if they go belly up.

~~~
kvb
People have been predicting Microsoft's decline for years, but they just
posted record revenues last quarter. They have a much more diverse set of
profitable businesses than Apple, Amazon, or Google do - Office, Windows, SQL
Server, Xbox, Visual Studio, SharePoint, Dynamics XRM, ... They have over a
dozen different businesses bringing in more than $1B of revenue a year.

That's not to say that everything's rosy, of course, but people have lost
perspective on what an impressive money-making machine Microsoft really is.

~~~
nostrademons
Almost all of those are in industries that are actively being disrupted by new
innovations: Office => Google Docs; SQL Server => MySQL, PostGresQL, NoSQL;
Visual Studio => Eclipse, SharePoint => The Google suite of tools, etc.

If you read The Innovator's Dilemma, one of the hallmarks of disrupted
businesses is that everything's fine until they go out of business. They keep
moving up-market, into market segments with higher revenues and higher
margins, until they're a mainstay of all giant enterprises. And then those
enterprises realize that there's a competitor out there whose product wasn't
suitable a couple years ago, but has just barely been able to do the job they
need it to do, and switch en-masse. And then the big company, having run out
of market segments to expand into, dies rapidly. Happened to IBM in the early
90s, Sun in the early 2000s...and Microsoft is next.

~~~
daeken
> And then the big company, having run out of market segments to expand into,
> dies rapidly. Happened to IBM in the early 90s [...]

Um. IBM has a $230B market cap. Apple is at $400B, Google is at $300B. Is that
really the example you want to give for a "disrupted" dead company?

~~~
nostrademons
Read "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance", Lou Gerstner's firsthand account of
IBM's historic turnaround. IBM was 3 months away from running out of cash when
he got there in 1993. It survived largely because he bet the company on a
pivot _out of tech entirely_ (the IBM of today is a professional services
company) and into a new market where they're not subject to the same
Innovator's Dilemma forces.

The same thing could happen at Microsoft, but it's unlikely with Ballmer (or
any insider) still at the helm.

------
michaelpinto
People forget this but Microsoft is at their best when they're the underdog —
just look at Lotus Notes, Word Perfect, Netscape, Apple in the 90s and OS2. If
they had the right leadership and if they refocused they would be killing it.

~~~
hkmurakami
I wonder why you were downvoted for this comment. The world might not be a
better place if MSFT "wins" again in past fashion, but your observations
aren't exactly wrong.

~~~
scholia
Plenty of people hate Microsoft so don't expect rationality....

------
tlogan
Actually, I do see more upside potential for MSFT than for Amazon or Google.
Google seems to be already on its peak - same for Amazon (I don't think they
will go down just peaked).

Here is my reasoning:

\- Windows Phone: not really because they are great but retardness of Android
phone manufacturers (especially Samsung) gives them an excellent chance to
gain a significant market share

\- XBox + Skype: they might become the central entertainment and communication
system in nearly every living room in the world

\- Yammer, SkyDrive, Skype, Web Office and other cloud solutions for
enterprises: Definitely something companies are going to try.

As somebody else said, Microsoft is the best when they are underdog so I do
understand why Larry is so concerned about Microsoft.

~~~
city41
As an aside, why do you feel Windows phones are not "great"? Full disclosure I
used to work for MS, but I have no product loyalty for any company. My
previous two phones were iPhones, and for the first time ever I finally feel
like I have a great smartphone with my Nokia Lumia (WP8).

I'm stumped why everyone is so down on WP8. Granted, the app store is pretty
grim. If that is the main concern, then fair enough. But I feel like the
phone/OS themselves are stellar.

~~~
RivieraKid
I agree with you and I expected that WP will start eating Android's share,
because until recently, Android's UX sucked. Why were consumers buying
plasticky phones with the slow and unintuitive Android instead of Lumia
phones? Similarly baffling was that Palm Pre completely failed as an iPhone
competitor.

Some of the possible reasons:

* It was a market failure, consumers weren't choosing what was best for them.

* WP came too late.

* Thanks to its flexibility and openess, Android was able to fill various market niches.

~~~
city41
Yeah all of that is true. WP7/WP8 taking so long is probably something they
will never fully recover from. Not to mention the WP7->WP8 nonexistent upgrade
path.

But my curiosity is in the phone and OS itself. People seem to hate on it, and
I don't get where that hate is coming from. Taken at face value, Windows Phone
8 is a really great phone OS.

------
bornhuetter
I'm not surprised Microsoft employees are feeling down. It seems most media
outlets and popular blogs really have it in for Microsoft, and that must get
to you after a while. No matter what they do right or wrong the media hates it
at the outset.

And their management aren't really helping - campaigns like scroogled must
make a lot of employees really squeam.

~~~
iamshs
Just like this story. The story is a rehash of results, without any analysis.
The accompanying picture does not even mention Microsoft. What level were the
employees at? Which division? What is the sample size? These statistics are
never ever that simple as the story makes it out to be.

~~~
bornhuetter
I've done surveys like this before - it's usually just an email that goes
around to all employees and asks them to rate the company, management, peers
etc on various metrics from 1 to 5.

The picture in the article shows the top 10 most happy, which is why Microsoft
is not listed.

But this is a pretty lazy, low value article.

~~~
iamshs
I cannot even find the original survey. Is it available online?

~~~
bornhuetter
This is the original article:

[http://www.glassdoor.co.uk/blog/top-10-companies-business-
ou...](http://www.glassdoor.co.uk/blog/top-10-companies-business-outlook/)

------
nostrademons
I want to highlight a statistical quirk that biases the results of this poll:

 _Whenever you have a self-selecting population, approval ratings are measures
of the liquidity of the population, not of how good a job the organization is
doing._

If you're a Googler and you hate your job, you don't stay a Googler for very
long. There are umpteen zillion companies that would love to hire you, or VCs
willing to fund you if you choose to do your own thing. There are a number of
such ex-Googlers on Hacker News. Google software is somewhat proprietary, but
the core languages, skillsets, and architectures are common to a lot of firms
who would just love to pick up accumulated ex-Google knowledge.

If you're a Microsoftie and you hate your job, there's a good chance that your
skills are more specialized, or you've "drunk the Kool Aid" and can't imagine
a life outside Microsoft. If you think things suck...well, you might not have
any other options. Or you might not _think_ you have options, having
accumulated so much company-specific knowledge. And so you stay in a job that
you hate even though you hate it.

It's the same with customers. The reason Facebook, Comcast, TWC, and Congress
have such low approval ratings is because users are pretty much _locked-in_ to
those services: even if they hate them, they can't go elsewhere. Meanwhile,
the reason Google has such a high approval rating is because it's pretty
simple to leave most Google products (and ones that are easier to leave, like
Search and Chrome, tend to rate more highly than ones with a large degree of
lock-in, like Plus and GMail).

If you want to tease out companies that are _actually_ doing things right,
look for ones with both a high approval rating (indicating large liquidity)
and a large & growing population (indicating that despite this liquidity, more
people want to come in than go out).

~~~
scholia
Oddly enough, a lot of Microsoft staff got hired by Google....

------
wslh
I am sure that Steve Ballmer was not interviewed ;-) he is more bullish than
Page and Bezos together.

------
jmstout
This is an interesting metric, often forgotten. Companies are just people.
What better way to gauge future success than by the mood in the room?

------
adamman
Microsofties?

~~~
abhinavg
IIRC, the term used to refer to Microsoft employees is actually Softies.

~~~
teamonkey
That can't be helping their self-esteem either.

~~~
bornhuetter
It's still better than being a "Wanger".

