
Satya Nadella just fixed Microsoft’s biggest problem - type0
https://besttech.io/satya-nadella-just-fixed-microsofts-biggest-problem-82e29fe03df2
======
scholia
Bit too much Ballmer bashing. He made plenty of mistakes so he's an easy
target for the ignoranti, but the adoption of open source, the move to the
cloud, the writing of Android and iOS apps etc all started under Ballmer.

Ballmer also cleaned up the anti-trust mess and -- while his hands were
somewhat tied by a dozen years of constant DoJ supervision -- tripled
Microsoft's sales and doubled its profits. This was despite competition from
free Linux and OpenOffice, whose fans used to tell me that Microsoft would be
out of business within five years....

~~~
kabdib
Ballmer's biggest mistake was the review system at Microsoft.

\- Managers spent easily a quarter of their year on reviews

\- Employees often competed against one another (have a great idea? Okay, but
That Guy down the hall found out about it and did a half-assed implementation
and got a great annual review, and you got slammed for not accomplishing
enough. Or maybe your idea simply got sabotaged in some closed-door meetings.
Customers? What are those?)

\- Sorry, we know all the people on your team are good, but you have to fire
five of them. And . . . don't bother picking them, HR already did that without
your input.

In 11 years I went through four changes in how reviews were done, and things
got steadily worse with each iteration. I hear things are better now; it
wouldn't be hard. There was a ton of bad attrition, of really good people who
got fed up with things and quit.

In a Q&A session I asked Lisa Brummel, the then head of HR, what she was doing
about bad attrition, about good employees who were leaving because of the
review system and politics. She wouldn't even admit that the problem existed.

The board should have fired Ballmer five years earlier; on the other hand,
they might have wound up with Kevin Turner running things, OMFG. Microsoft
Kremlinology is a thing.

~~~
caryme
_Sorry, we know all the people on your team are good, but you have to fire
five of them. And . . . don 't bother picking them, HR already did that
without your input._

Ha, this happened to me. I found out I was getting laid off _before_ my boss
and boss' boss did.

------
hacknat
>At Microsoft, those resources are so disconnected from engineering that they
seem to rely on whitepapers and customers to learn about their own products.

This is so true. My company was being courted by Azure folks so we got some
premium access and it was always laughable and frustrating how much more I
knew about their cloud architecture than they did. I remember finally being
able to talk to the head of network engineering, who was able to talk me
through the finer points of how their load balancers worked (we were bumping
up against some limitations). That 5 minute conversation was worth more than
all their white papers (which were incorrect and contradictory at times)
combined. I think I asked her why they didn't publish this information. She
didn't say anything.

~~~
gentleteblor
This isn't all true, is it?

I replied to one of those "Welcome to Azure" emails and mentioned I had some
questions about integrating the Key Vault with a bunch of their other
offerings. Someone from MS reached out to me and setup a meeting with a
developer from one of the (many) Azure team. And this guy knew his shite, and
was very helpful (still have notes from that meeting on my desk, many months
later).

I was a solo developer, with a startup idea, no revenue, no company. And I got
help ASAP. I thought it was awesome.

I'm sure my experience doesn't reflect the whole picture, but i think that's
true all around.

~~~
hacknat
I'm sure that for basic functionality it's true, but we were stretching their
load balancers so I needed some deets on what was going on.

------
codingmyway
I've always said sales (and marketing) was Microsoft's biggest problem. The
are finally starting to be cool again as the engineers take over.

The silo between Windows and development (Azure, .net etc) needs to come down
fully to fix Sinofsky's mess too.

We're still left with a desktop OS UI with huge animated icons designed for a
phone even though they've now given up on the phone market anyway. They gave
up too easily just as Windows phone was starting to overcome that screw up and
become popular with some non techy users as it really is the most user
friendly.

~~~
hitr
Very well said on the Windows phone.I have used three windows phones before
switching to Android and I think the UI for simpler things like dialer
,messages or emails was better on windows phone.Especially email was so good
,it used to work a charm even on 2G.I have used built in clients and other
options on Android and nothing beats the basic email client on windows
phone.May be it was not feature rich for gmail but usability was better .Many
of my colleagues is of the same opinion who switched from windows phone to
Android.All Microsoft had to do was fix the developer ecosystem but looks like
the platform is abandoned. An alternative other than Android or iOS would have
been better

~~~
marcusjt
But those are just apps, not the OS and there are any number of replacement
dialler, messaging and email apps for Android - are you suggesting that NONE
of them are as good as the Windows Phone default apps?

~~~
GrumpyYoungMan
>replacement dialler, messaging and email apps for Android

It's a smartphone; communication is its entire raison d'être. Those things
ought to be awesome right out of the box and, on Android, they're definitely
not.

------
puranjay
Try this: Google "Office 365"

The first result just says "Email". The second result says "Office 365 login"

I'm not an internet dunce, but this is just bad user-experience. Why not have
a modern landing page that tells me a bit about the product, it's price and
what I can expect from it?

Why is the first result a login page?

I've been using Google Docs almost exclusively for work now. I've ditched Word
completely. I was willing to give Office 365 a shot, but the signup process is
so infuriatingly out of date that I don't feel like bothering.

~~~
cptskippy
One of the problems Microsoft has that others don't is brand confusion. They
like to ride on their own coat tails so distinct and unique products that are
completely unrelated are often called the same thing.

What do you call Microsoft's personal email client? Outlook.

What do you call Microsoft's web based personal email service? Outlook.

What do you call Microsoft's enterprise email client? Outlook.

What do you call Microsoft's web based enterprise email client? Outlook.

Google doesn't have this problem because Gmail is Gmail.

~~~
douche
Good lord, the brand confusion.

I work with Microsoft's enterprise instant messaging/unified communications
platform. It used to be called Lync, which, whatever, meh, it's a name. When
Microsoft acquired Skype, they decided to rename the next iteration of Lync,
Skype for Business. Skype and Skype for Business are two completely different
products, running on top of different protocols that just barely inter-
operate. It's absurd how much confusion this rebranding has caused.

~~~
bmm6o
And there's Office Communicator - was that another name for Lync?

------
labrador
Use my bookmarklet to hide that horrible image of Balmer sticking his tongue
out

javascript:(function (){var x = document.getElementsByTagName("img");for (i =
0; i < x.length; i++){x[i].setAttribute("src","");}}());

~~~
throwanem
Here's one you can use to delete arbitrary elements from a page by clicking on
them. It's handy in this age of unfortunate design decisions.

    
    
        javascript:for(var%20i=0;%20i<(document.getElementsByTagName('a')).length;%20i++)%20{(document.getElementsByTagName('a')[i]).style.pointerEvents%20=%20'none';}function%20handler(e)%20{e%20=%20e%20||%20window.event;var%20target%20=%20e.target%20||%20e.srcElement;target.style.display%20=%20'none';document.removeEventListener('click',%20handler,%20false);cursor('default');for(var%20i=0;%20i<(document.getElementsByTagName('a')).length;%20i++)%20{(document.getElementsByTagName('a')[i]).style.pointerEvents%20=%20'initial';}}document.addEventListener('click',%20handler,%20false);cursor('crosshair');function%20cursor(cur)%20{%20document.body.style.cursor%20=%20cur;%20}

~~~
mrob
Or in Firefox, select "Inspect Element" from the right click menu then press
delete.

------
leonroy
There is one damn thing I would _love_ from Microsoft. And that's to get rid
of adverts from their software.

I use Windows 7 and Windows 10 Enterprise. We paid for those licenses. It
boggles my mind that anyone at MS would think sticking ads in the Windows
Weather App or Skype would be a good idea for paid for software.

~~~
delazeur
This is my least favorite thing. I realize that often when you pay for
software you don't truly own it in the legal sense, but I still want to feel
like it's _mine_ and ads don't let me do that. For this reason, even though I
think it's an interesting idea, I am deeply repulsed by Amazon's discounted
"with special offers" Kindles. Somehow, just the fact that those exist erodes
my sense of ownership of my "without special offers" Kindle.

------
drinchev
I was a Windows user for a long time.

5 years ago I switched to OS X, because I think it's closer to the deployment
environment I use as a dev.

However what OS X did ( when they killed the old one - MacOS 9 and rewrote the
whole thing on UNIX based kernel ) was the single greatest move, which I think
pays off even these days.

This is what I hope should happen with Windows. They should decide on POSIX
kernel and completely rewrite most of it. This will put Windows as an option
for me.

~~~
orf
Suggesting a rewrite of something as important as the NT kernel is ignorant at
best.

I think Bash on Windows is a great compromise.

~~~
Gravityloss
Why is the NT kernel so important? It hasn't touched my life much in about
eight years, private or professional. Nokia thought Symbian was very important
too.

~~~
gnoway
Unless you're OK with breaking compatibility with all existing Windows apps -
most of which you have no control over - rewriting the kernel as a POSIX thing
is going to look a lot like 'bash on windows' in reverse. You'd have to have
some kind of shim layer to translate all the old system calls, so most
everyone's existing software is going to be slower and there will be bugs,
etc. Including your own, since Windows is a kernel, a ton of drivers, a
userland (including basic runtimes), a windowing system, a basic set of
productivity tools and games, etc.

I think this would be a total disaster that killed Windows, personally.

~~~
pdkl95
> 'bash on windows' in reverse

That would be "wine", which has worked surprisingly well several years.

~~~
overgryphon
Wine is fine for getting around an expected limitation, but would you run your
workloads on wine in a production datacenter? It would be a disaster.

~~~
Gravityloss
I wonder what companies really have designed new backends for windows for
years anymore? Technically you could run many generic things there (databases
or JVM), but what would you actually _gain_? Likely if you have to use
windows, you're left in some legacy niche, looking backwards and not into the
future.

------
known
Writing software(GNU) != Selling software(Microsoft/Oracle) != Selling
support(RedHat) != Selling solutions(IBM) != Selling gadgets(Apple) != Selling
advertisements(Google/Facebook/Twitter) != Selling consulting(Accenture) !=
Body shopping(TCS/Infosys/Wipro/HCL/Cognizant)

------
justinclift
> He drove smart acquisitions ...

And the author has "LinkedIn" listed?!?!?!?!

Does _anyone_ \- aside from some MS staff and the article author - think
LinkedIn was a smart buy for MS?

Everyone I know is welcoming the likely fade out of LinkedIn in not-many-
years.

~~~
mrpippy
Not to mention, the acquisition was _announced_ a month ago. It's not even
close to being approved yet by LNKD shareholders or closing. No case could be
made that it was smart, since...it hasn't happened yet.

------
timwaagh
I'm reading this from my linux laptop running firefox. my colleagues use macs.
I don't think microsoft is gaining anything. nothing against the guy but
perhaps its too little too late.

~~~
zaphar
Microsoft has shifted focus from the laptop to the cloud. And they are most
definitely gaining there. You're just measuring the wrong thing.

~~~
aabbccdd
Microsoft has no product for private cloud. You're sure about the measure?

~~~
UK-AL
Microsoft have tons of tools for private cloud? Including the upcoming ability
deploy the azure platform to your own machines.

~~~
aabbccdd
Tons of tools? Dare to mention any? Upcoming ability - any official
announcements?

~~~
aabbccdd
These tons of tools yet to be released in September 2016 :)

~~~
UK-AL
One major one is not yet available. There's still Hyper-V+ System Center, +
Azure Pack which makes running your own private cloud relatively easy.

------
B1FF_PSUVM
Maybe, but I'm worried they've given up on consumer devices, and decided to
stick to the enterprise cash cow, in the Oracle-lesser-evil model.

Entirely egotistical of me, I came from an iPhone to a Lumia and I'm not too
enthusiastic about going back (although I also use iPads, and like them). I
find Android a bit of a swamp, and having only iOS as an alternative is sad.

~~~
scholia
They're still doing Windows 10 for smartphones and there are other hardware
suppliers besides Microsoft. The OS is free, after all.

Whether the Surface phone will make any difference is open to doubt, but it
_might_ ;-)

As an Android user, I'd be prepared to have a serious look at one.

------
filereaper
Interesting article, IBM seems the same, Sales and everything else.

Maybe this is a relic of old apex predators that are past their age.

~~~
cptskippy
You can throw Cisco, Oracle, HP, and just about any other enterprise company
on that list.

------
amelius
So by "becoming Sales and everyone else", they actually got bad at sales.
Ironic.

------
baybal2
Microsoft caters more to business and OEMs than to anythybody else. Consumer
market is largely irrelevant to them.

Why you sell your stuff this way, you need a good salesman.

Yes, Microsoft is "uncool", but it doesn't matter to them

------
niroze
Bashing on NT kernel without knowing what VMS is, and what improvements were
made that we all can learn from is terribly ignorant at best.

Sure, Microsoft has had terrible problems, but the true innovations and
improvement on kernel design and implementation are truly amazing.

Kernel programmers are underappreciated.

------
rainhacker
If 'Engineering and everyone else' beats 'Sales and everyone else' (Google vs
MS) How about Twitter ? it's of the former type. As an engineer, engineering
first company is more appealing. However, we'd end up again with a different
silo.

------
grandalf
> Microsoft’s Outlook iOS app is probably the best mail client on iOS

I used it about a year ago and it was horrible, many broken features and
fairly slow and unresponsive, and also exceptionally poor UX (like office for
web).

~~~
tdkl
It also stores your email on their servers to get push messages, which no UI
can fix.

~~~
illumin8
Worse than that, it stores your email credentials on their servers, so it can
retrieve email on your behalf. Terrible, terrible security. I wouldn't be
surprised if the passwords are stored in cleartext in the database.

~~~
cocotino
If you're talking about Gmail accounts for example only the oauth tokens are
stored (which you can revoke from your google account config panel). If you're
talking about an IMAP account of yours, how are they supposed to log into it
without storing your password in clear text?

------
Theizestooke
They're definitely sending more marketing people to post on reddit and
Hackernews.

------
jaseemabid
Click bait title?

------
sickbeard
We'll see what happens when profitability takes a dive.

------
dredmorbius
Clickbait title

