

Starting to Evolve Our Organization and Culture - r0h1n
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/jul14/07-17announcement1.aspx

======
couchand
_The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to
realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of
our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total,
our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and
Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both
professional and factory workers._

This is why people don't trust executive-types. Satya, why can't you just say:
"We're laying off 18,000 people total, and 12,500 people from Nokia."

~~~
ath0
Because while that's the top-line for the 18,000 people affected (12,500
today), he'd desperately like that _not_ to be the only thing the other
100,000 people who are staying hear. He wants the rest of the people to first
hear: "We're changing for the better, and while these layoffs are a bad thing,
it's necessary pain we have to go through to be better in the long run." That
means wrapping the bad news with as much context and transparency as you can,
every time you talk about it.

~~~
sokoloff
I agree with your overall sentiment that you can't just lay bald facts out
there, devoid of context and expect great things to happen.

However,if I were famous enough to propose a Sokoloff's Law, it might say "If
your goal is to increase transparency, you've failed once the phrase 'realign
our workforce' or 'work toward synergies and strategic alignment' creeps into
the draft."

------
contingencies
Does anyone else feel like Microsoft hasn't actually _done_ anything in over a
decade? OK well .. except with the Xbox lineage. It seems like in every other
part of the business they've made a bunch of dumb purchases, epic-failed in
all areas - including their previous core competency of the consumer OS space
- and brought in this Steve Jobs-esque clone CEO guy who is gagging to be seen
as doing something while offering precisely zero believable direction.

It must be hard for them seeing all the areas die for them at once: Bing,
Exchange, Hotmail, Office, Windows, XBox, mobile, embedded...

~~~
Zikes
Satya Nadella's only been CEO for 6 months. You can't effect major changes in
a major multinational corporation overnight, especially not until you've had
sufficient opportunity to come up with a good direction for that change. If
anything, I would consider that a promising and reasoned approach, as opposed
to announcing a layoff of 18,000 people within the first month of his
appointment.

Steve Jobs did not invent innovation or style and he certainly didn't patent
them, so there's no need to claim anyone else with a hint of competence or
ambition is just some cheap knock-off. If you raise his pedestal any higher
you'll only spend your own life living in the shadow.

~~~
contingencies
My point was it's a sinking ship, this guy is too little too late and yet to
prove any efficacy. I think you misinterpreted the Jobs mention... I'm not a
fan of the original, and frankly find the similarities with other tech
presentations highly amusing. Skivvies. Round glasses. Slightly wasted,
career-corporate bearing. Ease with which non-words of utter boardroom
befuddlement spill out of their mouths. And so on...

~~~
Zikes
I think I get your point on the Jobs mention, that you weren't dismissing him
as a wannabe-Jobs so much as the culture and manner Jobs most prominently
embodies. That's pretty fair, I think.

Though a Jobs-related counterpoint, Apple was in a pretty rough place at one
time, too:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Amelio#Apple_Computer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Amelio#Apple_Computer)

I think it's still much too early to count Microsoft out, they've still got a
whole lot of runway ahead of them before they run out, and cutting such a huge
part of their work force could just buy them even more runway, enough to get
their bearings and recover. I think it would be pretty interesting to see a
post-Microsoft tech world, but I can't imagine that happening until a worthy
successor dethrones them, rather than simply fading away.

~~~
contingencies
_I think it 's still much too early to count Microsoft out, they've still got
a whole lot of runway ahead of them_

The name will surely live on in some offering or other, but the dynasty has
already faded.

 _it would be pretty interesting to see a post-Microsoft tech world, but I can
't imagine that happening until a worthy successor dethrones them, rather than
simply fading away._

With regards to the primary three product lines: the OS and the office suite,
plus the corollary server solutions, Ubuntu + Redhat seem to be pretty
effective at stealing former Microsoft clients, particularly governments.
Hell, even Amazon's getting in on the act with EC2 sales to the CIA.

That's fairly strong evidence on its own, but in addition the world has
shifted away from desktop and Microsoft's strongest position against this is
essentially office work requiring a keyboard and XBox/gaming rigs. SteamOS is
going to add further challenge to the console space, and encourage development
in a cross-platform direction, and we've already seen open and largely
interoperable source office solutions proven at scale.

If you had to point at a successor, I believe it's the Linux world in general,
but from the consumer's perspective Ubuntu.

