Gone Fishin'
I'm spending my days singing that Bing Crosby + Louis Armstrong tune "Gone Fishin'" while I enjoy still waters, quiet trails, and generally sunny skies. As I sit on the hill in between family romps and watch the clouds go by (trying not to hear that Madonna launch music), it certainly causes the reflective "and what am I so concerned about?" moments to kick in.
So here's a quick post to keep the pot stirred. I hope you're out there, enjoying life, too.
Town Hall + FAM + Analysts Coffee Talk: damn, what a past week.
Regarding FAM, MSFT Extreme Makeover has the following post: MSFTextrememakeover Like us, or leave us. In the comments, Charles points to the following post off of Seeking Alpha: Microsoft Investment Requires Too Much Patience - Barron's - Seeking Alpha. Snippet:
Some of the issues that worry analysts:
- It was clear from the presentation that many of the growth prospects will take 5-10 years to bear fruit.
- The company overspends ("nothing would delight analysts more than a nice big round of cost-cutting.")
- The businesses MSFT says it's entering (e.g. advertising and consumer electronics) are far more cut-throat than its current mix.
- Microsoft's focus on building internet infrastructure rather than building sites that bring in users is "backward."
- Bill Gates's plan to pass control of product development to Ray Ozzie "will not be a smooth one."
Those are certainly all issues to be really concerned about, though #2 reminds me of something Dylan Yolles brought up a couple of times at the coffee talk: control expenses via cost efficiency. Now one grand way to start is to not blow a billion dollars here and there and to avoid any future money losing ventures. Brilliant, I know. Can I have an SPSA grant now?
While Mr. Bach has been appropriately contrite and saying "the billion plus buck loss stops here," the commitment I want is forward looking: we will no longer produce product lines that are sold at a loss. One fine day, the third generation of Xbox will be out there. How about committing to pulling a Nintendo here and making it profitable from day one?
Cost efficiency and controlling spending is a pretty broad area to improve in. I'm glad that head-count growth is so visibly discussed now and that Mr. Liddell is saying that it's not sustainable. Let attrition do its thing for a while. I think the analysts would be thrilled - thrilled I tell you - if we actually shrunk headcount and optimized employee career assignments. Around cost efficiency, I'm concerned that one of our new hires will look over the financial books and, with a twenty-five watt light bulb blazing above his head, say, "Hey, I know, we can save some money cutting back on this luxurious towel service here!"
Around our performance and wondering when our stock price will take off, I just have to ask, "If not now, when?" When will we emerge from the post-growth purgatory Charles DiBona mentions? Can we get a software plus services product line out that that resonates with everyone and makes clear the value of Microsoft rich-client applications plus on-line services?
I hope that the upcoming Windows Live Suite is the beginning of another Office Suite. For free. Hmm, wait a minute... well, anyway, it includes my favorite little application, Windows Live Writer, and given that the Office Suite story turned out so well there's an abundance of opportunity for another suite to emerge. Revenue around this, I can only assume, is built on advertising around the content you generate with the suite. That makes me feel a little dirty, still.
I'm glad that there's more focus on creating products for the consumer. Waaaay back, three years ago, it was part of my reason for launching this little blog. I was tired of all the IT-focused features we were so focused on vs. the forgotten home user. I want the cash and attention of everyone walking along the street. I want knowledge workers demanding to have IT deploy the new Office because it's so friggin' cool and because there are features in there they can't wait to use. I have hope.
Shields up: a while back, Ms. Foley asked if Microsoft can go silent running on features vs. blathering about them years and months before they come out. I hope so. I think everyone of us who has watched a Steve Jobs presentation has always felt envy when he unveils something surprising and new and then says, "And you can buy it at the Apple store this afternoon!"
Well played, sir, well played. Even if it's something I'd never want, my inner geek starts running around screaming OMG OMG OMG!
For anything consumer focused and small, yes, we should be able to do this. Obviously, features that are going to rile up the IT department need a soft landing. But I would prefer to announce the cool stuff right at launch or before launch, to avoid the months and months of discussion and criticism that leads us to, "meh" on launch day.
Other bits:
- Following along keeping quiet, Jamie has a new C9 park about liberating user feedback. It includes me (blush), Fake Steve Jobs, and Fake Steve Ballmer.
- Fake Steve Jobs is actually quite on the roll and has two of my favorite recent posts: It's called zeitgeist, have you heard of it and Freetards in deep denial (oh, man, nice!).
- Mr. Pincus dropped by in the comment stream of the last post and certainly brought some life into the comments. I'm glad that there is so much internal enthusiasm associated with Mr. Pincus (of Prefix and Prefast fame) but what I'd like to hear more of is not so much the journey he is rallying but the destination.
Okay, back to the hill. Ooo, that cloud looks like Ray Ozzie, confused, pondering, 'Dude, what is this bag, and why have you left me holding it?'
163 comments:
The problem with going "silent running" on up coming features is that so many of the volume licences sold are based on a "pay now buy later" model. The Enterprise Agreement (EA) is essentially only of commercial sense if the customer believes he/she will get value from upgrades in the 3 year span of the agreement.
IMHO the whole licensing model needs a top to bottom revamp so people really pay for the value in things like the update services (XP today is a completely different product from its launch, yet you got all the new features free and delivered online). A model of low (or free, or very low OEM bundle cost) for base licence but a commercial charge for update service would make more sense for both customers and shareholders (revenue mainly subscription and annuity rather than lumpy purchaes when each "Wave" hits). For Consumer things where the market won't support a commercial subscription pay for it via the advertising model that SteveB keep lauding.
Is it really true that some poor guy was canned for this
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/01/ballmer_dances/
I don't believe it at all, but maybe it wasn't polite enough for the likes of Jon...
hmm, this is the 2nd post with a reference to "enjoying life" from mini. Coincidence?
On the topic of "enjoying life", who's got a good team these days? My current team has forgotten quality and forgotten the customer, and I want to enjoy work again. Somewhere, someone's gotta be customer-focused and shipping, right? http://career/ makes it easy to find out how many years of C# they want, but impossible to actually learn anything about the team you'll be joining.
... and if I had a dollar for every job posting advertising a "start-up environment!" it'd be like my own SPSA grant!
>"(XP today is a completely different product from its launch, yet you got all the new features free and delivered online)."
(I guess you mean it's lowered performance and decreased functionality forced on users by the updates. To wit, DRM, none of my movies work unless they are fifteen years old, WGA is an absolute abomination and to be honest, I intend to reinstall the original OS without updates using third party security to insure protection.)
Somewhere, someone's gotta be customer-focused and shipping, right?
Stay away from Office and (from what I hear) Windows and you should be fine. I left Office for Devdiv three years ago, and have had a fun work environment, yearly promotions and a life outside of work ever since. I am just kicking myself for not having left earlier.
The idea that we have been somehow focusing on IT to our detriment is pretty naive Mini. We've done just as poor of a job courting IT as we have done for consumers in the past 5 or 6 years.
Fact is, consumer "buzz" isnt going to push IT into doing anything (note - normal companies dont work like MSFT where you run what you feel like running), and we should be beyond guerilla marketing approaches like trying to get "users" to drive IT behavior. That just leaves us open to very saavy enterprise players to take away what little of that biz we have (we are currently like 1% of typical IT spend while IBM is like 60-70%)
As the company that made a LOT of noise around 01/02 about the transformational nature of "software services" we have delivered depressingly little. That we are now apologetically trying to play catch up with Google, in a space that SHOULD have been ours, is quite frankly embarassing.
Why are we incapable of defining a hollistic vision that is agnostic with regards to how the technology is delivered and consumed, agile in how the technology is packaged, and consistent across all flavors?
Why is it so hard to have a knowledge worker system, built on .NET, that ranges from a classic, feature rich, fat client install, all the way to a fully hosted, browser embedded, thin client delivered from a cloud, with various options for federation and hosting existing in between, and a consistent user experience throughout?
We are talking the talk and NOT walking the walk. IT (rightly) expects that by now, we would have had an Office experience that fully integrates with all of our management tools, gives them the flexibility to "right size" the build for classes of users (including stripped down to bare for commodity workers), is available as a classic deployed app, a cloud hosted web app or a federated web app, and has a rich suite of consoles to allow enterprise policy control and metering. Oh, and the range of solutions should have an equally flexible range of license options including classic, subscription and, gasp, subsidized and, for the average consumer, the experience should be no different (essentially) on their "free" subsidized Word.NET as it is on their classic, IT deployed, Word 2009 or their call center coworkers federated, subscribed, Word.NET - biz call center edition.
Why is this SO impossibly hard for us to manage to really execute on? Because we are IBM circa 1985 - culturally stagnant and bound to an aging cash cow that NO ONE will risk upsetting. Meanwhile, we chip away at the billion dollar cash stash on silly ventures and "R&D" for things like Surface.
Instead of blowing a few billion on the next "Zune", how about we accept a billion dollar *risk* and make transformational changes in the culture and mindset of the company that will keep us from being utterly marginalized long term by the likes of Google?
Re: cost cutting
Show of hands: how many of you have ever been to the office surplus on campus? You didn't know there was one? That's what I thought...
No need to order pens, pads of paper, staplers, etc. ever again. But wait, there's more. Cables, laptop batteries, blank CDs, unopened cases of jewel boxes, speakers, keyboards - it all piles up down there.
It rotates all the time; there's always something new. So, next time you need something along these lines, why not go over to 18 for lunch, and stop by surplus on your way out.
It's a small step, I know. But it all adds up...
WOW. I think that's the best post Ive ever read about MS issues in a few years.
Kudos!
Microsoft will start to have a clue when they announce Office for Linux. Otherwise, same old same old, with more funny disasters every year. Ahh well.
Meanwhile, in other news, I got my first Windows Mobile phone the other day (I had no choice, it was imposed on me). While the stuff like web surfing is fine as far as it goes, I have a question about the phone dialing software. Is that part of Windows Mobile, or is that created by the phone manufacturer?
I ask because on my particular gizmo, the T-Mobile Wing, the person who came up with the phone software part of it clearly is somebody that never actually had to use a cell phone ever in their life.
"...Why is this SO impossibly hard for us to manage to really execute on? Because we are IBM circa 1985 - culturally stagnant and bound to an aging cash cow... "
We are over matrixed. Functional responsibilities aren't defined - people essentially do whatever they want regardless of "strategic direction" or "guidance" or "commitments". Accountability simply does not exist if you belong to the inner circle. If it did our dear leader of X-box and HED or EDD or ED&D or whatever we're calling it today would have been fired already and we wouldn't have such a difficult time filling senior leadership positions and we wouldn't lose so much bright talent who gets tired of "making others great" up the chain for peanuts of compensation compared to those above.
We simply have no accountability at the senior layers and too much lazy rest-and-vest-because-I-know-best thinking that shuts out the really good ideas on technology and the business models around the technology. The sheer arrogance of some of our leaders is inexcusable and leaves us in a likely fall behind position in the market.
Solution: Clean house at the top. Clean up functional responsibility and actually PUT THE BUDGET WHERE THE DELIVERABLES LIVE and not in some other series of side organizations to foster "cross group collaboration" which ends up being a boatload of overhead to manage budget processes that don't need to exist in the first place. Not a small task and very difficult but at one point in time that wouldn't have stopped anyone at this company - in fact it would have made us try that much harder.
>"Instead of blowing a few billion on the next "Zune", how about we accept a billion dollar *risk* and make transformational changes in the culture and mindset of the company that will keep us from being utterly marginalized long term by the likes of Google?"
It probably won't happen for the same reason the US will not embark on an intense effort to transform from an oil based economy to a hydrogen/alternative energy economy. Too scary when the current SPSA grants are just too comfortable.
But as a customer, I agree with the writer's comments that has the focus of software, services and user needs is the missing MS vision.
>>Why is this SO impossibly hard for us to manage to really execute on? Because we are IBM circa 1985 - culturally stagnant and bound to an aging cash cow that NO ONE will risk upsetting. Meanwhile, we chip away at the billion dollar cash stash on silly ventures and "R&D" for things like Surface.
Instead of blowing a few billion on the next "Zune", how about we accept a billion dollar *risk* and make transformational changes in the culture and mindset of the company that will keep us from being utterly marginalized long term by the likes of Google?
It would be interesting to hear some of our (or someone else's) business folks weigh in on this - perhaps it makes buisness sense to milk the cow until it is dead? Perhaps major investors want a "slow and steady" Microsoft, not one that does wild new stuff, or perhaps noone knows what the hell they're doing?
... and if I had a dollar for every job posting advertising a "start-up environment!" it'd be like my own SPSA grant!
About 90% of all the text found in the job descriptions can be considered boilerplate. Let's see if we can enumerate them and thereby recreate almost all job postings in http://career:
- Start-up environment.
- Must be highly motivated
- Come join one of the top teams/products at Microsoft
- Must be L63+ for L60 job description
- Must be able to multitask effectively
- Come change the world
- Must be customer-focused
- Must know how to ship with quality
I know I must be missing some things, but I've been out of MSFT for a while now and haven't checked out 'career' in a while. But I don't imagine much has changed in terms of the job descriptions.
I don't see why anyone bothers. They should just limit the description to 30 words and let the informational do all the talking. All you really need to know is what group and who the hiring manager is and that will tell you tons about what you're getting yourself into.
Microsoft will start to have a clue when they announce Office for Linux.
Excellent idea. I can imagine Linux users running at the chance to buy software.
so people really pay for the value
You seriously want to charge your customers for an "update service"? You issue software early to avoid DoJ (yes, you did do that with XP), inflict holes on us, then want to charge us for the mechanism to deploy the patches? Wow. One almost has to admire this hell-bound chutzpah.
You want to deluge my PC with ads from the core OS? Great idea! That - more than anything else - might finally kickstart Linux into becoming a credible competitor instead of the mess it is now. You certainly need the competition if this bilge passes for "how do we serve our customers better" at Microsoft.
As for the rest of that comment, words almost fail me at the contempt for customers exhibited in that executive-ish swill. The only sensible part was that your whole licensing model needs a revamp. That's true, at least, much as your SKUs need to be consolidated (I mean, look at the list of Office editions... do you have executives who lock themselves in a room with that at night for ten minutes or so...???) As with so many other (not all, admittedly) parts of today's Microsoft, not a shred of focus on the customer except as dumb cash-cow.
>"Excellent idea. I can imagine Linux users running at the chance to buy software."
Actually I and others would in a heartbeat if it has value and is reasonably priced. But your current valuation of Office is about threefold over price-point. The same goes with Vista and XP.
I had to chuckle when I saw this gem this morning on ZDNet:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6200577.html
talking about how Microsoft more than halved its Vista pricing in China. And when software is $5 on a bootleg DVD a $118 price is going to make a difference over $238. Gimme a break.
Compared to the old days of business software costing tens of thousands of dollars, its a bargain, but in the days of commodity software of today, the price point on an OS worldwide is closer to $50 and the price point for an obsolete Office suite is closer to $29.95.
And for the expletive-deleted partners involved in trying to pawn Works as an ad based on line freebie, good luck with that. I am sure WC Fields will be on your side.
> perhaps it makes buisness sense to milk the cow until it is dead?
If you do this, then when the cow is dead, so is Microsoft, because you have nothing to replace the cow with.
> Perhaps major investors want a "slow and steady" Microsoft, not one that does wild new stuff, or perhaps noone knows what the hell they're doing?
No, investors want the insane growth levels that happened in the '90s, but that's a lot harder to do when you're as big as Microsoft is now.
MSS
Pasting an enlightening post from MSFTextrememakeover comments. This is ridiculous. Here I am thinking we are turning around a corner in search and actually getting excited about it. I just played one of the Live club games...chiktionary.......its scary how these queries are getting auto generated. Try for yourself. Its a shame if anyone is getting awarded for this nonesense.
http://club.live.com/chicktionary.aspx
-------
It is truly sad to see what our executive management has done to destroy this company. There is absolutely zero accountability across the board for our partner level executives. Even worse - it is well known within the company that the goals and metrics that partners sign up to are almost always totally sandbag numbers that they know they will hit. This guarantees that they will acheive their accellerated SPA's (restricted stock). It is also well know that when they look to be missing their #'s in any one of the business they will manipulate the measurement of the goal to make sure they get their fat paydays.
Take search as an example. SPSA awards had a goal of increasing seach share by some 5% or so this year. Now everybody knows that MSN/Live search share is totally in the tank. But somehow miraculously they made a 5% gain in search just the month before measurement for partner SPSA's. The dirty little secret is that this share was totally artificial. http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201000338
Almost none of these new searches are people seriously looking for things on MSN or Live Search. And some people even say that most of these searches are not even done by actual real humans. They are bots that have been scripted to win prizes from MSN's over funded marketing machine. Does anybody remember MSN giving away $400 for every new narrowband subscriber? Here we go again on search.
But hey - you can't get to the truth. No partner wants the truth, it gets in the way of the million dollars they get every year no matter how many horrible a job they do.
Like somebody else here said. Being a Microsoft partner is the easiest million dollar job in the world. No accountability, tons of vacation, lots of fancy offsite meetings spent strategerizing, and never really having to do any hard work. It's a great gig if you can get it...
And for those of you who say "he's just jealous" you bet your ass I am!
"Start-up environment" is just short-hand for "can't manage project deadlines, expect months of hero hours".
You seriously want to charge your customers for an "update service"? You issue software early to avoid DoJ (yes, you did do that with XP), inflict holes on us, then want to charge us for the mechanism to deploy the patches? Wow. One almost has to admire this hell-bound chutzpah.
I'm not the OP, but want to comment on this. I think the idea is to charge for enhancements, not necessarily security fixes. A number of folks I know lamented XP SP2 for being such a noteworthy revamp, while the market, et al, did not pay it any mind. The same could be said of Win95 OSR2, Win98 SE, Windows 2003 R2, etc. Each of those releases had significant advantages over their predecessors (particularly from an IT and hardware standpoint), but customers didn't really notice because they were "free".
I think the subscription model is a great idea. I would go one further and have a sort of "volume license cafeteria plan" for feature sets as well. If your org will never use IIS, for example, why pay for it? You could even pipe the licensing through the 'Add/Remove Windows Components' applet.
The only problem is that Vista has something like this now, and Ultimate edition certainly hasn't delivered on it's promises; a Texas Hold 'Em game isn't exactly delivering value, IMHO.
But then, I'm sure smarter heads than mine have thought this through...
We are not matching the 80s/90s growth rates because we are underperforming in the areas of risk taking and innovation.
Evidence that we are no longer taking risks: how many commitments on your review have you failed in the last five years? How many has your management chain failed on?
My guess? Zilch.
We are not setting commitments aggressively enough. It is human to strive for security and behave risk aversely, and at MSFT it is not ok to fail. For a successful growth company, that trend needs to be counteracted from the highest levels of management down.
Innovation: we suffer from management paranoia, the desire to control the chaos of software development.
We execute on the portion of what we can plan for that fits into a 8h/5d schedule.
As a consequence, we miss out on the innovation we could harvest by employing selfmotivated, highly intelligent and creative people.
This is why Googles 20% time is so attractive, and it is something that management at MSFT doesn't get: If you hire smartly and allow your employees a day a week to play without supervision you reap unexpected benefits, like internet search, blogging software, voip, attractive extras and facebook possibly being developed internally first.
In addition, you win by the cool factor and geek appeal (reinforcing the brand: remember when MSFT was cool?), and it makes hiring as well as employee retention easier.
Ooo, that cloud looks like Ray Ozzie, confused, pondering, 'Dude, what is this bag, and why have you left me holding it?'
Of all the people you'd want holding the bag (and with both hands) is Ray. Building search from the roots up and creating (or otherwise acquiring) an ad delivery system is the thing that keeps us from being "the next IBM." We made the turn in the road - Ray's vision was key. More bags please ...
>> perhaps it makes buisness sense to milk the cow until it is dead?
>If you do this, then when the cow is dead, so is Microsoft, because you have nothing to replace the cow with.
Perhaps if you have most of the milk in your bank already, you just don't care if the cow drops dead.
Any word on reviews? The numbers must be locked by now.
Despite having a solid year and getting a solid message from management, I'm fully prepare for my achieved/limited, 2% raise, 4% bonus, and zero stock. Even though my old ***hole manager who screwed me for 2 years has moved on, I don't see much changing, sadly.
Let's post our numbers like last year. Here's how mine will look:
Title: SDET
Level: 61
Committment: Achieved
Contribution: Limited
Merit: 2%
Bonus: 4%
Stock: 0
Promo: 0
Boy, I hate August, it's the most depressing time of the year.
Evidence that we are no longer taking risks: how many commitments on your review have you failed in the last five years? How many has your management chain failed on?
My guess? Zilch.
You know why? Because by the letter of the HR/MyMicrosoft/whatever guidelines, if you fail a commitment, you're technically in danger of being labeled as "Underperforming".
Until the review system's risk/reward balance is fixed, and it becomes less of a "perception and self-promotion game", well, don't expect big risks anytime soon.
Building search from the roots up ... Ray's vision was key.
The decision to build a competitive search engine was made years before Ray arrived on the scene. Even now most of the great ideas are generated from the bottom up.
>Perhaps if you have most of the milk in your bank already, you just don't care if the cow drops dead.
Yup, because the only person in the world with a desire to do a good job and a sense of personal responsibility is little old you. How special you are.
(As an aside, I'd like to see the HR drones altering InsideMS posts try and edit this one! Haven't they figured out that this is the internet age yet?)
Underpromotion nice folks is just as common outside of MSFT than on the inside.
Tune in next week
First of all, to the name-names comment I didn’t let through: you know, I do not want that here. VPs get paid to take heat and are big boys and girls and can deal with it. Line managers? Not here. You can start your own Naming-Names blog, of course, if you are that motivated.
Next up: I am going waaaay off the grid and I'll be a lot more focused on making the kind of noise that avoids surprising the native denizens. I had toyed with the idea of letting this place go unmoderated, but I don’t think that is a good idea. Comments will pile up waiting to be let through.
Here is the big pause button: click!
Those of you wishing for money to stop being pissed away on Xbox might be getting your wish (not really any inside information on this, just a knowledge of the people involved and what they've promised and how it's not going to come close to happening).
Robbie Bach and crew have stated that the Xbox division will be profitable in FY08. They simply have not sold anywhere near enough units for even a 100% attach rate on Halo 3 to make that happen. Even accounting for a huge (and unrealistic) surge in unit sales, they're going to know by the end of this calendar year that near-term profitability isn't going to happen.
So, my prediction: Starting in January, Xbox is going to be an even more uncomfortable place to be than it is already. People who survived the 2003-and-later RIFs and thought they were safe are going to find themselves on the street. Some token exec might actually get fired this time (sort of like how Ed Fries "moved on" around the end of 2003, never mind that he was much more on the ball than any of the GMs and higher that stuck around).
Somehow, some way, FY08 is going to be "profitable" for Xbox. But I think in making that happen, they're going to have to cut so many corners that they'll be even more dysfunctional as an org than they already are. And that "streamlined" headcount means even fewer first-party titles to differentiate them from the competition, which is already doing very well.
Given the recent data on sales, I think it's safe to say the division's promise that they would finish first this generation if they could only launch a year early like PS2 did will never come to pass. Both Wii and PS3 are outselling the 360 right now and that's a trend that will only get worse as the PS3 eventually comes down in price. There will be no see-saw battle for the lead, at least not between the 360 and the others. No way the 360's getting back to first place once that's lost. There is just no momentum as there is for its rivals. Like a randy teenager, they shot their wad early.
If I were a betting man, I'd put money on no successor to the 360 ever coming to market. But then again, I'd have bet against a lot of things this company has done (note that none of these are things the company has done successfully, just things they've done).
The decision to build a competitive search engine was made years before Ray arrived on the scene.
Got it. In fact, I even heard that there were proposals to have search built long before it became competitive. What I'm saying is that from a philosophical perspective it helps to have someone of Ray's standing weigh in and say: "Yes, this is the right path. We should keep moving forward on this front ..." etc. He is a veteran known for his valuable insight (and not so much for extreme agression or outright bombast.) his approach seems to be more chess-like and introspective. If you're looking to put a new face on Microsoft, you could do worse than make Ray 'true North' on the company compass.
Despite the pause button having been pushed, I couldn't help but write. "That we are now apologetically trying to play catch up with Google, in a space that SHOULD have been ours, is quite frankly embarassing (sic)."
And here we have the epitome of MS hubris. Why should you have owned this? Aren't you guys about OS? and Office? Oh, and xbox. And this. And that. You guys are everywhere and no-where. No focus. Products with as much passion as my grandma's slippers.
There is no SHOULD in business-- there is what you can do. You guys are riding a wave from the 80s and let your egos soar with the rising stock price. It's (all) crested and is starting to crash. SHOULD. Good one. Geez. Ya'd think that owning a market segment would be discussed in terms of producing the types of products that consumers want-- and would ultimately lead to said leadership. Nahhhh. Entitlement. That's what it's about.
Holy, cow, you guys.
"A number of folks I know lamented XP SP2 for being such a noteworthy revamp, while the market, et al, did not pay it any mind."
There's only one XP operating system, SP 2. SP1 and RTM should never have been released - they were horrible produts and epitomised the philosophy of "good enough" that characterised MS's products since DOS.
XP SP1 and RTM were in reality a mass-beta of SP2.
The market doesn't give it any mind, because SP2 is where Microsoft should have been at RTM. Not 2 years later.
comment from msftextrememakeover
It is truly sad to see what our executive management has done to destroy this company. There is absolutely zero accountability across the board for our partner level executives. Even worse - it is well known within the company that the goals and metrics that partners sign up to are almost always totally sandbag numbers that they know they will hit. This guarantees that they will acheive their accellerated SPA's (restricted stock). It is also well know that when they look to be missing their #'s in any one of the business they will manipulate the measurement of the goal to make sure they get their fat paydays.
Take search as an example. SPSA awards had a goal of increasing seach share by some 5% or so this year. Now everybody knows that MSN/Live search share is totally in the tank. But somehow miraculously they made a 5% gain in search just the month before measurement for partner SPSA's. The dirty little secret is that this share was totally artificial. http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201000338
Almost none of these new searches are people seriously looking for things on MSN or Live Search. And some people even say that most of these searches are not even done by actual real humans. They are bots that have been scripted to win prizes from MSN's over funded marketing machine. Does anybody remember MSN giving away $400 for every new narrowband subscriber? Here we go again on search.
But hey - you can't get to the truth. No partner wants the truth, it gets in the way of the million dollars they get every year no matter how many horrible a job they do.
Like somebody else here said. Being a Microsoft partner is the easiest million dollar job in the world. No accountability, tons of vacation, lots of fancy offsite meetings spent strategerizing, and never really having to do any hard work. It's a great gig if you can get it...
And for those of you who say "he's just jealous" you bet your ass I am!
>>You can start your own Naming-Names blog, of course, if you are that motivated.
If you haven't seen www.trenchmice.com, then definately check it out. It names names and then some!
On taking risks... I think MS should reward its researches and employees for admitting their failures instead of labeling them as "underperforming". If inventors of Zune were not afraid of canceling the project they might save company some money.
Fake Steve Jobs exposed !
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070806/wr_nm/apple_fakestevejobs_dc_1;_ylt=AihafwC31EqG7dUwzkJ.c6kE1vAI
Dan Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes, admitted to writing as Fake Steve after a New York Times reporter found resemblances between the blog and Lyons' published work and asked him whether he was behind the long-running satire.
Mini, since FSJ is unmasked do you think, and may be worry too, that you could be unmsaked too.
I loved how somebody noticed the FSJ's writing style. FSJ is extremely talented. Well you are extremely talented too. There are not many folks in Microsoft with your talent. You must be interacting with other Microsoftees in your day to day life. These Microsofteed can recognize your writing style. If I were nearby you, I would have recognized you. How? Because there is none around me who has this talent and style. If you were nearby me then you would be the one.
Let's post our numbers like last year.
Snr SDE 63
$Bonus: 10.5%
Merit: 4%
Stock: 700
It was ok, just that I'm leaving the company. I wish they can substitute my stocks with cash :-).
>>Let's see if we can enumerate >>them and thereby recreate almost >>all job postings in >>http://career:
>>
>>- Start-up environment.
>>- Must be highly motivated
>>- Come join one of the top >>teams/products at Microsoft
>>- Must be L63+ for L60 job >>description
>>- Must be able to multitask >>effectively
>>- Come change the world
>>- Must be customer-focused
>>- Must know how to ship with >>quality
>>
>>I know I must be missing some >>things, but I've been out of >>MSFT for a while now and haven't >>checked out 'career' in a while. >>But I don't imagine much has >>changed in terms of the job >>descriptions.
>>
HAHAHAHA!!! For someone who hasn't checked out the career site in awhile, you're still hitting the nail right on the head.
I have been looking around and have read a lot of JDs as of late and you have pretty much captured what all of them boil down to. Same shit, different job description.
That's one of the many reasons why I will be somewhere else within the next 12 months. Not enough of the right changes happening, and moving teams frequently results in the same pig, just with a slightly different shade of lipstick. I don't like the direction Microsoft is going, and if I can't change it I either need to shut up or leave. So in the very near future I'll be taking the red pill, and then I'll wake up in the real world, embark on a strange new trip, and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
It was ok, just that I'm leaving the company. I wish they can substitute my stocks with cash :-)
If the stock closes above $30.08 tomorrow, then we can see us getting closer to $31 or above in the next 3-4 days.
$30.08 is the 50 day moving average and technical traders will move in quickly to push the stock higher while shorts will be covering.
Hey Mini - what's your take on Suzan Delbene leaving as Corp VP, Marketing of Mobile? Asked to go? Accountability finally? iPhone anyone?
To the poster who took exception to the "should" comment regarding web services.
You're completely missing the intent of that post. This blog is an MSFT self-critical blog. Maybe in whatever business you're in, you happily accept defeat and "know your place", never attempting to branch out into a new area and innovate.
That's not what the culture of MSFT is supposed to be. So it has absolutely nothing to do with "hubris" or "entitlement". When I say we "should" have owned that space, I mean that with the thinkers we had onboard at the time of .NET, and the passion that these folks have, the fact that they were hamstrung by management and, as a result, now have to accept playing catch up, really hurts.
Does that make it more clear to you? I think its funny that folks who have an ideological axe to grind with MSFT read ANY expression of ambition and passion as "hubris", yet happily rationalize the efforts of other tech companies to completely corner markets. I understand that YOU have decided that "MSFT should be happy with OS and Office", but see, there are a lot of people at MSFT who dont want to punch a clock and make widgets. We actually love technology and want to create new solutions that are innovative.
Did you see anything in my post about market tactics or marginalizing competitors unfairly? No. It was all about a lack of cohesive vision and willingness to take risks on TECHNOLOGY. For you, MSFT riding the tired OS/Office monopoly into the grave would suit your particular agenda. The fact that MSFT employees, shareholders and customers dont share your anti-passion doesnt equate to "hubris" or "entitlement".
SEATTLE (AP) -- Online advertising company aQuantive Inc. (NASDAQ:AQNT) , which is being purchased by Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) , said Wednesday its second-quarter profit fell 22 percent due to increased costs.
Good thing we paid a premium so that nobody else snapped up this bargain.
"Somehow, some way, FY08 is going to be "profitable" for Xbox. But I think in making that happen, they're going to have to cut so many corners that they'll be even more dysfunctional as an org than they already are. And that "streamlined" headcount means even fewer first-party titles to differentiate them from the competition, which is already doing very well."
I take issue with the accuracy of your accusation that the Xbox org is dysfunctional. Have you even worked in Xbox?
I don't know if anyone noticed, but MSN (the portal) is ON FIRE. I can actually find interesting articles there, and whoever populates Hotmail landing page deserves a promotion (even though I hate both Hotmail and the landing page in particular). It's been a LOOOOONG time since I've read anything on MSN and as of late I find myself going there at least a few times a week. Good job, folks. I'm sure you're seeing the corresponding uptrend in traffic.
If the stock closes above $30.08 tomorrow, then we can see us getting closer to $31 or above in the next 3-4 days.
$30.08 is the 50 day moving average and technical traders will move in quickly to push the stock higher while shorts will be covering.
Too many technical analysis BS. Stock is moving towards $28 today. How can you explain that? Hey I sold options around 31.x. I'm invinsible :-).
I don't know if anyone noticed, but MSN (the portal) is ON FIRE.
You must be the PM on this team. This thing sucks. It's not using the screen space effectively and feels smaller then other more popular portals. The only reason anyone lands there is because they are FORCED to, not by their own free will and guess what that means they don't stay.
>"I don't know if anyone noticed, but MSN (the portal) is ON FIRE. I can actually find interesting articles there, and whoever populates Hotmail landing page deserves a promotion"
I said to myself, ok, I'll byte. Went there. Looked. Asked myself WTF is this person talking about? Then it hit me that the above is probably a troll. Sad IF true.
A couple of suggestions to said person:
A little color, less corporate hype n'type, take some risks, one click sign up for hotmail, one click free web storage, one click etc., live, etc., YOU are not in competition with LIVE. YOU are live. Same company. Forget the news. A link to Drudge would work better; pay him for the logo dudette.
Go to news.google.com and observe the value of aggregated news that works.
One click to buy (a) new notebook, (b) new xbox with HDMI (c) new umpc phone through any of your thousands of partners, (d) something really interesting and exciting.
Learn what TECH means. YOU are a TECH company. Make it interesting or at least link to Tom's Hardware and Gizmodo or Engadget, give them a freebie for a fixed period of time. You could do that ad infinity until you get a stable, solid paying group of advertisers chomping at the bit to place adds there.
Sign up for My Yahoo, customize your page to the max then go to your boss and say `Hey, lets make MSN a better place than My Yahoo, with cooler customizations, better services, more variety, better depth on the links (I want to see how many posts are on the latest Mini blog) etc. And on and on. and if you already have that, why is it not obvious on your MSN home page.
You have so much to offer through the vast depth of Microsoft and partners, yet it is all not there because you don't want to take any risks. MSN should be the Disneyland Future World of Microsoft, not some me-too just like every other portal place.
I take issue with the accuracy of your accusation that the Xbox org is dysfunctional. Have you even worked in Xbox?
Yes, I worked in the Xbox division for several years. In fact, I worked in PC gaming prior to that so I had a good front-row seat for the ensuing erosion of common sense brought on by the Xbox experiment.
As to the "dysfunctional" comment, perhaps I should amend that to say that as bad as the division is now, it's probably not much more dysfunctional than the average org at Microsoft so it may not seem so bad depending on what you're using as a reference. I mean, I've heard and read about as many anecdotal tales of people getting crucified for making valid points outside Xbox as much as I've witnessed it occurring within. If your contention is that the company as a whole is equally dysfunctional, I suppose I can't really argue.
Of course, the difference is that none of those other orgs have managed to piss away as much money as Xbox has.
>>I take issue with the accuracy of your accusation that the Xbox org is dysfunctional. Have you even worked in Xbox?
I have worked in Xbox for several years, and it is an extremely dysfunctional organization at the top (Sr Director levels and above). Crony'ism, political backstabbing, constant struggle for power and budget between Sales, Marketing, Product Development, First-Party Games, Third-Party Games, Xbox Live, etc. not to mention blantant issues with sexism, racism, and poor management of personnel which HR does NOTHING to fix. The departure of Peter Moore doesn't help any as the alignments of power continue to ebb and flow. But don't take my word for it, just look at the at the attrition levels of the star performers over the last year.
Never mind cost efficiency. With the Wii and iPhone we're at a crescendo of product embarrassment. We need direction to produce exciting products, but the guy who's supposed to give us that direction is only giving us intermittent handwaving about web services. Does Steve Jobs have a brother?
On the "MS should own search" idea:
There are many companies that try to branch out into another area besides the one they currently "own" (or are expert in). And most of the time it works out badly.
Example: You remember Pan Am? They aren't around any more. Why not? Well, Pan Am was an international carrier. They had no flights within the US. Then they bought National, a domestic US carrier. It destroyed them. They didn't know how to run the combination. It turns out that the domestic airline industry is different enough from the international industry to cause problems, problems that were fatal to Pan Am.
So: search is not like operating systems. It's different. It's really different. The idea that "Hey, we're Microsoft, we can write software, we can do that" is mistaken. Yes, it's software. No, you can't necessarily "do that", at least, not do it well. And it's hubris to assume that you can. (Note well: it's not necessarily hubris to try.)
Let's face it: MS has tried maybe a dozen things. They scored big in OSes and office suites. Servers they're doing well in. Set top boxes, phones, search, Xbox - not so much.
You seem to think that, if you had just moved earlier and unleashed the passion in your people, you "should" have owned search. I remain unconvinced. It would have upped your odds, though.
MSS
The market doesn't give it any mind, because SP2 is where Microsoft should have been at RTM. Not 2 years later.
---------------------------
Windows 2000 the same heart ache .. SP1 became what RTM should have been
but in reality thats called an RTM/Ship trade off decision for some teams. .... the mass majority had a good product ... few had problems .. noteabley with 2000 RAS was broken really bad and got worse in SP1 and subsequently in Sp2
So: search is not like operating systems. It's different. It's really different. The idea that "Hey, we're Microsoft, we can write software, we can do that" is mistaken. Yes, it's software. No, you can't necessarily "do that", at least, not do it well. And it's hubris to assume that you can.
Sometimes you can't do it first or do it as well, but you can attempt to be #1 or #2 in your category. (I would guess that we're ahead of Yahoo in that regard.) As well, search is fairly well integrated in Vista, so, as Vista becomes more prevalent so will live.com search.
>> You seem to think that, if you had just moved earlier and unleashed the passion in your people, you "should" have owned search
We will own it, eventually. One thing about us is that we never give up. Another thing is, I've seen what's coming in September release search-wise, and GOOG should be worried. And that's not even the best tech we have - that's just what we managed to implement so far.
hey Sr.SDE who posted numbers,
Post your - Exceeded/Achived -- wat ever crap they gave you as well ..
I am L61 SDE expecting an exceeded ..I have no clue what my #s are going to be ..Wating
Responses to different posts:
Sometimes you can't do it first or do it as well, but you can attempt to be #1 or #2 in your category. (I would guess that we're ahead of Yahoo in that regard.)
We will own it, eventually. One thing about us is that we never give up.
Microsoft has been in the internet search business for approx. as long as Yahoo and Google, yet has lost unbelievable amounts of money and has always run a distant 3rd in market share. The Live effort has run up the bill even more, reversed quarterly profitability, and LOST marketshare overall. So given nearly a decade of competition and this downward trajectory (ignoring the Chicktionary blip), exactly when do you guys think Microsoft is going to catch up to even #2, let alone make any money?
As well, search is fairly well integrated in Vista, so, as Vista becomes more prevalent so will live.com search.
Despite a decade of lost lawsuits about integrating web browsers/services into the operating system, you are still holding out hope that Microsoft can/should/will leverage our monopoly? That's wonderful.
>Another thing is, I've seen what's coming in September release search-wise, and GOOG should be worried.
You'd better deliver on that boast. The rest of MSN is tired of dragging your deadweight and would be real happy to see you guys cut loose.
>> Microsoft has been in the internet search business for approx. as long as Yahoo and Goog
Bzzzt. Wrong answer. Microsoft has been in Search business for around 4 years now (that's including development, first version was released in 2005 if memory serves). Before then we were buying search from Inktomi. AdCenter was started even later. We were way, way too late to the game. Given that Google and Yahoo have such an enormous lead (and suckage that is the rest of MSN portal), it's a miracle that we're even a distant third.
To the folks that took my comments on a tangent about "owning search".
I was speaking specifically about software as a service. Not search. It isnt hubris to say that MSFT "should" have owned that space. By "should" I'm saying that, as an insider criticism, with the thought leaders we have, the investment we've made, and the vision that floats around, there is no excuse for Google Writer being viewed as the killer app of web search.
Not sure why this is such a contraversial or hard to understand statement. I would expect possible argument from other insiders that I am being too harsh or don't see the "big picture", but arguments from folks outside the company saying it is "hubris" and takes a lot of nerve to imply that we should have delivered on key productivity apps being transformed into services and, thereby, been dominant in that space, is ludicrous.
Bzzzt. Wrong answer. Microsoft has been in Search business for around 4 years now ... Before then we were buying search from Inktomi.
Regardless of how it was being done, Microsoft was providing customers with internet search and was therefore in that business. So Microsoft was not late to the game, we just had the wrong strategy.
"Another thing is, I've seen what's coming in September release search-wise, and GOOG should be worried."
I doubt it. It does not matter how great your next search engine is. Microsoft has an unshakable reputation not for serving customers, but for serving themselves by leveraging business in disreputable (monopoly methodologies) ways.
I am starting to use lesser more customer friendly search tools like Ask and others for these reasons. And I certainly don't use IE.
And with your recent ad company acquisitions, it is wait and see how MS leverages that either for or against the customer. Which will it be? Data mining of personal information and distributed advertising to owners of that personal information or will it be passive advertising where the customer decides if he or she wants to respond without the data mining?
http://news.com.com/How+search+engines+rate+on+privacy/2100-1029-6202068.html?part=dht&tag=nl.e703
Regardless of how it was being done, Microsoft was providing customers with internet search and was therefore in that business. So Microsoft was not late to the game, we just had the wrong strategy.
Wrong again, unless you genuinely think AOL is 'in the search business' in a similar way to Google, Yahoo or us. We were late from an engineering, sales and strategic perspective. The fact that we're at third and somehow gaining market share is a miracle -- especially given how small the search team originally was!
You'd better deliver on that boast. The rest of MSN is tired of dragging your deadweight and would be real happy to see you guys cut loose.
Hah... I believe what you meant to say was: "The rest of MS is tired of dragging the MSN deadweight and would be real happy to see you guys cut loose."
In all seriousness, what services does MSN provide that are actually innovative or any good?
Spaces: Sucks! All PMs and Devs should be ashamed -- Facebook was started by an undergrad and look at it!
Virual Earth: Some cool features, but way too cluttered and slow. Typical MS overengineering with no ux studies.
All the other Craigslist, youtube, finance etc clones: Crap, crap, crap and more crap.
Historically it has been so easy to get promoted in the MSN org -- no wonder quality is down the drain.
> Not sure why this is such a contraversial or hard to understand statement. I would expect possible argument from other insiders that I am being too harsh or don't see the "big picture", but arguments from folks outside the company saying it is "hubris" and takes a lot of nerve to imply that we should have delivered on key productivity apps being transformed into services and, thereby, been dominant in that space, is ludicrous.
OK, I think I've got it now. I could agree with you if you took one more step.
"Key productivity apps being transformed into services" would not necessarily have dominated that space, even if it was done well. That is, it may be the vision rather than the execution that was flawed. "If we just do this, we'll own that space" may still be hubris, but hubris of the vision rather than hubris based on just being Microsoft.
That said, yes, somewhere "should" became "didn't", and it's perfectly valid to wave around that "should" and remind people of what didn't happen, and to try to get some recognition that things didn't happen as well as they were supposed to, and to try to get some accountability.
MSS
>> Regardless of how it was being done, Microsoft was providing customers with internet search and was therefore in that business
Yeah. Just like Ford is in tire manufacturing business. They sell their cars with tires, right?
I don't know if anyone noticed, but MSN (the portal) is ON FIRE.
Click on news.google.com on an average laptop (say 1024 x800 resolution). The page comes up with all the headlines in view. Click on msn.com. Top 1/3 of page is links to and ads for irelevant msn services. 1/2 of visible remaining right hand side is devoted to 3rd party ad.
You need to scroll to see actual news or actual content and the top picks are meaningless fluff about some lightweight new movies (nothing that might offend anyone of course) and some sports filler content.
The difference is like USA Today vs. New York Times.
Hardly on fire.
>> Regardless of how it was being done, Microsoft was providing customers with internet search and was therefore in that business
Yeah. Just like Ford is in tire manufacturing business. They sell their cars with tires, right?
If there's some kind of breakthrough in tire technology and Ford fails to adopt it and consequently loses all their market share, would you also say, "hey, not their fault, they're not a tire company"?
Search was Microsoft's to lose. We realized it was important at roughly the same time as Yahoo and Google and consequently made the deal with Inktomi. That was a strategic decision. We could have just as easily invested into homegrown search and advertising and didn't. The only reason why other companies have a "head start" and why we have to "catch up" is because of a strategic failure, not an act of God as some seem to think.
Yeah. Just like Ford is in tire manufacturing business. They sell their cars with tires, right?
Realizing that there is huge money in tires, Ford started manufacturing their own tires, right?
Catching up on brand awareness.
One of the issues with trying to catch up on Google is that they not only have a substantial lead in ads served etc, but also in brand awareness. Many people don't say they will search the internet anymore - they say they will google something or google it. Or say "look it up on Google" as if google was the whole internet.
With regard to search, beyond a certain threshold of performance and accuracy, it does not matter whether MSN provides faster searches, more relevant results etc. At this point it has become ingrained behavior to search via google for a substantial amount of internet users.
This is partly due to providing good technical solutions but also due to marketing to a wide range of consumers, many of whom, Microsoft does not actively engage.
Case in point - my ten year old was trying to show off her knowledge of the world of consumer electronics yesterday.
"I know what an iPhone is". What is it? "Its like a mix of a laptop, a phone and an iPod".
Ok, whats an XBox ? "Its a game thing like a playstation" was the reply.
Ok whats a Wii ? - "its this really cool game thing that you can interact with like to play tennis or fight and things like that"
Ok Whats a Zune ? - " I dont know that one"
Granted, that the related Microsoft products are all targeted at older age groups. But other brands such as Apple and Google are building brand awareness at a younger age in a way that will last. And that will affect purchase decisions and consumer behavior for years to come.
Here is an article about how Robbie Bach not only sold additional shares before the xbox announcement but how also none of these sales where part of a firewalled program.
I wonder if his defense will be that everybody knows that Microsofts Management is criminally clueless and the company is therefore on a downright spiral.
>"One of the issues with trying to catch up on Google is that they not only have a substantial lead in ads served etc, but also in brand awareness."
I was struck by your comment. One of those deep kind of nocturnal mind pressers that tends to have more meaning and depth than is obvious at first glance. Google and MSN have been around a while, but I believe MSN is much older as brands go.
What exactly is the problem? It is not the initials, as MSNBC has great brand recognition and is considered a rich news source on the net (though it's ad surge on loading the page is almost unbearable at low bandwidths). But the content is great, a good mix of form and utility with raw news.
But MSN has always suffered from a kind of Vulcan mind meld in reverse, driving away any customer or user appreciation of what it stands for--and I apologize to all you MSN people who are struggling with making a stand. Maybe its time for a change, (and I am no brand guru), like msNEWS or msNET, or msNaughty (which is probably the only way it would ever make money.)
Anything but MSN which at this juncture is like hooking a positive to a negative on a battery and a negative to a positive, instantly draining the battery. 'Whatever works' is the motto we used for building hand made product models to look like the real thing, until 'whatever works' was replaced by accurate digital renditions of the intended design. A certain loss of sculptural spontanaety occurred at that point.
In the case of MSN, the intellectual acumen needs to find a kind of shrewd perspicacity that blows your mind after gives you goose bumps, creating a sculptural piece of art on the web if that makes any sense. Sorry for the weird expressions, but really, Yahoo on without the yah or hoo is a difficult entreated strategy. Even Yahoo itself suffers from a kind of fingernails on the blackboard graphic identity these days.
Administrivia: "Mini" is back on the grid and back from going fishing. Now, when the real-world me is swamped with crunch-time work or needing a mental vacation, the Mini-persona goes on a virtual vacation and the Mini-laptop gets to rest for a week or so. Given some comments I've bit-bucketed from eager folks doing their own Nick Denton-esque hunt, let me just share that I don't post my OOF-age here and I'd feel really bad if someone got undeservedly harassed because they were on a real vacation during the past couple of weeks. I'm not them.
(crack the knuckles): so, what's interesting? We're now, what, 80,000+ employees with the AQNT acquisition going through? Holy-mother-of-my-goodness. Review models should just about be set in concrete so people can start looking for new positions with vigor. Facebook is still fun and all, though I'm not ripping through playing around with it near as much as I used to. And a very interesting and somewhat revamped Company Meeting is coming up next month. As always, I look forward to it. More so without the singing.
Mini - gotten wind of what one of the "big" announcements is gonna be at the company meeting?
Hold on to your hat....it looks like we're going to have a new company vision statement. This trumps everything. The old 15% discount ESPP program, real merit increases, having less bullshit, lunch delivered to your desk...it all pales in comparison to towels 2.0/new vision statement.
Looks like somebody will have to add a square to the Company Meeting Bingo Card!
We are not a growth company in wallstreet measures. Let us be a growth company in employee number at least. If we are not spreading the wealth among investors in their retirement saving