Microsoft Company Meeting 2007
The overall Mini-Microsoft summary of Microsoft's Company Meeting 2007:
- I love this company.
- I love this company's Company Meeting.
For real! Even at the end of this Company Meeting 2007 day when I'm poised to make a break for it, staring pleadingly at our CEO - giving one of the best speeches I've heard from him while - and repeatedly whispering, "please stop talking stop talking stop talking... my eyes and ears filled up two hours ago when this was supposed to be over... stop talking... please..." I still love the meeting.
Hey, I'm an unrepentant Company Meeting fan. Why? Because I do like to be energized from time to time and say, "Damn, we do some great stuff and I work with some excellent people." Otherwise, I would wander over to some other game and pull up a new keyboard.
Could this huge, complicated production have been better? Of course. I hope they round up people's constructive feedback and go over it next year as part of planning the Company Meeting 2008. Quick, shallow improvements off the tips of my fingertips:
- Alternative bus routes logistics: why does every bus come down I-90? How about strategizing some different approaches and trying to separate pedestrian and bus traffic? Once again, I was watching buses stacked up on the exit ramp while the meeting was well into the first hour. That's no fun for them folks.
- Demo Deathmatch: five minutes. That is all you have for a demo. I'm smart (well, sez me) and I don't need a big story about wood delivery and gold-customers blah-blah-blah. Five minutes. Drop the story. Show me the candy at a highly concentrated rate that overloads my cortex. Have an ongoing applause-o-meter to track who wins the deathmatch and, I think as a reward, gets to talk more about their group.
- Let Them Play Golf: I agree with a recent commenter: when did we hire all these polished, good looking people? I know that *you* are good looking or else you wouldn't be reading this. But, sorry, I want a presenter onstage that's a little crazy and enthused, not spa-shined and sparkling. I don't know. Some of those presenters just didn't seem like... Microsofties. Maybe I've just uncovered a discrimination that's been lurking in my heart: "for a Microsoftie, you just don't look geeky enough to be talking about {fill in the blank}."
- More Fun: Yeah, I miss those parody videos of the past (though the JibJab-esque video was fun!). Sorry, the parodies are much better than having a bunch of rich execs onstage burping for us via an Xbox game. Now, that might make for an interesting start in a parody video... ah, BrianV, you were good for one thing...
- Que the Orchestra: hey, they'll start playing the music to cut-off a big Hollywood star's rambling acceptance speech. I think we can have Bob or Clippy pop up on the screen to start chasing off presenters who go on too long... (clink clink clink) "It appears you don't understand time management. Can I help by turning off your mic?"
- Ban Paper: not one scratch of paper. I mean nothing that can be folded into a paper airplane. When are people going to friggin' learn that right after eating their lunch, bored Microsofties, especially those in the 300 sections, start flinging assault waves of paper airplanes down on their very annoyed coworkers? I think I said "Ooo! Crap!" around thirty times yesterday, watching some high speed attack plane from high-above smack into some young man or young lady.
Well, okay, the last one would have stolen from us the point where one paper airplane made it all the way to the stage screen and the crowd erupted in cheers. And Kevin Johnson was all, "Yeee-aaah!" thinking we were cheering for what he just said...
For the first two hours of the meeting, I was planning the title of this to be "Best Company Meeting Evah!" And then I guess the demos happened. I escaped the demos to go chat with other enlightened folks who were... escaping the demos. Demo guys, you're not selling this stuff to us. Show us the highlights and stuff we don't know and why we should feel good about the company because of what you're doing. That's what I want. The meat. Not the prelude, building action, twist, climax, and extended denouement.
The Live Search team wins for having the best demo of stuff I want to use. Now. Right now. Ship it please. Awesome stuff.
Figure a way to make a Surface the size of a laptop screen and you know I'll buy one.
I had just downloaded and installed the new Windows Live Suite beta so I already knew what was in there. I thought Chris Jones was being surprisingly uncool (I'm a big Chris Jones fan) during his demo snag, but the object of his white-courtesy phone heckling left a comment that all was fine. I think that was the only demo snag of the day.
There was no Zune demo, only teasing that yes, something Zune-y this way comes for the holidays. After all of Apple's announcements on the previous day and Apple coming up with the quote-unquote brilliant idea to make the WiFi on a player do something useful, I don't know what we could do to spring ahead at this point. ZUNE!
I finally discovered something that stinks about Halo 3: that upcoming commercial. What the? Come on, show us the game. Geez. It's already gone gold so why couldn't someone from Bungie grace us with a demo?
As for the speeches, some high level remarks:
- Kevin Turner: I feel this guy is trying to sell me something vs. talk to me as an employee. No, I actually want to see, page by page, everything we shipped and everything we plan to ship, not some crammed together chart with perhaps obscure products. And profits, please, not revenue.
- Gates: well, I kind of remember it but I listened more in respect than interest.
- Ray Ozzie: really good vision speech that I could relate to (it's a generation thing). He just has to throw in a few more questions here and there so that my attention can be refreshed. But as a commenter pointed out here a while back, what we need from Ray now more than ever is code and shipped product, not vision. And I liked his "party like it's 1984" call to arms to protect our customers. Nice.
- Steve Ballmer: great speech, even if I don't agree with chunks of it. I'll probably watch it again soon. I loved the scorecard. I loved the frankness. I have to say, my heart skipped a beat when he said, "We are many Microsofts" since I initially misheard him. We are not one Microsoft. We are many Microsofts and no one solution will apply to all of the company. Hmm, well, one way to think small if not be small and enable small-team aggressiveness. I do like that he tackled head-on the lack of boldness in the company. I wonder: why does Steve think there's a lack of boldness nowadays? Me? A poorly performing MSFT stock price certainly is a factor there. Hey, when you can say FYIFV, you can do some pretty bold things.
Looking at the crowd, I think most people were polite and clapped when they were supposed to, but I don't think the needle on the engage-o-meter ever went above "interested" (vs. "authentically enthused" or "wow" or "friggin' awesome"). Also, presenters and demo'ers need to realize that they are presenting to what's supposed to be one of the smartest audiences gathered for the whole year. Anywhere. Go fast. Talk frankly. Don't sell to us. Tell us something we don't know. Demo'ers: make us want to come work for you.
And when it comes to where to work to find the best Microsoft manager: Brazil? Okaaaay...
Finally, I'm pretty sure there was a lone "boo!" when we proudly announced last year that we had hired 12,800 people.
I wonder where that came from?
Further Discussions:
(1) The previous post has lots of incoming comments already about the Company Meeting. And there have been some very fine comments and discussions recently. If you don't tend to read comments, I suggest going through the last few posts and scanning through the comments and participating, if you're so inclined. And note that every post has a link to a comment feed, so that you can subscribe to comments in your RSS reader of choice.
(2) Mr. Jon Pincus provides an option to keep your Company Meeting discussion on the Microsoft.com side of the firewall:
Mini, if you wind up blogging about this, would you be kind enough to let Microsoft employees know that we've got a thread discussing it at https://spsites.microsoft.
com/sites/adastra/jon/List ... there are a lot of different strong positive and negative opinions expressed and not only do I think your readers at Microsoft would be interested, I'd loooove to hear what they think!s/Posts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=2 53
I wrote on Jon's Facebook wall that I was delightfully surprised to see the number of times he popped up on the video interview snippets.
(3) Mr. Adam Barr has Software + Services = ? which is a bit of a rumination over Mr. Ozzie's speech.
(4) red hot place has their take on the Company Meeting, too. Sorry to have led you astray! I thought there'd be more than buses, too!
201 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 1 – 200 of 201 Newer› Newest»C'mon mini...
I expect more from your opening blog after company meeting than rambling about paper airplanes!
Anyway, to me BillG appeared to be completely unplugged this time as if he wanted to talk about his philanthropy ideas rather than technical stuff, but was not allowed to do so.
Speech by Ballmer: Exceeded expectations. Keep it up Steve!
LisaB: Starting shuttles. Great. We love you for that. But, we expected more…
Thanks for the laugh! Some years ago I won the paper airplane contest by putting one one the stage. I vividly remember the cheering, much to the confusion of the speaker.
Those were the days!
Nice post. I agree with you for the most part related to the meeting logistics and feedback. One thing I'd like to add that stood out to me occurred during SteveB's speech. He mentioned a meeting with the financial analyst community a few weeks ago. If I heard him correctly, he said they asked him, "How will Microsoft succeed?". His answer left me scratching my head. He basically said (paraphrasing), “because we have to”, “we have great employees”, etc. Is that really an answer shareholders and investors want or need to hear? It sounded more like a way to make employees feel all warm and fuzzy, but legt me feeling empty. I think most shareholders believe we have lots of smart people and the resources we need to do great things, but I think he could have provided them and us a more insightful answer. “Because we need to” just doesn’t cut and sounds like my mom telling me not to do something “because she said so”. Um, I didn’t buy that when I was 7 and I don’t buy it now. Really, I want to hear our CEO provide a better answer to those kinds of questions.
Other than that, I liked his speech. I loved the fact he called out focusing on Design (great visual and tactile designs) and being Bold (taking smart risks). We can do much better at both.
I watched the webcast and skipped the last half hour, and now everyone says Ballmer was in rare form. I assume it's on corpnet somewhere, right?
Agreed on the spa/tan/slick look. On average, people who work here are less attractive and more interesting than the people who show up on stage at the company meeting.
Giving Dave Cutler the first Bill Gates award made me feel like the long-ago past is more important than anything that's happening right now. Of course he deserves any award he gets, but I thought the goal of the meeting was to PUMP US UP!
Seriously, the LINQ dude should have received the BillG award. LINQ is the most exciting real-world tech I've seen anywhere in the last decade.
I agree with a comment in the earlier post about how we dont care about any of the presidents or the sam's club guy. He sounds so artificial and so do KevinJo. JeffR is the only guy I have some respect for among the four jokers.
I would have liked to see some cool execs like J or a funny Technical Fellow like Peter Spiro on the stage. I had enough of these salesmen presidents. Give me a break please.
I also felt that BillG was little unplugged and his keynote was repetitive.
Ray kicked ass. I liked his slides too. Every other slide pretty much sucked. We should send all our execs to Steve Jobs on a course on how to come up with interesting and innovative slides. I thought Office 2007 powerpoint has more capabilities.
I would have liked to see LisaB to talk more on the stage. Connector sounds cool. Let us see.
Heard enough about E&D making profit this year. I will be glad if they dont blow up more billions while trying hard to make a couple of millions of profit. Come on guys, get real!!
This Debra crapathy totally pissed me off. I dont know how is serving as a CVP for a company like Microsoft. Pathetic!!
Most of the demos sucked. I dont know why they have to demo all the admin products in company meeting. Who will be excited to see a demo of how to configure some stupid management server product.
SteveB speech was a big drag. Too bad that when he called BillG on stage recognizing his last company meeting most of the stadium was empty. I would have liked to see more videos about BillG.
The Ray Ozzie's speech was great but it was a long day. And it was a pitiful sight when 2/3 of people had left and SteveB had to command the rest to stay to give a last standing ovation for BillG.
Too bad that's no TechFair! I looked forward to all the freebies in the meeting and I returned empty handed!
An antidote: when hotmail showed up in the photo demo, another teammate sat besides of me said "yekk!" and I almost wanted to shout, "Get rid of those fxxking banner ad!!!" It is so distracting! That's the major blocker that turned me away from Hotmail. You'd be surprised how many new softies used gmail instead. When I was in NEO and exchanging emails all of them gave gmail accounts and none used hotmail!
The new Live Search though, is cool and we have a real chance in beating google. The video search is GREAT! The text search... well I tried it this morning and it still didn't do as well as google but only behind marginally. There's certainly hopes! (whether we can gain some market share is another matter).
It was the first Company Meeting since I left MSFT. This particular event had stopped being inspirational or interesting to me a long time ago. the same claims/promises were being made year after year with little to show for them ("we're on the verge of the largest wave of innovation in the history of this company", "there's never been so many opportunities", blah blah blah...)
I'm quite surprised to read that MSFT hired 12,800 people in the past year though. Is that a typo? I thought on a "typical" year it was something like 7,000 or so. What happened? Is it a result of acquisitions?
Be bold, be brave... thats a great message, but Steve should know how it really is.
Looking out for the customer will get you in deep trouble. When all the engineers want to do the smallest necessary boring work possible, if you do be bold, you'll be in trouble real fast.
If Mr Ballmer knew how things were at Atlas (Aquantive) he'd know that he's asking developers to commit career suicide.
If you think you have it bad on main campus, you should try to be bold at Atlas and see what happens to you.
Steve's vision is great, but we need to get our raises - and keep the lynch mob from tearing us apart
I would have liked to see some cool execs like J
Heh. J's "coolness" is entirely manufactured, a fact that becomes all the more blindingly obvious the more time one actually spends around him.
My only question is: how many image consultants making six-figure salaries are we paying for to make a clod like J seem "edgy" (as the laughable Business Week cover article slash puff piece put it).
Mini, feel free to CRF this one if you think it's over the line. I just had to get it out.
This Debra crapathy totally pissed me off. I dont know how is serving as a CVP for a company like Microsoft. Pathetic!!
Just remember, you can't spell "Debra Crapathy" without "ra!"
I'd be interested to know what the aQuantive folks thought of the meeting.
I'm sure you work with lots of excellent people. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of them.
Trouble is, MSFT has tens of thousands of employees. It's long past time for a shareholder revolt to toss out the deadwood, starting with your top six(!) layers of management.
"J's "coolness" is entirely manufactured"
To say that it's manufactured would imply that it actually exists. I would rather describe it as:
"J's 'coolness' is entirely imaginary, and in fact is believed by nobody outside of "J" himself and his chain of command up to Ballmer, the #1 example of the Peter Principle in the world today."
>>"J's "coolness" is entirely manufactured"
Oh, its not just him; he's just a particularly visible poster-child of an evident executive belief that lots of hair/no hair/various piercings/the ability to WOOHOO! at the slightest provocation and so on is the key to developing cool, innovative software.
Unfortunately, that's just a hackneyed stereotype.
Much of the best software is developed by mature, sober, seasoned, quiet, "boring" engineers who really get technology and have the technical clout and managerial backing to implement it correctly.
As was evident from the company meeting, pretty, polished people with nice teeth, jutting jaws and a cheerleader mentality are running the place these days, which is worrying to me as I'm as ugly as sin and frighten small children without a bag over my head.
sure wish there was a webcast that folks in the field could have watched. i received an email back saying that we are not doing a live webcast to encourage more to go to the meeting... well i am hundreds of miles away. thanks msft.
"J's "coolness" is entirely manufactured"
To say that it's manufactured would imply that it actually exists.
In a similar sense, quotation marks are also used to indicate that the writer realizes that a word is not being used in its (currently) accepted sense.
::I'd be interested to know what the aQuantive folks thought of the meeting.
I'd be happy to share my impression... Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr.
My new manager has alot of the vision that I heard Steve talk about. But the old manager had the opposite vision - the customer was our enemy, don't be bold, take the littlest risk... and that cost us dearly, and caused great misery.
Its probably like this anywhere, its up to the manager. Thats why its up to Steve Ballmer personally to stay true to his word. Send that message down the ranks. Make sure it gets sent. Just like Vince Lombardi, its either 'my way or the highway'.
Looking at the demos, especially search, I was inspired. Then I imagined our software, and we are neck to neck with Google right now, they bought double click, we're on a level playing field. And I couldn't imagine a demo with our software... how boring, how embarrasing... software built without passion, pride, love of the customer.
And that's not the way it should be. That CRM software that was demoed, our software should be that appealing and easy to use. A manager should be demoing our software, dragging sliders, and turning nobs, and showing how our customers maximize their inventory, their profit by the millions... how we have the potential to be the most incredibly useful product for advertisers and publishers.
I thought the meeting was great. But not all managers are like my manager. My last one was the opposite of Steve's vision. My current one is Steve's vision.
I'm like Steve... I competed with them personally for years in Search Appliance space and did pretty darn good. And now its Google, Google, Google... and I love every moment of it. I was crushed when Google appliance came out, devestated, and defeated. Its a great honor to be able to compete with Google once again, this time with Microsoft on my side. With a fair chance to win, if what I saw at the meeting was for real.
Steve, if you read this, you Have to be a man of your word, plug your power cord into the orginization and make sure that vision gets from top to bottom. Make it your way or the high way. Or else we're screwed. but you got great people, you have the best. Its up to the coach to make the game. I already know what to do cause I heard your speech. But how can we even get a first down when we're our own obstacles. I loved the meeting, and now my after thoughts - if Steve Ballmer was able to get that speech plugged into the org, to get that vision to drive the company, most of all the division I work for, then he's the greatest CEO on earth (that I know of), if not, he's just a pretty good speaker.
So what's it going to be Steve? Vince Lombardi didn't just give a motivational speech in the locker room... he won superbowls by being on the field, every single play. Not up in the bleachers looking down. Steve Ballmer on the sideline would strike fear in the deadwood (the good attrition would skyrocket, Mini would love that), and the ones who are out to win will have the obstacles removed to do it.
My take on the company meeting, look up Vince Lombardi on Wikipedia... when Ballmer was talking (during the high moments) thats what I saw. And my other impression, probably my greatest hero, Eric Selberg, PM of Relevancy at MSN Search... reminded me of Bart Starr. I got to shake Eric's hand once. I saw all the people who made that happen, I don't know their faces but I saw their passion and love. Its an honor to be a part of this company, and that's not Cool-aid, that's 100% pride.
"I Love this Company" ... everything else aside .. on September 6th .. " I Love this company " and anyone who says otherwise is full of shit.
Seriously, the LINQ dude should have received the BillG award. LINQ is the most exciting real-world tech I've seen anywhere in the last decade.
More exciting than all of the Windows releases in that time?
You must be "the LINQ dude".
I can't believe I was the only one that thought Ray's slides sucked.
20,000 people at MS do not need a history of the personal computer. Especially when we were already running late.
We also don't need to see a scene that was used in one of our competitors most memorable ad campaigns. I don't get what the point was (except that we're "the man" now).
Yes, he was a great speaker. A little more motivating than most of the other execs. But we still haven't seen him DO anything at Microsoft. I would've much rather seen a demo of something he's been personally working on.
One thing that struck me in demos and some exec speeches is that their goal is not to serve the customer, but to defeat the competitors (Google, Apple, etc). This is really sad and immature.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against competing, but let's not count the chickens before they've hatched. Let's do our due diligence in addressing competitive challenges, but let's skip the kool-aid talk about how we're going to kick Google's ass. Let's skip it for two reasons: 1. We won't kick Google's ass in foreseeable future since they don't stand still either, 2. "F#cking killing Google" shouldn't be our goal to begin with, Lucovsky notwithstanding.
This reminds me strongly of various governments who invent a foreign enemy to detract the attention of their constituents from domestic problems. This happens all the time and never ends well.
sure wish there was a webcast that folks in the field could have watched. i received an email back saying that we are not doing a live webcast to encourage more to go to the meeting... well i am hundreds of miles away. thanks msft.
There was a live webcast, and it was even split into "Redmond" and "everywhere else" feeds. You just had to know where to look (hint: you will never find it on the intranet -- you have to "know people"). Even though I'm in Redmond, I skipped going down to Safeco (as if traffic isn't bad enough on a normal day ...) and instead watched the webcast from the comfort of my office. I had to email a friend in Fargo to get the link.
Thanks for the mention, Mini! My Mom'll be happy that I was up on the big screen :-)
Alas, I missed the meeting -- couldn't find a way to stream it off Corpnet -- and so don't have much else to add here.
> I'd be happy to share my impression... Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr.
Well said! And great post in general, it's very useful to see these things through new eyes.
jon
> sure wish there was a webcast that folks in the field could have watched.
Ooops, I lied, I did have something else to add.
There was a webcast; several other people were sending around questions about where/how to find it, so maybe it wasn't all that well publicized.
It's also up on corpnet for viewing -- or re-viewing, as the case may be.
jon
>As was evident from the company meeting, pretty, polished people with nice teeth, jutting jaws and a cheerleader mentality are running the place these days
Ozzie and Ballmer are exceptions to this. In their own very different ways, they were the only speakers who made any connection with the audience (some of it was negative, no doubt).
Many of you bash Ballmer, but I wonder whether his insistence at staying is because he realizes the 4 frat boy cheerleaders he has reporting to him are paper pushers. I hope that's the case, I hope he's just waiting for someone more inspiring to show up and then turn things over.
On the other extreme, as a previous poster points out, those supposedly cool execs with the piercings and what not are also paper pushers, different only from the big 4 in that they lack self awareness. I also hope Ballmer has them figured out too and is trying to keep a lid on things. Just because you might see him and J high five-ing each other, doesn't mean he really has any use for or hope in him.
"One thing that struck me in demos and some exec speeches is that their goal is not to serve the customer, but to defeat the competitors (Google, Apple, etc). This is really sad and immature."
i am glad someone mentioned this and above all glad that such people exist at msft. maybe the company's biggest challenge is that it is TOO competitive as in "we want to be in on anything in tech that is cool and profitable". and also "we won't touch any technology no matter how good for our customers unless someone shows that it is a profitable business".
whatever happened to "we have a long-term vision for the technology future and we are excited to help being this future to our customers"?
typical example is reported comments by gates and ballmer laughing at google before the goog ipo days because they were "commies" with no business model. not only were they comically wrong but also WHO CARES whether there is a business model or not to start with: as long as you have good technology why not take a risk and see how it develops? Back then google was a small operation with COOL TECHNOLOGY. the same thing can be seen from ballmer's comments on iphone. not a word on the technology of the device. no. he only wanted to talk about the PRICE.
in other words stop thinking like a bean-counter or a salesman. think like an engineer. good things will follow.
disclosure: i am not a msft employee. i have some stock as part of a diversified portfolio and a long-time customer..
>> More exciting than all of the Windows releases in that time?
Yes. The last exciting release of Windows was Windows 95 pretty much. Since then it was just putting Windows 95 UI onto the old NT kernel. Let's look at a shorter timeframe, though, since BillG awards are not awarded for decade-long achievements. What did cutler do in the past couple of years? Anyone? Ported NT kernel to x64? Isn't this supposed to be straightforward? Linux folks just throw in a few custom bits, recompile and their kernel works anywhere from watches to LANL. Granted, it's not really Cutler's fault that Vista is embarrassing pile of crap, but let's look at the situation realistically. There's NOTHING special in terms of engineering about NT these days. It's become a commodity which most people continue to buy because they don't know any better.
LINQ on the other hand solves a HUGE pain in the ass for applcation developers. It's one of a kind. I've never heard anyone bash it, even on anti-Microsoft sites. It just makes huge amount of sense. It's beautiful from engineering standpoint. It's novel. If this does not deserve a prize, I don't know what does.
On the topic the seattle work locations:
As an employee in the field, this is good news. While it doesn't benefit me directly, it does show that Microsoft is learning to be less Redmond-centric.
Field employees are limited to customer-focused career options like sales and services. There is a great amount of talent in the field, already employed by Microsoft, that would be great in product development (PMs, test, dev, marketing, etc).
I've been a PM in another company that "gets" virtual teams in product development -- and guess who's collaboration tools we used? Microsoft!
It's time to start eating our dogfood with our collaboration tools and start utilizing our talent outside of Redmond.
BTW: Where did these 12,800 people come from? A large chunk are hires in the field. We still have many open positions, but the lack of career opportunities make it tough to hire top quality employees we need.
Good comments to a good post.
Re Demos: I had the same gut feel that most here express: except for the Live Search demo, it was too much marketing and not enough engineering. Send the developers, the program manager who built the software/hardware to demo it!
Re BillG award: the point is why give the award to someone who already is at the top. Give it to someone who is up and coming to rally the people and show them that innovation still can happen!
Steve's speech was good. But it should not have taken until the end of the meeting to thank Bill...
As long as we have boring parts to the meetings, will see more people leaving early and more paper airplanes being build.
One thing that struck me in demos and some exec speeches is that their goal is not to serve the customer, but to defeat the competitors (Google, Apple, etc). This is really sad and immature.
Oh, get over yourself. I suppose next you'll be writing to NASCAR and telling them that races would be so much safer if only one car was on the track at a time.
Humans live for competition. While we exist to serve the users, we are in a race to figure out the best way to serve them with some very talented and lethally determined competition. Knowing whether you served the customer the best exists only in relationship to them and therefore it's stupid to take your eyes off of them even for a second.
I didn't come to Microsoft to work on software as some sort of academic exercise or to build average software either. I am here to build THE best software in the world, acknowledged by both friends, our detractors, and, yes, even our competition. If that's not what you're after, help support Microsoft by working for one of our competitors. (I hear Google is hiring.) Thanks!
Much like the last 6 company meetings, I skipped it and took a personal day-off (ok I ras-ed in to check in some changes :)). Again - doesn't seem like I missed anything.
Recently, for some reason, I pickup up Billg's The Road Ahead (published back in 95) from my bookshelf on the way to the bathroom. I thought it was a terrible read a decade ago when I bought shortly after accepting an entry position. But while I was flipping through it I noticed the below passage. I thought: "Wow! Bill pretty much summed up mini a decade early!"
"When you have a hot product, investors pay attention to you and are willing to put their money in your company. Smart kids think, Hey, everybody's talking about this company. I'd like to work there. When one smart person comes into a company, pretty soon another does because talented people like to work with each other. This creates a sense of excitement. Potential partners and customers pay more attention, and the spiral continues, making the next success easier."
"Of course, companies can get caught in a negative spiral too. A company in a positive spiral has an air of destiny. One in a negative spiral operates in an atmosphere of doom. If a company starts to lose market share or delivers a bad product, the talk turns to "Why do you work here?" "Why would you invest in that company?" "I don't think you should buy from them." The press and the analysts smell blood and start telling inside stories about who's quarreling and who's responsible for mismanagement. Customers begin to question whether they should continue to buy the company's products. Within the sick company everything gets questioned, including the things the company is doing right. Even a fine strategy can get dismissed with the argument "You're just defending the old way," and that can lead to more mistakes. Then down the company spirals."
- Bill Gates. The Road Ahead. Chapter 3: Lessons from the Computer Industry. Page 39.
>> Humans live for competition.
Dude, competition is customer focused. You build the best product, customers give you their money, you win. If you're mature you don't even mention your competitors in this scenario.
For our execs, it's not a matter of building the best product, I'm afraid. It's a matter of sucking the oxygen from the atmosphere and killing f#king Google and everybody else. That's ass-backwards.
Coincidentally, Google's quote of the day today is:
War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
- Thomas Mann
I didn't come to Microsoft to work on software as some sort of academic exercise or to build average software either. I am here to build THE best software in the world, acknowledged by both friends, our detractors, and, yes, even our competition.
How's that working for ya?
I agree we have too much immature comic-book competitiveness. People who are the tech equivalent of fat guys chugging beer and second-guessing NBA players, memorizing stats and explaining them instead of working out.
Our competitors live in fear of our pile of cash and existing market dominance, both of which are slowly but surely eroding while our management pumps their fists and yells about "passion" and "competitiveness."
One comment - Eric Selberg of MSN Search is no more the PM for relevance nor has anythig to do with relevance
I'm laughing at all the engineering geeks bash away at the MBAs.Do you really think your coding skills and cool technologies matter without marketing turning them into billion dollar cash cows?
What's Ray Ozzie's Gamerscore? It's rhetorical - it has to be 0. He obviously doesn't know that an Xbox 360 can play music and movies. Over 50 minutes on stage, he mentions Xbox Live four times. Never mentions Games for Windows Live - doesn't use the console on any of his slides. That would be fine if it was all about the enterprise, but how can you bring up Microsoft consumer products and not once say "Xbox"? Made me furious.
I'm also furious with the sound board guy: my ears are still ringing from the band's volume level and the two sound-mishaps. Being up in the upper levels makes you ear-level with the speakers so it was extremely painful to listen to the band.
And about the band: next year, get rid of the live people and bring in Rock Band. Have people try out if you want, but at least the music will be by the original artists and there will be something to do besides saying "oh, look, it's the band again". It would make the transitions entertaining - would make the warm up fun... maybe more people would be encouraged to get their earlier if there was a reason... If you don't want live players, hook up a Zune for all our sakes!
Aside from that, you're spot on with the demos. At least 60 minutes of the meeting was co-opted by the Live team showing me how to write an email and send an IM (yes, I was insulted) and the MBS team with their extremely boring product demo. I mean, I can empathize with MBS, in that they don't get the spotlight often but what the hell? You take 20K employees that mostly deal with Windows, Office, or consumer products and you show them a) how to run an IT department and b) how to run a ficticious business using MBS software. Ouch. If I'm ever faced with either of these two career options, I will be buying a bullet and renting a gun - terribly boring even if you can move the unlabelled object around a report.
Lastly, I fail to see why they didn't show off Zune 2. Apple has announced their holiday line up... you have a 20K person "audience" that wants to support a product... why not give them a preview? Most of the public won't wait to see what Zune 2 is... I just don't get the decision to keep it secret from us (and the rest of the world) at this point, now that company with the largest market share has aleady shown their hand.
Aside from the above, it was better than last year and far better than the year at McCaw Hall. I like the later start, I like the shorter scheduled time, I really like the fact that our executives assume that we can read a 10K to get financial information (and left the rehash out of the speaches). I thought Steve spoke better than he has for the last two years - I was happy to see Bill talk about his vision and that he will still be involved with the company, if only part time. Overall, I thought it was worth the time I invested in it... even if there wasn't much swag this year!
I didn't come to Microsoft to work on software as some sort of academic exercise or to build average software either. I am here to build THE best software in the world, acknowledged by both friends, our detractors, and, yes, even our competition. If that's not what you're after, help support Microsoft by working for one of our competitors. (I hear Google is hiring.) Thanks!
you're a recent campus hire, aren't you?
if you came to microsoft to build the best software in the world, then someone sold you a line that even my grandmother wouldn't have bought. when you focus on beating the competition in software development you *do not* create the best software in the world, you create an almost-ran piece of utter crap like zune that "beats the competition" based on a set of random criteria determined by execs with specific commitments.
that's not making great software.
nintendo didn't set out to beat the competition with wii, they set out to do something that hadn't been done before and do the right thing for customers -- and they won. DS? same thing. ipod? same thing.
of course, competition plays a role in this because there will always be someone ahead of you or right behind you. but you can't ever lose sight of the fact that it's the customer who determines the winner at the end of the day. and they are generally absent when we plot and scheme how we're going to beat our competition.
and so, zune. welcome to the social.
Lastly, I fail to see why they didn't show off Zune 2. Apple has announced their holiday line up... you have a 20K person "audience" that wants to support a product... why not give them a preview?
Could MSFT be getting ready to buy RIMM? I know this rumor has been talked about a lot, and I didn’t believe it at first. However, credible sources on Wall Street have resurrected rumors about MSFT getting ready to make its biggest acquisition yet. I don’t know if it is RIMM or someone else. It’s not YHOO since they are actively shopping around to tie up with a media company or even merge with ebay.
http://www.thestreet.com/s/kass-g-phone-and-other-street-chatter/markets/activetraderupdate/10378095_3.html
>> Do you really think your coding skills and
>> cool technologies matter without marketing
>> turning them into billion dollar cash cows?
Do you think your marketing can turn something into a billion dollar cash cow without our cool technologies and coding skills? How's that working with Search and Ads so far?
Right back atcha.
How's that working for ya?
Pretty well. One of our major competitors recently had to pull out of a few markets because they were running out of money. I'd like to think I had a small part in helping keep us out of a similar situation. We might even be able to snap those markets up if all goes well. Thanks for asking!
Sorry to hear that things aren't working out as well for your product or service. I'm sure with continued effort, it too can become #1 in its market.
Dude, Debra Chrapaty is a visionary leader and she has much upside at Microsoft. She being considered for Sr VP of HR along with JawadK when Lisa becomes president.
Don't interpet me!
RE: Right back atcha.
Oh boy, Here we go again. Yes, yes, we all know that coders are god, everyone else is, well, not...
Puhleeeze.
When we can work together as a team and play off each other's strengths instead of just flexing for each other, maybe we'll get somewhere.
For those looking for the on-demand links, have you thought of typing "companymeeting" into your browser while on corpnet?
Dude, Debra Chrapaty is a visionary leader and she has much upside at Microsoft. She being considered for Sr VP of HR along with JawadK when Lisa becomes president.
Wow, there is an awful lot of humor packed into that one post!
To the anonymous soul that wrote that, thank you so much. I really needed a great laugh!!
" their goal is not to serve the customer, but to defeat the competitors (Google, Apple, etc). This is really sad and immature. "
EXACTLY!
That's what I've been saying about MSFT for at least ten years now. Competition is incidental to seerving one's customers. Focus on the customer, not on the competition, or you just turn into IBM in the 1980s.
Oops, too late.
Anyhow, this fixation on the competition is something I've seen at many companies, and it comes from the frat boys. In most companies, the frat boys are confined to sales. In companies that are on their way to the ash heap of history, the frat boys are put in charge of engineers.
"With a fair chance to win, if what I saw at the meeting was for real."
Don't kid yourself. If what you saw at the demo was in the hands of any other company, it might have a chance to make a dent, but where it is now, it will never be more than a distraction from the company's main line of business.
"Humans live for competition."
Speaking as an Apple shareholder, I hope that your attitude is pervasive throughout Microsoft. Please, keep focusing on the people who are kicking your ass, and let Apple and Google concentrate on the customers.
Hey, here's an idea: why don't you clowns by Research in Motion? I'll bet someone like you would be thrilled to mix it up with Apple in the cell phone business. You'd have all the adrenalin you could eat, while everyone who's worth a damn at RIM cashes out and leaves you the empty husk of a once-great business.
"I am here to build THE best software in the world,"
Man, did you ever join the wrong company.
"Bill Gates. The Road Ahead."
Whoever the ghost writer on that book was, he's quite perceptive.
BTW, do you think BG ever even read it?
" I fail to see why they didn't show off Zune "
I'm going to go way out on a limb here, and suggest that they chose not to embarass themselves and their audience.
Zune cratered. Get over it.
Notes from the Homer Simpson School of Management:
The last two posts from the previous Mini topic Microsoft Company Meeting Ahoy! were substantive and important in my opinion, and should you wish to discuss strategy instead of things like reviews and open private offices, it might be a good topic for further mention, i.e., Ozzie gets it. Does he?
I'm not an employee, so I did not hear any of the company meeting speeches, but the idea of out doing Google by insuring privacy is a deeply rooted American tradition (the privacy part). I think it would resonate with everyone, not just over twenty five crowd. Once people understand what is being and has been lost over the last ten years of internet growth and the development of search and ad based data mining technologies.
Ok. enough of that. Here is an idea worthy of the Bill Gates Award (does it go to customers?): how about a reader-verbal-voice reader to take a specially crafted news aggregator (say a really well done Live News site) and have it read off the news in a clear human like customizable voice of pre selected RSS topics like world headlines, what's new on Mini, Latest donut shop in Springfield etc. The idea is to replace network cable news with an audio feed of the morning's headlines one could listen to in place of turning on the tv. Just playing my small part in helping build a better Microsoft.
(waves arm with finger extended in a circle) "I think he just made the international sign of the donut!"
Someone anonymous said:
"I didn't come to Microsoft to work on software as some sort of academic exercise or to build average software either. I am here to build THE best software in the world, acknowledged by both friends, our detractors, and, yes, even our competition."
Heh. I think you came to the wrong place, friend.
nintendo didn't set out to beat the competition with wii, they set out to do something that hadn't been done before and do the right thing for customers -- and they won. DS? same thing. ipod? same thing.
Uh, Microsoft had motion-sensative controllers in 1998... they promoted the hell out of the Wii and the "campy" games of WiiSports and WiiPlay have driven sales. In a years time, if their games-attach rate is still 1.0, I wouldn't call it a "total victory"... and I say this because my Wii hasn't had a game to play on it for months.
As for DS and iPod, you're very correct: they did something new for the hell of it, which is very similar to Surface. Oh wait, that's a Microsoft product, so you'll probably choose to ignore that.
Great meeting, Great Company!!!
Feedback:
Only demo the cool stuff. Dynamics looks great but it is not fun and we are not individuals who will be buying it.
Suite alignment. This company needs to focus on less options for people and a better buy up story. The new desktop live mail products look cool but why not give away something like Outlook...
When you are 2 hours over already, cut scope and get on with it. We needed to cut some of the middle junk out (like the lunch break) so Steve could come out on time.
I do agree with Steve though - I love this company.
Dear God! JawadK is being considered for Senior VP of HR? Could there be anyone more poorly suited for that position? Gack!
Thanks for the summary. Being in the field, I don't get to come out for things like this. I was at TR a few months back, and it sounds like it was similar to all of the general sessions there - a bunch of people trying to sell us stuff we don't need to be sold.
The funniest part at TR was the people demoing all the amazing things you could do with Silverlight - and advertising. Wow! You can overlay Ads! Wow! You can get ads in HDTV! Wow! You can resize the ads to be full screen! Anytime the presenter has to say, "Come on guys, this is cool stuff!" while the audience just stares...
And the hiring number doesn't surprise me. My hiring group from last year had over 450 people in it. On the same day. They actually had to split us into 2 groups.
>> similar to Surface. Oh wait, that's a Microsoft product
That's not a product. Product is something customers can buy. iPhone, for example. Surface at this point is a research project, nothing more. And even if it gets released, I don't see consumers buy it. To see why, wave your hands over your table for 10 minutes. It should be sold as an exercise device.
>> Oh boy, Here we go again. Yes, yes,
>> we all know that coders are god, everyone else is, well, not
That's not what I said. What I said was that engineers are essential to this company's success. I didn't say marketing is not essential. I just said that on its own marketing can't do shit if the product is subpar or if there's no product at all.
So it's out. You're an HR troll for MS. Nice one.
Lastly, I fail to see why they didn't show off Zune 2. Apple has announced their holiday line up... you have a 20K person "audience" that wants to support a product... why not give them a preview?
It wouldn't surprise me if this was actually in the works, but looking at the iPod announcement the day prior Exec Mgmt decided to pull everyting Zune related.
It wouldn't surprise me because I suspect that iPod will have taken the wind out of Zune's sails (sales?) and with at least 2 months until Zune 2 launch, no one wanted it leaked that the product was going to be stillborn.
Uh, Microsoft had motion-sensative controllers in 1998...
As for DS and iPod, you're very correct: they did something new for the hell of it, which is very similar to Surface. Oh wait, that's a Microsoft product, so you'll probably choose to ignore that.
I'm not the original poster but I will choose to ignore that. Rear-projection multitouch surfaces were around long before "Surface." You can do most of the stuff shown in the Surface videos exactly the same way on an iPhone, of which Apple just sold a million. Wake me when Microsoft makes an innovative product that customers love.
Uh, Microsoft had motion sensative controllers in 1998... they promoted the hell out of the Wii and the "campy" games of WiiSports and WiiPlay have driven sales. In a years time, if their games-attach rate is still 1.0, I wouldn't call it a "total victory"... and I say this because my Wii hasn't had a game to play on it for months.
do you even play video games? metroid prime corruption released recently for the wii, and along with bioshock on 360 on PC/Xbox it's currently a contender for game of the year and helpig to drive sales. zelda? warioware? super paper mario? yep, all driving console sales for wii.
wii also makes money on their hardware, and so when they sell millions of units they *make* millions of dollars instead of losing millions of dollars like us. this is why they don't need a 10x multiplier on their attach rate to break even like we do.
that said, i love my xbox and we've won the hardcore gamer battle for this generation. but we didn't do it with our hardware -- that is, the thing that competes most directly feature-for-feature with sony -- or because we were trying to beat specific things sony was doing in their games... we did it because we have the best games for hardcore console players. We gave the customer what they wanted, we didn't try to beat sony feature-for-feature.
As for DS and iPod, you're correct: they did something new for the hell of it, which is very similar to Surface. Oh wait, that's a Microsoft product, so you'll probably choose to ignore that.
You really need to step-out of fanboy land and dunk your head into the cold water of reality if you want to help the company -- surface is not a microsoft consumer product and it's still years away from appearing on a large scale in the wild. I hope -- I really hope -- that we don't screw the pooch on it, but the fact is that surface computing has already begun appearing in the consumer space and we're seemingly years away from having any story here even though we have the potential to be true leaders in this space. I would really like us to help lead this charge, but I'm fairly certain that we'll be a day late and a dollar short yet again on this one.
I'd love to be proven wrong.
As for DS and iPod, you're very correct: they did something new for the hell of it, which is very similar to Surface. Oh wait, that's a Microsoft product, so you'll probably choose to ignore that.
The discussion was about focusing on the customer. Surface looks cool, but it isn't out yet so we don't know if MS is offering the customer what they want or just creating a cool gadget that makes for a nice demo.
There's no doubt that MS has the talent to develop incredible stuff, as Surface, Seadragon and Photosynth show (yes, that was through an acquisition, but the talent is at MS now.) Let's just hope that management doesn't screw it up by focusing exclusively on what Google is doing.
As an "ex" of some months, I didn't get to see the meeting and all the rah-rah. And while I'm curious about what Search has done, I'm pretty confident in saying that it's just not going to matter. Google won search. Game over.
This Mini post has featured a lot of arguing about how or even if Microsoft should compete with the likes of Google and Apple. Answer: no. When you are just huffing and puffing to keep up with the cool kids, and you're clearly a geek and a loser (in that context), you are much better off going away and doing something entirely different. Meanwhile, you just embarass yourself.
Microsoft was ironically lucky that almost nobody in the real world noticed the Zune, because it could serve only to lower people's opinions of Microsoft. You know, if they actually spent time to think about what Microsoft had done. A sad, pathetic "me too" product with an absurd catch-phrase. This is how Microsoft competes?
And Steve B talking about focusing on design? Har har! Like you can just conjure that up. I know, put it on some people's commitments: "create great genre shaking designs (see iPod, iPhone)." That will just make it happen, right?
Even if we have some genius designer somewhere in the hive, by the time his/her design gets through the PM process, the focus group testing, the multiple customer surveys (all the pointless junk PMs and marketing justify their lives with), it will have been turned right back into.... a Zune.
A word of advice to Microsoft marketing and PMs. Focus group testing just means you have no faith in what you do. You want a good focus group? How about every single person who ever saw an iPod or an iPhone for the first time saying "Wow! That is so cool!" I keep trying to get that same buzz from my Windows Mobile phone but.... nah ah.
My take is that Microsoft needs to realize what it is, what it's pretty good at, which is a company that makes software for IT departments. Exchange, SQL, Office. That kind of thing. Windows was a one-time fluke that captured the consumer market. Great. You got lucky. Milk that cow but don't spend much on that farm anymore.
What consumer success has Microsoft had otherwise? Instead, they have burned enough money to send a manned spaceship to Mars and to show for it they've got a crappy MP3 player that six people bought and a game console nobody wants anymore.
Microsoft doesn't have the mind, the attitude, the personnel, the structure or the processes to be a successful consumer company. Abandon those efforts entirely, and go be the best IT software company in the world. Port Exchange and SQL to Linux, for starters, and GET OVER IT already. You are NEVER going to play with the cool kids. It's time to concentrate only on being the serious hard-working dad that may not be much fun, but he brings home the bacon.
Regarding a few comments:
The "I am here to build THE best software in the world" guy is clearly nuts. I was a dev for many years. I couldn't be bothered with Microsoft as who wanted to get involved with the buggy crap MS has been churning out for years. Then after a while I switched into marketing. I made a beeline to Microsoft. I figured if MS's marketers could have made the company that rich by selling crap, I could sure learn something from them. I did learn a lot, and then left to get a big raise elsewhere.
As for the "Do you think your marketing can turn something into a billion dollar cash cow without our cool technologies and coding skills? " guy, yes, they can. I mean, Windows, Office, etc. All were terrible products: buggy, bloated and have been for years. Still huge cash cows. I've seen plenty of superior products come and go because big companies don't want to take a risk on a startup. Microsoft does a great job at playing the old "No one ever got fired for going with..." card.
Finally, as for the competitiveness thing, being competitive is great. However, Microsoft these days seems to win the battle and lose the war. I mean on the web, you beat Netscape and now are getting your asses handed to you by Google. If you beat them the next folks will beat you. If you just try to copy your competitor you will often win if you have a good name and a pile of money but you will never actually get ahead of the game. Get some vision--not just "we're going to out-Google Google" but what are you going to do that is fundamentally different?
Finally, all this talk about Xbox and Zune. Get over it. Microsoft is a modern day IBM. It doesn't make any money on consumer stuff, and it always gets killed by competitors (Wii, Ipod, etc.). It's a combination of a flight of fancy and a recruitment tool (getting you those extra 12,500 employees). Microsoft is not cool. Microsoft is a good and highly profitable provider of business software. Stop living in denial. Those boring pieces of management software you don't want to see demos of--that's your company. It's not sexy, but customers actually want to buy them (unlike Zune that no one outside of Redmond wants).
"Microsoft doesn't have the mind, the attitude, the personnel, the structure or the processes to be a successful consumer company."
I disagree. I believe that microsoft has all of the above, but it's buried under layers of incompetent management.
When I worked at Apple, I had occasion to meet any number of MS employees who really knew their stuff, as well as a couple of the management poseurs who kept the talent from achieving anything.
The best thing that could possibly happen for MS's customers, shareholders, and engineers would be if someone invented a fatal disease that only affected morons in suits.
Bart Starr? I'm flattered! Although as a Steelers fan I always aspired more to the Joe Greene standard. ;)
Thanks to everyone for the kind words, but let me give credit where credit is due --- we on the Search Team has all been working very, very hard and as announced at the company meeting is close to unveiling what we've been working on. It's a huge amount of work done by some great people.
As for me - yes, I'm not the PM for Relevance anymore. I've been working with another group of rock stars in search, and you'll be seeing what we've been doing very soon as well.
"Zune cratered. Get over it."
Glad to see someone found a use for it http://hideapod.com/
Everyone should have received the email for the company meeting survey...please fill it out...let's make some change happen.
"Microsoft does a great job at playing the old "No one ever got fired for going with..." card."
Fired, no. Lost their jobs when their company went belly-up? You betcha.
Let me just add one more perspective here to the whole competition uber alles thread...
I'm the VP of engineering of a company developing a vertical market solution in a very profitable market. It fell to me to decide what our development and deployment platform would be. There are good market reasons to deploy on Windows, but development on the Mac is far easier to do.
Now, here's why I I'd have to be suicidal to even consider deploying on windows: MS is your best buddy until you start making a *serious* amount of money, and then they decide to cut your throat. WordPerfect, Lotus, Netscape(!), Palm, IBM, Intuit, and many, many others have learned this the hard way.
If I make our product dependent on a platform provided by a company that can't stand to see anyone else make money, then I will have committed a serious breach of my fiduciary duty to my shareholders.
I can just imagine the calls when a new rev of Windows makes my apps break, but somehow Microsoft's new entry into our field goes along just hunky-dory.
I don't see my new business getting as big as Google anytime soon, but if we even break $200M in sales in a year, I wouldn't put it past MS to try eating our lunch, and I'll be damned if I'll hand them the fork.
Show me MS getting along with Google, IBM, Oracle, Sun, and all the other vendors who have products on their platform, and maybe I'll change my mind. Until and unless that happens, I won't trust you as far as I could throw a chair with Ballmer sitting in it!
Okay so I'm an FTE but I don't know Jawad Khaki, I'm just curious why so much hating against the man? No serious, I mean if your going to trash someone at least give some reasons why. I'm not being fecetious, I'm curious.
"Everyone should have received the email for the company meeting survey...please fill it out...let's make some change happen."
I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole when it doesn't explicitly say it's anonymous.
I didn't know what to say about the meeting.
Then I came across this:
http://w