Microsoft Walks On By - Yahoo!
Well slap my ass and call me Judy! Microsoft is walking away from acquiring Yahoo!
Hot Damn and Yahoo!
(I have never, ever been so happy to trash a pending Mini-Microsoft post. Ah, yeah, it had a nice lemon analogy and everything but, well, forget it!)
While sanity did not prevail in making this crazy offer, sanity prevailed in not doing whatever it took to make the Yahoo! acquisition happen. Initial coverage:
- Microsoft: Microsoft Withdraws Proposal to Acquire Yahoo!
- Microsoft says proxy battle not worth it Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News.com
- Breaking Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal (Updated)
- BREAKING MICROSOFT WALKS Kara Swisher BoomTown AllThingsD
- Microsoft walks away from Yahoo
- Brier Dudley's blog Microsoft tells Yahoo it's over Ballmer's letter to Yang Seattle Times Newspaper Blog
(Pardon me while I crack open a bottle of Col Solare.)
With this strategic inflection point, the era of post-BillG Microsoft 2.0 has begun.
(Sip. Savor. Yum.)
The only not-so-good thing out of not blowing all of our cash at once is that we'll continue to live in an era of cash-cow abundance, preventing us from making profit-minded decisions. The lack of the money cushion would have, I presume, actually caused new projects to expect to bring in cash vs. becoming strategic money pits.
Out of this had best come a new reorganization of our online properties. Out with the old already. We had reached a bet-the-company point in going after Yahoo! to make up for the lack of performance out of MSN / Search / AdCenter in an attempt to leap-frog forward. I think we need to hang-up on the good-enough consensus culture for a while and put in a strategy czar to get things done vs. expecting something to arise out of the dysfunctional ecosystem we currently have.
And speaking of Microsoft 2.0: Ms. Mary Jo Foley's book is out now. Once you get past the foreword, it's a good read. I hope she comes to campus - well, Redmond probably - soon so that folks can have a discussion of the book and ponder the future in a face-to-face forum.
Soon, we can get back to the usual program of talking about the recent Town Hall and looping back to cover the recent comments about Microsoft India. For now, I'm going to ease back and enjoy this strange feeling I have: being happy regarding a wise decision our leadership finally came around to.
349 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 349 of 349What the hell is going on with msft employees? Great, we walked from the deal and we end up with a stock that's in the tank again. How the hell did that happen? I don't understand the complacency within this company. People should be outraged at what Ballmer is doing to shareholder value. He's created so much uncertainty that the market has no idea what we're doing and we're being punished for it.
If the employees utter disgust for the yhoo deal had anything to do with Ballmer backing out then speak up damn it. If he believes in this company and we're truly going it alone then take that huge cash pile and buy back our shares!! But for God's sake, do something with the freakin' cash. How does he continue to screw shareholder value and get a way with it? More importantly, why are employees allowing him to get away with it?
Here is my own experience. I happened to work with an MSIT team for a month. It shocked me that they're all at very high level.
The problem is that they don't know anything related to computer except email and google.
I spent about 2 hours and finished the only work that that team and I did in a month.
I then spent two days to explain to every one on the team the work I did. I knew most of them still could not understand but what the hell.
I know it is hard for them to recruit. Nobody wants to work with a bunch of people with amazing titles but know nothing about the work.
They get paid well, much higher than me but I don't want to go to that team even after the manager offers me an immediate promotion.
Somebody, please look into MSIT. You can get rid of 100% of them without hurting any business.
BTW, Please, VPs in MSIT, Indian teams are far worse. Your commitment of outsourcing 70% of work is a crime to the company.
I truely believe that 100 good engineers are enough for the whole MSIT org.
You know who's the genius here? Yang. He managed to create the perception (or delusion) that yahoo was worth $40B+ and clearly the market based on the last 3 days sees it the same way. Yet Ballmer managed to do just the opposite. And people think Ballmer was smart for walking away. Yang is dancing in the streets. He increased shareholder value by $6/share and avoided being gobbled up by the evil empire. This is almost comical...
So what did you do to try to change the culture around you? Work the bare minimum according to you. Poor baby, everyone is incompetent except for you.
Most of the BS at Microsoft is caused by people higher up than you. They think they're doing a great job because they don't have to live with the crap they cause. So if you rock the boat, you will be massaged back into line--or, failing that, fired.
Also realize that every manager's bad decision or stupid pet project has been sold hard to HIS manager, so to reverse course on anything is to admit failure. Not good at review time, and therefore not likely.
So stop giving the rank and file a hard time about not working to improve their condition. Those of us who have actually tried realize it's a complete waste of time.
Why people choose to focus on whether we're doing a good job at competing against goog or not is beyond me.
Uhh, it is? Maybe it's because that's almost all Ballmer talks about?
>How in the hell are we yet again stuck in this $27 - $30 hell ranges?
It’s called a trading range. Do a goog search on it for the particulars, but basically, it is caused by stagnation of growth. A lot of the ranges these days are market driven, e.g., the market has been teetering on a recession for some time and therefore stocks have stopped their massive growth, mostly since the end of the bull market some years ago, IT bubble, 911, yada yada.
If you analyze today's Microsoft track, there was a short breakout just after Bill Gates stated overseas that Microsoft would go it alone re Yahoo. I think the market was looking for Microsoft to show leadership, and for a moment until the details of the statement became better known, it kicked your stock over 30 for a few hours.
But to better answer the long term trading range reasons, we all have our opinions.
Mine are as follows: despite really good financial growth this year and last, (which I attribute to your new OS and to years and years of people not buying MS products while waiting for something better), there have been an incredible number of bungles over the last year or two:
Most of these listed below relate to one symptom: failure to make your customers your number one priority while also failing to understand who your customers are and what they need. All of that pops up as follows:
-IE Explorer loses dominance,
-The EU lawsuits and settlements,
-The bone headed failure of the Xbox hardware (this one is just the tip of a bigger problem of poor management at Microsoft Games and Entertainment),
-The failure to react quick enough to the Google challenge in advertising, search, SaaS,
-The failure to maintain brand value, (probably the most important one) while failing at the same time to properly differentiate your business through effective branding of the different businesses,
-The poor management of growth and expansion, with Gates and Balmer choosing to keep everything under one umbrella and brand financed by the OS cash cow,
-Not assigning succeed -or-die accountability to the management structure,
-Failure to understand the changes taking place in all your markets, such as selling your OS at a high price at exactly the same time that cheap and free alternatives begin to become available. Or failure to adjust quickly enough to the avalanche of new SaaS technologies pouring into the world markets, and so on.
-Failure to break out in a big and visible way with any new and significant technologies (voice is probably one and it really has not yet taken hold--others?),
-Embracing DRM and continuing to develop and sell new products that use it such as Zune at exactly the same time that the world is abandoning it and considers it a failed technology,
-Creating a DRM based play for sure technology, selling it then abandoning it leaving your customers to figure out what to do from there,
-Failure to recognize and accurately separate the enterprise markets from the home computing and entertainment markets, despite the anemic effect of Xbox live and a few other technologies from Microsoft (surface?),
-Wasting incredible amounts of capital on things that have questionable ROI or are difficult to justify financially, at least in the time frames of expected payback. For example 6 billion and 5 years on Vista, 6 Billion on AcQ, and you nearly spent almost 47 billion on Yahoo (I mention that as because the non expense only succeeded in dropping your market cap by the same amount), billions on repairing Xbox, and so on. I don't work for Microsoft, so I would guess there are more examples,
-Failure to make Search, Live and MSN succeed as hoped,
-Failure to change the home computer home entertainment formula in a powerful and all encompassing way as promised by Bill Gates.
-A devastating morale problem fueled by massive personnel management issues inside. Big is very very hard to keep small and efficient, productive and happy.
Given these things, all the tremendous good will and financial strength you have going for you, it is stunning there have been so many errors, and more stunning the analysts have not crucified your management over it. Probably because for the last two years, Vista and XP have propped up the company and forestalled any financial disasters, but it is my opinion that when you add all this together it explains your stock trading range.
Says here we're buying Facebook now:
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080507/microsofts-project-granola-facebook-tastier-than-yahoo/
Let's hope we're not paying $15B for that dump.
So it might be "Good bye Yahoo!, Hello Facebook"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121017846020274243.html
At least it will be less tha $47b!
I cannot understand this. We have big revenue pressure in India and our travel has been almost totally eliminated. Every trip needs senior level approval from someone who is often travelling and more often, does not care to read email messages if they are not travelling. Meanwhile, we have customer event in Dubai where Microsoft pays for the customers ticket, hotel and all expenses. If we worked in a company that was not profitable it is one thing, but to work in a company with the highest margins in the world and still have these stupid rules is very short sighted. Weekly forecasting, no travel, bad numbers, high attrition, poor and invisible leadership are the reasons why this year will be remembered in Microsoft India.
Ballmer/Liddell plans to buy Facebook for $30 billion.
I hate all these people walking around with a bloated sense of self importance, like they're curing cancer. I hate the people who talk like they think they know what they're doing, but don't. I'm sick of people with made up titles, directors with nothing to direct, empire building managers, cronyism and process for process sake.
I thought maybe I posted this in my sleep! I left recently (after nearly 10 years) for pretty much the same reasons as this poster - with maybe a little less Hate.
Day-to-day job satisfaction was miserable, I had to spend most of my week tending to a cadre of middle managers who didn’t have anything to do. They have been promoted above their capability and now think they are all strategy genii. Over-leveled + no real work + inflated self-opinion = Massive Productivity Drain. Don’t get me wrong, I used to be a die-hard MS loyalist, and I still want MS to succeed, but recently it made me feel physically sick. MS is rife with this problem and no GM or VP is going to change it because there is no incentive. Anybody below who tries is pretty much p*****g into the wind. It’s a real shame because there are still some really smart and capable people at Microsoft but their talent is just going to waste. I could almost cry…
Most of the negative commentary I've read from inside MSFT runs along a familiar themes: "I am doing next to nothing with my time and my management doesn't seem to know or care." and "I work for a faceless bureaucracy that is more concerned with empire building than with producing a competitive product that will knock the socks off of our customers."
This is the price of winning. You see, with the ability to dominate the PC desktop, Microsoft hasn't really had to make design decisions based on customer demands. At least not until OS X looked like it might take some of the customer base away from the Windows franchise, that is. Whether OS X would have seriously impacted Windows sales or not is irrelevant because, I believe, it created pressures on MSFT to make certain strategic decisions with respect to the release of Vista which, again I believe, seriously compromised the final product (more emphasis on eye candy, no WinFS). In my humble opinion, MSFT reacted _defensively_ in product design rather than _proactively_ due to a *perception* of what customers would have preferred.
This perception was, again I believe, created by "monopoly coast", or the ability to not worry too much about what product features you should or should not add to your software based on competitive pressures. Microsoft has shown in the past that they have been able to produce incredibly well designed and polished products when they feel there is a strong competitor forcing them to, for the lack of a better phrase, "innovate". But once OS/3 and other windowing software for the x86 platform were essentially defeated in the marketplace, MSFT has taken the path of releasing a new product and then patching it to perfection. Anyone who doubts that statement need only ask the CIO of any organization; no one will roll out the latest version of Windows after it first ships to their production machines. Most wait until SP1 or SP2 to deploy on critical infrastructure.
So where is the motivation for the monopoly to do better? There are still no competitive pressures for MSFT to do any better. Apple's products have only made marginal gains in market share. No one can really tell how many machines are running Linux or BSD since the OS is not tied to machine sales. It looks as though Microsoft's dominance is assured for the forseeable future.
Which brings me full circle to the comments: Anyone looking for MSFT managers to act anything like a nimble and hungry startup should look for employment elsewhere. You are now working for the functional equivalent of a government agency. Every complaint I've heard about how these poor souls feel about their jobs could have come from a government employee or government contractor. I've been a government contractor for 17 years and I recognize the sentiment immediately.
There isn't anything you can do at the grassroots level. The anonymous comment that said "More importantly, why are employees allowing him to get away with it?" is a joke. The SCOTUS has consistently sided with management in suits from shareholders against management, so what do the employees think they are going to do? Storm the ramparts?
I do what I can by being faithful to myself. Because I can't change the system, all I can do is change myself. I have a project right now where neither the company I work for, nor the contractor we want to work on our job, want to take any risks to get my project started. That means *I* will have to take the risk to get the job started. *I* will have to shoulder the liability of the project _personally_ because I believe in the scientific data that will result from the work. I know we *need* this data to make decisions across the entire site, not just within my company. I am willing to risk my job to get it.
So I guess my question to those folks who are upset with MSFT managers is: What are you willing to risk to make MSFT a great place to work again?
About the stock price, why not just vest, sell immediately, and use the money to make other investments? Sure beats the stress of waiting for the MSFT stock price to hit a magic number.
I came looking for some gossip on the internal thinking and opinions post Yahoo pullout. I guess the verdict is "It was a bad idea to begin with".
Cant help but notice the amount of frustration and self pity consuming some folks here. I had a totally different impression of the typical "Microsoftie". Interesting!
"Why people choose to focus on whether we're doing a good job at competing against goog or not is beyond me."
A $44B bid was guaranteed to make it the focus, just in case Ballmer's comments about competing against GOOG until his "last breath" didn't. Plus, there's concern about the potential threat to MSFT's business long-term, as well as the potential upside if the company could be more successful there (it's a big market - even by MSFT's standards)
"Focus on the numbers because they reflect reality."
The market is a discounting mechanism and stock prices reflect not just earnings, but also future expectations and sentiment.
"I'll admit, the stock action this week is completely bizarre. What the market is thinking is well beyond anything that makes sense to me."
The market is likely thinking that where there's one insane bid, there may be another. I think the YHOO thing also re-raised many of the concerns about leadership and direction that had started to fade on the back on the first 2 blowout Q's. Keep in mind that since the pre-bid period, MSFT had a comparatively lackluster Q3 (with concerning weakness in the main cash cows) and gave reduced guidance for Q4 (though as you say, increased guidance for all of FY09).
"How is this company falling apart and how is this a <$30 stock with a PE of 17 (not something we've seen since the 80s)?"
That would take hours. So just ask yourself this: why would you buy the stock given its long-term record of underperformance, below-market dividend, and the fact that insiders lead the industry in selling it? For many, the answer is you wouldn't unless it was trading for a major discount to FMV, which it currently isn't.
MSFT stock is right where it should be. A PE ratio of around 15-17 is priced for Large, non-growth tech companies. IBM, EDS is all around the same PE ratio. SAP is slightly higher at 18.
MSFT is analyzed by more analysts than any other stock, hence, the market is pricing it correctly. Don't expect it to move much. It's the law of BIG numbers.
"Until the employees get behind the company, the company will go nowhere."
You got this wrong. Until the company gets behind its employees, the company will go no where.
When is the insanity going to stop?
Facebook has zero technology. I can create a similiar site for a couple million dollars.
Fire all the partners and stop paying crazy money for useless companies.
"We really believe in companies having choices about their destinies," Brin said. "It's not about scuttling (the deal). They were under a hostile attack and we wanted to make sure they had as many options as possible."
Steve Balmer picks up chair, throws it across room.
YHOO 26.22 0.58 2.26%
MSFT 29.27 0.06 0.21%
Ballmer/Liddell plans to buy Facebook for $30 billion.
That would be a bigger mistake. Facebook users dont like microsoft either:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3893228.ece
There is possibility of a Yahoo-Google alliance. That might just about do it for Microsoft's struggling online business.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/google-we-like-yahoo-and-we-like-it-independent/?ref=technology
When will MSFT realize Ray Ozzie isn't the answer. Ozzie has been silent since hired and equally worthless when he actually does speak. He announces Groove v2.0 aka Live Mesh aka Live Mess and expects to be a visionary? Sorry, try again
Plus, there's concern about the potential threat to MSFT's business long-term, as well as the potential upside if the company could be more successful there (it's a big market - even by MSFT's standards)
I've been involved with this company since '95. As long as I can remember people have been whining about some potential threat the msft's business. Hmmmm... $51B in revenue later...
Yes, it's a market and we should play a role in that market but goog's level of success will not dictate our failure unless we decide:
goog success = msft failure
We can be successful in that market and many more markets with or without goog being successful. How do people allow themselves to attribute someone else's success with their failure. That's simply pathetic. Is it not becoming obvious to people why everyone else is questioning our future? Because it appears we have the mental strength of a 2-year old.
MSFT had a comparatively lackluster Q3 (with concerning weakness in the main cash cows) and gave reduced guidance for Q4 (though as you say, increased guidance for all of FY09).
The focus on the negative in this company is amazing. Appl also reduced guidance for Q4 yet it seems like it's had zero impact on shareholder value and confidence. By the way, our Q4 guidance was only very slightly reduced in the midst of a recession. All people wanted to see was another blow out qtr. Q3's numbers were solid -- especially in this economy.
Our problem seems to focused in one area or one individual only: Ballmer. If our executives believe in this company so much then why don't we ask them to aggressively repurchase our shares?
Oh boo hoo. Come back Microsoft, we want you. . . ohh boo hoo.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. I was clear that buying yahoo is not my decision and that I don't work in online areas, Frankly I don't care about yahoo or the bitter employees posting here. And I mean bitter over the fact that your great company is in the crapper and requires a handout from goog or msft.
The non-bitter employees of yahoo I'd love to have a beer with you and talk about something besides tech-religion or tech-politics.
I don't really know what the market is thinking, but I would guess the following.
Microsoft has not bounced fully back since Ballmer tipped his cards that the best idea for fixing our online story has to be bought. And then failed to buy.
Yahoo is up because the market now knows that *someone* is crazy enough to pay over $30 for the turd.
Facebook the site is a waste, but the talent is worth something to buy. Except that Facebook employees will look upon the purchase as retirement and won't bring much to the company.
I would love to see some true inter-company competition. Windows sucks and the management bloat is largely behind it. Nothing new can happen, and people who do not toe that line are forced out. Their misery is plastered all over this site daily. Start a small team to build a new OS from the ground up with some startup capitol. Give them free reign and see where it takes hold. If it cannibalizes Windows, really, so what? The cash cows are ripe for disruption, and it's not coming from free online web 2.0 whatever garbage. Why not take a real risk and give it a chance to come from Microsoft for a change instead of defensively holding onto the same market it owns and busting everyone's tails for dreams of 10-20% growth? Create a new market, it worked for Nintendo.
>Don't expect it to move much. It's the law of BIG numbers.
So what you are saying is you have to own hundreds of thousands of shares of Microsoft stock to earn pennies per share on the investment?
Your comments about not expecting much on the investment are the same as saying, "if you have talent, don't come to Microsoft: our options are worthless."
I don't work at Microsoft, but I find your comments the most asinine thing I have ever heard. If big is worthless, then, break it up into smaller more profitable companies. As an engineer, I wonder, do CFOs really have this much stupidity that they don't know how to maximize stock value for their investors? Maybe we ought to bring back burning at the stake.
Everything is wrong at Microsoft India. There is now a reward of some cheap notebook if we get to the revenue target. Does Neelam (GM) not realise that we work for pride and challenge and whether or not she offers us a Rs,13000 HCL notebook we will do our best. I am insulted by this offer of a gift if the subsidiary meets the revenue goal. Last year, everyone got xbox and Neelam thought that people worked harder for the chance at winning xbox. Her cheap thinking about what motivates people at Microsoft is one of the reasons we are suffering in India today.
Go back to HP Neelam. You have no idea about Microsoft culture and how to motivate people.
To all lost and confused over the Y! price... what you are seeing is large institutional investors keeping the price high to kill the options players who have a massive number of shorts coming due.
Once we are past the option expirations, and it is clear that no MSFT is coming (some denial still there), and now that Google has said "No big Y! deal anytime in the immediate future", expect YHOO to start to tank.
As for MSFT stock... The market has classified it as a non-growth stock. The only way to get the price moving would be to DESTROY expectations in a HUGE phoenix like way, OR start paying a higher dividend.
That is all. Some knowledge of the market can be useful if you want to start talking about stocks. Very rarely do short term market moves correlate to fundamentals.
"I wish msft would stop discussing features/functionality before they are launched. Who needs an enemy when you can intentionally sabotage sales from within.
The latest is Zune's upcoming copy protection features:"
Your general point is well taken. However, Zune's upcoming copy protection is not something they are touting. Rather it was secret because they don't want the public to know it is coming. The story was a leak they have (half-) denied.
The lesson here is that you shouldn't do things the public wouldn't like. But if Microsoft follow that rule, then it would hardly be in business.
"sales account managers are manipulating their quota and making 200K to 300K in bonus for doing nothing - you would also say the same thing."
200k to 300k is incredibly inaccurate. There are very few account managers that ever see a $100k bonus. A L64-65 at 140% can do it but there are only a handful of those per year and in most cases it more than evens out the following year unless they are lucky enough or smart enough to get out of role. It would be safe to say that more AE's pay back than hit 140+%.
Our field sales force is grossly underpaid and over worked when compared to our competitors. This is why we see so many rest & vest, and worthless AE's.
The "do nothing" part is almost correct. It should be do nothing except sit on internally facing con-calls while hoping that the ATS continues to do all the actually selling.
KT is not even started. There are layers of worthless mgmt (STU & BMO) as well as the great enigma (MCS) that could go tomorrow and we wouldn't even feel it. There are hundreds of heads that should go in this year's RIF.
How do people allow themselves to attribute someone else's success with their failure.
Could it be because for years the definition of success at Microsoft has been the failure of the competition? Netscape is the most recent example that comes to mind.
So stop giving the rank and file a hard time about not working to improve their condition. Those of us who have actually tried realize it's a complete waste of time.
Right on... no point battling the system. It happens in most such companies. The inspiration for Dilbert comic strips comes from companies like Microsoft.
Learn from it, use the opportunity to study the mechanics of how kissing the right asses gets you ahead. If you dont like it, move on.. go elsewhere. With Bill Gates completely out of the picture, it can only go south. As long as you have that carnival barker at the helm, don't expect things to get any better.
Incredible,
This thread has gone off in so many directions, and yet they all seem to be important and pertinent. Let me see if I can throw my two cents in.
Yahoo deal dead... Yeahh. I felt it wouldn't work out, but hoped more than thought it. I don't think it will help MSFT either internally or long term stock prices either. Of course I am concerned about google, (not capitalized on purppose), but we just need to compete and supply good solid product that the public wants.
Hiring a ton of outside labor to bring in or hold overseas both hurts and helps. New ideas, are good for broadening possibilities, but they need to have something to bring to the table. Don't just go outside because you can. There are plenty of talented people here in the U.S. that we can tap.
That being said, I read somewhere above that we need to do it because of attrition and turnover rates. HOGWASH. It has been quite a long time since the corporate moral and internal corporate image was high. I remember about a year ago with new HR direction that things were going to be great, improve for the better. Nothing really has changed. If they want to keep good people and lower the attrition rate, they could. They choose not to.
Needless to say I remember one or two years ago, we were all reading a book that was out there from Cynthia Shapiro called Corporate Confidential. If you take a look back at the informaiton we read, we will notice that the book was fairly accurate, and the information appropriate to our environment. Then came Lisa, and Oh yes, we are going to keep more employees and make things better. No change. So, now we still code, and make good product, but we burn through our corporate resources. (us). Off the subject, I noticed on her site that Ms. Shapiro, will be speaking up here in Seattle on the radio this weekend. (Straight from the site [ cynthiashapiro.com ] I copied the following: Sunday 5/11 @ 6:00 AM PST on 97.3 KBSG). I think I will listend in and see what she has to say. Maybe she will mention MSFT itself. Who knows. Her latest book is about getting a job and being hired over others. Something we don't have a problem with is getting people. Now we just need to keep them.
So, next subject. I noticed someone mentioned how great it will be to still have the cash to do good product without being quarterly profit centric. I believe that to be extrememly accurate. I don't know that we need as much cash as we have, but cash flow issues, and amount of critical mass cash seem to kill a lot of smaller companies. I think, especially with our current methods of creating product, that we wouldn't handle that very well. We are more like a cruise ship moving through the ocean trying to steer than we are a small speed boat. We aren't as agile, but the cash gives us abilities that compensate.
I think I will stop here for now. Don't want to over stay my welcome. Thanks.
Something we don't have a problem with is getting people.
We have no problem hiring the Bs. We do have a problem hiring the As.
Some attrition is inevitable because life happens and priorities change for people.
But hiring the Bs is a vicious circle because sooner or later they run up against a brick wall and get attrited out.
News these days is that PS3 already oversold 360 in Europe, despite our one year plus head start.
How nice, yet another success story...
>and now that Google has said "No big Y! deal anytime in the immediate future", expect YHOO to start to tank.
I thought a Google-Yahoo deal was imminent. Last I heard they are dotting the i's and crossing the t's just working on ironing out the kinks of antitrust concerns before committing. It will be a deal where Google adds are displayed on Yahoo searches and Yahoo profits nicely from the deal. That is going to happen. So you were saying . . .?
>As for MSFT stock... The market has classified it as a non-growth stock. The only way to get the price moving would be to DESTROY expectations in a HUGE phoenix like way, OR start paying a higher dividend.
So tell me Einstein, what would happen if Microsoft broke itself up into four companies under a holding company or broken up outright? With new fully culpable company presidents instead of VPs running each company? Maybe an OS and applications company, a SaaS/ad subsidized company, a device plus software company, and an intellectual property and pure research company. Models exist for all of these to survive. Maybe except for the Applications and OS company, you would have at least three companies back at the startup level. Talk about motivating the troops.
So, next subject. I noticed someone mentioned how great it will be to still have the cash to do good product without being quarterly profit centric. I believe that to be extrememly accurate. I don't know that we need as much cash as we have, but cash flow issues, and amount of critical mass cash seem to kill a lot of smaller companies. I think, especially with our current methods of creating product, that we wouldn't handle that very well. We are more like a cruise ship moving through the ocean trying to steer than we are a small speed boat. We aren't as agile, but the cash gives us abilities that compensate.
A tech company like MSFT can have five major strategic assets for the future: Brand leadership, momentum sales (i.e. product built last year still selling next year without additional R&D), strong internal organization, good engineers, and a cash horde.
Brand Leadership Microsoft has pissed that away by losing sight of what the customer wants. "Hi I'm a Mac - and I'm a PC".
Sales Momentum Still exists, but the Vista debacle will kill it. XP is running out of steam, and Vista failed to add a needed boost. Office is running out of fuel too.
Internal organization Microsoft never developed this. The culture of "individual excellence" meant that no leaderhip or institutional memory of best practices ever evolved separate from the individuals on a team. MSFT doesn't really even have "teams", just collections of individuals. Replace a key person or two and there's no continuity.
Good Engineers MSFT has been driving away these people for several years now. Good engineers have better opportunities, and are smart enough to know it. MSFTs review and compensation policies are designed for a boilerroom sales organization and don't work for an engineering organization. Coupled with a refusal to address inadequate management at all levels, MSFT offers nothing to experienced engineers, and does nothing to keep them.
Which leaves us with Cash. With the Yahoo! deal, MSFT tried to throw that asset away too.
It's almost as if the company is deliberately trying to destroy its future. It is rapidly running out of assets it can use to turn things around.
Everything is wrong at Microsoft India. There is now a reward of some cheap notebook if we get to the revenue target. Does Neelam (GM) not realise that we work for pride and challenge and whether or not she offers us a Rs,13000 HCL notebook we will do our best. I am insulted by this offer of a gift if the subsidiary meets the revenue goal. Last year, everyone got xbox and Neelam thought that people worked harder for the chance at winning xbox. Her cheap thinking about what motivates people at Microsoft is one of the reasons we are suffering in India today.
Go back to HP Neelam. You have no idea about Microsoft culture and how to motivate people.
Absolutely!!!
These cheap tricks are not new at MS India. What the hell do they think of the sales guys? Show them the carrot of a cheap gift and they will run like mad dogs chasing unrealistic targets? Guys, our personal lives, peace of mind and health are far more valuable than these cheap gifts! It is just not worth impressing the numbers obsessed management team at MS India. This model just sucks. We are good at doing business and we have proved it even before the Neelams and the Rajivs stepped in.
Neelam, Rajiv and Sanjeev - Will you please leave the floor and help us rebuild the original MS culture at India? We are just fed up with the bloddy HP mentality and mindset that is polluting the current team! You are pissing off your own team, the customers, partners and just about everyone. You suck!!!
While there is a huge mess and chaos at MS India, the CVP prefers to pose for the media along with some government officials. That shows where his passion is.
It's quite surprising that the management chose to ignore the noise that they keep hearing about this geography.
What an unfortunate situation to be in! The CVP suffers from media mania, EPG leader is crazy about whipping the sales team's ass, DPE GM is obsessed with bloating the participation numbers of his events and the MD keeps day dreaming of getting the best region award at the next MGB. What a great team to work for!
When the going gets tough, we should get rid of the HP crap.
I know that you (Neelam & team) are smoking grass. Thank you for your lack of passion and commitment.
We had a great culture at Microsoft India few years back. But, then came the clowns from HP India. We have been having a great time working at MS India and we were proud of working for this company in this country. Now more than ever is the time to prove that the culture is entirely fucked up and we should do what it takes to make this company is an INCREDIBLE place - a great time to DRIVE the HP buffoons home and deliver on our passion! This is the incredible opportunity to demonstrate, what sets Microsoft India Team apart from other technology companies, especially during this current fucked up climate.
INCREDIBLE results deserve INCREDIBLE recognition and I am pleased to announce an INCREDIBLE reward – a used HP notebook for whoever leaves MS India first to rejoin HP (Before June 27th 2008).
I look forward to an incredible and memorable finish: INCREDIBLE INDIA …let’s go for it and show what we are made of!
Regards
An INCREDIBLE MS India Employee
-With a tribute to the folks who built this company in the past to make it one of the best places.
... no one will roll out the latest version of Windows after it first ships to their production machines.
Conversely, the quality bar we look at from the inside has been lowered, because we don't expect anyone to deploy before SP1. Hence the frequent 'Oh, we can still fix it with the first SP'.
So tell me Einstein, what would happen if Microsoft broke itself up into four companies under a holding company or broken up outright? With new fully culpable company presidents instead of VPs running each company?
For starters, it will hopefully bring in something that is unheard of at Microsoft - it is called accountability. The smaller companies will be forced to perform for their survival rather than leech on the success of others.
They will either shape up and start producing results, or just keel over and die if they continue the way they are today. I think this is more likely - 80 percent will be obliterated in a few years.
Collaborating to deliver a combination of products offering compelling value will be a little harder, but not impossible. There would be some redundant work but that's happening today as well.
Google making a deal with Yahoo might be not such a bad thing to Microsoft. Everybody understands the downside of it, but there is also an upside:
1. Advertisers who had to deal with 3 paid-search systems - Google, Yahoo and Microsoft - now need to deal with only two, since Yahoo is out.
2. Therefore we can expect some advertisers who didn't have time to sign up to advertise on Live Search, now could do so. Especially since prices on Microsoft system are lower than on Google.
3. Yahoo will lose the paid-search advertisers, and therefore will look much less attractive for Microsoft to buy, so we won't buy it.
Everything is wrong at Microsoft India. There is now a reward of some cheap notebook if we get to the revenue target. Does Neelam (GM) not realise that we work for pride and challenge and whether or not she offers us a Rs,13000 HCL notebook we will do our best. I am insulted by this offer of a gift if the subsidiary meets the revenue goal. Last year, everyone got xbox and Neelam thought that people worked harder for the chance at winning xbox. Her cheap thinking about what motivates people at Microsoft is one of the reasons we are suffering in India today.
Go back to HP Neelam. You have no idea about Microsoft culture and how to motivate people.
Neelam left HP in 2005 and HP stock has done very well since. Maybe that suggests something. I wonder if she was forced out along with Carly, and ended up finding a sucker in Microsoft.
Not sure what MS-India has delivered of value since its inception. I was just reading an article about XP SP3 post installation problems. Was SP3 work done at MS-India?
Maybe the price of the stock is not doing so great--Yahoo deal cancellation notwithstanding--because it's starting to percolate in the general public what a terrible OS Vista is, as compared to what they were used to (XP).
Do the following experience with non-MS employees "general public" Vista users: ask in a neutral way what they think of Vista. In most cases you don't get a verbal answer right away: but just watch their face... Do it with as many people as you can. You'll be amazed a the statistical results. Don't take my word for it, try it...
>>>
Not sure what MS-India has delivered of value since its inception. I was just reading an article about XP SP3 post installation problems. Was SP3 work done at MS-India?
>>>
You got it right.... XP SP3 was delivered by the India Development Center (IDC). Neelam is not involved in that (She is focused on screwing up every bit of the sales org in India). But, you see the India connection and that speaks for itself.
IDC churns out crappy software that will have a disastrous impact on MS image. This is not the first time. The teams at IDC are pathetic and they don't deserve to ship any critical stuff that is important for this company. They should be given stuff like developing Character Map, Sound Recorder, MS BOB or something that 1% of Microsoft customers spend 0.5% of their time. Give them anything critical they are bound to screw up bigtime. I heard that they own few components of Windows 7 and that's scaring the hell out of me!!! You thought Vista sucks.. watch out for the next version of this sucker with a seal of IDC on it.
Here are the INCREDIBLE unwritten requirements to do succeed in Microsoft India SMSG
1) To be a GM direct you must be a Punjabi or from the North of India at the very minimum. If you would speak Hindi in meetings and use Hindi bad words, you get bonus points.
2) You must be from HP and close to getting fired from there
3) If you are do not qualify under Rule 1 or Rule 2, you must be a white person from Redmond who is coming on a short term assignment so that you can claim 100% responsibility for India's growth and then leave when things are becoming tough
4) You must ensure that there are a different set of rules for yourself and those for people below you. Especially in times of cost cutting, do NOT be the change you wish to see. Continue to travel for meaningless PR meetings while the sales force is not allowed to travel for customer meeting. Of course, even by mistake, you must not talk to the field offices because your ignorance about the business will become even more obvious.
5) You must whip the sales people all the time and blame them for failure. You must also say that the PEOPLE are what make Microsoft great while always putting them down
6) If you wish to be GM, you would be a cry baby and say China 'stole' the subsidiary of the year award from India and offer people Rs 13,000 to make numbers in the hope you can win the award at this years MGX.
7) To be GM you must speak in a way that will demotivate people. You must also have the ability to actually fool yourself into thinking you contributed to the success of a deal because people say "and thanks Neelam and Rajiv for your executive support and guidance".
8) You must accept that if you are currently at Microsoft India, you will not be promoted to be a GM direct unless your name is Gulati (please see Requirement 1).
9) To be CVP, the key requirement is that you must say all the right things in a speech and then not follow even a single one of them in real life
10) If you are a Punjabi from HP and live in Delhi then the only requirement to be hired into Microsoft would be a pulse.
I welcome other readers of this blog to contribute more.
"It is going to take every bit of $47 billion to fix that mess first."
Microsoft is making money hand over fist and you think it is a mess! Most companies would love to have the mess that Microsoft does.
"Whether OS X would have seriously impacted Windows sales or not is irrelevant because, I believe,
...
In my humble opinion, MSFT reacted _defensively_ in product design rather than _proactively_ "
Vista was out long before OS X.
Neelam & team,
Please start the layoff process to fire those whinning babies in Microsoft-India.
Based on my experiences, Microsoft-India are filled with useless people who're full of themselves.
Yes, get rid of them. Please.
I'm shocked by a high level executive comment of "Hey, Yahoo, don't worry. The $33 bid is good for ever. Feel free to come back at any time."
Isn't this stupid? Shouldn't this person be fired immediately?
MICROSOFT is hopelessly going toward IBM II.
Spin Off!
All GM and above should provide a plan of Spinning off his/her unit.
All employess should be offered a choice of joining a spinned off unit.
Useless GMs or VPs won't attract good enginneers and are doomed to fail.
Useless Stars will fail miserably too.
Do that and you'll have hundreds of new MICROGLES kicking Google's ass.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=YHOO&t=1y&l=off&z=m&q=l&c=
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1y&l=off&z=m&q=l&p=&a=&c=&s=msft
compare and contrast ... for good measure:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1y&l=off&z=m&q=l&p=&a=&c=&s=goog
"Vista was out long before OS X."
Huh?
OS X - March 2001
Vista - Nov 2006
Vista was out long after OS X. Half a decade after (which is about fifty dog years or a century in computer years).
Vista was out long before OS X.
Mac OS X was released as a public beta in September 2000. The full releases were:
10.0 Cheetah, March 2001
10.1 Puma, September 2001
10.2 Jaguar, August 2002
10.3 Panther, October 2003
10.4 Tiger, April 2005
10.5 Leopard, October 2007
Quartz (the vector-based rendering system which Aero is compared to) has been there since the beginning; Expose (3D, gpu-based window manipulation) was introduced in Panther; Spotlight (metadata-based instant search features) and Dashboard (widgets) were introduced in Tiger.
Vista was released in January 2000.
[mini: typo in my previous posting...sorry]
Vista was released in January 2007.
Vista was out long before OS X.
Epic fail.
I honestly hope that the leadership team at Redmond is following the comments posted here. Some of the comments sound very comic and funny but the underlying fact is that 70% of MS India is stinking with corrupt leaders. EPG has no moral values and ethics in selling. No one even understands why DPE should be paid in the first place. Public Sector has a new country lead for every 12 months and no one has a clue on handling the government accounts. HR is non existent and has the maximum attrition than any group. PR is busy bribing the media and publications to print positive stories.
No wonder we lost OOXML vote in India. There has been no attempt at convincing the academia and government on why this should be a standard. All this despite the so called focus that the CVP has on the government. He did nothing to influence this. There has been no significant contribution of the CVP till date. He claims to know all the influencers & bureaucrats by their first name but he did nothing to help this company. He talks big at the internal events and that's about it!
The DPE lead is great at dancing at internal events and no one knows what else he is good at. Even if everyone in DPE are fired right away, it wouldn't make any difference to us. It's a well known fact that they will be the first to go out if there is a lay off at MS. This team is more of a liability than an asset. The earlier we fire them, the better for us.
What to say about the MD and her directs! They still don't realize that they lead a team that sells software and not duplicate auto spares. Their style of managing the team is worse than that of a vegetable retailer. At least they will have some understanding of the market. This team doesn't even have a basic understanding of the market dynamics. More than anything, their torture has become unbearable in the recent past. All the old timers in the team are pissed of with them.
This is most commonly heard in the political circles in India. But I guess this is very apt for the leadership team at SMSG India - Take moral responsibility of the current situation and resign! Nobody is going to miss you.
"Vista was out long before OS X."
What!!??!!
OS X (Cheetah) was released on March 24, 2001. Vista shipped on January 30, 2007.
"200k to 300k is incredibly inaccurate. There are very few account managers that ever see a $100k bonus. A L64-65 at 140% can do it but there are only a handful of those per year and in most cases it more than evens out the following year unless they are lucky enough or smart enough to get out of role. It would be safe to say that more AE's pay back than hit 140+%. "
I have been shown the data. It happens very often. It's concentrated in a few groups, may be you are not part of those groups. The groups are not the ones with high growth either. The fix is in.
As for 100K, it's incredible easy to make 100K in bonus (RBI alone).
It's very easy for level 60-62to make 100k. If your base is 100K, under the most common sales plan, you would only need to achieve 120% of quota to make $100K. It's that easy and that 100K is just the RBI component. The committment is still more than any regular salaried employee will ever get!
Microsoft field sales force is not underpaid. Period. I have worked at Oracle and Sun and saw the data there as well. While a few big fishes may make more, on average, SMSG sales make out like bandits.
I have looked - there is no easier way to make this much elsewhere unless you are a superstar and I am not.
"Our field sales force is grossly underpaid and over worked when compared to our competitors. This is why we see so many rest & vest, and worthless AE's.
Goodness gracious! I am very suprised at the number of negative comments on MS India. I am currently a Senior PM from a product developement team in Redmond and am actually planning to return back to India this year. I was considering MS India but now I am not so sure...Any good stories about MS India? I know that pay really sucks...but what about the quality of projects?
insidems currently has a very interesting discussion. Go check it out. Also an interesting topic for mini?
I know that pay really sucks...but what about the quality of projects?
Quality of projects and work done there is even worse than the pay. Only low key projects go there because very little can be expected out of IDC. They have already been the prime reason for the collapse of quite a few recent initiatives. Like MSN, it's probably a great place to retire and keep drawing paychecks.
Just how bad is Q4 shaping up to be?
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2008/tc20080512_157155.htm
It only confirms that Vista is not selling. Is Windows 7 going to be any better? Last I heard, many teams are not able to deliver on their work.
In India , till 2003/2004 , MS was pretty much 'the place to be' for a smart programmer.
Then in 2004 Google opened a Bangalore office, and I get the impression that MS became terribly insecure, and started hiring programmers by the dozens - and lost all its charm. Don't know why. The top guys will go to Google and other companies. Both the pay and quality of work supposedly suck at MS India.
In Microsoft the probability of being stuck with some worthless UI feature for a couple of years is high enough to drive any smart person away.
Incredibly stupid mail from a incredibly stupid leader at Microsoft India. She wants us to get to a number without telling us where we are today. Why should I achieve more than target to help other non performing groups in Microsoft India? I may get a slightly bigger bonus, but my target for FY09 will be increased much more. And the GM will make all the money this year and then leave.
Neelam thinks all the sales people are as stupid as she is. And the CVP thinks nobody is as smart as he thinks he is.
I joined MS India a few years back. Before this I was working for a sales team at a large SI in India. In terms of the culture and politics, this is worse than many other small time Indian companies. I never feel that I am working for a brand like Microsoft. People here have no respect for each other. They will smile at you only if they see an opportunity of using you somewhere. Otherwise, you are just a piece of shit!
I guess this is just reflecting the attitude of the top management. I face this every time I go for a review with the EPG head. He abuses and harasses the field sales guys. I feel extremely frustrated and disgusted with him.
I have decided to move on soon. I will keep praying for my colleagues.... God save this company.
Regarding IDC - I recently joined IDC without much expectations. I can say that there are some good teams led by good PUMs. These PUMs are experienced and guide the teams very well.
If you are lucky, you will land up in a good team. The culture is also pretty decent here.
At least, I like and respect IDC for what it is today.
There is one concern - Even now, We still struggle to get a critical piece of work from Redmond. I don't know why this happens. May be the credibility factor based on the past experiences.
Does anyone know what the firm date this year after which one can notify his/her manager about their intention of moving onto another team without affecting their current annual performance review process in any way whatsoever?
>> Neelam & team,
Please start the layoff process to fire those whinning babies in Microsoft-India.
Based on my experiences, Microsoft-India are filled with useless people who're full of themselves.
Yes, get rid of them. Please.
Yeah... It's high time for the lay off process to get started. But it should start with the MD and the direct reports of her. After that you will realize that you have solved the problem. The root cause of the current issue lies with the MD and her direct reports and not with the employees below them.
They are responsible for bringing down the culture of MS. They demotivated and demoralized the team. They formed a coterie of like (evil) minded individuals. They injected corrupt practices into the system. They got rid of anyone who tried raising their voice against them. They are misguiding the media and the leadership team at Redmond.
They should the first to be fired. Amen!
The scary thing here is that you could replace MS India with, MS (country A) or MS (country B) and replicate most of the text. I am working in SMSG with sales and I am *totally unimpressed* with the leadership in SMSG. The budgeting is 100% top down. No-one and I say no-one cares what people down the chain of command say about the business opportunities for next year.
No, Instead a mail is sent from the area managemet team that says. "We think that country xxx should grow 22% in revenue next year. Please feel free to push back on anything but the growth number". The thing that makes me totally flabbergasted is that the sub leadership just accepts this!
What this leads to is that the leadership teams all around the world starts messing around with the score cards in order to "make" the numbers. Sales managers are only doing one thing and that is forecasts and now every week!
There are SOX violation flying all over the place right now. Business conduct is worth nothing. People are staring into their scorecards instead of doing business. Travel and Expenses budgets are cut for q4 so no-one is travelling.
And for the poster that said that it is easy to make 140% quota; B-sh*t!
MS India, a true rolemodel for any sub.
And Kevin Turner, please resign. You are killing this company.
Aughhh! Reported today (5/13) on MSNBC:
"Icahn reportedly considers Yahoo proxy battle -- Billionaire may try to get portal to return to negotiations with Microsoft"
Thanks but no thanks Carl. I hope SteveB had enough sense to not return his calls......
Here's why Ballmer is trying to "fucking kill" GOOG:
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/google_to_surpass_size_of_microsoft_windows_in_2009
Vista is a disastrous, flaming bag of poo. We should just tell everyone we'll continue selling XP, put Royale Noir theme on it so that it looks less "fisher price" and tell whoever is in charge of DirectX that it needs to work on XP as well.
Those who worked under the previous management know this better. They were super aggressive and also built coteries around themselves. But they never demoralized the teams and individuals. I agree that the sub was much smaller then (and there was no Mini). They never tolerated corrupt practices. There were a bunch of senior folks who were shown the door because they went overboard. Now we completely lost control at MS India. The folks who are expected to keep a check on such things are resorting to these acts. So, what do we say about them? and where do we complain about this?
>>>The scary thing here is that you could replace MS India with, MS (country A) or MS (country B) and replicate most of the text.
This only means that the overall culture at this company has gone to dogs. So, the India Leadership Team can find solace in your statement because they are just complying with the WW corporate culture.
This is the beginning of the fall of Microsoft. At the corp. level we have leaders like Kevin Turner who is all set to make MS another wal-mart. We have Razy Ozzie who is all set to keep re-inventing his decade old Groove app and forces us to call it Live Mess errr....sorry... Live Mesh. SteveB's focus is lost and he is on a hunt to acquire dead companies.
At India, everyone is focused on making a quick buck and move on at the earliest. You already see that happening in EPG and BMO. I bet that the MD has her plans firmed up and will leave in October. She will be followed by at least 5 more senior leaders.
You will also see smart managers and engineers jump off the ship in no time. There are umpteen number of opportunities outside and the current environment is only driving away all the committed folks.
I sorely miss the good old Microsoft. Can we ever bring it back? I seriously doubt. I never thought we would see this day so soon.
call this ignorance perhaps, but can the folks from india that are so vocal on this thread discuss why DPE is so bad in India ? Where I am they are fairly well respected at least by the other technical folks in the subsidiary and they seem flexible in coming and helping with our customer engagements
From Mini's latest post - "Soon, we can get back to the usual program of talking about the recent Town Hall and looping back to cover the recent comments about Microsoft India."
Mini - We can't wait to read your analysis of the commentary from MS India folks. When do you plan to put up your next post? Looks like the comments will keep pouring in till then :-D
speaking of the recent Town Hall:
Going into the meeting, there was a lot of hype around initiatives that would "improve the employee experience."
So, what was the big news? We're getting rid of styrofoam cups and switching over to paper!!! Whoopdee-frickin'-doo.
WHAT A JOKE!
After over a dozen years at Microsoft, I accepted an offer from a competitor today.
"Vista is a disastrous, flaming bag of poo. We should just tell everyone we'll continue selling XP, put Royale Noir theme on it so that it looks less "fisher price" and tell whoever is in charge of DirectX that it needs to work on XP as well."
Okay preadapted, time to stop pretending to be a MS employee and go back to bashing the company 7/24 on the Yahoo message board.
So tell me Einstein, what would happen if Microsoft broke itself up into four companies under a holding company or broken up outright? ... Maybe except for the Applications and OS company, you would have at least three companies back at the startup level. Talk about motivating the troops.
This industry and this company demonstrate that what motivates the troops is money. The stock stops rising, options disappear, there's no motivation.
Other than rare companies like MS, high potential options rarely come without true risk. I have asked many an MS'er about whether they'd go for a scheme where they had greater opportunity to gain, but had to endure greater risk as well. Overall, I received a resounding NOT INTERESTED. I don't know if that's because MS is full of risk averse people, unambitious people, or if people are too used to the rarity of big stock options w/ no risk to even consider something else.
call this ignorance perhaps, but can the folks from india that are so vocal on this thread discuss why DPE is so bad in India ? Where I am they are fairly well respected at least by the other technical folks in the subsidiary and they seem flexible in coming and helping with our customer engagements
The biggest problem with DPE in India is their accountability. You can't hold any of them responsible for any engagement. We avoid taking them to customer meetings because they don't add any value.
There are some pretty good technical folks in the team. But they are not best utilized.
DPE is supposedly the most technical team in the sub. But here we have a lot of flab and a majority of them pretend to be technical while they are not. We hear of DPE only when there are huge events and that's when they make a lot of noise and disappear. They don't align with the field at all.
Actually, we can't blame the team for that. The major issue is with their GM. He is a fart bag and has more foes than friends in the system. That started to impact the whole team. Hopefully they will be better off when they get a new GM soon. He screwed up the team hopelessly. Lack of direction, and pissing off the CVP demoted him to report to his peer, Neelam. He is stepping into the BMO role and we have to wait and watch.
PS - I am not the commenter who wants DPE to be fired. I am from sales team and these are my personal opinions.
http://www.thestreet.com/s/deadline-nears-for-icahns-proxy-move/newsanalysis/technet/10416792.html?puc=googlen&cm_ven=GOOGLEN&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
Hello grasshopper, it is I the New Yawk Black Eyed Sqwappa, your California weasel's worst nightmare. The runt talked to my friend the Dairy Queen at the Berkshire meet last month, and he agreed to ask me to talk to you.
Here's how it will go down. In a week or so, you will meet with the Yahhooligans, and you will tell these amateur dweebs, the the deal is off. Just walk away. Say nothing, do nothing. Go into your corner and wait.
When the heat dies down a couple of weeks later I will purchase a two or three percent stake in Yahoo. I will then challenge the stockholders at the annual with a new slate offering to the stockholders. The twerps won't know what hit them. The Icon and eastern dark horse will burn and pillage until there is nothing left. And you, grasshopper, will then hop over and offer $29 a share and they will say OK. The eastern New Yawk old money will have none of this upstart west coast bubble arrogance. We will have our way. Instead of Slashdot it will be slash and burn baby. We always do. Let em eat turnip juice. Enough of this touchy feely goody too shoes honest do no evil crap!
This is the beginning of the fall of Microsoft.
I can't believe you can say this with a straight face, considering that people have been saying the *exact* same thing for over a decade. I have some news for you: Microsoft began to fall a long, long, LONG time ago.
You will also see smart managers and engineers jump off the ship in no time. There are umpteen number of opportunities outside and the current environment is only driving away all the committed folks.
Again, this has been happening for many years. Get with the program.
I sorely miss the good old Microsoft. Can we ever bring it back? I seriously doubt. I never thought we would see this day so soon.
Please define "soon"? Microsoft is an *ancient* company when it comes to tech, and the "PC revolution" isn't even something the current generation of kids can relate to.
Can we bring the good old Microsoft back, you ask? I reply: Are you on drugs?
""Vista is a disastrous, flaming bag of poo. We should just tell everyone we'll continue selling XP, put Royale Noir theme on it so that it looks less "fisher price" and tell whoever is in charge of DirectX that it needs to work on XP as well."
Okay preadapted, time to stop pretending to be a MS employee and go back to bashing the company 7/24 on the Yahoo message board.
Well, *I* for one work at Microsoft and have since '95, and I'm in a core tech discipline, and I think it's patently obvious that Vista is a big, flaming pile of poo.
A big, flaming pile of poo that my own Mother couldn't figure out how to get out of the stupid box we packaged it in.
I'm a Microsoft employee, and I hate Vista with a white-hot passion. It's a shit product and it's embarassing how much we've denied it.
Companies start.
Companies grow.
Then companies die.
Get a grip people. You are all too emotionally involved. If you want to leave, go. You won't regret it.
MS is dying under its own weight and the unrealistic demands of shareholders. At least execs realize that software can't grow at a predictable 15%+ rate anymore, though that realization is about a decade too late to matter.
I have some news for you: Microsoft began to fall a long, long, LONG time ago.
...
Can we bring the good old Microsoft back, you ask? I reply: Are you on drugs?
Okay, I'm a Mac user, and have been since 1991. I've never worked for Microsoft and never will. Now that my background is out of the way...
Rubbish! Gibberish! Balderdash! Tech companies have an almost unique ability to reinvent themselves, and software companies are the most able of all in that arena. They can turn on an idea, a new way of looking at the familiar.
Remember Apple in the late '90s? It was a complete basket case. Products everywhere, an OS strategy that failed and kept failing pretty damned comprehensively, leadership spill after leadership spill. Clearly the company was headed for doom - it was the one time I've considered the constant predictions of doom to be accurate. I was ready to jump ship, all that kept me as a customer was hardware investment and inertia. Then we saw Copland finally killed off, NeXT brought in and the resurgence of Apple. It was fuelled initially by the iMac, but the would not have lasted without OS X.
Apple completely turned a corner and I don't think anyone expected it.
Nowadays I'd never buy a standard PC. My MacBook Pro has OS X plus all the Vista I need (and SP1 at that)! I'm happy to be an Apple customer, and have 'converted' a fair number of people over the last few years.
My point (finally) is this: Apple reinvented itself in the last ten years, and Microsoft can certainly do it. Hell, people have been predicting the end of Apple since about 1980! Microsoft's had it easy! (just kidding everyone, you know what I mean)
The "good old Microsoft" may be gone forever, but there's only one thing stopping the even better new Microsoft from appearing, and that's Microsoft itself.
>> I'm a Microsoft employee, and I hate
>> Vista with a white-hot passion.
>> It's a shit product and it's embarassing
>> how much we've denied it.
+1. Another embarrassed MSFT dev. It should have never been released, and we should offer free upgrades to customers when we release something decent. But that would require admitting we've fucked up, which our leadership is not capable of.
> My point (finally) is this: Apple reinvented itself in the last ten years, and Microsoft can certainly do it. Hell, people have been predicting the end of Apple since about 1980! Microsoft's had it easy! (just kidding everyone, you know what I mean)
> The "good old Microsoft" may be gone forever, but there's only one thing stopping the even better new Microsoft from appearing, and that's Microsoft itself.
Specifically, it's Microsoft's management that's preventing a new and better Microsoft from appearing. And, from what I read here (I don't work for MS), I doubt that a new and better Microsoft can emerge with the current management.
Hmm. Apple re-emerged when Steve Jobs took back control. The analogy would be Bill Gates... but I don't think the analogy works, because I think that Microsoft is too big for Bill to effectively manage. I think that that was the beginning of the problem for Microsoft, that Bill wasn't able to make the transition from medium-sized-company manager to huge-company manager. And eventually he recognised that, and stepped aside. Unfortunately, the replacement was Steve, and Steve isn't really a huge-company manager either. Steve Jobs doesn't have that problem, because Apple isn't that big. It's still at the size where Bill was an effective manager.
MSS
"I sorely miss the good old Microsoft. Can we ever bring it back? I seriously doubt. I never thought we would see this day so soon."
This is one of the most quoted lines of the last 20 posts. I believe many people reading this blog are squeezing their eyelids together at work today, wishing the old Microsoft back into existence.
Good luck with that.
"The "good old Microsoft" may be gone forever, but there's only one thing stopping the even better new Microsoft from appearing, and that's Microsoft itself."
And this is the take-home message that answers the wishful thinking of Microsofties. But achieving the goals of that sentiment will only come with a great deal of work. I'm not sure whether the Microsoft employees of today are dedicated enough to follow through on that vision. Judging from the posts to this blog, there isn't enough interest in doing anything other than looking for a comfortable exit strategy.
Here are some simple facts as I see them; I'll admit that they may be disputable to a point, but they are based on historical president: 1) Operable systems are becoming commoditized, 2) Office suites are becoming commoditized, 3) Computers are becoming more mobile.
The first two are less obvious and may appear open to dispute, but the last one is based on sales figures: 51% of computers are laptops and most computing devices are used for communications, not computation. That means more and more "computers" are going to get smaller and will require a more spartan interface. That is why Verizon chose to go with LiMo for its interface over Google's Android, Symbian OS, or Windows.
http://www.crn.com/networking/207800107
The spartan interface was half of the equation. The other half was complete control over the guts of the code. So mobile computing is veering more toward other players and further away from a WIMP-centric world. Microsoft announced that it was keeping XP in play for sub-notebooks in an effort to keep Linux out of that market, but it is difficult to price your product below "free".
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39418115,00.htm
So that leaves the office suite market, which Microsoft has owned without serious competition for over ten years. Whether Google can manage to steal that market away from Office or not is irrelevant; when a product's feature set becomes ubiquitous to the point where the "extras" no longer become a differentiating element in a sale, then the free product will win out every time. Thus, it is just a matter of time before operating systems for the entire PC family and generic office suites are commoditized to the point where the only value left to exploit will be in some add-on service or killer feature. Indeed, the only money Microsoft has made in compilers has been the "visual" (e.g. Visual C++) market. Without the visual add-on, no one would purchase what they could download off the net for free.
So that is probably what is driving the thinking behind Ballmer's recent acquisition strategy. I believe that he knows what the rest of the technology sector knows: Microsoft only "rents" its monopolies; it does not own them. So in order to preserve the company into the future, he is moving on several fronts simultaneously while he still has the cash and doesn't have to accumulated debt to build market share in something other than just operating systems and office suites.
I think Ballmer et al. learned the lessons of IBM. IBM was under the impression that Big Iron was never going away. I know that there are people posting and reading this blog who believe that operating systems and office suites will never be commoditized. I don't think Ballmer and the senior management at Microsoft believe that. I think they know that whether it is Linux, or BSD, or something that hasn't been created yet, some free OS will eventually be eating their lunch. And they don't want to be feverishly fighting to save the company while their revenue stream is dwindling away as they attempt to find a new "thing" or "service" to sell.
So unless you have something other than operating systems and office suites to carry the company forward into the next 20 years, I don't think you have any reason to complain about what senior management is doing.
From a short article called Icahn's Proxy Men
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/05/15/icahn-yahoo-microsoft-tech-ebiz-cz_wt_0515yhoo.html
"Carl Icahn
Corporate raider extraordinaire. Icahn has a well-deserved reputation as a bully; he doesn't know much about the Internet and likely couldn't care less. For the past 30 years, he's done a fine job of spotting smug, listless managements and slamming them around like losers in a pro wrestling match. For instance, Icahn badgered Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ) into letting go Chief Executive Ed Zander and persuaded it to consider selling off its handset division. If Icahn succeeds in overthrowing Yahoo!'s board, expect him to storm in with a plan to sell off assets, fire employees, re-cut licensing deals, you name it."
Sounds like the kind of Guy Microsoft needs to shake things up. Just what the tech industry needs, a barbarian in the ranks. I wonder how successful the companies he screws up are after he gets done with them.
>"I'm a Microsoft employee, and I hate Vista with a white-hot passion. It's a shit product and it's embarassing how much we've denied it."
Wow. As a long time customer of Microsoft products, I find that statement refreshing. I'm not here to bash Vista or Microsoft, but I do want to state why I don't buy Microsoft products any more. It is really simple. There is not much in them that I as a customer want, and in fact there are lots of things in your products that intentionally reduce the user experience quality, and downright deny use of legally owned products and media. My goal is to find alternatives to products made by a company that ignores its customer needs.
Here is a link to a ZDNet article that kind of outlines just a few of the issues. It is not just a software issue. It affects use of hardware as well, and it has been going on for years, with backward uncompatibility issues pushed into upgrades to XP as well.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1865
Hey, Apple guy, your reinvention comment was interesting.
But Apple did change one thing first: its CEO.
Perhaps Microsoft needs to do that before it reinvents itself... any ideas for who would make a good CEO for Microsoft?
My point (finally) is this: Apple reinvented itself in the last ten years, and Microsoft can certainly do it.
I don't think it's the same situation. Apple's problem was a lack of vision and leadership; Microsoft's problems are rooted in its poisonous corporate culture.
Putting it another way: all Jobs had to do to "fix" Apple was steer the boat in the right direction. Anybody who wants to "fix" Microsoft is going to have to burn it down to the waterline first.
it looks like Ichan will bring this back around to Bill in the long run.
"OS X (Cheetah) was released on March 24, 2001."
But Lepord is still short of feartures that were in 2003. Sure Apple has a lot more eye candy, but it a case of beauty being only skin deep.
I wrote programs for the Mac, that is pretty much wasted time ...
I've been lurking for a while. I have really appreciated the forum you've created, Mini!
This isn't totally on-topic, but it's kind of related. About a year ago, as I was finishing up my Master's in CS (machine learning/AI), I got a recruiting call from Live Search. Then, the recruiter said that there was about a year-and-a-half window of opportunity on the team. I had recently accepted an offer, so I didn't pursue it at the time.
It seems like it would be a strange time to join the team. It seems like MSN/Live's future collision with Yahoo could put the search team on the chopping block. I wouldn't want to deal with that drama, if that's really the future.
I know there are lots of people who would advise me that MS SaaS is a bit of a trainwreck at the moment. 60/20/10 GOOG/YHOO/MSFT in search share, the numbers don't lie, I get it.
But I am curious about the upside of the search team. I'm definitely interested in the technology as a whole, did my thesis in machine learning. And I think I could hack it. Can anyone give me a little insight to the pros of joining the search team in the near future?
And yes, I know the point of the blog is --MS, not ++MS. I guess I'm also soliciting advice as to whether anyone new could do something interesting and productive there, or if they'd just be the next dead weight.
Who is Microsoft's first and best Customer? You want to change the heart of Microsoft you need to start here.
rah rah about Strategy!
That's what happens when you let the sales people run the company. Get out now, it's not going to get fixed before the company has a near-death experience.
-jcr
But Apple did change one thing first: its CEO.
Apple changed their CEO five times before SJ was in charge of the company: Mike Scott, Mike Markula, John Sculley, Michael Spindler, Gil Amelio.
Scott put them on the map with the Apple II, but botched the Apple III and damn near destroyed employee morale right after the IPO. Sculley rode the wave, but failed to impose any kind of discipline on the company. Spindler damn near died of stress trying to clean up Sculley's mess. Amelio performed an amazing job of financial open-heart surgery that kept Apple off the auction block, but couldn't restart growth.
Steve Jobs came in and made it very clear that everyone who wanted to stay had better get with the program. Some quit, some got canned, and many many more pulled together and built some amazing products. Steve also managed to recruit some of the greatest executive talent in the world. If you ever get a chance to hear a talk by Ron Johnson, do not miss it.
I joined the company when they were already recovering nicely, and before the stock went through the roof. It was a great time to be there.
For Microsoft to ever get out of the doldrums, I think you're going to need more than giving Ballmer the heave-ho. You'll need a near-death experience: it worked wonders for Apple.
-jcr
all Jobs had to do to "fix" Apple was steer the boat in the right direction.
Nah. If that was all the company needed, Amelio could have saved them. Gil had already started on the surgery to reduce the number of products and so forth.
SJ threw a couple of people overboard (although far fewer than the press would have you believe), and he did it in a way that scared some people and inspired others (as in, "thank god he canned that idiot!").
Let's just say that anyone at the director level or higher who got canned by Apple in 1997 probably had it coming.
-jcr
Putting it another way: all Jobs had to do to "fix" Apple was steer the boat in the right direction.
All Steve Jobs had to do was steer Apple in the right direction.
That's all.
Simple.
Just betting the company on a media base, making iPods, selling music online in a way no-one had succeeded in before, changing the entire OS and then dumping the chip partner of 25 years and going with Intel.
Looking back, I can't see how any of us could have missed such an obvious set of strategies.
Strange how we forget how Steve Jobs had to sideline then dump the current CEO, how he had to line up all the talent that'd been missing from Apple for those years, how he had to dump the clone market, kill most of the product lines and kill the Newton.
But yes, he only had to steer the boat in the right direction.
Funny how management can be made to sound easy, but so many people get it so badly wrong.
Microsoft can get there as well, and the Apple analogy isn't as poor as it may first seem. Apple were going in all directions (badly), management had no focus and no clue, and customers were losing hope.
Microsoft's management also seem to be acting in too many different arenas, with no clear focus and apparently no clue.
The answers are all *hard*, but Apple turned it around from probably a worse position. Now Apple are seen as central to what home computers are all about, rightly or wrongly, and they're doing better than they've done in many years.
Microsoft has an almost impossible-to-lose monopoly to fund just about any changes the board chooses to make. They need to make the right changes, that's incredibly hard, and the first step is probably to replace the board and maybe the upper levels of management.
Who can implement that sort of change nowadays? Apple chose to bring in Jobs (with NeXT) but Microsoft has no such obvious Trojan Horse.
Judy,
(blogger slaps ass of Mini in the halls of Microsoft) For a blog about Microsoft walking on by Yahoo, I find the curious lack of posts on the subject by you and others here (including the ones you deleted that really had no offensive component) to be an interesting turn of events.
Obviously the Runt must have contacted you. It is even more curious that the day Balmer walks away from the deal is the same day Gates and Sue Decker, President of Yahoo were at the same Berkshire meet at the same time.
The big money fix is in and it is so powerful even Mini Microsoft tows the line.
Methinks Yang really needs to evaluate his senior leadership loyalty at Yahoo.
>> But Lepord is still short of feartures that were in 2003
And an example of such features would be...? I'm a Microsoftie, but I'm typing this from within Leopard. I upgraded the day it came out. In my not so humble opinion, it's Vista that's missing features, not Leopard, all the way from Mac OS X features implemented back in 2001-2002. In fact Vista appears like a successful attempt at sabotage, with every single feature badly screwed up. People from Windows division need to face it - there's not A SINGLE THING in Vista that would make me think "I gotta have it". Gamers might be drawn in by DirectX 10, but I'm not much of a gamer, and when I do play games I play them on my BluRay player - PS3. Aside from that, there's nothing in there but pain, ugliness (who TF decided to use light blue as the standard color?) and incompatibility.
But I am curious about the upside of the search team. I'm definitely interested in the technology as a whole, did my thesis in machine learning. And I think I could hack it.
Did you try Google?
>> My point (finally) is this: Apple reinvented itself in the last ten years, and Microsoft can certainly do it.
> I don't think it's the same situation. Apple's problem was a lack of vision and leadership; Microsoft's problems are rooted in its poisonous corporate culture.
And you think that the poisonous corporate culture isn't due to a lack of vision and leadership?
If you have real leadership, they don't put up with people playing stupid, self-serving political games. Real leadership can tell the difference between real work and "managing up", and fire those who do the latter.
Real vision means that you have a concrete goal that you're trying to see become reality. That draws a sharp distinction between action that makes the goal happen, and action that produces PowerPoint decks. The former has value, the latter has none (or maybe even less than none).
Seems to me like real leadership and real vision could be exactly what Microsoft needs to clean up the poisonous corporate culture.
MSS
With 4 key departures in SMSG in Microsoft India in the past 2 days, it looks like the attrition rate is worse than that of a call center. The only problem is that the CVP and the country GM are not leaving. Ravi is in denial that he is singularly responsible for the fuck up that is called Microsoft India SMSG. And Neelam is unable to find a job anywhere else.
Ravi still does not talk to employees although I know he visits all the cities if there is a good photo opportunity. And Neelam is too busy getting her bio data to search firms to worry about the staff morale and well being. Of course she has the time to send out stupid and poorly thought out emails asking sales to get to some absurd quota that was arbitrarily fixed.
Chiming in on the Apple discussion:
What's truly amazing about Jobs' performance as CEO (after returning) is that there's not a single move he made that wasn't roundly criticized at the time.
Partnering with Microsoft; killing the clone market; switching to USB; removing the floppy drive; killing the Newton; announcing the iPod; switching to Intel; all the way up to the iPhone's virtual glass keyboard... every single one of these moves was condemned as loudly and vociferously as possible by friend and foe alike. Each and every time he made one of these moves, the entire tech press announced that Jobs had just "killed the company."
Meanwhile, if you look at the company's actual track record over the last decade, every single one of Jobs' "far-fetched" predictions has come true. Go back and watch his iPod introduction in 2001. He stands up there and says "We looked at the mp3 player market, saw that there wasn't a dominant product, and decided to create one." Everyone scoffed; it was impossible to beat Creative, etc. etc. but it came true exactly as he predicted.
It's gotten to the point where, if Jobs makes a change, and my own instant knee-jerk reaction is to say, "That's crazy! It's suicide!" etc. I just automatically assume that Jobs is right and I'm wrong. This isn't idol-worship; it's a sober statistical analysis. He's proven he can do that.
By contrast, go back and look at Gates' and Ballmer's predictions over the years. (Gates published a whole book of them, pompously called The Road Ahead) It's not "hit and miss"; it's worse. Whether talking about where the industry's going, or talking about what Microsoft is going to do next and what effect it will have, they are wrong more often than they are right.
So, sure; "all you have to do" is steer the ship in the right direction. But you've got to do it while the entire tech world is screaming about how "wrong" you are with every move you make.
Microsoft is the ninth company I’ve worked for since getting out of college. The other companies I worked from almost 2 years to over 6 years, so I have a lot of “real” world experience. Companies varied in size from 15 to 200k+ employees. Two were bigger the MS at the time.
Yes Microsoft is getting pretty big and I’m sure there is a lot of deadwood … that is why the 10.1 category exists. I think last year Steve Ballmer yelled about 8% attrition not being bad and that half of it was good attrition, people we needed to get rid of. Who are these people? Well I think you seen some samples of them on this board. Anyone that brags he can do his job in 3 hours a day and hate the many people he has to interact with has a serious problem.
The one thing I’ve learned about Microsoft is there is no lack of opportunity. If you are only working 3 hours a day and think everyone else is crap, you probably need to go. Those kinds of employees are dead weight and pulling the company down. That is why the 10.1 category exists. It is nonsense to expect any company to manage your career; you have to do that yourself. Sometimes bad hires manage to get in. When I heard Steve talk about good attrition I felt bad about it, however, seeing postings about only working 3 hours a day and getting gives me an understanding of it.
I have worked at a company that was brutal, a couple that were out of control. I have chased the golden ring a couple of times. I have worked a several companies that were filled with deadwood. Microsoft is none of those, but it does offer a lot of opportunity.
Goodbye to 3 hour Joe and please don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out!
I just wonder why there is such a huge variance in the perceptions of Vista. On a music discussion forum that I regularly post on, we had a topic called "Show Your Desktop" where eberybody posted a screenshot of their desktops. I was shocked at how many people were running Vista. The topic naturally shifted to what people thought of Vista and again I was shocked to see that while there were some that were "meh" about it, the majority thought it was decent upgrade from XP. These aren't geeks. These are secretaries, accountants, students etc who just post on a music discussion forum.
I've come to realize that if you ever want to find out what people think of Vista, do NOT ask somebody who's life revolves around his operating system (ie geeks)
Honestly, they should never have given nerds the internet.
PS, we have a number of devs (at last count 6 of the 13 or so) where I work that have switched to Vista and nobody has a problem. (I know this because while I'm still on XP and don't intend to switch, I make it a point to interrogate these people on their Vista experiences just out of curiosity)
I know Steve Jobs led Apple to find the cure for Cancer. But let's get some perspective.
Wait till Apple becomes as big as Microsoft and then decide if it's a job well done by him. What was Microsoft like when it had about 20K people and much fewer products? Could you have guessed then we would be in a situation like this?
I guess the blue badgers are not immune to the RDF...
What has Ballmer done to this company's stock price? He's managed to bomb our stock and give yhoo a huge boost and nothing has changed. We're right back where we were 3 months ago but we lost 10 - 15% in our price while yhoo got a 30% increase.
Simple. To reverse the trend and have YHOO drop 30% and MSFT gain 15% is to have Ballmer write an open letter to YHOO board telling them that MS will *never* interest in purchasing YHOO. Then you will see the impact the next day.
The reason YHOO is up is that expectation that MS will still talk to them and spending ever more $$$ for it.
Do you think Ballmer will do that?? No. That's why YHOO is up and MSFT is down.
BTW, is there anyplace around Eastgate that looks to be good for late & long Friday liquid lunches? I can't bear to click on that "Amenities" link.
The nearest semblance is probably the Cascades Bar & Grill in the south end of the Embassy Suites Hotel.
>> Wait till Apple becomes as big as Microsoft
You'll have to wait for a LOOONG time. Apple will never become huge with Jobs at the helm. Jobs' mantra is "focus", and he said that for him focus means not what Apple does, but what it chooses not to do. That's why Apple doesn't do Enterprise and does not participate in the gaming market.
Microsoft has a pathological fear of seeing someone else succeed at anything remotely related to software, so we tend to keep our fingers in all pies simultaneously.
That is why the 10.1 category exists. It is nonsense to expect any company to manage your career; you have to do that yourself.
No, it's nonsense to delegate personal development and career guidance to every leaf node employee. Sure, in one sense you are always responsible for your own career. Of course. But what the hell do you think managers are supposed to be doing? One of the most important jobs a manager has in a tech company is to develop the personnel working for him or her. A bright employee getting no clear guidance from his boss may decide that the best way of being "responsible for his own carrer" is to ship off to a competitor for a promotion and a raise.
People are the only critical asset to a company like MSFT. If you are the manager of a bright, high-potential new hire, and you leave it up to that kid to figure out how to grow his career, you are fumbling the ball. You are hurting the company. You are failing at your job.
The entire "you own your career" matra is a bullshit cop-out on managemeent's part. When a manager says that, what he's really saying is "I don't have a fucking clue what you should do to become a more valuable person to this company, and even if I did, I wouldn't have time to share it with you."
The same is true of the "vitality curve" (i.e. 20-70-10) and the hyper-delegation of "cross-group collaboration" that goes on at MSFT. All of those things are indications of weak managment that cannot do it's job and so delegates that job to ever leaf-node employee. MSFT has horribly weak management - people who do not have the skills to create, direct, lead, coordinate, and grow, a team of engineers. To compensate, they come up with Glengary Glenn Ross review systems, delegation-cum-abdication "leadership" styles, and the entire "you own your carrer" baloney. They tart it all up by claiming they're empowering employees, but it is not empowering to give a random dev a dozen conflicting priorities, a couple of uncooperative teams he has to cross-group collaborate with, no guidance, no support for any decision he makes, and then tell him he should be smart enough to figure out the answer on his own.
Companies with effective managment do not do these things. These things are crutches companies with weak management are forced to use to compensate.
The bulk of MSFT's attrition is "bad attrition" in that these are talented people who could (and have) done excellent work. If they're working 3 hours a weak and bitter about the company, it's because the leadership of the company has utterly failed them.
Wait till Apple becomes as big as Microsoft and then decide if it's a job well done by him. What was Microsoft like when it had about 20K people and much fewer products? Could you have guessed then we would be in a situation like this?
Bingo. It's like all the Office folks coming over to run Windows, thinking they're a lot smarter than those poor fools who mis-managed the Vista mess.
Well, Allchin, Valentine, Jones and (most of) the rest did okay when they were running things as complex as Office. It was only when they tried to tackle the complexity of post-Win2K Windows that they got in way over their heads and sank.
Which doesn't excuse them, since they were the ones who let the damn thing get out of control in the first place, but I don't think very many people really appreciate just how hard it is to manage what the Windows franchise has become.
@skc: Honestly, they should never have given nerds the internet.
Dude -- nerds gave you the Internet.
Yahoo shareholders happy clearly does not understand the profound impact Warren Buffett has had on Bill Gates.
>
And Gate decided to sell microsoft. He buy railroad and hotel.
Interesting events over the week and weekend with the latest salvo of Microsoft discussing a partial buy in of Yahoo.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121114039708401745.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
I also enjoyed the arch Microsoft nemesis' John Dvorak's interesting piece on how Icahn would destroy Yahoo. Well Duh. But the best part of Dvorak's article is the summary of each board--Yahoo's and Icahn's slate. He should have put Microsoft's in there too.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/carl-icahn-destroy-yahoo/story.aspx?guid={B3DF0AF7-2898-428F-9AD7-FE0E9766BA9B}
I guess the rules for being a board member is to a) have lots of money, b) be some kind of political/business/corporate hack and c) know nothing about the business you are a board member of.
I said it before and I will say it again, Icahn is after the wrong board of directors to replace.
"Microsoft Says It's Back In Talk With Yahoo"
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Microsoft Says It's Back In Talk With Yahoo
SEND Anne Stanley
MarketWatch PulseDigg It StumbleUpon Newsvine Reddit SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft said in a statement Sunday it's talking about a new deal with Yahoo that wouldn't involve a full buyout. "In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business," the company said. Microsoft said it is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo at this time, "but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions..." Since Microsoft walked away from its bid for the Web company, investor Carl Icahn has launched an effort to oust Yahoo's board.
"The Computer Industry Comes with Built-in Term Limits"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/technology/18digi.html
Microsoft wants to disrupt the search business?
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/139150.asp
1. Innovate and disrupt in search -- We will disclose some elements of our plans with this week's release of search and sharpen our focus on user experience and business model innovation. The work we have done over the last 4 years on search has established a solid foundation to build upon.
Please, before you get there, how about fixing the basic functionality, like being able to find Microsoft buildings on live maps.
Try typing
"Microsoft building 116"
or any other MS building 33, 40, 25, etc.
into the live maps and you get
There were no results for your search.
Now do it in Google maps and it will pinpoint the buildings right on spot.
MS search or maps or whatever team you are, this is really embarassing that you can't even find your own buildings on your maps but Google can.
Microsoft Issues Statement Regarding Yahoo!
Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business
So now what do we call you while slapping your ass, Mini?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24697195/
I love conspiracies... this whole thing smacks of one. Can't you just see back-channel conversations between Liddell and Icahn: "Hey Carl, soften these asshats up, will ya? I'll buy you a lifetime supply of Fosters."
I can't wait for the Omaha announce on Wednesday! Cash back on purchases on ebay is going to be HUGE! Really, I mean it!! At least a 2 point share jump.
/sarcasm>
I've come to realize that if you ever want to find out what people think of Vista, do NOT ask somebody who's life revolves around his operating system (ie geeks)
I'm sure there are also many people who buy the latest model Car XYZ and are proud of it and show it off to their neighbors even though it may be inferior to the outgoing model.
The entire "you own your career" matra is a bullshit cop-out on managemeent's part.
+1 +1 +1
A fun thing to do when your manager asks why you didn't do [management task XYZ] is to work out a subtle way to ask why they didn't do it themselves, seeing as they're the ones with the oversight and authority. You have never seen such furious red-faced backpedaling in your life.
Mini - It would be great to filter out senseless negative comments on this blog.
If GOOG does search advertising deal with Y!, thats GOOG gain = MSFT loss but when MS is in the news for a similar deal we hear so much negativity. Way to define:hypocrisy!
Partnering with Microsoft; killing the clone market; switching to USB; removing the floppy drive; killing the Newton; announcing the iPod; switching to Intel; all the way up to the iPhone's virtual glass keyboard... every single one of these moves was condemned as loudly and vociferously as possible by friend and foe alike. Each and every time he made one of these moves, the entire tech press announced that Jobs had just "killed the company."
This is pretty revisionist history. I don't recall anyone getting so worked up about the floppy, USB, Intel, or the iPod. And the virtual keyboard of the iPhone is slandered by foe only, or some 20% of internet pundits.
Is this part of the RDF that says Apple and its users are fighting the good fight against a system that holds them down? Jobs is lucky for users who held on through the dark years more than anything else. When Mac was at its crappiest people were still clinging to memories of cowdogs, sad mac icons, and eep.wav.
(And to be honest those things were fun. I had a lot of fun on the Macs in elementary school, but I never learned anything like I did at my previous school that had me programming Basic on a trash-80.)
But no, no one announced Jobs had "killed the company" since the Microsoft deal. Get real.
The big money fix is in and it is so powerful even Mini Microsoft tows the line.
Here let me help you with that: it should read "mini TOES the line."
And shouldn't you be ranting on the Yahoo finance boards in the first place?
It was all too good to be true :(
The "Microsoft building 116" problem is all about UI consistency.
Live Search can't find Microsoft documents and white papers that Google puts at the first line of results.
You wouldn't want Live Maps to break this convention, right?
>"Hey Carl, soften these asshats up, will ya? I'll buy you a lifetime supply of Fosters."
More like a scene from the Godfather where Vito, tells singer Johnny Fontaine that he will make studio head Jack Woltz a certain "offer they can't refuse" in regards to a part he wanted to play.
The whole Icahn thing looks more like a strategic run at preventing Yahoo from signing on with Google in their ad sharing deal. But that is pure speculation.
>
And Gate decided to sell microsoft. He buy railroad and hotel.
I'm a stickler for correct prose and spelling. It's >"And Gates decided to sell Microsoft, buying a railroad and a hotel with the money."
Those, he could get for under a billion dollars. No, Gate decide to call hitman make competition sleep with fishes.
>>Dude -- nerds gave you the Internet.<<
You're a case in point seeing as you didn't get the pop culture reference.
It was a joke. You need to go outside once in a while dude.
>Here let me help you with that: it should read "mini TOES the line."
And shouldn't you be ranting on the Yahoo finance boards in the first place?
Mini;
I do apologize. I was using the oft purposely mispronounced phrase to infer you are holding up the dead weight of your company's management. ahem.
From Wikipedia Toe the Line:
"Sometimes this phrase is written "tow the line." This misspelling changes the meaning of the phrase slightly: rather than implying conformance with a rule, "tow" suggests contribution to a cause, e.g. "the pundit is towing the administration's line" alluding to a metaphorical act of pulling something with a line, cord or rope. However, this variant is grammatically suspect, as the verb tow refers to the object being towed, e.g. a car or a boat, not the mechanism by which it is towed, such as a rope or chain."
Oh, and I promise, the moment Microsoft realizes its place in history and toes the line of inevitability by taking its place among the relics of computing heistory, I will indeed vacate the premises. Either that or the moment I become VP yada yada yada and am given the opportunity to fix it myself.
The "Microsoft Building 116" issue is all about... urban myths.
I was finally able to reproduce the problem -- on my third try. First out of the gate, typed Microsoft Building 116 (no quotes) in the search box for "locations" in maps.live.com. Found it. Second shot, typed "Microsoft Building 116" with quotes into the search box for "Businesses" in maps.live.com. Found it. Then tried the phrase without quotes in the search box for "Businesses", and the search failed.
So, I suppose we could argue about whether or not maps.live.com should default to searching for "businesses" rather than "locations", and/or about whether maps.live.com should assume that a series of words is a phrase when searching for businesses. Those are both interesting UI discussions. Claiming that the search engine is broken, though, doesn't cut it.
The "Microsoft Building 116" issue is all about... urban myths.
You forgot to add "caused by idiotic users who don't know how to search using ms live".
If MS building XX is not a business, then what is it, a residential home, a farm, a ghost house?
Google is crushing you and you use this kind of ignorant arguments?
That piece of live $hit product will not see life on my work or home computers.
The whole "live" org deserves to be desolved.
The "Microsoft Building 116" issue is all about... urban myths.
You forgot to add "caused by idiotic users who don't know how to search using ms live".
Nope, didn't forget to add this -- didn't add it because I don't think it's true. If you think of users in this way, that is your problem, not mine.
If MS building XX is not a business, then what is it, a residential home, a farm, a ghost house?
It is a building. Microsoft is a business. Microsoft building whatever is a location.
Google is crushing you and you use this kind of ignorant arguments?
What kind of ignorant arguments? Someone made an assertion that Live Search couldn't find a building on the MS campus. Rather than blindly accepting the assertion, I went and tested it, and posted the results of my test.
I'm not arguing that Live is better than Google at search. I am putting some reality around the statement that Live couldn't find a building.
"The entire "you own your career" matra is a bullshit cop-out on managemeent's part.
+1 +1 +1"
These posts show why people don't get good reviews. If you don't look out for your own career, why should you expect anyone else too?
These posts show why people don't get good reviews. If you don't look out for your own career, why should you expect anyone else too?
The only "looking out for my career" I should have to worry about is how well I do my actual JOB. I should be evaluated, rewarded, and promoted according to how well I did what I was SUPPOSED to do. Not how well I did at inventing work for myself, stealing other peoples' work, managing up, self-promoting, managing expectations, inventing BS cross-group initiatives, "anticipating my manager's needs," or attending meetings.
These posts show why people don't get good reviews. If you don't look out for your own career, why should you expect anyone else too?
Q: if you manage people, what do you want them to do with their career?
A: become more valuable to the company.
Q: For each person you manage, what do they need to do to become more valuable to the company?
A: Well, hell if I know, that's up to them to figure out - they own their own career.
Doesn't work so good, does it.
"The only "looking out for my career" I should have to worry about is how well I do my actual JOB. I should be evaluated, rewarded, and promoted according to how well I did what I was SUPPOSED to do."
Wrong!
You are paid to do your job. You get promotions and bonuses when you do *MORE* than your job you are paid to do. You get other rewards based on your potential to do *MORE* than your current job.
If you just come to work and do a great job, but just your job then at best you deserve a cost of living increase.
If you take charge of your career and expand your role or job then you do desearve more. It may be your managers job to help and to promote you in the reviews, but it is up to you to go beyond your job.
If you want to promoted you got to do more than your job. In all fairness to Microsoft, if you are just doing your job you probably are not working very hard. Most jobs have plenty of slack in the role to allow people to expand.
If you are waiting on your manager to help you then you are being a fool. Your manager is a resource, but it is up to you how you use it.
"Q: For each person you manage, what do they need to do to become more valuable to the company?
A: Well, hell if I know, that's up to them to figure out - they own their own career."
---------
If you have a manager like than then go find a new manager. If you have good skills it isn't hard.
If you want to promoted you got to do more than your job. In all fairness to Microsoft, if you are just doing your job you probably are not working very hard.
Typical Microsoft mentality. The idea that everybody is interchangeable--just cogs in a big machine. Replace Dev A with Dev B and the job will get done exactly the same.
Here's an idea that will upset your world view: talent, skill, and hard work matter, even when you're "just" doing your job.
Imagine a scenario where our two devs (A and B) are asked to do the same job. Dev A's code is simpler, shorter, faster, more reliable, more extensible, and more maintainable. It results in a better product and saves Microsoft millions of dollars in maintenance, patching, etc. Dev B doesn't work as hard, his code isn't as good, but it still gets the job done and he spends most of his time inventing other work to do, "helping" his coworkers, and otherwise "managing up."
Now you've basically said that Dev A should just get COLA (if that) and that Dev B is a rock star and should be promoted... I wonder if you still stand by that decision...
If you have a manager like than then go find a new manager. If you have good skills it isn't hard.
Yes, but MSFT encourages that sort of management, so increasingly, the odds are you'll need to find a new manager in another company. Which, as you said, isn't hard if you're good.
Wrong!
You are paid to do your job. You get promotions and bonuses when you do *MORE* than your job you are paid to do. You get other rewards based on your potential to do *MORE* than your current job.
Typical of the myopic view MSFT takes to management. Sure, you get promoted by doing, or showing the cabaility to do MORE. But what MORE should you be doing? What MORE will actually be valuable, short or long term, to the company? If your manager can't guide you in that, then the company is giving up it's best chance to influence your development in a direction beneficial for the company.
Managers should be guiding this stuff, exercising some oversight and control. But that's not what MSFT does. MSFT promotes managers who can't do this stuff, and everyone pretends that they are delegating responsibility when they are actually abdicating it.
I'm pretty amazed by the MSFT employees that think they are so special. They should go work in the rest of the world for a few years and then they will miss Microsoft.
Post a Comment