Quick Thoughts on the Microsoft 2009 Company Meeting
Some quick comments on this year's Microsoft 2009 Company Meeting.
First, how did my six hopes for the Company Meeting hold up?
- Steve Ballmer comes out first to set the context for the meeting in light of a pretty awful FY09 Q3 and Q4: Zilch.
- Practical vision: well, Craig and Ray did seem to focus on the practical aspects of product groups, research, and inbetween the technology transferring power of the labs groups. Seemed practical. But then there was that whole Avatar assistant thing that no one around me felt like was real: one-half.
- Demos are short, sweet, powerful... sorry, but Elop's demos sucked the life out of entire stadium. Some were good, and some were really really short. So: one-half.
- Show us the new stuff. Hey, we did get to see some new stuff. Bing. Zune HD. Map goodness. No Halo. New ad cuteness. But it was still conservative. Hmm. How about: three-quarters realized.
- New simple review system? Phffft. Not unless thwacking balls w/ your avatar is our new review system. 160 for that. Zero for this.
- Serious wrap-up by Ballmer. Zero.
Add that up and we get 1.75/6.00 - hey, almost one-third realized.
Now, I'm not going to go into revealing anything all that interesting that happened in the meeting. Just my general impressions of the day.
Kevin Turner was first and, well, I'm kind of tired of the "ThankYou"s by now. He did take on the job of addressing the tough year and I believe he said some things that really surprised me. Growth hides mediocrity being one of them. That we over hired. Sure we all thought it, too, but to now go and put on the 20/20 glasses and speak it in front of the company gives me hope (hmm, need a new word) that it won't happen again. Same with the realization that you shouldn't start up doing work in good-times that you know you'd drop and cut during bad times.
Dr. Qi Lu might be my favorite techie right now. I was impressed with what he's brought together for Bing and what's coming and how he has focused the team and adopted some of the new technology that Satya was showing. Who the hell thought we'd be feeling so good about our search decision engine? Ever?
Elop. Steven. Baby. Dynamics. XRM. Really? What did I do to you to have that forced down my eyeballs? I'm pouring another glass of wine right now hoping I can kill whatever brain cells are still connecting this demo memory together. Geez. Did anyone give you advice that this was a bad idea? If so, keep listening to them. If not, you're seriously lacking good reports willing to give you honest feedback.
Robbie Bach did okay, but I can't say the demos blew me away. The table-top demos were full of slick sparkly presentation but... it was all stuff I've seen one way or another so nothing new there. He missed a golden opportunity for Microsoft-Fan-Boy love to go and have someone play Halo:ODST on stage or show some great Zune HD apps.
Bob Muglia. What did he talk about? I remember the real cool tech for traces and then WinDiff. Did he talk about how we're losing the edge on client development for Windows and how it's all a confused multi-SDK technology mess centered around everything being .NET based?
Sinofsky went pretty fast - when in doubt, load up the stage with a bunch of new, cool technology and play with it. I loved the reveal on the Mac Air case ("It's aluminum!"). And I think Steven gets the best line for when the train let loose its blaring whistle he said something along, "This is where someone mentions about the trains running on time."
Craig and Ray: it was nice that they switched up their presentations - that added some energy. But not enough. It seemed a lot more practical this year, other than what I mentioned previously about the whole very well staged Starfire demo. I hadn't seen that in like... over ten years.
And then Steve Ballmer. I've got say, at this point in the day I was pretty much in a "Where's mai KoolAid" funk until Mr. Ballmer came on stage and started presenting. I feel this is a big transitional year for Microsoft. I've said we've turned the corner, but that doesn't mean we're out of the bad neighborhood yet, nor are we incapable of making bad decisions all over again. The second half of FY09, and what we are still enduring as part of the economic crisis, has provided a certain level of alarmingly crisp clarity to refocus, and I believe Ballmer's presentation served for about as much focus we're going to see in the near term.
And I like how he ended his presentation. How do we feel? He reflected on how Microsoft is not a normal company and that its employees have an unnatural emotional attachment to it (yep, that's true - it can cause them to have all sorts of crazy reactions and do crazy, passionate things). How do you feel? Steve, well, he wants you to feel good about where we are, what we're doing, and where we're going.
I must feel good, because I have hope.
(Oh, by-the-way, if you see Mr. Ballmer walking your way: hide you iPhone. Trust me on that one.)
Additional links:
- Rule No. 1: Hide the iPhone from Ballmer at the Microsoft meeting
- Microsoft's Bing 2.0: Coming this fall (maybe even next week)
- Twitter highlights from Company Meeting at Safeco
531 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 531 Newer› Newest»Ballmer got 4% raise in FY2009. Isn't MS freezes 2009 salary increase?
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/179714.asp
According to the Seattle Times article, Ballmer's raise was granted at the beginning of FY09, not the beginning of FY10.
That means it went into effect 14 1/2 months ago, not 2 1/2 months ago.
Presumably, if he got a raise this year, we won't know how much of a raise he got *this* year until this time *next* year.
Watch this space, as they say.
Another indication of just how out of touch our management is. Ballmer got a 4% salary increase in '09 - how is that possible? how did he even achieve any goals let alone exceed at a time when the entire company was not given any salary increase:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jO36wTMzDbVwD0JcBBIfKYpXwxnwD9AQ61D00
*sigh*
There was a comment earlier from somebody who hadn't read mini for years and noticed that all the comments now look the same as when this blog was started.
The uproar about Ballmer's raise really drives his point home. There has always been a wide disconnect between what management tells the front lines and what's actually going on.
When we were told the economy was bad in 2001/2002 so we had to cut costs by virtually eliminating the merit/bonus budget, the SLT got their biggest raises and bonuses ever. When we were told the stock buyback program was to un-dilute the stock and increase the share price, the SLT exercised enough options and got enough stock awards that the number of outstanding shares actually increased. Every year something like this happens.
Basically, ever since I started working at MSFT, management has been tweaking the rules and numbers so they get compensated more and their underlings get compensated less. And they give make-believe, nonsensical, or simply inaccurate reasons for this behavior, just so there's an explanation on record for the press and the more naive employees.
If you own a company you can go one of a few routes. You can treat your employees as partners and be happy to share the revenue with them. Or you can treat them as a commodity and try to get the most work possible out of them for the lowest possible price. (This would be the approach demanded by shareholders of any public company.) But you can also go one step further which is to employ spin and "messaging" and psychological tricks (and outright lies) to REALLY minimize the amount you have to compensate your employees for their work. It should be clear that Microsoft is devoted to this extra step.
Wow - The big guy gets a 4% raise. I sure as hell hope he'll explain this one.
I love working for this company, it's such a shame that we have to put up with this crap. Steve-o, this has got to be one of the dumbest things that you've allowed in a long time. Isn't it time that you retired before the shareholders and your employees demand it?
If SLT/Middle Managemet does a poor job, they are learning from mistakes, mistakes happen. If IC/employees do a bad job, then bad review (10%)
If SLT/Middle Management, finish project ahead of schedule, they get rewarded. If IC/employees finish project ahead of time, they over-estimated the project timeline.
If SLT/Middle management change track mid-way in a project, they are proactive and get rewarded. If IC/employees do the same, they didnt choose the right track to begin with.
IF SLT/Middle management burn oil late in the night, then they are very dedicated and determined. If IC/employees burn oil, then they are inefficient.
Need I say more ? Such is the MSFT f__in system.
Ballmer could've won a few points with MS employees by refusing this raise.
What a dick move. Wasn't the first, won't be the last.
I thought we paid for performance here?
And before everyone starts excusing themselves since Ballmer's salary increase was at the start of FY09.
Last year I had an awesome year. My performance was amazing, as recognized by my manager. My raise: 3%. That was all, since I didn't get a promotion last year (I got one this year, but no merit increase).
Could someone point out why Ballmer got such amazing performance last year to deserve a bigger merit raise than most of the E/20 employees I know?
It'd still be interesting to see anything successful done by ex-MSFTies in the new millenium tho.
how do you define successful? In this economy, I define that as a startup that hasn't gone under.
Here's one:
http://www.cozi.com/
Here's another:
http://www.jacksonfish.com/
OK, so Ballmer's "merit" raise was apparently part of FY09, so it would not have happened after the "no raise" policy. Or at least that's what the timing would indicate. I do wonder what the story is for FY10.
Nevertheless, SLT should be trying to clarify this for employees and media, instead of letting everyone speculate and stew. Transparency, openness, not so much...
And you just gotta love those stock figures for some other SLT members:
"Ballmer declined to receive a stock award, while Liddell received $2.5 million, Bach $4.4 million, Elop $3 million and Turner $6.3 million."
I remember when working at Microsoft meant an over-the-top experience every month or so - a manager, an employee, technology, or SLT doing something amazing. I'm still awestruck every month or so - sometimes more frequently - but it's in how little the SLT gets our market, customers, shareholders, and employees.
I'm not worried about Steve B's raise.
I'm sure it was a mistake, and that somebody in HR will send a letter to him explaining that he needs to return it.
Yes, the Seattle Times did mention SteveB did get a raise in FY09, not FY10 as many may have assumed at first (an easy mistake given reporting a ~year later). AND, the PROXY statement noted that none of the exec's would get raises for FY10; HOWEVER, did you folks note in the recent PROXY (SEC Form 14-A, page 22 under Incentive Comp), that they ARE INCREASING THE BONUS POOL percentage for the exec comp plan (Mini commented upon this EXEC BONUS PLAN in his blog of 9/25/08). The bonus pool was previously something like .35 in FY09, and it is being increased in FY10 to .45 percent of OPERATING INCOME, due to the addition of two new executive officers; however it does not define who exactly is an 'Executive Officer' and if those two executives added 28% of the headcount to that number.
Given exec's make most of their comp in non-base pay, which one of them really cares if they miss the 4% merit increase, their BONUS POOL just went up by 28%. (Forgive me if my numbers are not quite perfect). The essential story is if your'e an executive, you don't really care about OPERATING INCOME or MERIT INCREASE. If OP/Inc. goes down, they'll just increase the percentage so the pool stays overall pretty $$ healthy.
Note all the other executive perks noted in the Proxy... who's brother works at Microsoft, who sold their homes in California at pre bubble pricing to Microsoft, etc.
Any share holder can feel free to epress their concern at the stockholders meeting in November, or will that be when Mini holds his first annual users group meeting. ;-)
Shocking to read about the type of compensation package the SLT gets. Not to mention compensation for the hundreds of GMs, especially those parked over the years in some obscure customer-facing groups or IT, who just show up for work, don't drive any specific Product effort, but are "safe" because when you are a GM it's almost impossible to be laid off...
And this in a year when:
- we lost 5K of hard-working folks with all the hardships (emotional and financial) they are now suffering
- stocks have steadily declined since Oct '07 (were at $36 then and the drop has not much to do with Fall '08 recession)
- MSFT employees are no longer worth "their weight in gold" as we used to say years ago when our vision was crystal clear and creativity was awesomely high
- Google is simply gaining up on us and just looking at how refreshingly simple and visionary their products are, makes me wonder where will MSFT be 5 years from now?
Net net: MSFT
- get rid of all the high paid Leaders (or Loosers?) who are stifling creativity, and showing up for work simply to collect their paychecks
- refocus/reorg/refresh/be product oriented and in touch with Real Customers and not inwardly focused as you are right now or you will become irrelevant in 5 years' time
>> how do you define successful?
For a startup $100M+ valuation (4x the minimum MSFT acquisition limit), and not all of it belongs to investors.
"If the above is truly correct, then if I were a shareholder I would be pulling my money out of MSFT so fast it would make your head spin."
What do you think they've been doing for most of the decade?
"...while Liddell received $2.5 million, Bach $4.4 million, Elop $3million and Turner $6.3 million."
People, deep breath. This is not, I repeat NOT, a reward. Do you think we would be incompetent enough to reward leaders after the company's first revenue decrease since going public? Heartless enough to take a bonus while cutting loose 5000 of our brothers and sisters in the first official layoffs ever? Hypocritical enough to award ourselves more than $20 million of stock in the same year it fell to 11-year lows? While Apple, IBM, Oracle and Google all did well for chrissakes? Of course not.
This is punishment. Do you know how much they got the year before? Easily twice that! It might not seem like it to you, but I can guar-an-tee that having to put off that new yacht until next year, or forego that villa in St. Barts, hits them where it counts and has them properly chastised. They've learned from this. You're going to see a new SLT. Mark my words.
"Gulp! Nothing to say on this level. Anyone? Anyone at all?"
What's to say? It's correct.
"Ballmer is here until one of three things happens:
- Bill decides otherwise
- Steve decides to leave
- Shareholders kick them both out
If the above is truly correct, then if I were a shareholder I would be pulling my money out of MSFT so fast it would make your head spin."
Thanks, that was the point I tried to make originally but didn't very well.
And since the Board sets the executive compensation that's where the buck stops for the raise hypocrisy.
"It'd still be interesting to see anything successful done by ex-MSFTies in the new millenium tho.
how do you define successful? In this economy, I define that as a startup that hasn't gone under.
Here's one:
http://www.cozi.com/
Here's another:
http://www.jacksonfish.com/"
From the first paragraph on jacksonfish.com:
"To be clear, I have no idea why anyone else should do a startup..."
Hahaha sorry I just had to!
"Our executive compensation program is designed to maximize shareholder value by attracting and retaining world-class leaders and aligning their financial rewards with the growth and success of the company."
Then by the company's own definition it's a failure. Because shareholder value has been destroyed not maximized. World class leaders have been attracted to Apple and Google instead. Executives that possibly were world class weren't retained (Connors, Raikes, less so KJ). The company is shrinking not growing, and failing not succeeding.
It's quite simple, for most common employees. No performance, no bonus. No performance, no hike. No performance, no promo. But then there are not-so-common people in the organization!
--- Ballmer got 4% raise in FY2009. Isn't MS freezes 2009 salary increase? ---
That policy was for employees. Not for the high-performant directors & execs :-)
The fact that folks are outraged over Ballmer's raise is somewhat amusing given the sham (or perhaps scam) that is our annual review.
In E&D, and I have seen the same in other parts of the company, the calibration for the annual review closed prior to the completion date of employee self assessment. What does this say about the employee relationship with Microsoft and the mockery that is the review process?
It says that the employee's self assessment either becomes affirmation of whatever review they were assigned, or a disconnect and lack of self criticism.
Before folks start saying that a good manager should not need to wait for the review self assessment since they have been engaged throughout the year, the fact is that:
1. Not every manager is good.
2. The corporate HR process does not take that stand and requires the review completion.
Balmer has how much stock? $20B?
He made the point of not taking stock and makes around $1M a year in total comp.
Why doesn't he just go one step further and take $1 in salary?
That $1M means nothing to him - but it could have been used to covered the company picnic and win him alot of points!
Latest rumour: Bill Veghte to replace Kevin Turner.
"Just as Microsoft believes in constant innovation in our products and services, we believe there is considerable room for innovation in shareholder dialogue."
But like with our products, beliefs don't equal actions.
"No wonder Ballmer loves this company so much... apparently the "NO MERIT RAISES" policy doesn't apply to him.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Microsoft-CEO-Ballmers-salary-apf-3429781936.html?x=0&.v=3
Saturday, September 19, 2009 10:34:00 AM"
The Seattle Times (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2009896852_microsoft19.html) picked this up as well.
Normally I appreciate critical commentary on Microsoft, dare I say, even impartial commentary. However, this is frankly inflammatory and serves only to incite those that feel disenfranchised already by Microsoft.
Read closely. You’ll see that Ballmer received a merit increase for FY09, just like the majority of MS employees. ABC News (http://www.abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=8615714) came out with a similar report a day earlier but included the fact that SLT did not receive merit increases this fiscal/FY10, just like the rest of Microsoft employees. Of course, the Times failed to include this tidbit in its article. It’s old news, people. The only part that’s slightly interesting is that shareholders will now get an apparent say in exec comp.
I’m not a SLT defender, but I do get pissed when the press slants its view and supposedly smart people don’t bother to get the facts before freaking out that yet one more thing at Microsoft is not fair.
If SLT/Middle Managemet does a poor job, they are learning from mistakes, mistakes happen. If IC/employees do a bad job, then bad review (10%)
Amen Brother!
You can treat your employees as partners and be happy to share the revenue with them. Or you can treat them as a commodity and try to get the most work possible out of them for the lowest possible price. (This would be the approach demanded by shareholders of any public company.) But you can also go one step further which is to employ spin and "messaging" and psychological tricks (and outright lies) to REALLY minimize the amount you have to compensate your employees for their work. It should be clear that Microsoft is devoted to this extra step.
Amen Sister!
And since the Board sets the executive compensation that's where the buck stops for the raise hypocrisy.
I stand sort of corrected I guess since that raise was technically for the FY09 but geez how long do you placate the guy who's been at the helm of tanking the companies' stock value?
I'm sure it was a mistake, and that somebody in HR will send a letter to him explaining that he needs to return it.
LOL
In E&D, and I have seen the same in other parts of the company, the calibration for the annual review closed prior to the completion date of employee self assessment. What does this say about the employee relationship with Microsoft and the mockery that is the review process?
It says that the employee's self assessment either becomes affirmation of whatever review they were assigned, or a disconnect and lack of self criticism.
You're judged based on your performance against your commitments. Your boss has a pretty good idea how you did long before you turn in your review. Or if they don't, it's your job to make sure they do. Start making your case 1-2 weeks after review season starts, or ask your manager (and skip level, or skip-skip level, etc.) until you get someone to tell you when it's happening.
Good orgs clearly publish these dates so that there are no surprises. I agree that the process is busted though, and should prevent managers from having these discussions until after the reviews are in.
Unfortunately something that should be pretty straightforward and simple takes 2-3 months. If they delayed any piece of it, we'd be lucky to see our bonus money by Christmas.
I'm interested in hearing from people in MCS, what their opinion of the Dell acquisition of IT services firm Perot Systems is.
Do you think this will impact MCS, in terms of network engineering, software pre-sales and application development projects? Or is Perot Systems mainly an operations outsourcer that runs data centers, and not much of a competitor in the markets in which MCS plays?
As a CSG who was forced to take a 10% pay cut in order to keep my job, and now doesn't know if I can afford to come back after my 100 day layoff is over, I'm nauseated that SteveB got that raise. As one poster said, he would have had a lot more credibility if he'd simply declined it.
Sic 'em, MS Cougar!
"In E&D, and I have seen the same in other parts of the company, the calibration for the annual review closed prior to the completion date of employee self assessment"
It is not fair to limit this practice to E&D. Given the outpouring of criticism for E&D on this blog I wanted to point this out.
This practice happens in every single org within Microsoft. Your score is determined between early May and early June. It is locked by mid to late July.
Your self assessment has nothing to do with your score. One might conclude, therefore, that the self assessment is pointless. This is also incorrect. The review document is not for your current boss. It is for your *next* boss. A good hiring manager will review these and look for trends.
Ballmer got a 4% raise going into last year. Get over it. His salary is still a joke and the "raise" is worth about $25k. If you're going to be mad, be so about the $20 million in stock that went to officers after this terrible year completed, along with an as yet unreported amount in cash bonuses.
It's bad enough that executives received large bonuses all decade while not growing the stock. Now they're getting them even when they don't grow the company.
Unlike others people in ballmer's position, ballmer does not usually sell his msft holdings. This truly reflects his love and passion for the company and faith in us. These three things should not be doubted about ballmer.
This $1.3M dollar or so is his living. Why should he be asked to even voluntarily give away his living too? He has volunteered to not take further msft stocks, and not does not want to sell his existing msft, then why should he be asked to even give away his salary?
People here do not see the emotional side of him. I could, because I feel pride in feeling that currently only ballmer loves this company more than I do. I can't also press sell button on my holdings as my loyalty to msft, even fully knowing that there is not much appreciation in the stock.
If i do not love this company and do not have faith in its future, then I should leave. This talk of diveristy etc is not supported by math, beyond a certain point.
I'm no longer at MSFT, and am sad to see that the review process is just as broken.
In my first year as a manager I was asigned two direct reports and wanted to take great care in providing honest and useful feedback on their reviews. Both of them had written great reviews with detailed comments.
Unfortunately, my manager had already calculated their scores and compensation! (without even reading a single line of the submitted documents, and had not even discussed this with me, or anyone, and had no clue what these people had achieved through the year).
How is it possible to review someone without reading what they have written, nor without knowing what they have done individually?
I was left with the very depressing task of then writing feedback to these two people, changing what I wanted to say to more negative/neutral comments to reflect the (poor) ratings results that were dictated down to me. Result: Three very de-motivated people.
I tried to appeal, but was shut down immediately by my manager who said that it was just the way it was done. I suggested politely that since she was the one that created the numbers maybe she was the one that should deliver the review meetings to my team and give the 'feedback' on their review documents. That idea was quickly squashed.
I replied that I was disgusted by the whole affair, and my managers reply was "fine, if you're unhappy, feel free to leave interview elsewhere". I asked permission to interview, and she granted it.
Within a short period of time, I'd received a couple of great offers from other teams (Despite what you might think from reading the above, I'm pretty good at my job). So I went back to my manager to organise a transition plan. The B@tch then locked up tight and said "no way - you can't leave you are essential to this team and the next release, so you can't leave until we ship and I've contacted HR and told them you can't move for another 3 months!" (way to go lady; now you've pissed off even more people in the company - the people who wanted me on their team and kept emailing me cheking on status).
After about a month (and various other people telling her that she couldn't force me to stay on the team that long) she said I could now go ... just after the team I wanted to go to had given up waiting for me and hired another.
I left the team shortly afterwards and spent another 10 years at Microsoft but was bitten so badly by the experience that I never had the desire to move out of IC status again (despite having managerial experience before MSFT).
I bet my manager continued to rise through the levels and it would not surprise me if she is one of the people that others are referring to these threads as being a high-level manager from hell. I hope she rots in it.
You can treat your employees as partners and be happy to share the revenue with them.
Life at MS in the 90's.
Or you can treat them as a commodity and try to get the most work possible out of them for the lowest possible price.
This pretty much describes the life of contractors at Agencies. The "outsourced" ones.
you can also go one step further which is to employ spin and "messaging" and psychological tricks (and outright lies) to REALLY minimize the amount you have to compensate your employees for their work.
Life at MS in the 2000's. Is it a coincidence this is the time when Ballmer has been CEO?
Latest rumour: Bill Veghte to replace Kevin Turner
Funniest comment of the year.
Please remind us, where he was sucessful? oh yeah, it was when he did windows me, the oher vista.
Here's a good one
As of July 1, there are no more tenure awards. It used to be you got a small stock award at 10, 15 and 20 years. Now you get nothing.
Nice incentive program here.
Also up, mid-year reviews will include major reorgs. Layoffs of people to free headcount for other disciplines.
The Road to a Balanced Budget Leads to Microsoft
1. Over the past thirteen years, I estimate that Microsoft has avoided paying more than $707 million in B & O taxes on sales of its corporate software licenses (see Citizen Microsoft and Microsoft's $528 million Washington tax break ). Although the majority of its software development is performed in Washington State, Microsoft records its estimated $18 billion in licensing revenue per year through a corporate office in Reno, Nevada where there is no licensing tax.
2. Just by enforcing the state's existing tax law from 2008 onwards, we could reduce Washington's revenue shortfall by more than 70 percent.
Microsoft's new Tablet.
Wow! this looks very cool. I wish we could have seen some detail at the company meeting...
http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet
can't wait to get my hands on one of these :-)
Over the past thirteen years, I estimate that Microsoft has avoided paying more than $707 million in B & O taxes on sales of its corporate software licenses (see Citizen Microsoft and Microsoft's $528 million Washington tax break ). Although the majority of its software development is performed in Washington State, Microsoft records its estimated $18 billion in licensing revenue per year through a corporate office in Reno, Nevada where there is no licensing tax.
This prompted me to check out the tax rates in Nevada. Nevada has no corporate or personal income taxes. There is lots of sun and Las Vegas. SLT, you can lift morale in short order by moving to Nevada.
How is it possible to review someone without reading what they have written, nor without knowing what they have done individually?
I was left with the very depressing task of then writing feedback to these two people, changing what I wanted to say to more negative/neutral comments to reflect the (poor) ratings results that were dictated down to me. Result: Three very de-motivated people.
Yeah, so you suck as a manager (feel free to take that as a compliment). One of the most important parts of the job is dealing with this exact situation every review period.
I can't also press sell button on my holdings as my loyalty to msft, even fully knowing that there is not much appreciation in the stock.
So you are making a decision that is contrary to your own interests in order to display loyalty to a legal entity, a corporation?
You need to get your head examined. MSFT is unable to reciprocate whatever you think you feel towards it. As for the officers of the company they've demonstrated how much they "care".
Concentrate your energy towards family, or your significant other, in short PEOPLE who can appreciate your feelings.
I won't charge for this. Just watch my show.
-- Dr Phil
If i do not love this company and do not have faith in its future, then I should leave. This
You can not "love" a company. You just can not have "feelings" for such an abstraction. It's just plain stupid. You and those who feel the "love" for MS have some sort of mental illness.
You're judged based on your performance against your commitments. Your boss has a pretty good idea how you did long before you turn in your review....blah blah blah
BS. Total BS. Your numbers are defined not by your mananger but your skip manager long before you write your review and your manager even has a chance to read it. This whole review process is a scam. WAKE UP!
"This $1.3M dollar or so is his living. Why should he be asked to even voluntarily give away his living too? He has volunteered to not take further msft stocks, and not does not want to sell his existing msft, then why should he be asked to even give away his salary?"
You have absolutely got to be kidding.
Unemployment is higher than it's been in decades; Americans are living in tent cities like they did in the 1930s and fleeing to Canada and Mexico for healthcare...and you're trying to generate sympathy for a multibillionare who "does not want" to sell his stock?
Not to mention regarding his $1.3 million dollar salary as his "living," as if actual nuts-and-bolts living expenses could possibly account for more than a thin shaving of that pie graph.
Lots of people "do not want" to have their homes forclosed on and "do not want" to lose their jobs, sell their cars, or buy prescription drugs in Canada. The anguish of selling stock is lost on me.
"The Road to a Balanced Budget Leads to Microsoft"
Written by a disgruntled ex employee and answered well here:
Is this the whole story?: Seems you've done a fair bit of research on the matter. However, I have to wonder if you done a complete job at researching your article? What about other impacts of Microsoft using Western Washington as its headquarters? As you pointed out, there are over 35K full time employees that live in the area. All of these employees have to sleep, eat, etc. They either have mortgages or pay rent. They all have to buy food, clothing, transportation, entertainment, etc. All of those purchases and properties generate tax revenue for the local governments. How much exactly does Microsoft impact the state?
Every year they donate millions of dollars in cash and hundreds of millions in software, all matched by Microsoft. Most of which goes to local organizations in the Puget Sound region. Take 2002 as an example. And this amount increases every year. How much exactly does Microsoft impact the state?
There's thousands of other vendors, contractors, and companies. who work to support Microsoft and their employees. All of these people and companies have rents or mortgages to pay. They all have things they need to buy. All generating tax revenue for the state. How much exactly does Microsoft impact the state?
If you want to go back in history, you have to then include all of the employees who ever worked at Microsoft who've had an impact to the state. All of the people who Microsoft made wealthy, retired, and the companies that they have started and all of those employees. How much exactly does Microsoft impact the state?
If you want to nit-pick about a common practice (exactly how many companies have their financial entities in Reno? Did you think to research that one?), why don't you expose the whole story?
— Unfit
AdCenter joke continues:
Sachind the clueless, has promoted his buddie, Nitin Chandel, who is best a L60 db developer, to partner.
These two together are redefining the meaning of a ms partner.
"As of July 1, there are no more tenure awards. It used to be you got a small stock award at 10, 15 and 20 years. Now you get nothing."
That's not true; they still give you a large, ugly crystal obelisk. The more years, the larger the (status) symbol is.
Why should he be asked to even voluntarily give away his living too?
Indeed.
Far better that, as a result of his ineptitude, he should force 5,000-plus former employees to involuntarily surrender their livings.
i wonder how richly they reward the people that develop the tax minimization schemes at MSFT...probably just more worker bees to support the STL comp packages.
Unfortunately something that should be pretty straightforward and simple takes 2-3 months. If they delayed any piece of it, we'd be lucky to see our bonus money by Christmas
I think it's fair to say that even if the review system isn't broken for any other reason it is broken for the fact that it drags on for so long. Such inefficiency could be damning evidence against how Microsoft is being run these days.
the STL should look east to issaquah for some leadership on compensation and rewards at the top...
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_36/b4145000403938_page_2.htm
Costco Wholesale (COST) CEO James D. Sinegal has received the same $350,000 salary since 1999 (his total 2008 package, according to the company's proxy, was $4.9 million). Sinegal says that keeping a long-term focus requires satisfying employees with pay levels that seem fair. "They feel better about their company and where the company is going if they know…someone is not just raking everything off the top."
At last, some numbers on Windows Live losses.
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/09/windows_live_lost_560m_in_09.html
The VP in GFS Debra left MS. Now GFS reports to Qi Lu. More reorg here.
The Road to a Balanced Budget Leads to Microsoft
I worked at Microsoft, and spent quite a bit of time at the Reno office (aka Microsoft Licensing Incorporated, MSLI) and with the tax department on a few holes in the "tax model". At that time (5 yrs ago), the tax department liked to berate us with the assertion that over its life, MSLI had netted over $1 billion in tax savings to Microsoft's bottom line.
In order to preserve the tax model, Microsoft has to maintain a charade that MSLI is an independent business entity that operates on its own. This is where all of the holes start emerging, mostly due to the fact that you can't get good talent to live in Reno. Trust me there is zero risk that Microsoft will pick up and relocate to Reno...maybe in the 90's the promise of the then-valuable stock options could persuade some employees to relocate, but now that Microsoft employment is simply a paycheck, forget it.
Key managers and functions get exceptions to remain in Redmond that really should be in Reno if MSLI is to claim that it is truly independent. For example, there are zero sales people in Reno. The high fliers in sales won't live there. The IT department in Reno is a shell of just technical support functions (because tech support is a lower skill job where you can find or train locals in Reno to hire). All of the design and development of the IT systems that run MSLI (HR, billing, LICENSING, supply chain, etc.) are all built in Redmond, and mostly hosted in Redmond data centers. All of the licensing programs for things like commercial and OEM licensing (think Windows upgrade programs) are designed in Redmond. The list goes on and on.
The only reasonable answer for why Washington State Dept of Revenue turns a blind eye to all of these holes is that someone has decided that the ancillary benefits of having Microsoft in Washington (employment, the network of other companies it supports, spending and sales tax revenues, etc.) outweigh the B&O tax losses. I think this is based on a false assumption that Microsoft would actually move. Microsoft is much more dependent on its highly skilled local talent (it has nothing else really) and won't put it in jeopardy by picking up and moving to...where again? Not California, not Reno...where would they even move?
Anyways, my overall message is I agree with the author of that blog post!
"I never had the desire to move out of IC status again"
Finally someone admits to what ALL the managers know. The things you are asked to do as a manager at Microsoft turn your stomach. The stack ranking system is a crime against humanity. It's a favorites game, and it's now almost to the point that it gets in the way of running the business.
Even if your team was cut to the bone in the layoffs, you had to tell a number of good employees this year that they are limited. And for some reason this year the number of limited employees was double the number last year.
It used to be that if someone was heading out the door you could hold them long enough to give them the bottom rank, and then essentially nobody got a limited. Everyone knews this, everyone played along at stack rank time.
But then, after the layoffs, we didn't have anyone heading out. And those few stragglers that did head out after the layoffs still didn't count as the bottom rungs on the ladder. And then, just when we figured out who would take the bullet, the recalibration came back and doubled the hit on the lower rungs. WHO THE HELL IS WATCHING THE STORE? HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO RUN A BUSINESS LIKE THIS? The state I work in requires "meaningful performance management" before termination, but we are telling people to resign that have little or no documented performance issues. And we are certainly not making any effort to manage their performance "problems". How could we? We just made up these comments to match the ranking. Which makes me wonder why I am risking a personal lawsuit by putting my name on the review comments. I have to do this just because Lisa thinks the ranks are full of slackers?
Make no mistake about who is at fault here. Under Steve we were able to run the business. Things got done. Cheery, happy Lisa pops in and now the review system is being misused in ways that cannot be stomached. Lisa set this model, and Lisa has allowed it to turn into something that basically slanders our employees. I am not happy that I have to risk a long, drawn out court case in the future, over immoral acts that I was asked to perform this year.
The terror regime has to end. It used to be that once you got past the politics of the yearly review you could run your business for another 9 months or so. Now the fear in the ranks means everyone is looking toward the mid-year review with dread. They are not focused on their work, they are focused on whatever new horror Lisa will unleash on the ranks. Lisa, if you have any interest in the future of our business please for God's sake return the 10% bucket to it's old size of 10%, and let us count the folks that we already know are headed out the door. It's how we've done this for decades. Literally, decades. And we've built up some shareholder value in the process, so I think there is ample evidence that it has worked. Let's end your experiment, OK? It hasn't improved a single product, as far as I can tell. And we make products here. Good products. Well, until you came along.
So far Dell was the only big OEM which didn't have a strong Services bakbone. PEROT acquisition will help them but in a small way. They have a lot of catch up to do with IBM and HP. Perot may give DELL good headway into hosted services, healthcare and Govt. Regarding MCS, the less said the better. While everyone is growing their servies pie (IBM, Accenture, TCS..), MS has no focus or strategy to build a services Biz. MCS delivery quality is also getting ompromised with use of low cost/poor quality servies from MGSI. Our commitment to Partners is lost
Good News On MSFT Earnings: Xbox Sales Tanking
LOL. SLT's plans have to fail in order for the company to make more.
You're judged based on your performance against your commitments. Your boss has a pretty good idea how you did long before you turn in your review. Or if they don't, it's your job to make sure they do. Start making your case 1-2 weeks after review season starts, or ask your manager (and skip level, or skip-skip level, etc.) until you get someone to tell you when it's happening.
Nonsense.
Your commitments exist only to be used as rationalizations and ammunition for negative reviews to sidestep petty lawsuits.
Anyone who claims otherwise is naive, never been a manager at microsoft, or the very very rare honest manager in a stack of honest managers at Microsoft.
"Unlike others people in ballmer's position, ballmer does not usually sell his msft holdings. This truly reflects his love and passion for the company and faith in us."
What CEO doesn't have love and passion for his company and a belief in employees? But every CEO isn't successful. NINE YEARS. If he was going to be a star he already would be. Not wanting to leave with his current record is understandable, but that's where love for MS needs to trump ego. Hanging on for personal reasons is selfish and not in the company's best interests. The board should be helping him reach that conclusion if he's not able to make it for himself. And if the board isn't up to it, then shareholders should help them both.
You're all being too hard on our illustrious leader. It's obvious that SteveB’s not in it for the money. Think about it, that FY09 raise equated to about $25k which is peanuts for him, whereas if he left then the MSFT stockprice would no doubt double overnight (along with MS-FTE morale) and so he’d make about $20B. See how much he loves this company!
>Life at MS in the 2000's. Is it a
>coincidence this is the time when
>Ballmer has been CEO?
I'd blame Mr. Wal-Mart - Kevin Turner for that one. It seems like he's implementing the nastier bits of WMT's HR techniques inside MSFT.
"It's true that you can't blame Ballmer alone for all this. After all, we've been in the worst economic condition since the Great Depression. But he certainly hasn't made things better. In fact, you can easily argue that he's made things worse. He's well known for his bombast and revels in it -- it's part of his persona. The problem, though, is that he doesn't back up that bombast with anything. Microsoft is losing badly on the Web to Google, and Office is under attack from Google Apps. Vista was a financial disaster. And Ballmer presents no clear ideas about Microsoft's vision for the future.
There are plenty of very smart people working at Microsoft, and in recent months, as I've written, Microsoft has got its mojo back. But I don't attribute most of that to Ballmer. If I were choosing his salary, he'd get a pay cut, not an increase."
(http://www.pcworld.com/article/172486/set_steve_ballmers_salary.html)
As of July 1, there are no more tenure awards. It used to be you got a small stock award at 10, 15 and 20 years.
I was wondering about that. I guess that makes sense as we no longer get the engraved likeness stock certificate plaque. I hit one of the milestones but had not yet heard a word one way or the other about stock. I also guess I will not be watching for notification of shares of stock any longer.
Microsoft records its estimated $18 billion in licensing revenue per year through a corporate office in Reno, Nevada where there is no licensing tax
Hmmm, so that is why we have the Reno location.
This practice happens in every single org within Microsoft. Your score is determined between early May and early June. It is locked by mid to late July.
This is not accurate. Some groups are more organized than others, and actually wait for at least some of the reviews to come in.
As discussed here, E&D is one of the bad orgs.
Belated Posting, but reply to one posting on, if there was a blanket ban rehiring laid off employees..
Everything depends on your luck and if the hiring team/HR likes your face... There is a Laid Off Under Perform-10% Director in APAC who got hired by another neighboring Region as a Director in EPG within one month with all benefits, relocation... So much for Microsoft being Merit based performance and hiring practices...
If i do not love this company and do not have faith in its future, then I should leave. This talk of diveristy etc is not supported by math, beyond a certain point.
Nope.
I could play the "I LOVE THIS COMPANY SO MUCH THAT I WANT IT HEALED!" card, but that'd be nonsense; I'm not here due to love.
I'm an employee because I'm being competively paid in an area where I can afford a home and raise my kids.
The obvious argument is "IF SOMEONE LOVES THIS COMPANY ENOUGH, THEY'D GIVE EVERYTHING FOR IT. INCLUDING THEIR SALARY!"
I fear "love" is used too loosely.
I'd blame Mr. Wal-Mart - Kevin Turner for that one. It seems like he's implementing the nastier bits of WMT's HR techniques inside MSFT.
yes he is, i recall the troll who worked in jawads org as their HRBP who finally left to office but boy she was stellar helping screw over people (in line with jawads directs efforts).
>> can't wait to get my hands on one of these
You must be new here. I remember looking at the demo renders for what Longhorn was supposed to deliver, and it was stunning. Great looking UI, usability, WinFS, total integration with the Internet, freeform, real-time data sharing between apps and the cloud, etc, etc.
Instead, seven years later all we have is glorified XP with compositing window manager on top and a different taskbar. And we wouldn't even have that if it wasn't for the growing AAPL marketshare.
People here do not see the emotional side of him. I could, because I feel pride in feeling that currently only ballmer loves this company more than I do.
He loves being the CEO of a Fortune 100 company. I'm not sure he'd notice a difference if he woke up tomorrow and was the CEO of Boeing, or Starbucks, or GE. I don't recall him ever showing any interest in computers, software, electronics, or technology in general. Steve Jobs founded two computer companies and a computer graphics company. Sergey Brin and Larry Page built the Google search engine with their own two (four) hands. Bill Gates wrote BASIC interpreters. What has Ballmer ever done? I get the impression that if, say, his printer stopped working he'd be at a complete loss for what to do. Maybe he'd call the Geek Squad.
"You can not "love" a company. You just can not have "feelings" for such an abstraction. It's just plain stupid. You and those who feel the "love" for MS have some sort of mental illness."
You need only look at the hate filled trolling posts here and at every other web location where MS is discussed, to see that people can and do have strong feelings for this "abstraction". While employees "loving" an abstraction where they work and get paid is slightly odd but understandable, those "hating" the same abstraction where neither applies to them is truly pathetic.
What disturbs me is growing evidence and even recent management admissions that billions were spent hiring people and funding projects that should never have seen daylight. This is exactly the charge that detractors of the company made for years, but which SLT denied.
Belated Posting, but reply to one posting on, if there was a blanket ban rehiring laid off employees..
I can't comment (yet) on the policy for fte's but I know firsthand that MS told the contract 'v-' companies that rehiring folks laid off was "strongly discouraged." That was the actual quote. I guess it makes business sense not to bring back employees that are probably disgruntled.
Obviously it's much easier with contract personnel to just say go away so your mileage may vary.
Is it just me or you too are seeing more than regular number of empty spaces in parking lots? I go around campuses quite a bit and the buildings where it was really really hard to find parking have now suddenly plenty of it! Did Sep 15 changed something? I personally know one person who got "managed out" during reviews but that's about it. Poor guy didn't even got severance. Driving to those buildings and finding so much parking spaces available right after Sep 15 is just freaky.
I can't comment (yet) on the policy for fte's but I know firsthand that MS told the contract 'v-' companies that rehiring folks laid off was "strongly discouraged."
Maybe, just maybe some v- companies have been told this. If a- companies have also been told this, it seems from personal experience that they're not uniformly heeding it.
I've been crystal clear with multiple a- agencies about the circumstances of my departure. Why? In the interests of full disclosure and to underscore that it's not a good time investment to forward any positions in the area that laid me off. I don't wish to work again for the management hierarchy that made the decision the way they did, for reasons I won't get into here.
However, I don't hold that questionable decision against an entire 100,000-person company, most of whom were not involved and don't even know my name. Wouldn't that be more than a little ridiculous? That's like blaming all of Belltown's inhabitants for your parking ticket last week.
Other areas of the company remain on my "will consider" list, and the agencies still contact me about any a- role that a recruiter thinks is a match for my skill set, experience, and that constraint.
I can't comment (yet) on the policy for fte's but I know firsthand that MS told the contract 'v-' companies that rehiring folks laid off was "strongly discouraged." That was the actual quote. I guess it makes business sense not to bring back employees that are probably disgruntled.
---------
maybe .. maybe not but folks need to get paid to support their families ... it is a bad assumption that the majority of laidoff folks will be in that frame of mine.
However, it will take due diligence for the hiring teams to look for that.
Can anyone tell me why our own browser team didn't think to add a webkit plug-in to increase IE performance? Google just won a lot of customer loyalty for doing that, as well as increasing their potential base for Gapps. It even works for IE8 apparently.
How can we be so bad at browsers across the entire lineup? Even the brand new Zune HD browser is terrible. If this is it for WM7 let's just license mobile Safari. Or are we going to wait for Google to fix that too?
There is so much hate in this forum!
Hey guys,
SteveB here for your assistance.
Look you people ... understand that I have billions, and billions and billions of dollars to look after. Carl Sagan just had billions of stars. Did he love the stars? Well, arguably yes he did, but that is not the point here as I clench my teeth. To tell you about the company I love ... which one is that again ... gosh-darn-it-Brian-Kevin-Turner where is that PowerPoint? Where oh where could that PPT be? Was it K-Mart? L- mart. Help me out here Kevin. I'm a beggin!
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33007219
To quote Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist James Lileks, one Washington Post reader wrote: "If Microsoft had been put in charge of marketing sex, the human race would have ended long ago, because no one would be caught dead doing something that uncool."
OK low level managers, burst my bubble. How many of you receive ratings for your staff without you giving input?
Hello, mobile team? Anyone home? Maybe we should just outsource development to HTC instead:
TouchFLO 3D 2.5 Build 1919 Brings Many New Features
Is it just me or you too are seeing more than regular number of empty spaces in parking lots? I go around campuses quite a bit and the buildings where it was really really hard to find parking have now suddenly plenty of it! Did Sep 15 changed something? I personally know one person who got "managed out" during reviews but that's about it. Poor guy didn't even got severance. Driving to those buildings and finding so much parking spaces available right after Sep 15 is just freaky.
I work on the Sammamish campus. I know we were hit during the May 5 layoffs, not sure about what has changed since Sept 15. But even before Sept 15, I was seeing lots of empty spaces. As early as a year ago, you had to pretty much drive around 10-15 min before finding a spot on the garage or outside. Now, you can park anywhere you want. Not sure what that's all about.
It was realy good meeting, thanks for sharing.
gosh-darn-it-Brian-Kevin-Turner where is that PowerPoint? Where oh where could that PPT be? Was it K-Mart? L- mart. Help me out here Kevin. I'm a beggin!
==
kevin is busy having lunch meetings at the mexican restraunt by wendys.
hope you didn't over hear our conversation as we sat next to you.
in all seriousness, brand MS == walmart of software .. somewehere this should be moved out of core engineering before there is no core engineering anymore.
Is it just me or you too are seeing more than regular number of empty spaces in parking lots? I go around campuses quite a bit and the buildings where it was really really hard to find parking have now suddenly plenty of it! Did Sep 15 change something? I personally know one person who got "managed out" during reviews but that's about it. Poor guy didn't even got severance. Driving to those buildings and finding so much parking spaces available right after Sep 15 is just freaky.
Maybe a lot of people just collected their bonuses and ran ?
When will the internal ONLY hiring @ MS Mobile division be scrubbed? Anyone, any ideas ...
WRT the claim that MS is discouraging staffing agencies to hire laid off employees -- that strikes me as highly discriminatory and probably illegal. Any lawyers on here care to chime in?
News say Win Mobile 7 will be out next March. I say let's put a bid for RIM now just in case...
"OK low level managers, burst my bubble. How many of you receive ratings for your staff without you giving input?"
I'm an L64 dev manager with 13 reports. My manager ran a calibration across his entire org (65), with all of his managers. We left with preliminary stack rankings.
He then stacked against his peers, and then bubbled up the chain, etc. Maybe 3-5% of rankings changed.
For commitment ratings, I set them for each of my employees. There was a little push regarding the number of exceeds I could give out, but in the end all of my ratings stood. (One was pushed down before we got it back up later).
For rewards, I set them for each of my reports, with some guidelines from my manager. These were then tweaked a little bit to match the org, but were consistently within 5% of what I had set.
Note that my recommendations on rating and ranking came after I read my employees' self assessments, and after I had done my preliminary work. Final, formal assessments did happen after the model was locked down, but I had had my input by then.
Bottom line, while there was some guidance from above, I was 95% responsible for everything my employees got - rating, ranking, rewards. Maybe this is because I've got a great manager and skip-level, but I like to think that we're doing it right.
...Steve Jobs founded two computer companies and a computer graphics company. Sergey Brin and Larry Page built the Google search engine with their own two (four) hands. Bill Gates wrote BASIC interpreters...
you have nailed! and what did steveb do? he sold MS licenses like no one. steveb was everything that billg lacked, but steveb does not understand to this day, how technology can solve everyday problems. in short, no passion. steveb could never innovate, he could only be a copy cat and he mixed up the tagline in the process. it should read "your passion, our (marketing) potential"
I think the reason microsoft did not go for a formal layoff this time because they have got lots of U 10% targets in the recent review. One of my colleague was let go last week. I am surprised because he was very nice and technically excellent.
Where is LisaB these days?
Four letter words
One of the problems the folks posting on this blog are still working on is that while they might love the company and give it their time and devotion, the company doesn't love them back.
Clue in, people, you're not being appreciated for craftsmanship or enthusiasm. You're working for an organization with the occasional appreciated manager but overall you're part of a mob that tries to grab as much of a piece of the MSFT bank as they can, using whatever means they see fit.
What disturbs me is growing evidence and even recent management admissions that billions were spent hiring people and funding projects that should never have seen daylight. This is exactly the charge that detractors of the company made for years, but which SLT denied.
They rewarded their failures with big bonuses and awards.
Sounds like their performance management system is broken.
They solved their problem by firing you instead. Problem solved.
Achievement unlocked.
It's good to be king.
"You can not "love" a company. You just can not have "feelings" for such an abstraction. It's just plain stupid. You and those who feel the "love" for MS have some sort of mental illness."
You certainly can love a company, just as you can love your country, or books, or vacationing in Barcelona. As with any other kind of love, of course, you need to be aware that it's often fleeting. Nothing stays the same.
I loved -- past tense -- the Microsoft of old, pre-2000. It wasn't just the money, which flowed freely; rather it was a combination of the culture, the experience, the work, the people... it was like nothing I'd experienced before and for the first 5 years I was here it was everything I could have wanted in a job.
Much like any other kind of love -- or anything else in the world -- things change. Microsoft is not the same company today that it was in 1995, and although I still work here and still really like my job and the people I'm working with, that sense of magic is gone. Of course, I was in my 20s back in the day and I'm now in my 40s, so I've changed quite a bit too.
Bottom-line is that you absolutely can love a company just as you can love everything else. And as with any other kind of love you probably don't want to be totally blind about it, nor do you want to ignore the fact that everything changes over time.
Is it just me or you too are seeing more than regular number of empty spaces in parking lots? I go around campuses quite a bit and the buildings where it was really really hard to find parking have now suddenly plenty of it! Did Sep 15 changed something?
There's nothing ominous about it being after review time.
Windows 7 just RTMd recently, so lots of people are in between major releases and are taking some vacation time before the next things get underway.
And, the people who were here while others were taking summer vacation, are now on vacation.
And, with school resuming, many parents are on slightly different schedules so they can pick up / drop off their kids.
Not everything is a dire sign of layoffs here.
Money Flows: Selling on Strength
Monday, September 28, 2009 - 5:17
#1 Microsoft (MSFT)
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-mflppg-moneyflow.html?mod=mdc_leader
Earnings news must be leaking out.
Microsoft Look-Ahead to September 2009 Quarterly Results
The Revenue and expense estimates above would result in Operating Income of $3.4 billion for the September 2009 quarter. This figure is 43 percent below Operating Income in the September 2008 quarter.
WRT the claim that MS is discouraging staffing agencies to hire laid off employees -- that strikes me as highly discriminatory and probably illegal. Any lawyers on here care to chime in?
You misunderstood or I "miswrote", my contract staffing company was strongly discouraged from REhiring anyone who had been laid off.
That REALLY won't be a problem in foreseeable future.
OMG, I just saw one of the tackiest videos in years!: "How to host a Windows 7 Launch Party".
I see an easy way for MSFT to do exactly what Mini's Microsoft-personnel-reduction policy has been advocatingfor years: the immediate firing of the whole Marketing/Advertising Division.
That video is the writing on the wall for MSFT.
I think the reason microsoft did not go for a formal layoff this time because they have got lots of U 10% targets in the recent review. One of my colleague was let go last week
---
it was a cost savings measure to U10 people and bounce them out then do the right thing and layoff .. god forbid we dig into the coffers.
I know people who were on U10 and given the equiv of layoff time to find a gig, but just not at MS
You misunderstood or I "miswrote", my contract staffing company was strongly discouraged from REhiring anyone who had been laid off.
who was your staffing company?
That REALLY won't be a problem in foreseeable future.
whys that?
Re: "How to host a Windows 7 Launch Party"
I believe the term is counter-subconscious espionage. Either someone is really, really stupid or really, really smart.
Bottom line, while there was some guidance from above, I was 95% responsible for everything my employees got - rating, ranking, rewards.
This experience is not typical. My incompetent GM decided to do everything himself. My input didn't matter.
Is anyone else hosting a Win7 launch party?
"Elop, asked the same question, preferred to think in terms of "constructive disruption" as Microsoft's biggest threat and opportunity. Constructive disruption, he said, happens when technologies and business models change so much that Microsoft adjusts its products and how it delivers them. They're both too busy beating us to the next new thing.
"This can be disruptive, but that's what the times call for. It's what our customers are telling us needs to be done," Elop said."
Wouldn't constructive disruption be MS leading it instead of being forced to respond to the disruptive actions of competitors, and only then because MS customers tell it to? Google and Apple aren't being asked whether disruption is negative for them. And they sure don't wait for their customers to tell them what their strategy should be. They're busy disrupting everyone else and beating us to the next new thing. Which will provide us with even more constructive disruption that SLT can initially ignore, respond to too late, and then claim is not completely bad.
Quoting at length from Steve Ballmer (TechCrunch interview):
The most successful by far is Firefox. Chrome is a rounding error to date. Safari is a rounding error to date. But Firefox is not. The fact that there’s a lot of competitors probably is to our advantage. Yeah, we’re right now about 74 percent overall with the browser market, roughly speaking. But we’re having to compete like heck with IE 8, with great new features. The other guys are getting more and more unanticipated competitive attack factors, the thing that Google announced yesterday where they replaced IE but they don’t tell you. I mean that’s how I would say it. For all intents and purposes of what they’re doing IE is not there. It’s their operating system. Instead of now masked as browser, it’s masked as a plug in basically to IE. So, you know, we’re going to have to compete like heck and you know, see where things go. The one thing that’s unclear is what’s the economic play for anybody else competing with us at the browser level. Is this all about kind of controlling the search box or is it about something else?
[...]
Here’s Windows and Windows is a very successful product. How do you attack Windows? Well, you attack with the high end, and hardware. That’s an attack. That’s – I won’t call it the Snow Leopard attack. I’ll call it the Mac attack of which Snow Leopard is a piece. You could attack from the side. That’s the Chrome – Firefox attack. You can attack from cheap, from below. You’re not from the side. You’re one on one, but that’s kind of a Linux, Android, presumably Chrome OS, who knows, attack vector. You can attack through phones that grow up. You know, mama don’t let your phones grow up to be PCs or something. I don’t know. But that’s another attack vector. So, you could say how do I feel about all these attack vectors? Strong, I feel very strong here.
Master strategist; master of the English language...
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090929-715972.html
Bach is the highest paid executive for the last fiscal year... hard to believe.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/180575.asp?source=mypi
Blame your own GM for any review process problems you see...
HR doesnt enforce a process for calibration or review, everything you see from HR is a guideline and the GM in your division controls how they spend their budget and the process they follow to do it. Some push hard core to differetiate, some do a bit more peanut buttering but that is entirely their call. It is not uncommon for HR to not be in the room for calibration...
If they are within budget nobody will question anything they did other than when diversity analysis flushes out problems, that is one of the few levers HR does have.
General concensus about the Windows 7 launch video, amongst my friends/team, is it must be a deliberate viral marketing ploy. Its certainly got press and blogger attention.
Mr. Ballmer’s participation in the Incentive Plan for fiscal year 2009 was limited to a range of 0% to 200% of his fiscal year 2009 base salary, payable in cash, consistent with our past practice and his request that we not award him equity compensation.
(source)
I can't find the page on hrweb where I can request my stock bonuses be paid out in cash. Also, my limits are at 20%, there must have been a clerical error. Anyone know how to correct that?
Mini - It's a new month. Time for a new post.
Here's your topic:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2009968889_microsoft30.html
How can these outrageous stock awards be justified?
Steve finally did the right thing and refused stock this year. The other execs should do exactly the same thing. It's the least they can do for the shareholders.
I can't believe what Robbie Bach got last year either.
This is in regards to a recent article with All Things D. It refers to MSN launching a new service for its health site.
I have an idea for MSN and its services it offers. Therefore, since this site is used by employees I am seeking information.
Who is the head of MSN or who would I contact?
Does anyone have contact info...such as fax or email?
If anyone can help it would be appreciated.
Re: Ballmer compensation.
It actually did decrease this year, not increase, because his bonus was cut. Take a look at this article:
"Microsoft CEO's compensation down 6 percent in '09"
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=AP&Date=20090929&ID=10405660&Symbol=MSFT
Master strategist indeed, is our very own home grown SteveB.
I just checked on my broker site ... MSFT market cap $222B, AAPL $167B and closing. Is that a snow leopard attack Steve? From the side, or behind? Speaking of which you couldn't find yours with both hands.
The SLT is a bunch of morons. Fancy defending exec compensation based on 'economic forces'. Fact is 10s of billions have been pissed away on loser products and bad investments (remember the $5B into AT&T, that "returned" $2.3B 5 years later. Unfettered hiring binges followed by poorly handled layoffs.
MS leadership reminds me of some spoiled brat who inherits a fortune and fritters it awy on polo ponies and extravagant parties.
Wouldn't constructive disruption be MS leading it instead of being forced to respond to the disruptive actions of competitors, and only then because MS customers tell it to?
Just to be clear, no MS customer ever told MS to compete with Google, compete with the iPod, etc.
Ballmer deliberately picked a nonsensical fight with Google, a fight which any independent observer could predict as an almost guaranteed (and embarrassing) loss, and consequently tarnished MS's reputation.
In the public's eye, MS went from being the winner of the OS and office productivity markets to the loser of the search engine market thanks to Ballmer's rhetoric.
For the most part, large and successful tech companies today don't compete with each other. Apple doesn't make a search engine, Google doesn't manufacture hardware, etc. etc. Microsoft is the only company that seems to be intent on copying *every* other company--Apple, Google, Sony, Oracle, IBM, etc. This "strategy" is an embarrassment.
I am hosting a win7 party, i got let go too so you know it will be great.
I doubt they will send my win7 ship it award but i will have many kegs / wine / other.
google now has my work that i did on IE so hopefully we make chrome OS better than midori.
10 Ways Microsoft Can Turn Around Windows Mobile
What I especially like about Ballmer's comments (above) is the part where he's talking about ChromeFrame. He calls it
the thing that Google announced yesterday where they replaced IE but they don’t tell you. I mean that’s how I would say it. For all intents and purposes of what they’re doing IE is not there. It’s their operating system. Instead of now masked as browser, it’s masked as a plug in basically to IE.
And then he speculates:
The one thing that’s unclear is what’s the economic play for anybody else competing with us at the browser level. Is this all about kind of controlling the search box or is it about something else?
Which is great, because he's basically revealing total ignorance of what's going on with Trident vs. webkit, html5 standards, etc. He doesn't get why anyone would want to make the ChromeFrame plug-in; he doesn't see the "economic play."
I've read dozens of intense discussions on various sites about ChromeFrame and the overwhelming reaction from developers is joyous relief at being freed from the IE6 albatross and its compliance problems. Content creators all over the world struggle with IE6 daily; webkit comes along and gets a 100 score on the newest Acid Test and is the heart of Google Chrome, and is now available to IE6 developers...and Steve Ballmer seems blissfully ignorant of all of this. He's peering vaguely at the plug-in, trying to grasp why anyone would want it or use it; trying to discern what its "economic play" could be. It's amazing.
I cannot believe how stupid an petty people are on this board. Ripping Ballmer on his Salary? He actually took a pay cut, but people bitch that he got a raise. Let's suppose he did get a 4% raise, so what? Compare his salary to the CEO's of the rest of the fortune 500 companies. He is making a fraction of what they do. Those of you that are bitching about a merit increase, I am sure that the company would gladly commit to giving you a 4% merit increase every year if you would work at 1/3 the industry average pay rate.
If you think money is the issue, and Ballmer left, do you think you could get any CEO to come in and do the job for the same amount?
In my 15 years at Microsoft I have met some really smart people. But some of the people that post on here really show how we have lowered the bar to fill positions.
Is anyone else hosting a Win7 launch party?
Anyone else? You mean you are?
Sorry, Jack, it's not in my job description, so No, I'm not going to humiliate myself by doing Marketing's job for them. I are not Borg, and I don't drink Kool-Aid.
Are you fkn serious?
During an interview last week, Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, was critical of I.B.M.’s decisions over the last decade to dispose of its networking equipment, hard disk and PC businesses. Technology companies must pursue constant market expansion and diversity to stay alive and relevant, according to Mr. Ballmer.
“I.B.M. is the company that is notable for going the other direction,” he said. “I.B.M.’s footprint is more narrow today than it was when I started. I am not sure that has been to the long-term benefit of their shareholders.”
I.B.M. sold off its networking business in 1999 and then steadily exited lower-margin hardware businesses throughout this decade. I.B.M. has argued that it makes more sense to concentrate on higher-profit businesses and leave the grunt work to other guys, namely Hewlett-Packard. Today, I.B.M. directs most of its energy toward software and services and continues to sell higher-margin hardware like Unix servers and mainframes.
I.B.M.’s strategy has worked out O.K. for its investors over the last decade. Shares of I.B.M. are up about 30 percent since 1999, while shares of Microsoft have dropped about 30 percent over the same time span.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/ballmer-criticizes-ibms-high-profit-diet/
Sixty percent better stock performance over eleven years, better relative financial performance throughout this recession, five divisions that even in this economy all make money, nobody particularly concerned they won't survive the next ten years, but Steve thinks they have it wrong and his MS has it right.
It's judgment like that which explains MS's "Lost Decade".
General concensus about the Windows 7 launch video, amongst my friends/team, is it must be a deliberate viral marketing ploy. Its certainly got press and blogger attention.
Surely there has to be a better way to get attention than making yourself the butt of a joke. Viral marketing is meant to pique your interest, get you wondering and leave you to think about it.
The feeling of everyone I know who's seen that video was that Microsoft has just lost it completely. Everyone felt more negative about the company afterwards.
It's just not true that any news is good news, or any attention is good attention.
which steve do you want or keep as the next CEO?
A) Elop
B) Ballmer
C) Sinovsky
D) Jobs
"You misunderstood or I "miswrote", my contract staffing company was strongly discouraged from REhiring anyone who had been laid off.
who was your staffing company?
That REALLY won't be a problem in foreseeable future.
whys that?"
I don't think I'll mention who my contract company was yet, they did actually treat me well so I don't see any need to throw them under the bus.
It really won't be a problem in the foreseeable future because that shop won't be rehiring anyone anytime soon.
During an interview last week, Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, was critical of I.B.M.’s decisions over the last decade to dispose of its networking equipment, hard disk and PC businesses. Technology companies must pursue constant market expansion and diversity to stay alive and relevant, according to Mr. Ballmer.
Argh! IBM was on the verge of going out of business in the 90s until Gerstner stepped in and did things like e.g. cancel their embarrassment of a PC business.
It is amazing that either 1) Ballmer doesn't know this key piece of computer industry history which he lived through and probably participated in to some degree, or 2) faced with the prospect of complete failure of an iconic multinational company, his preferred strategy is to continue to prop up loser divisions that are hemorrhaging money in the name of "market expansion and diversity."
Either way he's basically saying that if he was in charge of IBM in the 90s, the company would have gone out of business. A preview of Microsoft in 10-20 years?
"I just checked on my broker site ... MSFT market cap $222B, AAPL $167B and closing."
Not only is it closing, it will pass MS in the next twelve months. That used to be unthinkable. It's now unstoppable. It *will* happen and there's no longer anything Ballmer can do to prevent it. Latest target for Apple was provided today: $265.
"How can we be so bad at browsers across the entire lineup?"
The simple answer is that it's deliberate. Open standards and true interoperability = less forced dependence on IE/Windows/Office.
This is why Google's Chrome Frame gambit is such a brilliant move - in one fell swoop, it shows how embarrassingly far behind IE is, while bypassing IE's continued stonewalling on supporting internet standards. Meaning IE can no longer be used as a competitive weapon to hold back Google, or any other standards-compliant web app company.
And by tapping into the userbase of the browser that's still the most-used on the internet, they're going to reach a LOT of people - even the poor souls who think "the internet" is that blue "e" icon.
How much longer will there still be a business case for expending time and energy developing IE, if it can no longer be used as a competitive weapon to hold back adoption of true internet standards?
Which is great, because he's basically revealing total ignorance of what's going on with Trident vs. webkit, html5 standards, etc. He doesn't get why anyone would want to make the ChromeFrame plug-in; he doesn't see the "economic play."
Google has stated publicly during this debate that they waste a bunch of time getting their services to work right on IE because of its poor performance and standards compliance. The "economic play" here is obvious--they want more people using their services and for those people to have a better experience. It's not about the browser, it's about showing people ads--i.e., Google's main and only business model. It's a shame this has escaped our captain of industry.
------You're going to see a new SLT. Mark my words.-------
You mean new 'S' or new 'LT'? :-)
"I am hosting a win7 party, i got let go too so you know it will be great.
I doubt they will send my win7 ship it award but i will have many kegs / wine / other.
google now has my work that i did on IE so hopefully we make chrome OS better than midori."
Yeah, I'm sure that Google let that happen.
Face it -- you're unemployed and daydreaming... Google does not want you.
General concensus about the Windows 7 launch video, amongst my friends/team, is it must be a deliberate viral marketing ploy. Its certainly got press and blogger attention.
Yeah. So did those Seinfeld ads!
http://gawker.com/5371189/the-home-where-microsoft-got-reamed
which steve
That is wierd almost to the point of creepy. Thanks (not) for pointing out the Steve fixation.
Oh, and in answer to your question, Jobs, but he'd never do it, because he'd recognize MSFT as a big ship of uncoolness too large, ingrained and ungainly to turn around.
I am seeking current or former Microsoft employees to join me in a podcast about program management. I used to be a program manager at Microsoft myself, and am creating some articles and podcasts about what the job role is like at Microsoft.
We will discuss what is expected of PMs, what leads to success, and what to avoid...
If you are interested in being a guest on one of my podcasts, just contact me via my web site at www.surkan.com.
To Mini and the comments here in reference to Steve Ballmer's pay -
You should be very proud of yourselves. "The power of the pen!", er, keyboard.
How often do you see a major newswire - Reuters - run separate, dedicated PR on any CEO's pay going down 6%, weeks after it public information? I mean, c'mon, those outside of MS don't really care about this small change, except the MS PR department sensing dissent among the rank and file. Obviously they felt the need to get the 'real' story out - indirectly. It was laughable, knowing it was most likely engineered by MS PR.
Note Reuters missed mentioning the INCREASE in the EXECUTIVE BONUS POOL in *FY10* by 28%. That's burried in the PROXY, and if you're looking for that detail, it's somewhere in the same area where the PROXY details the >$5M MS paid in relo costs to an executive, to buy his California home at pre-bubble burst prices, so he could take advantage of the post bubble prices here. Note to new hires and tranferees: Request that option on your relo package. When you eventually sell your new price depressed home, the first $250-$500K is tax free money banked. What a great way for MS to hand over more tax free money to the exec's, while cutting budgets to the bone internally.
Which reminds me of the PROXY's mention of Steve taking the 401k employee match. Not even Bill appears to take that. Does Steve really need the extra $6-8K per year match? Steve probably doesn't see it is as more damaging to his PR. Cannot blame the accountants, trying to maximize his take home pay, and shuffle a few $$s into 401k to save on taxes and increase inheritance options to beneficiaries.
Hello B. Kevin... I miss seeing your posts!
>>Anonymous - Thursday, October 01, 2009 3:40:00 PM<<
Imagine what it looks like to someone who has been here 17 years...
General question.. Is there anyone willing to talk about how to deal with micro-managers in MS. I mean new managers who suck at management but you have to unfortunately report to them?
"General question.. Is there anyone willing to talk about how to deal with micro-managers in MS. I mean new managers who suck at management but you have to unfortunately report to them?"
Yes, just leave... remember corollary to the Dilbert Principle:
"You grade them on two axes, their degree of evilness and incompetence. If a boss is very evil and very competent, that's the worst of all bosses,"
With such a boss, "you use a strategy similar to when you are running away from a monster. You trip your co-workers so the monster eats them first," Mr Adams said
Managing micro-managers.
So, I had the misfortune of coming up against a micro-manager in my last 3-years at microsoft. I can tell you it is not easy. This kind of guy tells you what to do, how to do it, and gets mighty pissed off when you dont.
The main thing to remember here is: never lose your cool. Always be in control with him. Try to figure out what his goals are, and try to make him see that the way you are doing things also accomplishes the end goal. And also, try to understand his motivations. Maybe he has pressure from his boss about quality of the product etc.
There is a very good book on this called "Getting to Yes". Read that.
And finally, get a senior mentor who can help you strategise and brainstorm on how to navigate this jerk.
As for me, I had to finally leave MS because I couldnt take it anymore. None of the strategies worked for me, because he had already marked me. I finally saw the dark and left, and am much happier now.
General question...I'm a level 60 FTE planning to leave MS for another job. How much notice should I give my manager before I leave ? Is there a 30 day rule in MS ?
"Hello B. Kevin... I miss seeing your posts!"
Well thank you for that, and for all that you do! Brian Kevin Turner here with you via the WiFi on the private jet ... waiter please more wine, I need to get my mind off the stock price! Ooops did I write that or only think it?
Anyway, God bless your heart and your little cotton socks. That is what I learned to say at WalMart, where I clawed and fought mah way from check-out clerk to CIO. Y'all know what that's like? Well let me tell y'all nature lovers ... ever read about shark species where the new-born sharks attack and eat each other in their mother's womb? Well WalMart was shark-womb on steroids! Ahh did not let a day go by without munching on another embryo. But I digress. Onto the recently announced cuts in the compensation of my good self and some other execoo-tives.
So many of you folks whine and bitch on about your A/70 and E/20 - but remember when y'all do spare a thought for the U/10 you know. Or at least (wink wink), used to know. But y'all folks it's much harder for me! When y'all are looking for the L65 target bonus at around 22% or so, and y'all's actual bonus is 18%, the difference is say $5200 if y'all's base bay is $130k. On the other hand, Ahh have to get bahh :) on a measly $5mill when last y'eaah I made $8!! For goodness sake people, get a grip! I means we are talking $3mill cutbacks in my style of a'livin', to which ahh have become very accustomed indeed.
So y'all grow up and stop whinin'. There's people worse off than you. And I am not talking about the unemployed (many of whom I helped generate), A'hhm talkin' about ME! Capish? Comprendo!
Now get back to WORK. And as always THANK YOU FOR ALL THAT YOU DO!!!!! At least what y'all used to do until y'all's manager calls y'all.
"It's a shame this has escaped our captain of industry."
Well, a good Captain goes down with the ship. And that well-worn adage is proved again with MSFT.
Aye-aye Cap'n! Hard a'starboard. While you're at it, ping Gilligan and Mrs. Howell. They set out sail on a three hour tour. A three hour tour. Not a three-decade-long tour. Are you listening Steve? Social Security is calling. Or is being 29th richest man on planet and CEO too much of an insulator? Dude, you are old. Time to kick back and be cool(er) and enjoy whatever years you have left. Git out now while the gittins good. Or else. Capish. Comprendo?
So is the crunchgear article about Pink correct: going south in a hurry? Was Roz over her head with the VP nod?
Is there anyone willing to talk about how to deal with micro-managers in MS.
Here's your choices.
A. Suck it up, and do everything the M^2 asks you to do, while reminding the M^2 that you're looking for a promotion. Do not contradict M^2 or push for another course of action. Very likely that you'll come out ahead.
B. Complain to the M^2's manager M^3. M^3 can assign you to another team.
C. Move to another team.
As for me, I had to finally leave MS because I couldnt take it anymore. None of the strategies worked for me, because he had already marked me. I finally saw the dark and left, and am much happier now.
That's the key piece so many armchair quarterbacks miss. If they've got a hard-on for making your life miserable, in many cases no "strategy" will help you, because any "strategy" that removes the perceived "fun" of making your life hell is one they won't see as superior to what they're doing now. You're screwed, and the best you can do, if you don't want to leave, is hope to delay the inevitable it long enough that a reorg takes you out of their sphere of influence.
This is often applied after a reorg to a reasonably-well-regarded manager or principal that used to be a peer or even a superior, but now is either an underling or peer, as a way of proving how great one is at one's new job.
"To put it another way, handset manufacturers have done more in the last two years to improve Windows Mobile than Microsoft has, which borders on pathetic. In the time since Windows Mobile 6.0 came out in February of 2007, Apple has released the iPhone—three times. Palm has created the Pre, with its totally new webOS. Android has come into being, and grown into something wonderful. RIM has created a touch phone and a revamped BlackBerry OS. For these companies, the world has changed.
And Microsoft? They eked out some performance enhancements and a new homescreen in 6.1, and executed a gaudy facelift for 6.5. This is what they've done to Windows Mobile. What's amazing is that in the time it took Windows Mobile 6.1 to lazily morph into 6.5, Microsoft—Microsoft!— designed one of the most spectacular handsets I've seen in years, loaded it with brilliant, inspired software, a decent web browser and a fledgling app store. One problem! It's wasn't a handset. It was a Zune. I understand the the two platforms aren't directly comparable, and as is, Zune OS wouldn't work very well for a smartphone, but it's a taste of something great. And why on earth does the HD have a better browser than Microsoft's smartphone OS? It's almost like the Zune team was trying to embarrass the mobile guys or something. And to their credit, if they're looking for it, they did."
http://gizmodo.com/5374876/windows-mobile-65-review-theres-no-excuse-for-this
Ballmer needs a winner. Before today, Microsoft had dropped 54 percent on the Nasdaq since he took over as CEO in 2000. For most of the past year, Ballmer ran the Windows business himself, and he’s counting on Windows 7 to restore investor confidence after corporations and consumers snubbed Vista. About 80 percent of companies plan to switch to the software in the next two years, ISI Group, a brokerage firm in New York, said yesterday.
“Windows 7 is important for how Microsoft is seen in the marketplace, especially after how Vista was received,” said Ken Allen, a portfolio manager at Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price Group Inc., the seventh-biggest institutional holder of Microsoft shares. “It will be an important year for how Ballmer is viewed as CEO.”
..
Others remain unimpressed with Windows 7 and Ballmer.
“Ballmer needs to retire -- it’s been a huge disappointment from a shareholder’s perspective,” said Dave Stepherson, a fund manager at Hardesty Capital Management in Baltimore, referring to Ballmer’s tenure as CEO. He helps manage $650 million, including Microsoft shares. Windows 7 won’t change things because it doesn’t have any “must-have” features, he said.
Windows Mobile 6.5 Review: It Still Sucks
Windows Mobile 6.5 is a spit and polish job on 6.1 – nothing more, nothing less. It’s a means of holding people over until Windows Mobile 7 – at least, we hope that’s all it is. Every single change in Windows Mobile 6.5 feels like it was made by a team of homebrewers or modders, rather than a huge corporation with truckloads of money to blow on one of their flagship products. Absolutely NONE of it seems like it was made with the rest of the OS in mind; one screen will be finger friendly, the next will require a stylus, and then back. One will be packed from edge to edge with gorgeous gradients, and the next will fall back on WinMo 6.1’s terribly archaic visuals.
If your manufacturer offers an upgrade path from 6.1 to 6.5, take it. The changes, while somewhat trivial and not executed nearly as gracefully as they should have been, do improve the experience.
If you did not like Windows Mobile 6.1 (or if you’ve never used it), we honestly would not recommend purchasing a Windows Mobile 6.5 phone.
Hat tip to Mr. Bach, MS's highest paid executive, and the mobile team. You should all be very proud of yourselves.
I am currently building some demos for a mobile operator that is deploying Windows Mobile 6.5. I can tell you from a developer standpoint, this OS release is a big step backwards.
Many previously public APIs are now gone, replaced by hidden functionality only available to internal MS developers or partners. Because I work with an operator, I can get the answers I need after a lot of back-and-forth questions between PMs who understand little about the technical issues. Of course, I can't talk directly to any internal MS devs.
MS still heavily evangelizes Compact Frameworks, which is completely inappropriate technology for system level development, 3D graphics, multimedia, or any processor-intensive activity.
This will be my last Windows Mobile project. 8 out of 10 mobile development jobs advertised on Craigslist are for the iPhone, and that is where I'm going after this project.
Windows Mobile is dead, and even all the great OS devs who have moved to WinMob from Windows won't be able to save it from the incompetence of the product planners, PMs, and marketing idiots.
Mini - Please CRF the "Fake Kevin Turner" posts. They serve no purpose.
> General question...I'm a level 60 FTE planning to leave MS for another job. How much notice should I give my manager before I leave ? Is there a 30 day rule in MS ?
Two weeks notice is reasonable.
The downturn prompted "a cultural reformation" at Microsoft, says Ballmer. "We said 'what do we really have to care about? We can't just continue to invest the way we have'."
Steve still doesn't get it. The problem isn't the investments, it's the returns. There haven't been any. And it isn't really about the recession either. If the company had been healthy going into it, the impact would have been muted and the setback temporary. Apple and Google are good examples, with Apple even managing a record setting quarter *during* the recession. But MS wasn't healthy going into it. Problems had been building all decade. The downturn just made it impossible to continue ignoring them.
Steve will never acknowledge that and therefore needs to be removed and replaced. This "it's the economy, stupid" meme will result in some short term efficiency gains, but not real changes which might finally reverse the company's long term direction.
Ballmer thinks trying to buy Yahoo was his worst mistake but only because the stock market crashed.
Even his worst mistake is not his fault in his mind.
No mention of the stock price.
Microsoft Pins Revival Hopes On Windows 7
"Microsoft offered $47bn (£30bn) to buy Yahoo a year ago, a bid that was turned down.
With hindsight, Mr Ballmer admitted it was "the worst mistake he never made".
He added: "Wow, I am glad we didn't do it, not because Yahoo wouldn't have been a good buy but because immediately afterwards the stock market collapsed.""
MSFT vs AAPL Chart
"Mini - Please CRF the "Fake Kevin Turner" posts. They serve no purpose."
Hello. Allegedly Kevin Turner, and genuinely hurt real Brian Kevin Turner here. Just one question, cousin: What actual purpose do you serve, actually? PM in charge of some minor feature? Enjoy your miserable, hanging on to your crappy job existence!
Re: Executive Pay
Does anyone know how shareholders can get the details on other exec's? Would love to know if Mich Mathews got a raise...
If I don't get promoted by mid year even though I feel I have achieved all things on the CSP and have solid data points/evidence to prove that, should I just leave my team/the company for that matter? I am leaning towards yes. But I would like to hear different opinions
I got an Underperfromed/10 and was asked to leave today. No warning.
I worked in STB
General question...I'm a level 60 FTE planning to leave MS for another job. How much notice should I give my manager before I leave ? Is there a 30 day rule in MS ?
A good rule-of-thumb is always to reverse the situation. How much notice would Microsoft give you?
"Mini - Please CRF the "Fake Kevin Turner" posts. They serve no purpose."
How about cutting the 'real' Brian Kevin? As fas as I can tell he serves no purpose either, if y'all gets my drift.
I think only some of you realize how bizarre MS has become in the past 10 years. Back in the late 90s when I joined there was passion to change the world, to do cool shit. Not because that was a part of 'Company Values' or some other corporate BS, but because that was the culture. Even the DOJ thing was seen as a distraction, nobody in the field felt bad about it.
Fast forward to 2009:
-The top sales guy, KT, misses quota by hundreds of millions of dollars and his punishment is to get paid $5mill. Imagine an account rep who misses quota - she will get a reaming review or get shown the door. Unlike Turner who can blah-blah on about the economy as the cuplrit, no excuses when you have a quota. Interesting that MariaMa gets the boot for missing sales but Turner is still there, feeding at the trough.
-Robbie Bach, who has presided over various disasters - think iPhone vs Windows Mobile, or the $1bill X-Box writedown - and whose only claim to fame is to lose the most money of anybody, is the highest paid executive.
-SteveB. What can I say that has not already been said? Incoherent, brutally lampooned, arguably one of the worst CEOs on this or any other planet. What a representative of one of the world's largest companies! 200 years ago his behavior would have had him institutionalized ... you know straigh-jacket, rubber room, dribble pinafore, the works.
Amongst all this rubble, how do the folks in S&T feel? They actually have delivered better and better products year after year, great business results, frankly created a business in a segment in which Microsoft was a joke 10 years ago.
Nothing short of a complete clean out will fix this mess. And putting Sinofsky in charge would be a disaster, perpetuating the old-boy net. Find a Steve Jobs or an Eric Schmidt, someone with technical savvy and business acumen.
But I predict once Ballmer hangs up his hat, it'll be either Sinofsky or Bach who assumes the helm. And I can't believe that I am saying this, as I do sometimes assume the persona recently dubbed 'fake Kevin Turner' :), but KT is probably the best choice for CEO from the internal candidates. The best choice for shareholders, not employees. The US and EMEA workforces would be decimated. But, that's capitalism folks!
I have been making podcasts of conversations with fellow job-seekers about their job search strategies. There might be a few interesting ideas for of my MSFT friends trying to find their next opportunity.
http://bit.ly/29Zgoj
It is the very lack of innovation in Windows 7 that makes it a success.
http://bit.ly/4pP5KE
"Steve still doesn't get it. The problem isn't the investments, it's the returns"
+1
He thinks it's a resource scarcity issue. So in his view holding R&D flat addresses it. But it's much bigger and broader. We need to take a top to bottom look at what we're investing in, whether it still makes sense, what strategy adjustments need to be made in order to win, and do we have the right people in place on the leadership side and in the trenches. In too many cases the answers to those are: it doesn't make any sense, we can't win, or we can only win with a totally different strategy and team. The "don't make sense" or "can't win" need to be dropped immediately, even if it's embarassing to SLT. Then we can put our best people and focus back on doing a few smart things well.
Dear shareholders,
Soon you will have a chance to change something at Microsoft. Don't miss it? If you miss it, more of the same will come:
- The absurdity of the Windows Mobile story. Unless Sinofsky is put in charge of that mess, it will only get worse. Time to reset this entire product and division.
- The Bing bang. Not happy to be beaten by Google in the search and ad spaces, Microsoft decided to be beaten in other areas also. Let's add Powerset and Fast to the mix, someone thought. After all, nothing better than to use the same amount of money used by Google to acquire YouTube buying some companies that are not profitable and also uncool. But that is not all… As if this wasn’t a large enough group of people that don’t deliver anything, add the Yahoo Mafia to the mix. Now you have the most complete set of incompetent people in a single division in any company from planet Earth. A friend went through the exercise of looking at the level distribution in the OSD division. In an amazing exercise of unmeritocracy, the division has 10% of partners, 20% of principals, 40% of seniors, leaving only 30% of people to do the work. That is the reason for so many contractors!
Anybody know, when MS will lift the internal only hiring policy @ E&D? I am truly interested in Win Mo 7.0 development, and even though I have made connections with several recruiters none of them are taking it to the next level because of this policy.
Your help is truly appreciated.
Best
"I just checked on my broker site ... MSFT market cap $222B, AAPL $167B and closing."
Not only is it closing, it will pass MS in the next twelve months. That used to be unthinkable. It's now unstoppable. It *will* happen and there's no longer anything Ballmer can do to prevent it. Latest target for Apple was provided today: $265.
I won't get into p/e ratios, market caps, etc. because this isn't stock talk but here are some telling numbers:
HP - 46.46
IBM - 122.29
AAPL - 189.27
REDHAT - 27.60
MSFT - 25.67
That's right, the largest open source competitor actually has a higher stock price than MSFT and the other major players have been steadily moving higher during the Steve years.
Doesn't ANYONE have the guts to tell him it's time to go??
I got an Underperfromed/10 and was asked to leave today. No warning.
I worked in STB
The U/10 WAS your warning.
If you didn't see that coming, then it sounds like the right choice was made here.
I got an Underperfromed/10 and was asked to leave today. No warning.
I worked in STB
Which team in STB? many people got axed in the same manner.
Brad punt some of the dead wood in MSD and bring in fresh talent.
"I got an Underperfromed/10 and was asked to leave today. No warning. I worked in STB"
Did you get escorted straight out the door or did you get two weeks?
If straight out, did they give you two weeks pay or more?
I got a U/10 and suspect the same may happen to be, so really curious.
There is lot of noise about steveb and I think someone has to stand up for him.
First, where were you guys when our stock was hitting $40? Why do you blame him when stock goes down but never give him credit when it goes up? If he is such a reason for moving stocks then consider the fact that stock has went up from $14 to $26 in just last few months. Fact is stock market is random and purely at mercy of juggernauts like Goldman Sacs regardless of how companies actually perform.
Second, I don't know of any employee personally who has got pay cuts in recent reviews. Infect from what I know, most people got almost same bonuses as they had got last year if they retained their ratings. Granted that there weren't merit raise but in this economy I don't know of any other tech company who have maintained same bonuses. Here I would give Steve credit for not only taking cut on himself but imposing as much as 50% cut on KT. Divide your salary by 2 and then think about how ruthless your manager is about performance. I think Steve has a guts to do it even at highest level.
Third, MS top ranks were filled with all non-tech BS emitting people like KJ (also known as "thought leaders" nowadays in MS speak). He has realized this and has done pretty good job of cleaning that up and putting techies back at top. We are already seeing results of that. Of course, there is still more cleanup required (wink wink Robbie).
Lastly, Steve acknowledges that old Yahoo deal was mistake with honesty. Considering his giant ego and all I'm surprised although I don't think that stock market crashed soon after was his fault. But here no one seems to appreciate him for his recent and pretty brilliant move with new Yahoo deal that would bring Bing's share to 25% without spending too much money. This will finally put MS in actual search business. Give him some credit for that folks.
I just want to say I'm not big fan of what's going on overall... WinMo, Seinfield ads, 90K headcount, overwhelming number of PMs and architects who god knows what they do etc. I know steveb never can be steve jobs and he would be always dependent on his luck to find people who can play Steve Jobs. Unfortunately his gamble doesn't always work out because executive world is full of empty "thought leaders" but very skilled at BSing. Furthermore people who were expected to bring tech revolutions at MS are such a f***ing old ponnies who can barely multiply two numbers in their head these days. I wanted to go on stage and punch Craig when he *proudly* said we spend largest amount on R&D without mentioning that we are known as the most non-innovative tech companies at the same time.
Once steveb cleans up final batch of these BS emitting executives (Robbie, Ray, Craig) with someone more younger and intensively technical I think things will take turn. When a new replacement of LisaB deeply thinks about how many BS-emitting-thought-leading PM, architects, managers, product planners, GMs of GMs we have accumulated I think we will see positive changes in population patterns at MS. In closing I just wanted to say steveb is most passionate and aggressive CEO in current times. It's very easy to blame him for everything and anything and dismiss any good he does.
I got an Underperfromed/10 and was asked to leave today. No warning.
I worked in STB
Wednesday, October 07, 2009 10:58:00 PM
We'd be interested to hear more detail here. Seriously, were you performanced out or did they just 'ask' you, and you left. Total surprise? I would have stayed put until they could legally performance you out. If you're a protected class - see http://undercoverlawyer.com - and see what your remedies might be. It would be helpful to many more to share your story so they know what is in store or what they might do.
"That's right, the largest open source competitor actually has a higher stock price than MSFT and the other major players have been steadily moving higher during the Steve years."
Sad but true. The following from Scottrade this morning:
Company Market Cap YTD Price Performance
MSFT
Microsoft Corp
229.2B +32.1%
AAPL
Apple Inc.
169.6B +121.8%
RHT
Red Hat, Inc.
5.2B +108.8%
HPQ
Hewlett-Packard Company
110.2B +28.0%
INTC
Intel Corporation
111.3B +35.6%
Even INTC outpeformed MSFT, and AAPL is 4 x better, RHT 3 x. Does the Board care?
ummm bobbie. stock price means nothing. apple's market cap is significant, but red hat's market cap is only 5 billion.
Any idea how accurate this portrayal of Microsoft's mobile strategy might be?
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/09/exclusive_pink_danger_leaks_from_microsofts_windows_phone.html
There is a very interesting and detailed account of the problems in the Microsoft mobile development process, based on some fairly detailed leaks, here:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/09/exclusive-pink-danger-leaks-from-microsofts-windows-phone/
In re Executive Pay - and how to find that out.
Typically, only the top 5 execs' pay get published in the annual proxy, in Sept. A new bonus program came out in September 25, 2008*, which Mini commented (outraged) about (see Mini's archives), and that gives you the CASH bonus pool which top exec's receive one of their bonuses from. SVP's are probably in this pool. You can do the math. In the September 2009 proxy, it indicated how this EXECUTIVE BONUS POOL was INCREASED for FY10, by about 28%. Another way to see a portion of the pay, is to look at all the stock grants that are made under SEC4 filings, where MS has to publicly state who/what they're handing out.
I think MM, who was asked about, lives in a ~$10M home, and that must cost something to maintain; and how could she be expected to forgo a bonus which her male peers are receiving? Not bad for her level of business experience and 'thought leadership' she appeared to show in the posted, short video where we think we heard her giggle to the camera: "I'm a shoe aficionado and I'm a PC". A guess could be they need to keep a few women within the SVP+ rank, when they report their annual EEOC-1, and she is one of two. LisaB is the other, but LisaB has some real educational chops and ran "a business the size of Revlon", not just spent it.
Too bad Steve and Bill cannot seem to find any other women within the ranks of Microsoft's “… hire the best and brightest”, who know a bit more about technology and business, right? This is the epitome of female intellect at MS, and they should receive huge bonuses as an example to all other females trying to move up the corporate ladder? All the MS women who toiled at length to gain advanced degrees from top schools, or sharpen your technical skills - heads up - what's really important: shoe level = stock lvl.
B. Kevin - what's your opinion?
i see a lot of people blasting ballmer and SLT team , but i would say most of us should thank them just because they hired so many normal talking people and gave them stable job until now. If one needs to implement the noise here then microsoft will be good company with 50k workforce with total rehaul. r u ready:)
If you "wont get into P/E, market cap, etc" then dont discuss stock at all.
I mean come on... You think share price in isolation is any kind of indicator of anything at all?
Rehat has less than 200M shares outstanding, MSFT has over 2B. So lets not be stupid here... Not to mention Redhat seems ridiculously overvalued at that price even given how few shares there are!
MSFT is in the toilet share wise (and the reasons why are VERY clear), but there is no need for baseless comparisons to illustrate it.
Apple is catching up and how.... not only on market cap but also cash in the Bank.
This is how MSFT is stacking up against AAPL -
Qtr ending June09 -
1. Qtrly Earning's Growth YoY Minus -29.1% versus Apple's 14.6%
2.Qtrly Revenue Growth Minus -17.3% versus Apple's 11.7%
Analyst Estimates for Qtr ending Sept 09 -
Sales Growth Estimate of Minus -17.7% Vs 15.6% for Apple
Lets hope MSFT's SLT prove the Analysts wrong....
Errm...the actual stock price dollar figure is, by itself, pretty irrelevant. One share of REDHAT costing more than one share of MSFT means nothing at all without "get[ting] into p/e ratios, market caps, etc.". One redhat share could be worth ten thousand dollars and it still wouldn't mean much (except that they probably don't have much in the way of stock awards :)).
"But I predict once Ballmer hangs up his hat, it'll be either Sinofsky or Bach who assumes the helm."
You're assuming Ballmer's resignation will be voluntary. That's a bad assumption the way things are going. He has at best two years, possibly only one, before shareholders demand his removal. That will set the stage for a battle between shareholders and Gates/Ballmer. The former will probably be averse to an internal hire, while Gates and Ballmer will want someone of their own choosing. Shareholders will have the edge. But I wouldn't be surprised if Gates/Ballmer are successful in getting Raikes selected as the compromise candidate.
"-Robbie Bach, who has presided over various disasters - think iPhone vs Windows Mobile, or the $1bill X-Box writedown - and whose only claim to fame is to lose the most money of anybody, is the highest paid executive."
You're missing the genius. Robbie has perfected the art of failing while being paid as if you're succeeding. A lot of SLT are also skilled practioners, but Robbie is the undisputed master.
"Mini - Please CRF the "Fake Kevin Turner" posts. They serve no purpose."
"Hello. Allegedly Kevin Turner, and genuinely hurt real Brian Kevin Turner here"
Wow in a world beset by scarcity of employment, food, housing and medical care, there is a surfeit of Brian Kevin Turners, both real, semi-real, and fake. Go figure!
Here's what the problem is with MSFT, plain and simple.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=MSFT,GOOG,AAPL,AMZN
The problem, simply, is TOO MANY EMPLOYEES. Period. MSFT needs to get rid of 2/3 or 3/4 of the employees.
Exploding Software-Engineering Myths
The Influence of Organizational Structure on Software Quality: An Empirical Case Study, by Nagappan, Brendan Murphy of Microsoft Research Cambridge, and Victor R. Basili of the University of Maryland, presents startling results: Organizational metrics, which are not related to the code, can predict software failure-proneness with a precision and recall of 85 percent. This is a significantly higher precision than traditional metrics such as churn, complexity, or coverage that have been used until now to predict failure-proneness.
General question...I'm a level 60 FTE planning to leave MS for another job. How much notice should I give my manager before I leave ? Is there a 30 day rule in MS ?
After you tell them you are leaving, ask them, when, in the next two weeks, would they prefer you leave.
If they're managing you out, you may be able to leave the same day you tell them.
Wow! What's the story on the Danger/Sidekick outage and data loss?!?!! The T•Mobile forums are ablaze with stories from mighty upset SIdekick users.
Errrm, you might want to mention P/E ratios, since its the only thing you wrote about that allows you to judge the performance of company.
Comparing stock prices is totally meaningless !!!
Do people believe that the T-Mobile / Sidekick / Danger / Microsoft "complete data loss" event will have any long term effect on future MS phone efforts?
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/10/09/ms.pink.and.danger.team.at.risk/
a source for AppleInsider says Microsoft has poorly managed the project and squandered the acquisition of Sidekick creator Danger from 2008. Rather than implement Danger's advice, the larger company has watched the majority of the team either fired or leave in frustration as the majority of their advice is ignored.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/14893/microsoft_kills_the_sidekick_the_first_smart_phone_is_dead
This week, Microsoft announced that they had lost all Sidekick user data including pictures, contacts, calendars, photos and other information from the Danger's servers.
So not only did Microsoft ruin a pioneering, successful smartphone company, they had to ruin all existing handsets and T-Mobile's reputation along with it.
I feel like somebody just ran over my dog. Well, not mine, but let's say a good friend's dog. Usually Microsoft's monumental incompetence only hurts itself and only instills disappointment, but ruining Danger and hurting its customers PISSES ME OFF. Sorry, but if the company collapses it won't be soon enough.
Anybody know, when MS will lift the internal only hiring policy @ E&D?
Are you sure there is such a policy in place? One person I know just joined the WM 7 team as FTE, although he has never done any deveploment or testing on any mobile platforms. Yikes!
>> you may be able to leave the same day you tell them.
You'd be an idiot if you leave the same day. Tell them you're leaving in 2 weeks and will do "whatever is necessary to transfer responsibilities". Spend 3-4 days wrapping things up (you won't finish everything, so don't bust your ass too hard), and spend the rest of the time drinking free soda and collecting a fat paycheck. If they're managing you out, they'll be relieved that you're going and won't mind paying for an extra week or two.
Why do you blame him when stock goes down but never give him credit when it goes up?
This is an easy one. Because Steve has admitted that he has no clue what causes the stock price to go up or down. BTW, when he said that, I believe that caused our stock price to go down. Actually I think that happens when he pretty much says anything.
Second, I don't know of any employee personally who has got pay cuts in recent reviews. Infect from what I know, most people got almost same bonuses as they had got last year if they retained their ratings. Granted that there weren't merit raise but in this economy I don't know of any other tech company who have maintained same bonuses. Here I would give Steve credit for not only taking cut on himself but imposing as much as 50% cut on KT. Divide your salary by 2 and then think about how ruthless your manager is about performance. I think Steve has a guts to do it even at highest level.
LOL Easy to cut someone's pay by a few hundred k, when they've been raking in MILLIONS of dollars in stock for the last several years. It's a pure PR move.
A 50% salary decrease would destroy the average worker. A 100% salary decrease for a year or two rarely has any lasting impact on senior managers at any company. Don't worry, they will get an extra big bonus again next year to make up for this. I'm sure Win7 will be credited for that large bonus, but the reality is they will have had nothing to do with that release. So they shouldn't get rewarded for the stock price going up based on Win7 sales.
Third, MS top ranks were filled with all non-tech BS emitting people like KJ (also known as "thought leaders" nowadays in MS speak). He has realized this and has done pretty good job of cleaning that up and putting techies back at top.
What "techies" are at the top?
Lastly, Steve acknowledges that old Yahoo deal was mistake with honesty.
No, he didn't. Read the quote from him a few posts before yours.
Do people believe that the T-Mobile / Sidekick / Danger / Microsoft "complete data loss" event will have any long term effect on future MS phone efforts?
Not really. MyPhone is a pretty tiny part of the overall WinMo experience.
But this has single handedly done more to damage the idea of "cloud computing" and "software + services" than Ray Ozzie has.
The initial stories leaking out about how this happened really paint MS in a negative light. Even if they are that bad, I hope we get someone to post an accurate accounting of what happened, and tell everyone the plans we have in place with all of our services groups to make sure this never happens again.
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