The KIN-fusing KIN-clusion to KIN, and FY11 Microsoft Layoff Rumors
Get out of the way Microsoft Bob, you have a replacement that Microsoft's Gen-Y employees can claim for their own! It's spelled K-I-N.
KIN's demise can't surprise anyone. When I looked at the phone's features, I thought: alright, an incomplete Facebook experience that I cannot improve by installing new applications... and I pay $$$ through the nose for a plan. But I've got a green dot and KIN Studio... maybe that will be enough to sell enough units to justify the Danger acquisition and the person-years of work behind getting KIN out. What the hell where all those people doing? I couldn't imagine anyone wanting the resulting iffy feature-phone at a smartphone cost, but KIN wasn't made for me. I was willing to let the market be the judge of KIN.
Verdict? Guilty, guilty, guilty.
The original Zune/Pink phone had interesting momentum but it all got squandered. What's the one ThinkWeek paper I want to read this year? Lessons Learned from Microsoft KIN and How Microsoft Must Change Product Development. You can't have a failure like this without examining it and then sharing what went wrong, all with respect to vision, execution, and leadership. How big was the original iPhone team? How big was the KIN team? Why did one result in a lineage of amazingly successful devices in the marketplace, and the other become a textbook extended definition for "dud" ?
Interesting comments:
All I can say as a former Windows Mobile employee who is now working for a competitor in the phone space is that this is good news for the rest of us. [...] Personally I quit because of the frustrating management and autocratic decision style of Terry Myerson and Andrew Lees. The only exec in the team myself and other folks respcted was Tom Gibbons who is now sidelined. Lees and Myerson don't know consumer products or phones. Gibbons at least knows consumer product development. We often talk about how Andrew Lees still has a job but Microsoft's loss is a gain for the rest of us.
And
And now Kin is killed *after* it has shipped in June 2010. You can bet Andy was involved in the development of Kin, the partnership agreements with the OEM, Verizon and most importantly the "ship it" approvals all along the way. And Microsoft discovers its a bad idea after it blows up in the broad market. Absolutely no thanks to any pro-active decision making on Andy's part.
Now there is spin that Andy killed kin to put all the wood behind Windows Phone 7. Er, the guy was in charge for two years of Kin development. He could have made this decision far earlier.
Similarly Windows Phone 7 has two years of development under his watch. Based on his past performance, 99% chance this is also going to be a total catastrophe. It further doesn't help that much of the Windows Phone 7 leadership team was kicked out of Windows when they screwed up Vista.
And finally, one Danger-employee's point of view of why they became demotivated:
To the person who talked about the unprofessional behavior of the Palo Alto Kin (former Danger team), I need to respond because I was one of them.
You are correct, the remaining Danger team was not professional nor did we show off the amazing stuff we had that made Danger such a great place. But the reason for that was our collective disbelief that we were working in such a screwed up place. Yes, we took long lunches and we sat in conference rooms and went on coffee breaks and the conversations always went something like this..."Can you believe that want us to do this?" Or "Did you hear that IM was cut, YouTube was cut? The App store was cut?" "Can you believe how mismanaged this place is?" "Why is this place to dysfunctional??"
Please understand that we went from being a high functioning, extremely passionate and driven organization to a dysfunctional organization where decisions were made by politics rather than logic.
Consider this, in less than 10 years with 1/10 of the budget Microsoft had for PMX, we created a fully multitasking operating system, a powerful service to support it, 12 different device models, and obsessed and supportive fans of our product. While I will grant that we did not shake up the entire wireless world (ala iPhone) we made a really good product and were rewarded by the incredible support of our userbase and our own feelings of accomplishment. If we had had more time and resources, we would of come out with newer versions, supporting touch screens and revamping our UI. But we ran out of time and were acquired and look at the results. A phone that was a complete and total failure. We all knew (Microsoft employees included) that is was a lackluster device, lacked the features the market wanted and was buggy with performance problems on top of it all.
When we were first acquired, we were not taking long lunches and coffee breaks. We were committed to help this Pink project out and show our stuff. But when our best ideas were knocked down over and over and it began to dawn on us that we were not going to have any real affect on the product, we gave up. We began counting down to the 2 year point so we could get our retention bonuses and get out.
I am sorry you had to witness that amazing group behave so poorly. Trust me, they were (and still are) the best group of people ever assembled to fight the cellular battle. But when the leaders are all incompetent, we just wanted out.
I guess we need another ThinkWeek paper on how to successfully acquire companies, too. Between this and aQuantive, we only excel at taking the financial boon of Windows and Office and giving it over to leadership that totally blows it down the drain like an odds-challenged drunk in Vegas. And the shareholders continue to suffer in silence. And the drunks are looking for their next cash infusion.
Dude, Where's Ray? You see more and more yearning for the days of BillG at the helm, perhaps because at least he was an uber geek that could drill your team's presentation like nobody's business and understand what your team was doing. And occasionally get enthralled by technology choices that would confound your average user (WinFS). Ray was supposed to serve as a replacement architect at Microsoft's technical helm, yet his impact seems to be superficial (and pretty disparaged if you chat with any leader in the company). Here's a snippet of a great comment about Ray and his impact at Microsoft:
The problem is, Ray doesn't see himself as the "Chief Software Architect" of the company. He sees himself as the "Chief Visionary Officer" (to borrow someone's phrase from early comments). He sees his job as being the person who regularly kicks "old" Microsoft in the butt to wake them up to whats going on in the world.
All of his behavior lines up with this: His correcting of Ballmer (in public!); His team's building Mesh, an expensive, buzz-generating, science-project app beloved by those who know about it, but irrelevant to those who don't (which is 99+% of the planet); More recently, his team's building of Docs.com -- another expensive, buzz-generating app that has no business model and no path to ever having one (if you need an indication of how pointless an exercise docs.com is, just look at the visitor trends for it since launch: http://trends.google.com/websites?q=docs.com).
Meanwhile, Ozzie has made enemies of most of the leaders of the actual products that pay for his "Labs". He's made no secret of the fact that he thinks that Windows is run terribly, or that Office is dead technology. Behind closed doors, he is openly dispariging of Microsoft development practices and Microsoft technology. His efforts to build product display a stunning lack of a caring about how much things cost to run, or whether they will ever make money. To my knowledge, he doesn't care in the slightest about the enterprise businesses at the company.
Dude, Where's My Job? Folks have been talking about ongoing stealth layoffs and the impending July FY11 layoffs reacting to teams with reduced budgets. I've scanned some various HR calendars and found some interesting appointments more around next week vs. this week, but the layoff rumors have spilled over beyond here and into TechFlash: Microsoft pruning more jobs. A follow-up by Ms. Mary-Jo Foley: More Microsoft job cuts coming ZDNet. So I'd expect more news next week than this week, but one commenter has noted:
Layoffs confirmed for tomorrow. I see long meetings booked by HR-types in Lincoln Square and RedWest-C. Didn't go through all the calendars for you main-campus types.
If Microsoft is doing this to appear fiscally responsible, they really can't tell just this half of the story. The other half of the story is the number of contingent staff positions, which if you open up Headtrax for yourself to investigate be prepared to tell Elizabeth you're coming to join her, because it about gave me a mild heart-attack.
If you learn anything, please comment regarding the group and the size of the hit and any impression about the folks impacted (e.g., 10%'ers, long-term employees, etc).
775 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 600 of 775 Newer› Newest»"The truth, as far as I can tell, is that it's easier to justify a 2nd undeserved 10% than a 1st undeserved 10%."
Yes, Agree and seen this too with fuzzy reasons like "your business insight is not as fast as we would expect the business insight to be of someone at your level" (no examples given).
You get a 10 the second time because if they thought you had "limited" longe term potential last year, they'd look like fools changing their minds, so you just keep getting that score. HR just hopes you'll eventually go away.
"As a concerned MSFT employee and shareholder, on the recent layoffs - who from HR or from the MSFT Executive Team has the courage to honestly post on here how many L65+ (especially incompetent L68+ partners) were let go on July 7th?"
Ask that same executive what percentage of those Partners and above receive 10%s or Underperformed? Ask what the attrition rate is. It's not what you are lead to believe. What was the average Partner bonus this year?
And, by the way, it was '45 Cheval Blanc - "Team Dinner", of course, to justify the expense.
XBox is a whole ecosystem and growing like a weed.
Microsoft has a true winner, any gamer knows it.
Maybe not. My 12 year old son has been saving his money for a year to buy an XBox. But when it came to the actual purchase, he ended up changing his mind - too many of his friends had had problems, and many of them had already switched to the PS3. So Sony got his cash, not Microsoft.
That is nothing, Sameer Nagi in Microsoft India has a degree in Hotel Management and he manages 40 Engineers in a Talent Development Program called APEX
Nothing beats Tarun Gulati, who was a waiter in a five star hotel in Bangalore and today is a GM in Microsft. All beacuse of his pal Sanjay Parthasarthy.
It is because of people like Sameer Nagi and Tarun Gulati that employees here in India feel they are managed by morons. I do not understand the need to hire people from the Hotel Industry in Microsoft and put them in charge of Engineers.
XBox Live is now over $1B/year in revenue and growing.
You do understand the difference between revenue and profit?.............. right?
While the layoffs of July 7 may slide under the radar of some as perhaps they weren't large enough in scale to trigger the requirement for public disclosure, the timing could not have been worse for those affected. Not only will those laid off not get their annual review bonus (which they've already done the work to earn!), they will not vest in their stock awards (which they've also done the work already to earn). For me personally, this means an immediate loss of over $30K, not to mention the loss of the day to day salary. Not huge $$ for Microsoft execs, but a LOT to me - a single woman supporting myself. It's an absolute shame that some of the top 20% were let go and totally hosed financially in the process. Perhaps MSFT thinks this will help increase the value of its stock, but it has hugely devalued the company in the eyes of former employees who were shown the door with no time to find a role elsewhere in the company. Sounds like desparation to me...
I had written some codes...
Where this 'codes' (note plural) is coming from? I never used it -- it is always 'code' for plural (non-countable noun)...
Also, to be snarky, in my experience, all people who say 'codes' were lousy programmers -- those who simply do not get it, and never will.
I'm still curious as to what percentage of the layoff pool fits in that magic range between 40 and whatever age it is (55? 59?) at which MS allows people to keep their vesting stock awards after being laid off.
Counting the people on my team let go last year, I know 5 out of 5 were in that range, all in our 40s.
I'll chime in as a v- that got axed on Cinco-de-fireo. I was in a smallish office in a flyover state with roughly 80 people in it working for Virtual Eart/bing maps and about 26 people got the axe that day. There were a few more fte's than vendors who got axed but as near as a few of us can figure, nearly everyone was in their late 30's or early to mid 40's.
There was a similar observation to yours made by a few of us in the original Cinco-de-fireo thread as well. I can't really believe that MS would be stupid enough to fire a huge number of people in a certain age range to make it obvious that's what they were doing. The only sensible idea I can think of is that the mean (or median take your pick) age of a lot of IT workers in the US fall into the range of late 30's and early to mid 40's.
As always your mileage may vary.
Ballmer could retire, buy an orchard, grow and sell...
Bing Cherries
/rimshot
Seems like there's a real leadership crisis. I was at MS for almost 10 years, and have a lot of friends there in different divisions. The backstabbing and politics seem to be getting more intense than ever. From what I can tell, if you're a level 64-68 or higher on the business side and you don't spend at least 40% of your time on that stuff, you're done: promotions simply stop. The amount of time people spend carefully crafting emails to cover their behinds and market themselves to higher ups is simply mind-blowing. I've been asked to come back a bunch of times, but given the current culture, I just can't imagine being there. I love getting great stuff built, shipped, and sold. But I get the strong sense that people don't really spend there time on those things.
The worst part about it is, I don't think people are learning about how to build the great products at the right time, and do world-class sales and marketing. The folks that I know who are passionate about products and customers (either on the dev or business side) tend to have a really hard time as they find how much internal marketing and jockeying they have to do (competition to get into the right meetings seems especially serious). Vendors, on the other hand, actually get to do some of that work. Case in point: someone mentioned that Frog Design did the design for the Kin. Why doesn't MS have the horsepower to do their own design? I suspect, in part, it's because great product folks don't want to spend half of their time covering themselves and jockeying for promotion, and having their designs blocked by the bureaucracy.
I don't know how you get the culture on a positive track, but that should be priority 1. Cutting budgets, laying folks off, etc., might make Wall St. happy and get you a .$50 pop in the stock price. Maybe it helps get people more focused and reduces the politics, but I really doubt it; things only got worse after the previous round of layoffs. At this rate, the senior leadership is making layoffs an annual nerve-wracking event for the company. That won't help.
Eventually Microsoft has to innovate out of the hole it's in.
They need leaders. I have no idea where they will get them from, since any promises of doing things differently going forward are simply not credible. And if they don't fix the culture, the stock price will be flat for another 10 years.
Anyone notice Roz Ho's GAL entry and her exceptionally non-existant organization?
That looks like the classic setup for Roz to soon be off to spend more time pursuing other interests.
'I probably need to remind you that Microsoft is still considered a Goliath in world outside Redmond, is universally hated on university campuses and is considered pretty uncool.'
No wonder it made it to the 'Most hated companies in US' list. Check out this CNN entry:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/news/1006/gallery.ten_hated_companies/2.html
"My team has been told in no uncertain terms by our GM that not attending the company meeting is a career limiting move"
Boycotts like that never work anyway. Vote your shares. It's not much, but it's all you can do without career risk. I think Ballmer survives this year and gets canned next. But he's certainly supplied enough ammo to move that up should even one large investor be so inclined.
>>Are there good healthy orgs within Windows Azure or OSD? I am a PM and am looking to make a transition in the next couple of months. Anyone happy with their group and would recommend it?"
Bing is good, but not the PM team. Let's get real....BrianMac is a manipulative ass who is only interested in promoting his ideas and people. The leads are decent and devs are great.
the timing could not have been worse for those affected. Not only will those laid off not get their annual review bonus (which they've already done the work to earn!), they will not vest in their stock awards
Nobody at Microsoft has any incentive to be fair to you. The opposite, actually. Shouldn't be a surprise by now. Sorry about your job but as many people have pointed out here, life is better on the outside. Also you can get an iPhone without feeling guilty.
Which told me one thing: HR is reading and posting in the blog.
I'm not surprised. They've abandoned the internal version. They need an outlet too, since they also work for a bad manager.
Keep on the "upper up" for those people let go recently. There really is a life outside of MSFT.
Been there, 12 years, you will land on your feet, MSFT will continue to drivel...
Hey, don't worry everyone, let's just run down to Ikea and buy our "Surface" table for the TV room.
Umm, where are those new integrated sets?
Here is an internal scoop of Micorosft AdCenter..
The org is run by a bunch of diplomatic partner level managers. sometimes, it's so hard to believe them. They have absolutely no clue about the direction of the organization and I think they don't even care. Ask them where do you see the Org after 2 years, I am sure either you will get a blank face or the answer would be whever the fate would take us.
Basically, the org is run by some smart Principal Managers who drives everything. They have absolute monopoly in the org. There is no one to question their decisions and even if someone dares to, they are smart enough to suppress it down very conveniently.
Gold star award, moral events, promotions, etc has become a joke here. Sometimes, not only others but the person who receives an awards\promotions gets surprised or laugh at it. I am not sure if it is Microsoft wide, but it's a common complain I hear from my reports that their Base salary at level 60-63 is less than what Microsoft offers to new hires. Wonder what HR is doing to mitigate such issues!
There is absolute no work-life balance. We ask our dev/test/pm to by always on call. Now don't ask me what the f&^% that means. It means any jack-ass from Ops/Test can call you anytime day-night for any F%$#ing problem and you have to be available to solve the issue right away.
There is an absolute flurry of vendors and contractors in AdCenter. You will find them in all flavors and colors. Not sure how do we get approved for that kinda funding. They are just like turmites who sits on Mictrosoft money and consume it slowly. They make more salary than a FTE and all they do is - hang around in corridors with a laptop in their hand. Obviously presence of some of them are justified but i am talking about the majority here.
Obviously, due to such an ambience, all good people are marching away not only from the org but also from the company. And they are leaving with a lot frustration and bad feelings about the company. I personally know some very talented people who left for Google and Amazon just because they could not handle the politics and randomness here. Those who are still here, either they are looking or they are in good books and they just want to earn more promotions. There is an absolute hole (read: lack of talents) in AdCenter.
I can go on and on and on but I am writing this story with the hope that someone influential person would read it abd believe at least a part of it and would try to question the partners about the issues mentioned here. If you don't believe me, read the results of mspoll, Permform a radom Interview from Dev/Test/PM and let them talk about the org, ask HR about the exit interview results.
A lot of the facts mentioned above can easily be verified. Do something. I love Microsoft and I want it to compete with Google. But with this kind of atmosphere, i dont see it happening.
+1 Working 7 days a week only makes sense if your stock options will make you a millionaire in five years. That will never ever happen again at MS. I cashed my stock out as soon as they vested each year.
Don't bet on it, at least as long as you avoid the layoff monster. L63, got two years of 6-figure stock bonuses before getting 10-percented when a lightbulb went off in a manager's head and he said ZOMG, how much do we owe that man in the next 5 years? Hello layoff pool. At least the water is relatively warm, though I wonder if its temperature is gradually increasing to eventually cook me out here.
IF, big if, I could have made it another 4 years, even if the stock price hadn't done anything, and even if I did not receive another dime of stock awards, I'd have been more than 1/3 of the way there given that I promptly sold the vested MS stock both times and bought Another tech company's stock that does appreciate.
Based on experience, my guess is, for a well-liked superstar, the million in 5 years is still a potentially achievable albeit low-probability dream if you start at a level high enough to get those kinds of rewards. Starting at L60 you have no chance. L62, 63 or 64 in just the right circumstances might make it.
I can't really believe that MS would be stupid enough to fire a huge number of people in a certain age range to make it obvious that's what they were doing.
Permatemps. DOJ. EU. For a more recent non-legal-oriented example, how about everyone's favorite Windows Mobile.
No, no record of corporate stupidity here.
My money's on the idea that they figured they could wriggle out of it cleverly somehow. Just like they figured for permatemps, DOJ and EU. That does not mean that they can, just that that is what they may be betting on. Because if Microsoft considers itself nothing else, it considers itself clever.
Recently laid off, did you know that you can take your severance money and still file an EEOC claim? Any right to sue that you sign away likely does not sign away your right to file an EEOC claim and subsequent lawsuit. See your attorney for details. Bonus points for checking the class action box to preserve your options for later.
@I hear MSIT India getting ready to reshuffle leadership team. Murali Krishna and Nagender can't escape lay-off possibility, they don't have role or purpose in the org. What I hear lay-offs could be around 10% and elimination of redundent leadership roles. Span of Controls and Org Depth issues are also being addressed to right size MSIT India. Another 100+ headcount reduction?
The problem is not at Murli's level. Most of the problem caused by the Principal Dev Manager in his org. The mistake - whatever is projected by Principal Dev Manager (or his lobby) is accepted by leadership.
No corrective actions observed so far from Leadership. Hopefully, It's under process.
Murli is not going anywhere but this is the time he should take some corrective actions or going forward he will face more tough time.
Anyone else noticed that the OSD all hands had all the presentations on a Mac? What's up with that?
The last demo is about Bing on iphone.
what the hell is E/110?
I mean Exceeded, alright. What is 110? I thoguth it's 20/70/10?
"Nothing beats Tarun Gulati, who was a waiter in a five star hotel in Bangalore and today is a GM in Microsft. All beacuse of his pal Sanjay Parthasarthy... It is because of people like Sameer Nagi and Tarun Gulati that employees here in India feel they are managed by morons. "
Wasn't SanjayP a former SVP, now just a CVP. When Partners mess up we allow them to stick around and recruit more friends?!
Similar at the most senior levels. KT's education stops somewhere in East Central Oklahoma. Mich M. - school not even mentioned in her bio, but she knew how to spend $10M on Seinfeld.
Not even Gates completed his Sophomore year, HR would say as an excuse... so you do not need a degree to do great things (true, I'm still trying to figure out what great things KT and MM have done but be a friend of Steve's), but if the leaders don't think eduction is that important, why do they (incl Gates) send their own kids to private schools, support their Ivy Alma Maters and specify top schools for recruiting rank and file. Any recruting folks sent to East Oaklahoma for Career day?
We allow Partners who cannot make the grade an unlimited time to move around. Orlando A.? Remember him? He was a GVP, then a lower ranked SVP and now a CVP ("consulting" to KT). Why not RIF them?
Why RIF an underperforming Partner when you can RIF 6 low level FTEs?
Windows has the model you seem to be advocating and it's an unmitigated disaster.
I don't think I suggested that smartphones behave like desktop OSes. You are confusing the concept of holistic UX design with that of weak security boundaries between processes.
Also, calling the desktop computing model an 'unmitigated disaster' is...weird.
To the person who is concerned with the plural of code. check this link
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22codes%22
people all over the world do this kind of mistakes that is why google is returning 206 million search results.
Are there good healthy orgs within Windows Azure or OSD? I am a PM and am looking to make a transition in the next couple of months.
Windows Azure has a dumb ogre, who goes by the name Bh.Sh. - was banished from WinSE, after he was found doing ... (not relevant). Dont go there, unless you want to be eaten dead.
>Anyone notice Roz Ho's GAL entry and her exceptionally non-existant organization?
Anyone notice Andy Lee's? Oh wait, nevermind, unchanged. I love how strategy/vision comes from the top, then people in the lower echelons are to blame when anything goes wrong, even when the strategy/vision was fucked 7 ways from the beginning. Not that Roz doesn't need to go (from the numerous comments here about her, if even 1% of them are true she sounds deplorable...and that C9 video was....bad, the whole 'this is the reason I come in everyday' was so f-ing fake), but it seems if people from the top want to take credit for successes then they need to be REAL leaders and take credit for failures as well.
>don't have security problems
Hahaha, wow. I can't believe Steve Jobs came around to post here, welcome good sir.
Yes I believe that HR does read and post here ... so what? Do you think they care?
Two years ago my VP took a set against one of my directs, and pushed me to hound the employee out of the org. HR was there helping all the way. I should have had the spine to refuse to participate.
Anyway don't ever be misled into thinking HR is there for you - their job is to protect the managers and the company from the employees, not the other way around.
>My team has been told in no uncertain terms by our GM that not attending the company meeting is a career limiting move.
You honestly want to work for a place that uses arbitrary, meaningless things like 'attended company meeting' to decide people's career success? I won't even start on how leadership != veiled threats/coercion, that is just pure leadership FAIL. If I were you I would get out of that team ASAP, no success will be had in the long term with retards like that running things.
>I worked at Danger and Microsoft and was one of the first employees to see the writing on the wall and left after I was given my stock payout.
Sounds just like the Farecast acquisition... just on a smaller scale.
Microsoft Rank And File Felt "Embarrassment All Over Campus" From Kin Failure
Read more:
Microsoft Rank And File Felt "Embarrassment All Over Campus" From Kin Failure
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-rank-and-file-felt-embarassment-all-over-campus-from-kin-failure-2010-7#ixzz0tIa0OqVs
it is unfair to blame rosanna for the debacle! she is just doing what she was told to finish the acquisition off so the whole org can concentrate on wp7, which will beat the sheet out of iphone!
rosanna will be sorely missed by the pmx team, thansk for the launch party at Fremont Studios, that was awesome!
I'm a former MS employee, been gone a few years, and I'm entertaining the idea of going back.
It's purely a question of convenience. MS would be a nice place to park my butt for a few years while earning a decent salary and benefits, and do work that I won't be ashamed to put on my resume when I'm ready to move on.
What teams should I look at? I "served" some of my time in Server & Tools. It was a decent enough org. It had its share of a-holes but a majority of people were there to do a good job. I got to ship big name products that look good on my resume. I'm terrible at politics so obviously I'd like to avoid orgs where those are played at olympic levels. I have no patience for douchy hispsters so E&D is probably out of the question but I'd like to know if there are other teams where that type is prevalent. I have friends in Windows who gave me the impression that since Sinofsky took over it's become a good place to work. Anybody care to chime in?
Finally in the old days I kept hearing of people getting their seniority back when returning to MS. That was before the days of yearly layoffs and Wal-Mart bred management. Is that still something I could reasonnably ask for during the negotiation process?
Any advice is welcome. Just don't lecture me about what a terrible mistake going back would be. I'm going into this with my eyes wide open and I have no illusions about the abilities of upper management or the company's propsects.
AdCenter === Chaos Center === IDC, redmond.
These are adcenter homegrown partners: Sachind, nitinc
They are long time buddies as well.
Both of them got promoted every 6 months or so, with Sachin helping Nitin, during a 4 year span, they made it to partner level, while creating a monster chaos center.
They have also hired and incubated an inner circle of mostly a- converted principals. There are about 20 of them, most of them are clueless about engineering, mostly Indians, but extremely good at psychopath.
This org is such a joke. I am waiting for my review, and then will dump this chaos center.
Layoff numbers???
The long note about how the Danger purchase was botched is spot on, with one exception: although some people had moved on, the team in place at the date of purchase was just as good.
The people who were burnt out left. The people who stayed were mostly not burned out. The new people who were brought in were very good.
The lack of innovation came not from a lack of talent but from a lack of funds.
Danger was successful enough to be able to keep funding update, but not successful enough to afford to bring in enough talent to be able to continue shipping phones to pay the bills while also innovating.
Still, you would be surprised at the work that was being done on an interface redesign, including support for a touch screen, that never saw the light of day because of the purchase.
Comments on comments (I'm principal-level M2 in a large product group, 5+ years at MS and 5+ years before)...
1) Pratley the visionary PM? Classic case of potentially good ideas obliterated by bad delivery and presence. But I guess if you don't wear Prada, you can't be visionary.
2) HiPo was not invented in IDC. HiPo, in general, is a collection of talent development programs for the top X% of employees (like 4%). The programs vary by level and role, and include Bench (in various versions) and College Select.
3) "Who is the Ray Ozzie guy" - best comment! That's his #1 problem.
4) BrianV wasn't fired, but he saw the writing on the wall. Being "partner GPM for engineering systems" probably wasn't in line with his aspirations.
5) Person thinking about Azure - great org, great leader, great technology. Politics starting to show at the 65+ level - but on other hand, the GMs/directors are generally very accessible. Very dev-driven, very few PMs or PM leaders.
6) "Codes" comment - likely the person speaks English as a second language. If you are in the original poster's situation, then you should leave the group and don't look back. It doesn't matter how right or wrong you are - they have it in for you, and you are screwed if you don't leave. If you are on a PIP and want to stay at Microsoft, then follow it to the letter and get through it, and then start looking. You *can* turn it around, and you *can* survive a bad review. And once you are through, spend some time honestly assessing the situation and see if there were any nuggets of truth in their criticism.
solyanik
7) Pioneer Square studio? Jesus... Robbie and J couldn't stop with the Commons, could they? I hate-hate-hate the holier-than-thou groups that build their own space, think their shit smells better, and believe 10%s don't apply to them.
8) More on the Pioneer Square thing - the guy named is in a 1-1-1 org (each layer of management has 1 direct). E&D (and other orgs) need to get rid of those stupid situations.
9) Calibration in February? No, calibration is done typically between June 15 and July 15. That's why it's important to get peer feedback requests out ASAP (and do your part and reply to feedback rqeuests in a timely fashion). Review text is always harder to get done on time, but it's worth trying.
10) adCenter jobs - I've been around adCenter for a couple years. The latest regime is a lot better than the last 2, and I personally would give them a fair chance.
about C++ in the kernel: That Apple's "Pink" failed is not sufficient evidence to show that C++ can't be used well. That Pink failed for the same reason that several academic attempts at new operating systems in C++ failed: over-engineering.
On the other hand, although it was a much smaller OS, PalmOS, especially the ill-fated Cobalt, was written in C++, including the kernel, and, among other things, had a very nice driver architecture that took advantage of C++ features.
The poster who pointed out that the only reason the Linux kernel doesn't have C++ support is Linus' strong objection is correct. Any number of attempts to add C++ runtime support into the kernel have been blocked by Linus.
I wouldn't use C++ in a kernel because I don't believe its benefits outweigh its downsides and because the risk of using it is high, but that's a judgement call, not a technical argument.
When the new phone finally launches, it will be "Seven out, line away, pay the don'ts."
people all over the world do this kind of mistakes
Uh-huh. Now click through to the actual results and report back on how many are actually referring to source "codes", as opposed to all the grammatically correct ways to use "code" as a plural.
I don't think I suggested that smartphones behave like desktop OSes. You are confusing the concept of holistic UX design with that of weak security boundaries between processes.
You were complaining about "siloed apps"--not sure what other conclusion you expected. If you just want a slightly different UX for the built-in apps, then fine. But you still haven't explained how WP7 is an improvement over the iPhone, e.g., you still have to tap on the SMS "rectangle" to see your SMSs, etc.
Android at least offers several features which could obviously be seen as improvements, e.g., the ability to put contacts and links directly on your home screen, as well as icon/buttons to quickly turn phone features on/off, like WiFi. (I don't care for that stuff but I can see how someone might.)
From the videos I've seen of WP7, the UI will be conceptually harder to grasp (what's simpler than a grid of icons?) and it's not clear to me how I can customize those rectangles to launch my favorite apps--e.g., what if I want one-tap access to the Facebook app? For all of WP7's purported "social network integration" it sure seems like it will be difficult to access Facebook from the home screen.
Also, calling the desktop computing model an 'unmitigated disaster' is...weird.
Only to someone so entrenched in the status quo that he can't imagine anything else. News flash, most average people HATE their Windows computers. They constantly have a low level of anxiety that they might unknowingly have viruses, spyware, malware, etc. They're worried that they might be tricked into clicking on an email or popup when they shouldn't. They have startup programs and system tray icons that they don't want but can't figure out how to get rid of. Their computers often become unusably slow (usually because of problems with virus scanners) and then they're not sure what to do--buy a new computer? Do they need another hard drive because they "ran out of space"? Do they have a hidden virus? Should they take it to the Geek Squad? Can they trust the neighbor kid to correctly fix the problem? etc.
Can you think of any other thing that average people use that requires this level of technical expertise? Even automobiles, for all their complexity, are relatively straightforward these days.
After decades of acting as technical support for friends, family, and acquaintances, I can't begin to tell you how excited I am about the "collection of unrelated apps" model of computing. If you ask me, it can't come to the desktop soon enough. Unfortunately Microsoft has shown no signs of "getting it" though.
On a day when every stock rose, Microsoft's stock was down 17 cents. Seems that investors dont see any hope in the company. See thios stock to 10 dollars by next year
Anyone wondered the names associated with Kin.
Buying a company named Danger was like trusting Madoff with your money. Didnt the name of the company give a hint to the clueless executive
Then we have Kin which got Kimmed and Pink which got Pink slipped
Hmmm www.kin.com is still up and running.. there is a KIN promo event in Dallas from July 9-11, must be a blast.
Guess they didn't like Silverlight either, website was done as Flash.
Think Balmer is going to try to 'throw away' someones Iphone this company meeting?
My money's on the idea that they figured they could wriggle out of it cleverly somehow. Just like they figured for permatemps, DOJ and EU. That does not mean that they can, just that that is what they may be betting on. Because if Microsoft considers itself nothing else, it considers itself clever.
I suppose that could be true. A few of us kicked around talking to a lawyer about it and nothing ever came of it but it might still be worth a consultation anyway.
"There is absolute no work-life balance. We ask our dev/test/pm to by always on call. Now don't ask me what the f&^% that means."
That's the new MS way. Sure we used to work long hours, during the critical parts of the development cycle, getting ready for a public beta, etc. with lots of excitement and team camaraderie.
Now, the expectation is to continuously work in a heightened mode, long hours, through-out the entire cycle. No down time, time to re-group, etc.
And, they will get away with it because 23 yos out of college are clueless.
And as for the guy who said you could still become a millionaire if you dance a path a certain way, which you were almost on.... you are a perfect example. You got 10% long before you made it.
to the person who said "You forgot to mention apple pie and the Stars and Stripes." to the anonymous poster who was simply stating the truth about this blog (it doesn't help). Let me ask you why you think taking your angst public helps?
"I found that person's post a bit suspicious as they seemed to have a great grasp of OHI (WHI) scores"
Wait until you have worked in the corporate world at least 10 years, perhaps in your 30s to 40s, and have paid a modicum of attention to life around you. Though I know paying attention is something not encouraged in this here U.S.A., but just think back to co-workers who were really talented who quietly disappeared over the years, promises made that were never kept, early plans for products that were so exciting and certainly doable, that when shipped were a pale shell of what they could have been, etc.
I was just one of thousands of drones putting my time in as I watched empire builders crush each other internally and sat through more and more absurd rah-rah rallies that are now truly embarrassing.
"Later I also learned by Microsoft insiders in the PMX team at Palo Alto that that I should not take it personal that it is part of the HATE they have for Microsoft employees. Thank You MS VARMA for your NO HIRE I am a happier person where I am now outside of the KIN services team. I would not have liked to work with you or under you. I hope our paths never cross again. "
I don't think so. As a lead in Redmond, the person you are trying to assassinate here was one of the better parts of the Danger acquisition. Judging by your behavior here, you deserved the no-hire.
"Are there good healthy orgs within Windows Azure ...?"
"[Windows Azure]" has a dumb ogre ... "Dont go there, unless you want to be eaten dead."
Q: Is this “don’t go there” recommendation valid for all disciplines DEV, TEST and PM?
From what I read here, we're mostly using MS India as a research center for new kinds of backstabbing and nepotism. Don't we have enough capabilities for that in Redmond?
>>adCenter jobs - I've been around adCenter for a couple years. The latest regime is a lot better than the last 2, and I personally would give them a fair chance.
I have to agree here. I have been around for 4 years and was about to leave. I am staying because of DonGa. He is the most grounded engineering leader in OSD and is bringing about the changes that are required to make this place better. I am glad we got rid of AlexGo & Rebecca. Alex was just full of himself and had no clue as to engineering. God help AOL!
In Microsoft la-la-land, Verizon may have been a good launch partner, but I think that choice was flawed.
Consider the target audience: Tweens and Teens.
KIN launched with a contract provider. In order to get a phone, you need a contract, and to get a contract, you need a parent's involvement. (Totally lame) The KIN represents everything parents hate about new-fangled phones: Data-hungry (Verizon data isn't cheap), texting-oriented ("Oh great, now we need a family texting plan"), and expensive ("It costs THAT much with a contract?"). There's no incentive for a parent to add such an cost-explosive device to the ye 'ol family plan.
I wonder if the KIN would have fared better if it had been launched on Virgin Mobile (Sprint Prepaid). On VM, $25/mo buys unlimited txt/data (what teens actually USE) plus 300min (for calling old-fashioned parentals). Thats something a teen could afford on a part-time-waitress budget. Handset price would still be steep (beg for it as xmas gift?), but at least you wouldn't have a contract.
By the numbers:
VERIZON:
Unlimited TXT on a family plan costs $20/mo
Data for a multimedia phone is $10/mo
Each line beyond two (Ma + Pa) is $10/mo.
To add a KIN to a family plan would cost $40/mo for at least two years. INSANE. Oh, and PRAY the teen doesn't send a "premium" text to KGBKGB or MTV Mobile.
VIRGIN MOBILE (Beyond Talk 300 plan):
Unlimited TXT included
Unlimited Data included
300 minutes included
This would cost just $25/mo.
Gravy: Prepaid means that parents don't have to worry about overages and "premium" subscriptions.
"File an EEOC claim..." This is correct, whatever MS asks you to sign, you cannot sign away your legal right to file an EEOC claim, or participate in any gov't investigation or be a witness - which is what an EEOC claim is. The US Gov't has broad powers that go above and beyond what any Company can ask you to agree, and you are not violating any agreement with MS by talking to the EEOC. (you may confirm this with your lawyer).
The only issue is, the EEOC takes about a year to get to your claim - efficient gov't bureacracy (though you can ask for your Right to Sue letter 90 days after filing) and take your case to a private attorney.
MS LCA junior attorneys assigned to these claims care little about the EEOC, and use the long process to their advantage. They know that you'll most likely go away before MS has to ever pay out a penny. The MS lawyer usually handling the case on the MS side only knows half the story and parrots that back to the EEOC. They never care about your side of the story - regardless of how valuable of an employee you may have been. MS would rather spend $100K fighting everything that comes their way than know the truth, and potentially be found liable for knowing something - especially if it involves a Partner. But stick with it, it eventually worked for me.
Read about how to file an EEOC claim, which can be done without an attorney before or after you leave MS. A good source is undercoverlawyer.com.
"I'm a former MS employee, been gone a few years, and I'm entertaining the idea of going back.
It's purely a question of convenience. MS would be a nice place to park my butt for a few years while earning a decent salary and benefits, and do work that I won't be ashamed to put on my resume when I'm ready to move on.
What teams should I look at? "
Wow, you sure are a catch. Any team would be lucky to have you.
You should look at any teams that suck and stay far away from the few good places left, where people actually want to do more than warm a seat.
I wouldn't use C++ in a kernel because I don't believe its benefits outweigh its downsides and because the risk of using it is high, but that's a judgement call, not a technical argument.
How big is the kernel, anyway? It doesn't seem like it should be big and complex enough that it really matters what language it's written in. Although, since this is Microsoft, it's probably a pig.
"But to say that the end is near because of a few hard-learned lessons is not looking at the big picture. MS is still a huge company full of opportunities and successes."
The end isn't near, but it's becoming more inevitable every day precisely because the company is incapable of learning from previous mistakes. After Longhorn, the company swore that no development project would ever be allowed to get that far off track again. Just a few years later we have WinMo, which went even further into the weeds and with even more serious consequences. Or how many times has the company squandered an acquisition because it insisted on rewriting everything on an existing MS stack? It's dozens at least, but still we get Kin. Another example is allowing new projects to lose ridiculous amounts of money such that it becomes nearly impossible to ever justify them. That mistake was made in spades for Xbox, yet it’s being repeated again with Online. Indeed, on an all in basis Online has already lost more than Xbox ever did. A company that can’t learn can’t adapt. And a company that can’t adapt is ultimately doomed.
When Ballmer did the first round of layoffs external experts said “cut once and cut deep”. But as usual Ballmer, who hired like a maniac for five years leading up to the recession and even continued for a full year after it began, was deaf to feedback and knew better. So he didn't cut once, didn't cut deep, and now has to go back for more in round 3 (or is it 4?), further impacting morale. Ballmer is incompetent. He's lost nearly three hundred billion in shareholder value directly, and burned through another hundred billion indirectly via buybacks that failed to raise the stock price. He's presided over at least a half dozen of the biggest product failures in MS history, and he’s made several of the most expensive acquisitions that also failed (i.e. aQuantive, Danger). He’s severely misjudged the competition, particularly iPhone and now iPad. He’s lost the marketcap crown that MS enjoyed for two decades. He’ll lose the revenue crown to Apple as well starting this quarter and for the full year next year. The slowest growth year and first ever negative growth year in MS history both occurred on his watch. Also the first official layoffs. And the company’s future has never been questioned as strongly as it is currently, largely because the company has never been so poorly positioned. There is simply no business justification the Board can make for why Ballmer hasn’t been removed. They have simply put personal loyalty ahead of their fiduciary responsibility. The stakes are clear: If Ballmer and this Board are allowed to continue running MS as they have, the company is on a path to oblivion.
To the poster replying with
"I don't think so. As a lead in Redmond, the person you are trying to assassinate here was one of the better parts of the Danger acquisition. Judging by your behavior here, you deserved the no-hire."
Whats with the "lead in Redmond" part? Being so, makes your observations of someone/something, more truer than that that of the original poster?
If your direct suggests trying a different approach of doing X, before trying your design - because he had read about it in say a tech paper - would you find it worth your while to discuss the alt-approach with him and choose based on its merits -
OR
Would you feel offended because you are a "lead in Redmond"?
You thought, your reply to the OP, will carry weight, only when qualified with "lead in Redmond"?
Shouldnt your argument/data/reasoning, carry your conviction about someone/something, without needing the "lead in Redmond" qualifier?
I am assuming that you were promoed to be a "lead in Redmond", based on your personal muscle in dealing with events, people and choices. Looks like you have atrophied enough to need a title to make your case. Or maybe you became a lead for other reasons - quite likely, given the culture - which makes you a DESERVE-NO-PROMO.
You say, the person (P), the OP was trying to "assassinate", is great - I AGREE with you. The OP concluded that the org was bad, based on his interviewing experience with P. Given that one interaction, the OP had no other datapoint to conclude otherwise. Shouldnt P have known that, and been great as always during the interview? But great people do get bad sometimes - they are humans.
But interviews are not the time to letgo off latent greatness. As a "lead in Redmond" who sits in an interview loop, like P, wouldnt you know this? The OP got what he/she didnt deserve - a bad interview experience. Life moves on. But being a "lead in Redmond", do you think, you have got something you dont deserve? Come on, dont feel guilty. You are a "lead in Redmond". Leave the guilt part to leads in the UK.
Q: Is this “don’t go there” recommendation valid for all disciplines DEV, TEST and PM?
A: Applies to the PM org. Dev ICs are protected from the "O", by a few layers of knights. The PMs are not that lucky.
7) Pioneer Square studio? Jesus... Robbie and J couldn't stop with the Commons, could they? I hate-hate-hate the holier-than-thou groups that build their own space, think their shit smells better, and believe 10%s don't apply to them.
Speaking as a denizen of Pioneer Square, why the heck should we think 10%s apply to us? We have a decent work life by virtue of distance from Redmond's malign culture. You're more than welcome to paddle around with HR, Mr "Eye of the Tiger" and a passel of psychopathic Indians.
I had written some codes and was maintaining it.
Code. The plural of code is code. Code is not cheese, or at least not yet. It used to be that you could eat "some cheese" and now it's "some cheeses". So time and non-US-educated programmers may change the plural of code, but it hasn't happened yet.
Ballmer's "all in" slogan for cloud computing is yet another ill-chosen marketing move, up there with the Seinfeld ads. In Britain, Canada and most other Commonwealth countries (ie English-speaking countries which are not the US) the expression "I'm all in" means "I'm exhausted, I'm ready to give up". Maybe that's what Steve really means :-) But more likely it's just another clumsy marketing slogan.
I suppose that could be true. A few of us kicked around talking to a lawyer about it and nothing ever came of it but it might still be worth a consultation anyway.
Based on an ex-colleague's experiences with that, one tactic is for Microsoft to run the clock and hope that the employees give up. At least one (that lawsuit mentioned a few months ago) did not, and others may be following.
MS India is good example what is MS becoming. When we joined in 2006 it was vibrant place with pride that we are joining the best company in the world. Nothing has changed except the faith on leadership. Look at leadership of MSIT India with people like Nagender, Meher etc who are breeding nepotism and just BS talks. Their PUMS happily move aruond and promote their stooges shamelessly. Hypos and 20%ers are all their favs and if you are one of those guys who will speak up then you are managed out or given A/10 to start with.
There's more than one reason that I'm awake at 6:00AM on a Sunday morning. The most compelling one is the fact that while I work for what is arguably one of the best companies in the world in terms of hard and soft resources, it is clearly one that lacks accountability and reward for those that actually produce for the company. These lacks deeply troubles my inner senses, and robs sleep even while forcing thoughts of tomorrow mornings deliverables.
The mid-level (dm/tm/pm and triad) personnel within E&D are clearly out of touch and the ones who should be the target of the current layoffs. They don't bother to read the annual review "one-pagers" prior to stack ranking meetings that decide, on an org-wide-level, both what employees have delivered upon in the past FY and what they are capable of in the next FY. If this particular issue is broached during the rarely confirmed skip-level 1:1, the typical response is something akin to "we're in meetings deciding appropriate features, and you should be focusing on stated committement deliverables that meet the organizations goals". As is public knowledge from recent news, those decisions are just a bit faulty.
These employees are the same people who say "yes" constantly to "upper management"/triad, and who IC's consistently look down upon for having no substantive vision, no effective leadership, and no contributions that move the business model forward.
People such as Terry Myerson and his Windows Phone triads can crow all they want about being innovative, efficient, and effectual, but in reality they are not any of those, and need a harsh slap in the face. The company would work as effectively without at least two levels of "management"....
Microsoft was a great company, once upon a time, back when I joined it. My current advice is to get rid of at least one, and more likely two levels of "management", stop promoting people to "principal" who clearly have no technical skills or direct touch with the people that deliver their products, and replace the "leadership" marketing executive who employees cow-toe to, and bring (back) a visionary technology leader. Otherwise, good people will continue to leave for companies that will not only pay a decent wage but also, and more importantly promote their bottom-line business model. MSFT stock is in the toilet, and for a very good reason.
Anyone who quotes the serious disinformation from Apple fanboy blog Daring Fireball here and expects to be taken seriously should go ahead and stick head in toilet and self-flush. The guy is still towing the iPhone4 line that even Apple has abandoned.
still lolling at the clown who calls desktop "an unmitigated disaster"...seriously, dude, quit while you are behind
people who can't admit they made a poor choice of words are their own worst enemy...graceless
Anyone who is seriously interested in helping Microsoft upper management might consider an option open to all: the annual Microsoft shareholder's meeting.
The shareholder's meeting is usually held in Oct-Nov at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington. Last year, entry was open to non-shareholders, but I think that plenty of Mini-readers are shareholders, so consider holding onto to proxies for entry.
Doors open at 7 AM, meeting starts at 8 sharp. I suggest that you dress appropriately for a business meeting and be there when doors are open. There is a block of time for open questions, and consider wisely what you should ask.
Last year, I watched a rather subdued Ballmer spare with a "Family Values" guy over whether advertising on "Family Guy" was valuable. Ballmer won, essentially stating, "We put ads where they work. Email me, and I'll let you complain to someone." Bill Gates was there, but remained silent for the entire meeting.
MS India is in complete disarray. Both R's does not have a clue what and how to repair? Mid level mgt...so called RSMs are parasites and consume their time only in findling excuses of their failures. "Collaboration and TEAM" reside only in books. EPG WEST is an example of that. NM/AA/DD point fingures/guns at each other and apple polish their bosses and are trying to get in their beloved ones at the cost of innocent folks...Messy atmosphere and non-condusive to work positively...I know about 20 people who are just waiting in the wings....What is JS teams's contribution?
"And if they don't fix the culture, the stock price will be flat for another 10 years"
Flat? The stock has declined 50% since 2000, even while the company was still growing. And accomplishing that required an infusion of buybacks approaching $100b. Why would it maintain a $200b valuation in decline? It won't. If the company doesn't get turned around and asap, it's reasonable to expect a larger and accelerated fall over the next decade. And that's without including the high likelihood of a market double dip in the next year or two, which would see it back into the low teens.
[Was] banished from WinSE, after he was found doing ... (not relevant).
Why was he banished? And if it was so bad, why wasn't he laid off?
You should look at any teams that suck and stay far away from the few good places left, where people actually want to do more than warm a seat.
Reading and comprehension skills are apparently not as prevalent as they once were.
I'm the OP and the reason why I'm asking what teams to avoid / look at is because I want to do good work that I won't be ashamed of.
At the same time going to MS is obviously a "butt parking" move. You'd have to be a moron to believe that this is the place to do ground breaking, world changing work. That's what I have been doing at the companies that have employed me since I left MS. If MS wants to hire me to do the same for them, I'm ready to listen, but right now I see no such project going on there. Most of what your management touts as such are usually copies of what the competition produces, 2 years late and a few features short.
Finally it's a new one to be lectured on my work ethics by a Microsoft employee. Everybody on the eastside has seen you guys line up on the 520 on-ramps at 5:00 PM. I get text messages from my MS friends about going out and grab a beer two thirds through my work day (theirs is obviously already over) You built yourself your own private mall for crying out loud!
If you don't want people to think that MS is the place to go when one wants to take it easier for a few years, why don't you work harder yourselves, or at least why don't you try to project a different image to the outside world?
For all you you wishing BillG would come back:
I started in '97. It was when Bill still wrote his own company-wide emails. Even back then it was clear he had lost control. His emails would be about the urgent need to improve Windows... In ways we all understood were important, and were constantly harped on in the media.
Guess what. None of his imperatives ever happened. I assumed it was because he wasn't really in control of the product cycles. They became feature wish lists and nothing more.
The company is either too big and complex for one man to run, or Bill was in secret semi-retirement as early as 1997.
The company should voluntarily break itself up. One for each shipping product. That is the only way to bring back innovation and management accountability. Fluff like engineering excellence and various research or white paper shops need to become part of a product, or be cut.
"Whats with the "lead in Redmond" part? Being so, makes your observations of someone/something, more truer than that that of the original poster?"
The OP stated that the Palo Alto team had an axe to grind with Redmond folks, which why the OP was no hired.
Someone from Redmond stated otherwise, being from Redmond in this case lends credence to the reality that the OP probably deserved the no hire, and was not a victim of irrational bias.
In Britain, Canada and most other Commonwealth countries (ie English-speaking countries which are not the US) the expression "I'm all in" means "I'm exhausted, I'm ready to give up".
Never heard it used this way. In the US at least, "all in" is a poker expression meaning you're betting all your chips on your current hand.
Ballmer's frequent use of this expression is moronic because if you go "all in" and lose the hand, then you're left with nothing. After half a dozen of Ballmer's "all in" bets, most of them have turned out mediocre, yet the company continues unaffected.
>It doesn't seem like it should be big and complex enough that it really matters what language it's written in.
Ahahahaha yeah because kernels used in millions of machines around the world are trivial and should all just be slapped together in assembler and contained in a single file or two. I mean how hard can it be? Look at the Linux kernel which is svelte and simple to understand...ohhh, no...wait...
to Anon - Wednesday, July 07, 2010 2:40:00 PM
"Who would have ever thought that people would pay $100 a month for phone service and $300 for a phone? Apple did. They kept fighting, providing smart solutions along the way."
??? Did you ever try to look outside of US? Apple didn't invent expensive smartphones? Did you know that Sony Erricson and Nokia had 500$ phones long before Apple?
>But more likely it's just another clumsy marketing slogan.
He is probably trying to capitalize by linking it to Texas Hold'Em Poker, which was all the rage about 3 years ago. Man our management is so in touch with reality. A few weeks ago I heard someone refer to an idea with a variant of Pimp My Ride...another super timely reference :(
They don't bother to read the annual review "one-pagers" prior to stack ranking meetings that decide, on an org-wide-level, both what employees have delivered upon in the past FY and what they are capable of in the next FY. If this particular issue is broached during the rarely confirmed skip-level 1:1, the typical response is something akin to "we're in meetings deciding appropriate features, and you should be focusing on stated committement deliverables that meet the organizations goals".
+1. Those who say, "Get out there and make a difference" have likely never faced this, "sorry we are the chiefs you are just an indian brave, you do as told and DON'T raise your voice, otherwise you will be targeted as one of the people not helping us meet our goals that were carefully chosen so that we as managers would be rewarded, and we don't expect you to understand those considerations, so sit down, shut up and keep fixing bugs in our overly-ambitious features or else".
There is simply no business justification the Board can make for why Ballmer hasn’t been removed.
Hands up if you have been involved in the past 5 or some years in defending the company from threatened shareholder action. If you read into that and thereby by connection some of its officers I can't stop you.
Anyways, if you have seen that or something similar, how often does it happen?
There may be business justification for Ballmer to be removed. Ballmer's management mis-fires are unlikely to be intentional, conspiracy theories about keeping the stock price low to avoid the company owing lots on options aside, but negligence does not make for an attractive resume either.
My current advice is to get rid of at least one, and more likely two levels of "management",
"Management" is where Microsoft puts many developers with career momentum.
A few years ago they were trying to convince developers to take a technical track so everyone wasn't trying to go into management which was seen as the only way to advance at Microsoft.
Managers are the ones in the room when compensation is being decided.
At the time, the VP in our product group announced that he was going to get rid of layers of management.
It didn't happen.
That's where the people Microsoft considers talented end up because they have to get promoted or be seen as someone to manage out.
The higher you go in the org chart the fewer positions there are so Microsoft sheds more and more people who they considered talented at writing code once upon a time.
It's good for other companies that Microsoft has designed a performance management system and an organizational structure that gets rid of talented developers.
To the guy who quipped about "Jump to Conclusions Mat". It's ironic that you're posting this on a blog engine which once was Evan Williams' "Jump to conclusions" mat, and this blog engine is written in "jump to conclusions" language, and runs on top of "jump to conclusions" operating system and is backed by a whole bunch of "jump to conclusions" infrastructure which Microsoft will spend the next decade failing to catch up to.
Does anyone care to comment on what caused the Fall 2009 Sidekick data loss?
It's the biggest data loss in human history, perhaps, and yet the cause seems to be unreported.
Will management tell us when this round of layoffs is over?
I read here that engineering tools group in windows has layoffs, but I only hear of one person so far.
"cheese" or "cheeses"?
Grammar Nazi here:
"Eat more cheese" = go from 1 kilo to 20 kilos of cheese.
"Eat more cheeses" = don't restrict yourself to cheddar, also have some brie, some gruyere, some mozarella and some stilton.
But "code" is always just "code". (Unless you are using different codes for your various crptic messages.)
"I'm all in" means "I'm exhausted, I'm ready to give up". Maybe that's what Steve really means :-) But more likely it's just another clumsy marketing slogan."
That's an interesting post, and thank you for sharing that. I'm surprised CMG didn't pick up on this. Don't we pay a ton of money to marketing consulting companies to make sure campaigns are vetted against international marketing standards or cultural slang to check for gaffes like this?
Mini - Please start moderating out the racist and personal attacks against some of our Indian colleagues.
I don't know if the IDC managers are good or bad, but you are letting an awful lot of personal abuse get hurled their way without any supporting evidence.
They have simply put personal loyalty ahead of their fiduciary responsibility. The stakes are clear: If Ballmer and this Board are allowed to continue running MS as they have, the company is on a path to oblivion.
The Board of Directors doesn't care about internal chaos. They just look at the financial reports and see that Microsoft is making money.
I doubt HR or management would be giving them information saying they are not doing a good job. It would affect their compensation.
If something fails, they can lay off some people to meet the targets for the quarter or year.
The Board isn't going to collect their own information on what could be improved.
Since Windows and Office finance Ballmer's failures, the Board won't do anything.
Ballmer said they tried to make too many changes in Vista so he isn't going to take that risk again.
That's the way it is.
You just have to decide if the amount of time you have to spend managing your career at Microsoft is worth it or if you rather spend more time writing software.
Roz Ho is corporate vice president for Premium Mobile Experiences at Microsoft. She has been responsible for the integration of Danger Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft in April, 2008.
Previously, Ho was the General Manager of the Entertainment and Devices Division Labs at Microsoft where she led an effort for this division to pursue product innovation focusing on consumer experiences in the consumer and entertainment space.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/rozho/
'Nuff said. Note NOT "leads an effort" but rather "lead an effort" in the past tense. Ho Ho Ho time to go!
still lolling at the clown who calls desktop "an unmitigated disaster"...seriously, dude, quit while you are behind
You are correct, in a twisted sort of way. The 'desktop' is gone, big-time. Gone! Verstehen-sie? In the sense of no-longer-here. Desktop gone bye-bye. About the desk-top I am no longer speaking to you, because you are a silly person. You, dude, are behind the times. Seriously.
How big is the kernel, anyway? It doesn't seem like it should be big and complex enough that it really matters what language it's written in. Although, since this is Microsoft, it's probably a pig.
According to Wikipedia, Windows 2003 consists of about 50 million lines of code.
Obviously not all of that is the kernel, but I'd hazard a guess that at least 10% of it is the kernel. I don't have source code access anymore, so I can't check that, but it sounds right. Presumably an FTE with source code access could verify this.
what the hell is E/110?
The 110 may be reference to the of % stock awarded, leaving out their contribution rating.
I am really sick of working for incompetent PMs. I have never seen so many unprepared individuals driving projects straight into the ground at a company with so many skilled ICs.
1 code for 1 internet
n codes for n internets
"Does anyone care to comment on what caused the Fall 2009 Sidekick data loss?"
Here's what I know. They were using Oracle RAC database software (not the problem, BTW) to manage the "SideKick Cloud". Something really bad happened in terms of the database or possibly the database servers (I didn't get the play-by-play on that part of the puzzle) -- but what needed to be done was to restore the database (to prevent further data loss and recover the services right away). The Danger group had never tested the restore capability of their backup process...when they did, surprise, surprise, surprise! Like 25% of all backups, the restore failed, except that this was even worse, the backup was faulty for weeks, if not months, and no one knew. We had teams working around the clock, we flew in engineers and called consultants accross the company to help in the effort. Can you imagine the challenge of looking for Oracle RAC experience inside of MSFT? I think this is why it got no press, we relied on a number of FTE's from multiple groups including Premier Field Engineering and MCS to keep it out of the limelight.
>>You just have to decide if the amount of time you have to spend managing your career at Microsoft is worth it or if you rather spend more time writing software.
I started 10 years ago, when (for me at least), the ethos was still "there's the problem - you go figure out the solution". It was great. I thought about my work, technical aspects, discussed same with colleagues - it was a geek paradise, and we got stuff done. Getting stuff done (well) brought appropriate advancement - I never even thought about it. At least 2 of my promos were unexpected.
Now things are different. I spend a ton of time thinking about "the career" at the expense of getting stuff done. It's not just a case of advancement - I could care less - but without advancement... you're obviously a loser who's on their way out *regardless* of what you achieve.
I'm an IC at a level such that my calibration is done by skip-skip-level - who simply doesn't have the bandwidth, context or technical depth to know what I'm doing, despite the best efforts of my manager and his manager.
This is in large part a result of the knee-jerk "me too" trio/triad nonsense that most VPs have adopted, attempting to ape Sinofsky's apparent success with Office (ask an Office old-timer what REALLY happened). There is NOBODY above lead/manager level that has a broad picture notion of what the hell is going on - resulting in all activity being tactical fire-fighting efforts.
So much for the "technical track". Being a senior IC these days seems to be a career-limiting position, which is a huge shame.
Ahahahaha yeah because kernels used in millions of machines around the world are trivial and should all just be slapped together in assembler and contained in a single file or two. I mean how hard can it be? Look at the Linux kernel which is svelte and simple to understand...ohhh, no...wait...
I didn't say kernels are trivial, but they should definitely be simple. Last time I checked, the Linux kernel was only around 2M lines of code, and most of that was support for different architectures, i.e., a fraction of the 2M lines ends up in the finished product. Also, Linux is not a microkernel like Mach (used in OS X). So presumably it's quite a bit bigger than it really needs to be. And it is actually fairly easy to understand... or at least for the couple of things I've needed to look up in the Linux kernel, it's been pretty straightforward. What about it do you think is difficult?
Your post is pretty telling of the Microsoft philosophy--i.e., that anything small and simple is "slapped together" and not suitable for use by millions of people. Maybe this mindset is why Linux is commonly used for $30 wifi routers but Windows 7 barely runs on a $300 netbook.
Mini - Please start moderating out the racist and personal attacks against some of our Indian colleagues.
I don't know if the IDC managers are good or bad, but you are letting an awful lot of personal abuse get hurled their way without any supporting evidence.
Something tells me you are one of those IDC managers. there is nothing said specifically about IDC folks here that is not being said about Redmond guys so why are you asking for moderation.
So someone please give some concrete examples of what he [Sinofsky] has done as a manager.
He did the ribbon and you should see the customer dissat rolling in from that one. If it weren't a monopoly it would have killed the product.
Bill Gates is promoting a teacher performance initiative in Pittsburgh where teachers work as a team and get a team bonus if their students are on track to attend college.
Employees getting rewarded for working as a team?
Another ex-Microsoft employee making crazy suggestions about performance management.
Bill Gates lauds city's steps to improve schools
With its recently adopted teacher performance initiatives, the Pittsburgh school district offers a model for other U.S. teachers and administrators who are working together to improve public education, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said Saturday.
Mr. Gates lauded key aspects of the collective bargaining agreement the city school district recently reached with the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers as "the kinds of changes that can renew the profession of teaching." He spoke in Seattle during the national convention of the American Federation of Teachers.
"In another program, teachers will work as a team with a group of incoming ninth-graders and stay with those kids for two years. If at the end of 10th grade the kids are on track for college, the whole team will get a bonus."
Mr. Gates said he hopes these initiatives will serve as a model for other school districts if they prove to be effective in improving academic results and earning appreciation from teachers in Pittsburgh.
To the guy who quipped about "Jump to Conclusions Mat". It's ironic that you're posting this on a blog engine which once was Evan Williams' "Jump to conclusions" mat, and this blog engine is written in "jump to conclusions" language, and runs on top of "jump to conclusions" operating system and is backed by a whole bunch of "jump to conclusions" infrastructure which Microsoft will spend the next decade failing to catch up to.
None of those would be anything if they hadn't had any corporate backing.
Think of it like being a VC. You see a thousand ideas cross your plate. Who gets funding?
IIRC powershell was once someone's side project. Except it'd be a cool toy if it didn't get buy in from share point, windows server, exchange, etc.
And infrastructure? Come on. Dev tools and servers are one thing MS tends to do right.
Does anyone care to comment on what caused the Fall 2009 Sidekick data loss?
It's the biggest data loss in human history, perhaps, and yet the cause seems to be unreported.
It was well-reported at the time.
Going from memory (which might have faded a bit, but is still accurate in the ways that matter), it went something like this.
A decision was made to upgrade the servers.
Backups were initiated. The backups were taking too long (on the order of at least a couple of days).
A Microsoft manager ordered the backups stopped and for the upgrade to commence.
The half-completed backups had been started on the same media that held the previous generation of backups.
Ergo, now there were no longer any backups at all.
The upgrade commenced.
The upgrade went wrong.
The rest is history.
In what part of Canada does "I'm all in" mean "I'm exhausted, I'm giving up"?
Having lived in Atlantic Canada, Ontario and Alberta, my experience is it means the exact same thing it does in the States.
Does anyone care to comment on what caused the Fall 2009 Sidekick data loss?
I thought it was fairly well known to be a result of a screwed up outsourcing attempt.
Regarding the SK data loss -- almost no data was actually lost; it was almost entirely recovered. Thus, it couldn't really have been the biggest data loss in human history, although your histrionics made me LOL.
Regarding the Redmond Danger Interview Kin Mopery: The person bitching about being given a no-hire is obviously having hurt feelings. To the person who flaunted being a Redmond "lead" -- while I agree that the interviewer in question is pretty great, I think flaunting your title as lead underscores the problems between Palo Alto and Redmond in the Kin team. It would have sufficed to give your location without "flaunting" your title, which is irrelevant.
"Anyone who is seriously interested in helping Microsoft upper management might consider an option open to all: the annual Microsoft shareholder's meeting."
You can't help those who are convinced they don't need it. Save yourself a wasted half day and just vote against every management request on the proxy.
> I am really sick of working for incompetent PMs. I have never seen so many unprepared individuals driving projects straight into the ground at a company with so many skilled ICs.
Welcome to Microsoft!
Foreshadowing? Microsoft's system for pushing ads to Windows 7 phones is called "Toast".
WPC: 'We missed a generation with Windows Mobile,' Ballmer says
Another thing Microsoft should watch out for: intrusive advertising. Two weeks ago, Microsoft told advertising professionals about a new Windows Phone 7 system called "Toast" that enables advertisers to remotely push ads onto smart phones, even if the corresponding apps are closed.
Kostas Mallios, Microsoft's general manager for Strategy and Business Development, said Toast will turn any Windows Phone 7 device into an "ad-serving machine."
"It's really the most intrusive advertising idea I've heard," Arvani said. "I think they're going to get a lot of resistance from the end-users, the development community and the advertising community."
Hi
i'm a msft employe not working in US. I'm from europe and i'm really disappointed about all these comments. I think that is up to us try to change the situation and try to continue to innovate. Blaming for a bad management is really easy: it is more difficult to argue and to try to fix the bad direction the company is taking. I know it is not easy but it is something we are payied to do. I'm the firt one that is critic agaist my company but I always want to build something agaist the criticism. I still beleive that MSFt is a really good company and i will figth to make sure that it will continue to be innovative and well accepted by our customer. I agree anyway that we MUST listen our customer more and not to try to sell our technology like in a supermarket (kT unfortunately thinks). Let's figth guy, because we love this company.
"Maybe not. My 12 year old son has been saving his money for a year to buy an XBox. But when it came to the actual purchase,"
I really wish all these types of comments were shitcanned. They're not remotely relevant to any discussion, and just seem to be an excuse for garrulous bores to drone on about themselves in blog fashion. No one cares what decision you or your precious son made. There are just as many anecdotes to the contrary. Don't want to hear them either!
Ballmer's "all in" slogan for cloud computing is yet another ill-chosen marketing move, up there with the Seinfeld ads. In Britain, Canada and most other Commonwealth countries (ie English-speaking countries which are not the US) the expression "I'm all in" means "I'm exhausted, I'm ready to give up". Maybe that's what Steve really means :-) But more likely it's just another clumsy marketing slogan.
Not 100% true "I'm all done in" means I'm exhausted or tired. "I'm all in" means what it means in the USA. I'm British and have worked in UK, Australia, US and Canada so I would know.
I heard from a credible source that the next round of lay offs are planned this week (Wed, July 14) and then another round in Sept.
To the poster who wrote:
"9) Calibration in February? No, calibration is done typically between June 15 and July 15. That's why it's important to get peer feedback requests out ASAP (and do your part and reply to feedback rqeuests in a timely fashion). Review text is always harder to get done on time, but it's worth trying."
I have to totally disagree here. Different organizations do things different ways. Windows most certainly calibrates during the February review. I was told during my midyear career discussion that I was getting a 10% in September. I was given 3 weeks to find another position and then terminated with pay to that day and vacation payout. There were at least 5 people in my group that got the exact same treatment.
WRT Roz Ho, checked the GAL and she has 2 directs. Either a headtrax delay caused by pending reorg, or ... wait for the 'spending more time with her family' mail, followed by the saccharine email from Lees about 'thanks for your many contributions blah blah'.
@"AAPL - 35000 employees",
You realize that half of Apple's headcount is their FTE Apple Store employees, right?"
Interesting as well - does this mean that a "successful" set of Microsoft Stores will also drain company resources? Offering regular retail folk amazing benefits across the country will be expensive to administer, and we'll start having Partner Checkout Clerk Managers with a single direct Principle Checkout Clerk Engineer reporting to them... and so on.
@"My team has been told in no uncertain terms by our GM that not attending the company meeting is a career limiting move."
Your GM won't even be there!
I've been at the company six years, and in those six years on 2 teams, have never seen anyone from a product triad or engineering managers show up... only peon leads and their ICs. GMs only go if they have stage time with their SVP or title-inflated president.
@"Why was he banished? And if it was so bad, why wasn't he laid off?",
Do you understand the difference between layoffs and firing? If someone is doing poorly, they should be fired for non-performance.
If their job rule is found to be 'redundant' or part of a downsizing effort, they are to be part of a layoff.
Often people who are let go in layoffs are great performers... while when you get those random mails from leads "(ALIAS) moving on", "NAME is going to look into going back to school. Signed, LEAD." - that's a firing.
Pratley the visionary PM? Classic case of potentially good ideas obliterated by bad delivery and presence. But I guess if you don't wear Prada, you can't be visionary.
He is a Prada wearing visionary alright and he has surrounded himself with similar visionaries. He gets accolades for a full team like minded people. It is a unique group at Microsoft, an Office version of MSR if you will.
Something tells me you are one of those IDC managers. there is nothing said specifically about IDC folks here that is not being said about Redmond guys so why are you asking for moderation.
Wrong, I don't work at IDC.
Things cross the line when managers are being called psychopaths, or people are talking about their past work experience as waiters or some such thing.
Those sorts of attacks are obviously posted by people with an axe to grind. They do not belong here.
He did the ribbon and you should see the customer dissat rolling in from that one. If it weren't a monopoly it would have killed the product.
All lies. The user feedback on the ribbon is positive. Enterprises have complained because they think they need to retrain their users. But the people using the product love it.
I have to totally disagree here. Different organizations do things different ways. Windows most certainly calibrates during the February review. I was told during my midyear career discussion that I was getting a 10% in September. I was given 3 weeks to find another position and then terminated with pay to that day and vacation payout. There were at least 5 people in my group that got the exact same treatment.
That's partially true, and partially false.
Calibrations in Windows happen at least twice per year. People that are on track for the bottom
10% are identified. But no final decisions are made. Managers keep a close eye on them for the next few months, and then they make a decision. You didn't get a warning that you were getting
a 10% in September. You *and others in your group* got fired. That has nothing to do with calibrations.
>> None of those would be anything if they hadn't had any corporate backing.
Hear that sound? That's my point that flew right over your head. None of those ideas required corporate backing at inception, and even though they do benefit from it now, they would not be possible in an environment where innovation is akin (no pun intended) to pissing into the wind.
>> Dev tools and servers are one thing MS tends to do right.
Spoken by a true dyed in the wool Microsoftie who STILL hasn't tried anything other than ASP.NET/C# and SQL and doesn't even think in terms of scaling services to petabytes of data and hundreds of thousands requests per second. Keep believing that, until you too get laid off.
Anonymous said...
Anyone notice Roz Ho's GAL entry and her exceptionally non-existant organization?
That looks like the classic setup for Roz to soon be off to spend more time pursuing other interests.
Maybe she'll land in the "Unlimited Potential Group" like Ira Schneider after he borked Windows Mobile 7 the first time...;-)
Folks, better get used to those layoffs. They are going to be a regular event at MS for the next several years. MS is caught in the technological riptide as we transition from one computing era to another. Much like IBM in the early 90's when they went from 500k employees worldwide to about 300k over the course of several years. Layoffs will be part of the landscape at MS for the foreseable future.
[Sinofsky] did the ribbon and you should see the customer dissat rolling in from that one. If it weren't a monopoly it would have killed the product.
Sinofsky is not an ideas guy like that. Julie Larson-Green and her subordinates were most responsible for the Ribbon. In an ideal world, this would have ruined their career trajectories. But of course they were all promoted and are now working on screwing up UI in Windows.
>>I heard from a credible source that the next round of lay offs are planned this week (Wed, July 14) and then another round in Sept.
I sure wish there was a way of volunteering. Seriously.
"The Board of Directors doesn't care about internal chaos. They just look at the financial reports and see that Microsoft is making money."
They're paid to care about all aspects of the business. That includes ensuring strong management and healthy morale. It also includes long term positioning and not just current results. They don't need to rely on what management feeds them. Again, their job is to make sure they know what's really going on. The board isn't made up of idiots. They have the aptitude and experience to see at least what everyone else does. They're simply closing their eyes and not doing their job. Which is why they need to be replaced along with Ballmer.
Now things are different. I spend a ton of time thinking about "the career" at the expense of getting stuff done. It's not just a case of advancement - I could care less - but without advancement... you're obviously a loser who's on their way out *regardless* of what you achieve.
Agreed. I'm not sure how or why Microsoft became so focused on "career" / "career ladder" / "career trajectory", etc. It really tainted the workplace. Perhaps the result of a bunch of H.R. types that were engaged in busy work of their own trying to protect their own careers. Or, perhaps the trend toward hiring "big brains" with giant egos that need to be on a fast track to vice presidency or they throw a tantrum and leave. Whatever the case, the well was poisoned.
What happens if you refuse to sign your review?
Has anyone been in this position?
I assume that nothing good comes of such a refusal, but I don't know that that would amount to.
"I'm all in" means what it means in the USA. I'm British and have worked in UK, Australia, US and Canada so I would know.
The American Heritage dictionary of idioms
all in, be 1. Be tired out, exhausted, as in I can't walk another step; I'm all in. [Slang: second half of 1800s] 2. In card games, especially poker, be out of money, as in I'm finished for the night; I'm all in. It refers to having put all of one's money in the pot.
"i'm a msft employe not working in US. I'm from europe and i'm really disappointed about all these comments. I think that is up to us try to change the situation and try to continue to innovate. Blaming for a bad management is really easy: it is more difficult to argue and to try to fix the bad direction the company is taking. I know it is not easy but it is something we are payied to do."
You cannot make a difference from the lower ranks of a company when the management is filled with bad apples actively creating toxic culture. There is no benefit to trying to change the culture from the ground-up, but there's certainly personal risk when you're perceived as going against the status quo.
Microsoft needs a change from the top-down, and until that happens it will continue on its present course. Don't waste your time.
@Anonymous,
'to the person who said "You forgot to mention apple pie and the Stars and Stripes." to the anonymous poster who was simply stating the truth about this blog (it doesn't help). Let me ask you why you think taking your angst public helps?'
I am the person who said that. Not a matter of angst; I was simply having a dig at the fatuous tone of the original post. Of course my post doesn't help, but *nothing* posted in here can help - indeed, at this stage Microsoft may be beyond help from any quarter.
Personally, if I were to take exception to anything posted here, it would be the ill-disguised propaganda and damage control from management and HR. For example, one sees risible offerings along the lines of "there will always be some malcontents in any large organization" and "Microsoft is a great place to work! It has a wonderful future! I love it here!" If such assertions were true and the corporate culture was not in fact highly toxic, Microsoft wouldn't be lurching from one costly and embarrassing failure to the next.
The KIN was never meant to be a "permanent product", it was a trial baloon for the ZunePhone. A successful trial I must say!
As for layoffs, that only involves some custodial staff.
Chill people!
Blaming for a bad management is really easy: it is more difficult to argue and to try to fix the bad direction the company is taking.
Dramatically more difficult because you're more likely to lose your job for it than you are to effect change, even if you've got a great point and you make sense when presenting it. Risk your career at your own peril. I've seen it many times.
So keep on believin' if you must. If nothing else, you'll save a teammate's job if your team is told it has to RIF someone in the next layoff, because they'll likely pick you rather than the one who really lacks chops who is the team's true ten percenter.
Not 100% true "I'm all done in" means I'm exhausted or tired. "I'm all in" means what it means in the USA. I'm British and have worked in UK, Australia, US and Canada so I would know.
Good Lord...
Appparently, you wouldn't know. "All in" meaning exhausted or tired has been around forever. I grew up in the U.S. and remember hearing a joke thirty years ago (it already had whiskers then) where the punchline played on that definition.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/all+in
all in
adj
(postpositive) Informal completely exhausted; tired out
Adj. 1. all in - very tired; "was all in at the end of the day"
Can we accept now that just because we may not have heard of a particular definition for a phrase, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist?
"If your software were really any good, Microsoft would have been out of business years ago."
Linux distributions are already better in many ways. The only reason why they don't have a higher market share by now is that Windows is pre-installed on 99% of all sold computers. People are naturally lazy, so they don't bother changing their OS. After all, they already paid for it. Once Google manages to get Chrome OS pre-installed on hardware systems, the game will change.
Sorry, but I don't see a bright future for Microsoft unless they radically change the way they are doing things. They can't rely on their monopoly for eternity.
"AAPL - 35000 employees"
Comments about revenue per employee are nonsense. No one really cares. What matters is earnings per share. Profit!
The fact that Microsoft has a lot more more employees and vendors and still makes more profit than Apple is a very good thing. Not only is Microsoft making a lot of money, it is plowing a lot back into economies around the world at the same time. In fact a lot more than Apple.
"The only reason why they don't have a higher market share by now is that Windows is pre-installed on 99% of all sold computers."
That is because it is what customers choose. It is easy to find computers for sale with Linux installed. These Linux based systems just don't sell well.
There are a lot of psychopathic managers at Microsoft, and waiters becoming GMs at Microsoft is important to know.
Microsoft is such a screwed up place that some people doesn't think the above are deeply wrong...
Linux distributions are already better in many ways. The only reason why they don't have a higher market share by now is that Windows is pre-installed on 99% of all sold computers. People are naturally lazy, so they don't bother changing their OS. After all, they already paid for it. Once Google manages to get Chrome OS pre-installed on hardware systems, the game will change.
I wouldn't characterize it as being lazy.
Linux, despite all its improvements, still requires more knowledge to set up than Windows.
Ask your grandmother to install Linux and see what happens.
It's like Chicken Little in here.
Microsoft is still a great company and a great place to work and I think our future is very bright. We aren't perfect and have our share of issues and politics, but who doesn't?
Microsoft has always had small layoffs and until last year, they were rarely made into a big deal.
Wrong, I don't work at IDC.
Things cross the line when managers are being called psychopaths, or people are talking about their past work experience as waiters or some such thing.
Those sorts of attacks are obviously posted by people with an axe to grind. They do not belong here.
"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man." -- The Dude
If someone has a hotel management degree instead of a Computer Science degree, it is relevant if they need to manage the development of a software product.
Corporate psychopaths and sociopaths aren't killing anyone but they are ruthless and manipulative and you wouldn't want to work for one.
There are normal managers who are still awful to work for.
>What about it do you think is difficult?
So your idea of 'simple' is 2 million lines of code? Interesting. I am sure individual pieces of the kernel are fine if taken on their own, it is when you start looking at how everything interacts and the various unstated assumptions that are present that things get nasty.
>Your post is pretty telling of the Microsoft philosophy--i.e., that anything small and simple is "slapped together" and not suitable for use by millions of people.
That is more your reading of my statement, it says more about you than me. I never said Linux was 'slapped together' or 'not suitable for use by millions of people' did I? No I didn't, I actually used the Linux kernel as an example that OS kernels for operating systems used by millions and millions of people aren't 'simple'. Specifically you said that kernels shouldn't be 'big and complex enough that it matters what language they are written in'. How you can say 2 million lines of C aren't 'big and complex enough' to perhaps benefit from some actual OO design in a language like C++ is baffling.
>Maybe this mindset is why Linux is commonly used for $30 wifi routers but Windows 7 barely runs on a $300 netbook.
Again, your bias not mine. The reason windows doesn't attempt to be used in a $30 router is that there is no money there. How much of an inroad has Linux made in the consumer space? What's that? Almost none? Every time it is offered in any form pretty much a small handful of geeks jump on it as 'proof' of the 'impending Linux triumph'...that has been 'impending' for what 10+ years now at least? You may say 'ohh what about OS X', good point. There market share is still almost nothing compared to Windows, they (Apple) wrote a UI layer and system management stuff that makes using the system more enjoyable and less about fuxing around with the low level system details that Linux abounds in in most installs.
>People are naturally lazy, so they don't bother changing their OS. After all, they already paid for it.
Yeah! It's those lazy, stupid users who don't realize that better things exist! It is the same reason that everyone still uses Yahoo Search and MySpace! Cause stupidity and inertia! Just wait until Google shows the world Chrome! OMG everyone will immediately throw Windows out and gets the Chromez! Facebook better look out too! Google Me will destroy them cause the Googlez is run by geniuses that is never wrong, ever! They are open! Look how open all their revenue generating code is! It is super available for anyone to look at!
This post brought to you by every Linux fanboi in the history of the world.
Well Mini, You can reduce the vendor staff headcount by one. I always believe in being part of the solution instead of just complaining about the situation. :) In the 4 + years I worked with Microsoft, I can attest to the fact the Microsoft is bloated. I worked closely with a FTE on a daily basis. She and I had almost the exact same job description. There was no point to my being there. I dreaded going to work to try and find something meaningful to do.
I've been a long time reader, but seldom look at the commentary. I just read through all of the
comments. It was really painful. Even with the troll postings etc, it strikes me as funny how this blog is such a microcosm of Microsoft in general. There are so many important issues to resolve but yet posters are too busy arguing about the plural of Code versus Codes and the definition of "All In" to get anything accomplished.
Parting advice from a lowly vendor: Quit ripping each other apart and try to do something positive with your time. Microsoft needs you to band together and speak in unison.
The making of an EPIC FAIL
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoftpri0/2012344672_howthemicrosoftazureappliancechangesthecloudcomputingskyscape.html
" Microsoft executive Bob Muglia said he was meeting with a chief information officer last year when the man grabbed him and said, "You don't get it. We never want another update from Microsoft again."
The man was frustrated by the software updates a corporate customer has to install if it uses Microsoft software — security patches, service packs, other bug fixes.
"I said, 'Wow,' " recalled Muglia, president of Microsoft's Servers and Tools business. "It was really at that moment I got it; I got what cloud computing was all about. What he was asking for was for me to deliver IT as a service."
Monday, Microsoft came up with an answer for the CIO: a new product that would also encourage companies to take a step into cloud computing: the Azure appliance. "
Yes, when an customer says, "We never want another update from Microsoft again", clearly he not talking about the fragile OS and Office products. No, he must be instead asking for A BRAND NEW, UNTESTED SET OF MISSION CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE THAT'S RUN COMPLETELY OUT OF HIS CONTROL.
Clearly, Bob Muglia has what it takes to run Ballmer's company.
>> All lies. The user feedback on the ribbon is positive. Enterprises have complained because they think they need to retrain their users. But the people using the product love it.
Depends on who you ask. I've seen quite a bit of very negative feedback.
As someone that left Microsoft last summer, this was rather interesting to read and go "Yup, that was there".
"Ten signs you work in a fear-based workplace"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38206989
How ironic to be on a Microsoft semi-owned website.
RE: Anonymous said...
What happens if you refuse to sign your review?
Nothing happens, your manager will sign your review regardless.
If you're not happy with it, you need to contact HR (in writing) and state that you want to follow up with a rebuttal.
"
All lies. The user feedback on the ribbon is positive. Enterprises have complained because they think they need to retrain their users. But the people using the product love it."
Of all the BS I've heard on this blog -- and there's been a ton on both sides -- this is among the most heinous. NOBODY loves the ribbon other than the people who designed it.
I've talked about Office with hundreds of different types of users over the years and I have yet to hear a single person exclaim their love for the ribbon -- comments range from "what the hell were you thinking" to "I still can't find anything."
"Calibrations in Windows happen at least twice per year. People that are on track for the bottom
10% are identified. But no final decisions are made. Managers keep a close eye on them for the next few months, and then they make a decision. You didn't get a warning that you were getting
a 10% in September. You *and others in your group* got fired. That has nothing to do with calibrations."
Don't make blanket statements -- calibrations happen differently everywhere they're done in the company. First-level calibration meetings happen at the lead level and it's often the Wild West -- and each management level you go up from there things become less personal and more arbitrary because people become numbers and not humans.
I've been in a number of calibration meetings for Feb where we've identified a 10% employee, and in the minds of managers it was a done-deal that this person was at the bottom of the stack for September no matter what they did -- and they received the message in Feb that they were on the way out. This is NOT the spirit of the system but it's quite common and exemplifies how the corporate machine breaks down at scale.
People get crushed under the weight of Microsoft's churning cogs *all the time*, because once the machine is set in motion it's incredibly difficult to reverse course.
Good for you for attempting to run the machine the way it was originally intended -- but don't make the mistake of assuming that your tiny pocket is the norm and not the exception. I've seen plenty of good people chewed-up and spit-out in many different parts of the company.
What happens if you refuse to sign your review?
Has anyone been in this position?
I assume that nothing good comes of such a refusal, but I don't know that that would amount to.
If there is something on your review that makes you not want to sign it, nothing good is already happening.
If you don't sign it, it just means Microsoft doesn't have your signature on a document that would be used against you if you sue Microsoft or file an EEOC complaint.
Besides not signing it, you can also write a rebuttal to your review. Who knows if they actually file it with the reviews in your employee file.
If they don't value the work you do, it is much easier to leave and work for a competitor than fight what they are doing.
Refuse to sign your review, and you're right, life becomes unpleasant. Six years of dev down the toilet. Manager & skip booted five months later. Reconnected w/team outside and it's a blast.
After all, they already paid for it. Once Google manages to get Chrome OS pre-installed on hardware systems, the game will change.
As if anything resembling Chrome would have come out of the 'Open Source Community'.
Nobody in OSS land would have ever chosen to build an 'embedded/curated' system like iOS and forgo functionality like your beloved bash shell.
Nobody in OSS land would have said, "X is shit. glibc? old crufty shit. GCC? ancient and bloated" and scrapped them in favor of something better.
If chrome succeeds on the desktop it's just a failure of the OSS community to build a system normal people would want to use.
PS: Here's to windows phone 7 on the desktop. :)
Regarding the size of the kernel, is it really too hard to use the Internet and figure it out?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntoskrnl
The posts from fake Steve Ballmer aren't the least bit amusing. Please start CRF'ing this crap.
(Even fake Steve Ballmer can't keep up with fake Steve Jobs)
"What happens if you refuse to sign your review?
Has anyone been in this position?
I assume that nothing good comes of such a refusal, but I don't know that that would amount to."
Many people have been in this position. You are correct that nothing good comes of it. In fact, it makes things worse.
First, your manager, his or her manager, and probably your HR generalist will simply pressure you to sign it to "get off of the VPs radar". At this point, you are now even a more visible squeaky wheel and many managers will take it personally and retaliate in some fashion. However, before the retaliation happens, either the manager or HR will sign off for you with the review tool indicating "employee refused to sign". I have never seen this appear in an employees history, but I have to believe it is there, or, at least a potential new hiring manager will be called by HR with this information.
Simply put: There's a MS-Manager pointed at your career. He is the most gawd-aweful yet powerful "piece of work" made. In all your anger, you are forgetting who gets to decide your future in the company. So you have to ask yourself "do you feel lucky?" Do you NOT want to sign? Punk? Well, do you?
You can put a rebuttal of your review in your review or with it. HR will help you with that, but it is a mixed bag, again, which can have undesired and unexpected consequences later on if your manager is a well-liked bureaucrat and it will be your word versus theirs; and you lose.
Did anybody hear this scathing report on NPR on Tuesday morning?
Once upon a time people would go into a frienzied panic on the news that MSFT was about to enter their market. Now? Not so much anymore.
Wrong, I don't work at IDC.
Things cross the line when managers are being called psychopaths, or people are talking about their past work experience as waiters or some such thing.
Those sorts of attacks are obviously posted by people with an axe to grind. They do not belong here
If you had just bothered to read the profile of people mentioned you would have realized that they acknowledge working in Hotels
http://in.linkedin.com/pub/sameer-nagi/8/183/37
"... and we'll start having Partner Checkout Clerk Managers with a single direct Principle Checkout Clerk Engineer reporting to them... and so on."
Laughed so hard, thank you!
On the topic of iPhone/Android/Windows Phone 7, the main difference seems to me to be that the former two "get the user". The latter (currently) expects the user to "get it". Artsy design, yet extremely illogical and as all art - impractical. And it is not just the phone really. When the ribbon was first introduced in Office, it took me months to relearn all the features (and their location) which I was used to. It effectively rendered a functionally rich application such as Word into Notepad.
I know I am hoping for the impossible, but maybe before shipping WP7 the powers to be will drop the lately prevalent MS "our way or the highway" attitude and will re-evaluate it whether it is the "user's way".
Worked for MS for about 7 years, left last year. Happy now!
Just regret that ever worked for MS at all. Should not waste my time.
Recomend to new people: quit as soon as possible. At MS you are a resource, not a human!
It seems that this article describes MSFT to a T.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Ten-Signs-of-a-FearBased-bizwk-1029763761.html?x=0&.v=1
Re: What happens if you refuse to sign your review?
OP here. Thanks to the folks that posted responses. As I thought, not a good move.
Thankfully, its a previous manager that contributed the part I disagree with.
@Anonymous,
"Ask your grandmother to install Linux and see what happens."
Ask your grandmother to install Windows, and see how she goes with that. Then let her go on the Internet without advising her on the multitude of security precautions that are required to plug the innumerable holes in Microsoft's noxious OS. Brag about the low TCO for Windows (perhaps you should skip the bit about where she will be forking out through the nose to have viruses and malware cleaned off her PC). Tell her that it's quite safe to do her banking online, and see how that turns out. Be sure to let her know about Windows rot, and how she'll have to re-install after around 12-18 months (she'll be thrilled). Regale her with tales of how Linux nuts get stuck with the command line (it would be best not to mention regedit).
Above all, if your grandmother should quiz you as to the meaning of the term "disruptive technology", you should adopt a blank expression and declaim that you have never in your life heard of such a thing.
Linux, despite all its improvements, still requires more knowledge to set up than Windows.
Ask your grandmother to install Linux and see what happens.
I wouldn't ask my grandma to install Windows either.
Microsoft has 11 businesses generating over $1B, out of which 8 were generated in the last decade (http://bit.ly/bNb6J7.)
Latest publicly available figures show we make more money (i.e. Net Income) than Apple and Google combined.
Sure, there were high profile missteps and stumbles, but the Borg is still a money-making machine, and ain't in danger of fading to obscurity anytime soon.
Ugh, the WP7 bashers are irritating in the extreme considering every review of the OS and UI I've seen so far seems overwhelmingly positive. For example...
http://www.ben.geek.nz/2010/06/why-youll-want-a-windows-phone/
Sounds to me like whether it'll succeed in the marketplace or not will NOT be a function of poor engineering.
So your idea of 'simple' is 2 million lines of code? Interesting. I am sure individual pieces of the kernel are fine if taken on their own, it is when you start looking at how everything interacts and the various unstated assumptions that are present that things get nasty.
I guess I'm used to bigger projects. What group do you work in where maintaining 2M lines is insurmountable without C++?
The reason windows doesn't attempt to be used in a $30 router is that there is no money there.
I don't think the Linux people ever made an "attempt" to work on $30 hardware. They just didn't make their software bloated.
As for whether or not there's money to be made in embedded OSs, hard to say. Has Microsoft ever tried?
>>Of all the BS I've heard on this blog -- and there's been a ton on both sides -- this is among the most heinous. NOBODY loves the ribbon other than the people who designed it.<<
Really?
I like it, for one. Also, instead of blathering on like that why don't you just google (yes, Google) for Office Ribbon Reviews? Yeah, lots of scathing "it sucks" reviews right? Right? *crickets*
Also, why is it then that Open Office Org is cloning it if it sucks so badly?
One wonders what the motivations for some of these posts are.
What happens if you refuse to sign your review?
Has anyone been in this position?
I assume that nothing good comes of such a refusal, but I don't know that that would amount to.
I wouldn't refuse unless you're prepared to lose your job. You won't be fired on the spot, but your refusal will definitely put a bullseye on you and start a countdown.
Signing your review doesn't mean you agree with it (I think it even says this, I forget). It just means you received feedback and discussed with your manager.
If you dispute your rating or bonus (or lack thereof), you can pretty much forget changing those things. By the time the numbers get to you, they are nearly set in stone.
But if you just disagree with the wording in the review or particular comments, your manager and skip have a lot of flexibility (if they aren't plotting against you).
So you may still have a poor review score, but can probably convince them to reword things or cut some comments entirely. At least the review won't seem so bad if you change groups.
BillG come back. The company you started is going to hell big time.
Ballmer time to retire
Tang Jun, the former VP of Microsoft was caught in a scandal of allegedly forging his phD degree.
There has been a fair amount of Windows Phone 7 bashing over here and some of that is totally legit (e.g. awful branding).
Personally I think there is space for a 4th company in that sphere (besides Android, IPhone and RIMM). But it is fiercely competitive and MS will have to be humble about competing there. It should also try to differentiate itself from others beyond the scrolling rectangles interface. A few differentiating killer apps would definitely help.
An e.g. of a killer app would be an app for accessing the office 2010 webapps. I use them and I know a couple of people who use them. A lightweight app, which will allow users to access their office webapp 2010 account and also do some basic stuff like editing and reading online excel files in a fast manner would be very useful. (BTW Office 2010 Webapps - however basic they might be - ROCK. This is going to really blunt the competitive threat from google office).
And who-ever came up with the 'obtrusive advertisements' on Windows phone - where user will get advertisement even if that particular app is not running - that person should be fired or at least serverly reprimanded. We need to be more humble and not more arrogant. This "feature" if incorporated will ensure the death of WP7. The smartphone battle is also to a great extent battle for hearts and minds of people, and Apple leads that space by a huge margin. Obtrusive advertisement is probably one of the worst thing you can do in process of winning the hearts and minds.
Also a request to all bloggers here - I assume most of us are current of ex employees. Many of us still have a substantial stake in msft shares due to espp buys. It would help if everyone gives a constructive suggestion on how to improve any specific product, rather than just vent out their anger.
Ask your grandmother to install Linux and see what happens.
I don't know about granny, but you obviously haven't done it in a while. Do yourself a favor and get a copy of Ubuntu and install in a VM. Installer is automated, not much different to Windows setup really. Comes with Open Office, the only thing that is tough is Exchange connectivity, but that would not bother dear old Gran. There's even a component updating tool, but without the Windows Genuine Advantage crap. :)
So setup-wise you are obviously clueless. Where Linux does have issues is the desktop looking and behaving differently to Windows, but most people could get round that ... if they wanted to. But why would they want to? They buy a new PC and Windows is on it. Thus it has been, and thus it shall be.
>Simply put: There's a MS-Manager pointed at your career. He is the most gawd-aweful yet powerful "piece of work" made.
Yes, great advice on this post. This is the problem with Microsoft - you can't escape a bad manager by moving groups. The back channel is deep and wide. You will be back stabbed by a politically savvy manager. This is why Microsoft's dysfunction will never be repaired by insiders and insider driven processes.
Microsoft Says 12th Alleged Russian Spy Was Employee
July 14 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. said the 12th alleged member of a Russian spy ring operating in the U.S. was an employee at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters.
The man, a Russian citizen in his early 20s named Alexey Karetnikov, worked for Microsoft as a software tester for about nine months, a spokeswoman for Microsoft in Moscow, who declined to be identified in line with company rules, said by e-mail today.
Too soon?
What happens if WP7's ad push technology called "Toast" has toasty ads popping in people's pants while they're busy doing something else and they don't like it.
Toast.
Microsoft exec mocks iPhone 4, dubs it Apple's Vista
"It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I'm okay with that," said Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, in a keynote speech at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), which runs through Thursday in Washington, D.C.
Earlier in his talk, Turner poked fun at the reception problems that have dogged Apple's iPhone 4 since its June 24 launch. "One of the things I want to make sure you know today is that you're going to be able to use a Windows Phone 7 and not have to worry about how you're holding it to make a phone call," Turner said, referring to the Microsoft mobile operating system set to debut on smartphones this fall.
Besides mocking Apple's iPhone, Turner also touted Windows Phone 7, now slated to reach retail in the U.S. this November on a number of smartphone models.
The iPhone's position isn't unassailable, Turner argued. "We're back in the game," he said. "And this game is not over."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38206989
Almost everything is aligned with Microsoft culture.
Such negativity!
All of you should resign, Microsoft would be so much better off for it!
Kevin Turner – Apple iPhone4 - “Their Vista...”
I find this tragic.
The COO of Microsoft, Kevin Turner publicly bagging on a competitor. To make it even worse he uses an example from Microsoft’s past – Vista.
After Microsft’s hubris of the 90's and the current challenges surrounding Windows Phone, this just strikes me as very immature and embarrassing.
“"It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I'm okay with that," said Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, in a keynote speech at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), which runs through Thursday in Washington, D.C.”
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179164/Microsoft_exec_mocks_iPhone_4_dubs_it_Apple_s_Vista
Dear Kevin Turner
Regarding your "Apple's Vista" comment - Please shut the fuck up and stop embarrassing us.
Thanks,
Microsoft Employees
I've looked around but have not found something like this - but how cool would it be to have a "rate your Microsoft employee" website - something like the www.ratemyteachers.com? I can think of a few folks - good and bad - that would be deserving.
Be pleased if anyone finds a resource like this dedicated to MSFT if they can post the link. The source code is available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/apunkateacher/ but I have neither the time nor the skill to run something like that up myself.
He is a Prada wearing visionary alright and he has surrounded himself with similar visionaries.
Dude, even a monkey could have come up with the visions of Pratley. You can get a parrot to read the tea leaves and do just as well copying others ideas.
Can I hear it for BRIAN KEVIN TURNER
So, MSFT not only hired a Russian spy but also hired someone "ineffective and lacking in high-technology capabilities."
Where does the madness end?
Russian agent had job at Microsoft
By Joseph Menn in San Francisco
A 12th Russian spy acting inside the US worked at Microsoft before his arrest and deportation, suggesting that he and the other Kremlin agents apprehended in the country were seeking inside information on technology as well as personal contacts.
Before Alexey Karetnikov, 23, was picked up for immigration law violations on June 28 he had tested codes at the world’s biggest software company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft confirmed on Wednesday.
Karetnikov, who was deported on Tuesday, had only been in the junior-level job nine months, and like other spies arrested at the same time apparently collected nothing that would damage US security.
“We’ve uncovered no evidence that he possessed, retained or passed on any sensitive or classified information” said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the justice department.
Members of the spy ring have been portrayed in the media as ineffective and lacking in high-technology capabilities and objectives.
But Mr Karetnikov’s position, and those of the other 11, suggest that the operation deployed software to capture secrets and sought access to programmes that could have given Russia significant leverage in computerised espionage.
Mr Karetnikov might have been looking for advance word of vulnerabilities in Windows or other Microsoft programmes, which would help agents hacking into computers running that code, according to Dave Aitel, formerly of the National Security Agency and now a private researcher.
So KT calls the iPhone 4 the "Vista" of Apple.
What. A. Jerk.
I am embarassed for all of us.
So Keven Turner is doing cartwheels again, now snickering at iPhone antenna. How many KIN you sold there boy?
This cart wheelin walmart boy really belongs in a circus. Oh wait.. the SLT is a bunch of circus rejects. So he's where he belongs!
Has anyone been in this position?
I assume that nothing good comes of such a refusal, but I don't know that that would amount to.
Nothing good usually comes of it, and yeah, it does put you in the troublemaker pile, so it's generally a worse than neutral activity.
However, as with all political maneuvers, it is a crap shoot with a potential payoff. Months ago someone posted here that they did just that and their review score ended up being corrected.
There are a lot of psychopathic managers at Microsoft, and waiters becoming GMs at Microsoft is important to know.
I know of a former cook who became a lead managing among others a guy with 30+ years of experience after just 2 years at MS, one year out of school where he had studied for his second career, computing. And no, the geezer wasn't dried up, but itching for more challenge than the lead would provide or allow him to pursue on his own as part of his work contribution. And yes, there was a manager with 20 years experience on the same team that the geezer could have been assigned to, but he wasn't.
That kind of scenario illustrates what a crock the MS management structure can be. A guy 2 years out of school was promoted to management because someone thought he was a nice guy (definitely is), a non-threatening status quo type, and had "assembly line" experience due to his time in a high volume food prep kitchen, rather than much expertise in what the team did. And he's directing the work of an expert while not taking any interest in the expert's input?
It's not just upper and middle-management ranks where those things happen. It's percolating down to the lead level and limiting the contributions of ICs who want to use their expertise.
The making of an EPIC FAIL
Thank you, thank you. I needed a late-night laugh that provided it.
While I don't necessarily agree with the mocking of the Azure appliance idea, I also don't feel it's the Holy Grail some are claiming it is. Been around long enough to laugh at silver bullets as they whiz by and, inevitably, eventually vanish into the distance.
Why does Microsoft always find a way to be in the negative limelight
1. Last week it was Kin
2. This week the honor goes to Microsoft hiring a spy and WalMarTurner calling Apple IPhone4 a Vista.
Dude, stop embarassing us. We have to live amongst, you know people
3. Next week after earnings report, I am sure Monkey boy will say something stupid
KT compares iPhone4 to Vista... I'm pretty sure he has never owned or used an iPhone or Vista. obviously, he is clueless.
Also, instead of blathering on like that why don't you just google (yes, Google) for Office Ribbon Reviews? Yeah, lots of scathing "it sucks" reviews right? Right?
Uh, hello, did you even try this?
The first result is a Computerworld review that is lukewarm on the ribbon. One of the only actual positive things it has to say is that it's "more colorful."
The next result is a cnet review that basically lists the ribbon as one of Office 2007's only disadvantages.
Also interesting is that Office 2007 has a 2-star user review average on that site. The first 20 or so reviews are users complaining bitterly about the ribbon. I stopped reading after that.
Really, dude, if you're going to tell people to google something to prove your point, you should probably be sure about what comes up.
I don't have as much problem with Turner's statement which in itself is pretty lame citing iPhone as "Apple's Vista" as much as I have issue with single mindedly focusing on Apple. This is the same problem we had with Xbox where the focus was on Sony whereas it was Nintendo eating our lunch. I would revise Turner's statement to basically say "Android is Google's Windows 95". I feel Google is going to be tougher to beat here given the momentum they have.
"So, MSFT not only hired a Russian spy but also hired someone "ineffective and lacking in high-technology capabilities."
Where does the madness end? "
They were long-term moles. The idea was probably that this guy work his way up the ladder in Microsoft and/or other IT companies for a decade or more. (Real spies don't break in and steal plans. They convince a disgruntled native to do it. A turncoat like Kim Philby or Aldrich Ames is worth far more than a single document swiped Mission: Impossible style.)
But: are we sure Microsoft's top executives don't already include a foreign mole saboteur? How could we tell?
If Windows had the UX of Linux, people would stop using it--overnight. It is a terrible mess. Inconsistency, poor design choices, bizarre jargon and meaningless program names everywhere as well as truly crappy looking GUIs.
Linux ain't going anywhere on the desktop as long as the platform remains controlled by bickering nerds. And no it isn't remotely ready for general users.
Quick, what happens when a general user buys a new phone and realizes that there is no software available to sync or do much of anything with it. What happens when no one they know has one of these things so there's no one in real life to ask a question? What happens when the manufacturer of a peripheral says "sorry not supported"? Now multiply that experience by 1000.
WELL SEE GRANDMA JUST NEEDS TO START UP AN EMULATOR/DUAL BOOT TO WINDOWS/TAKE HER MACBOOK AND
Shut up. You're a troll now get lost.
So setup-wise you are obviously clueless. Where Linux does have issues is the desktop looking and behaving differently to Windows, but most people could get round that ... if they wanted to. But why would they want to? They buy a new PC and Windows is on it. Thus it has been, and thus it shall be.
Your "clueless" comment is exactly the kind of comment seen on Linux support forums.
Linux customer support brought to you by Kelso from That 70's Show.
"Burn."
Thanks for making my point.
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