tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post7446853716301966145..comments2024-03-18T12:52:48.117-07:00Comments on Mini-Microsoft: Microsoft Layoff 2009 Completes Last Milestone and Ships!Who da'Punkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205453956191063442noreply@blogger.comBlogger911125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-44424562243962445992010-07-15T03:40:47.111-07:002010-07-15T03:40:47.111-07:00[url=http://www.77net.net/]nike tn [/url][url=http://www.77net.net/]nike tn [/url]Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-1008630443262873092010-02-19T07:12:08.444-08:002010-02-19T07:12:08.444-08:00Was there a layoff thid February '10?Was there a layoff thid February '10?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-48136159722307471782010-02-19T07:11:20.322-08:002010-02-19T07:11:20.322-08:00@Re VLSC Crap
See what people are going to do. C...@Re VLSC Crap<br /><br />See what people are going to do. Can someone write to KT and Ballmer?<br /><br />re: So how's your eOpen/VLSC/MVLS experience? <br />Tuesday, February 16, 2010 4:32 PM by Justin <br /><br />How soon before a class action lawsuit beings how Microsoft has our money and we have no product going on 40+ days now??Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-19978657517549330772010-02-16T10:10:01.343-08:002010-02-16T10:10:01.343-08:00Re VLSC Crap
Who was nominated the gold star awar...<i>Re VLSC Crap<br /><br />Who was nominated the gold star award? We need to send this to the leadership team Kevin and Ballmer<br /><br />Sal Mosca nominated by Rick Stover</i><br /><br />Those two guys are emblematic of the lowering of hiring standards that was the hallmark of Microsoft in the boom from 1995 - 2000. They are tools who would never cut it in the product group and whose primary skills are "managing up", Powerpoint, Excel, and Scorecards. Stover is very good at putting a positive spin on things though...I can just picture him shrugging his shoulders at the failure of VLSC and justifying a gold star for someone who helped with damage control and fallout management.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-17717433163636428912010-02-16T10:06:51.613-08:002010-02-16T10:06:51.613-08:00@Re VLSC Crap
Microsoft, shame on you...rather th...@Re VLSC Crap<br /><br />Microsoft, shame on you...rather than learning something out of VLSC, you are nominating people for GOLD Star awards.<br /><br />MS should fire all the people first who worked on VLSC top to bottom. We really got all the bad name in the market and most of our VLSC customers must be completely frustrated by now.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-13410886753794458502010-02-11T21:22:54.617-08:002010-02-11T21:22:54.617-08:00Re VLSC Crap
Who was nominated the gold star awar...Re VLSC Crap<br /><br />Who was nominated the gold star award? We need to send this to the leadership team Kevin and Ballmer<br /><br />Sal Mosca nominated by Rick StoverAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-28786280609821855362010-02-11T08:24:58.324-08:002010-02-11T08:24:58.324-08:00VLSC Crap
Who was nominated the gold star award? ...VLSC Crap<br /><br />Who was nominated the gold star award? We need to send this to the leadership team Kevin and Ballmer<br /><br /># re: So how's your eOpen/VLSC/MVLS experience? <br />Tuesday, February 09, 2010 1:09 PM by MRS <br /><br />Glad there are others out there, I kind of felt like I was the only one (as MS support led me to believe). It's been 7 weeks since I've first contacted MVLS support; the past 4 years of agreements are totally gone. I'm unable to add any new agreements. I'm the admin and there is only one live ID tied to our account. The last rep asked me to send screenshots and then I was supposed to contacted by a senior support member within 24 hours. It's been 5 days since that call and e-mail.<br /><br />Talk about brutal...please roll back this useless upgrade (not that the other site was any better, but at least it worked and was accurate)!!!<br /><br /># re: So how's your eOpen/VLSC/MVLS experience? <br />Tuesday, February 09, 2010 2:13 PM by Eric Ligman <br /><br />If you are still having issues and wish to submit them for me to look at, please submit the information requested on my Blog post at: http://bit.ly/4EiLF6<br /><br />Thank you,<br /><br />Eric Ligman<br /><br /># re: So how's your eOpen/VLSC/MVLS experience? <br />Wednesday, February 10, 2010 7:22 AM by Chris <br /><br />Its an abortion. Try to view a product key and you get errors. Navigation is a disaster. The information displayed is nonsensical. <br /><br />It is the Vista of license management. <br /><br />Nice work Microsoft.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-53088690800788228812010-02-07T21:15:23.679-08:002010-02-07T21:15:23.679-08:00Re VLSC Crap
The entire team of Dev,Test ,Solution...Re VLSC Crap<br />The entire team of Dev,Test ,Solution Managers ,Release Managers,Support should be fired for this fiasco.<br />But we know that many of them will be awarded with GOLD STAR for creating and then trying to resolve the issue<br /><br />Very true<br />Just heard that Principal engineer LPO has been nominated for Gold Star for solving VLSC problemAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-85262625040455730612010-02-03T06:09:25.133-08:002010-02-03T06:09:25.133-08:00Don't be insulting President Chavez by compari...Don't be insulting President Chavez by comparing him to Balmer.<br /><br />Chavez is popularly elected by the voters. Also, it could be much worse. Look at Yahoo with Terry Semel a couple years ago. That guy took some $500M from Yahoo and destroy it in the process.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-73057728746442919002010-01-31T00:34:19.843-08:002010-01-31T00:34:19.843-08:00>> That would be CMU Mach, rather than BSD. ...>> That would be CMU Mach, rather than BSD. <br />>> BSD was monolithic and Mach went to a <br />>> microkernel architecture<br /><br />It's actually both. It's a modified Mach microkernel (even on the iPhone and iPod touch, BTW), with BSD userland on top.<br /><br />Funny thing is, Mach was originally designed and developed by Rick Rashid, who now runs MSR. It will be quite ironic if Mach beats NT into the ground within the next 5 years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-47167272317220048492010-01-29T13:04:33.060-08:002010-01-29T13:04:33.060-08:00H1B discussion should not be off limits here. Th...H1B discussion should not be off limits here. The issue people have with employing any H1Bs when there are educated, experienced US citizens available and/or being laid off from companies who then hire H1Bs is this: The purpose of this visa program is bring in expertise and education that is NOT AVAILABLE within the population of US citizens and other legally work-eligible permanent residents. If there are US workers available, H1Bs are NOT to be requested or used. <br /><br />The H1B is a visa that provides temporary work status, with a beginning and an end, and it is to be requested by employers ONLY when they cannot obtain the expertise needed from US citizens and legal residents authorized to work in the US. There is a limit to how many H1B work visas can be granted each year (US gov website says 65,000 for 2010, with some field exceptions). <br /><br />It just plain looks bad when companies like Microsoft bring in more people through this visa process, while not employing the educated, expert citizens and legal work-eligible permanent residents (green card).<br /><br /><br />From the US Citizens and Immigration Services website: "The H-1B visa program is used by some U.S.employers to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in a specialized field and a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. Typical H-1B occupations include architects, engineers, computer programmers, accountants, doctors and college professors."<br /><br />H1B is for a "specialty occupation", with specific educational requirements defined at: www.uscis.gov as:<br /><br />AND HERE IS THE BIGGEST POINT: You cannot use an H1B if there is a qualified US Citizen or permanent resident available. <br />A couple more things from the US Gov website:<br /><br />Employer of an H1B must attest (as in promise, vow, and swear) that:<br /><br />It has taken good faith steps to recruit U.S. workers using industry-wide standards and offering compensation that is at least as great as those offered to the H-1B nonimmigrant;<br /><br />It has offered the job to any U.S. worker who applies and is equally or better qualified for the job that is intended for the H-1B nonimmigrant; <br /><br />It has not “displaced” any U.S. worker employed within the period beginning 90 days prior to the filing of the H-1B petition and ending 90 days after its filing. A U.S. worker is displaced if the worker is laid off from a job that is essentially the equivalent of the job for which an H-1B nonimmigrant is sought; and <br />It will not place an H-1B worker to work for another employer unless it has inquired whether the other employer has displaced or will displace a U.S. worker within 90 days before or after the placement of the H-1B worker.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-46577980402326340702010-01-29T08:03:04.971-08:002010-01-29T08:03:04.971-08:00"I may be over-optimistic, but the big pictur..."I may be over-optimistic, but the big picture is that we have a huge patent portfolio, are actively competing in 5+ fields, and have a whole bunch of talented folks (most I've met, probably I'm lucky)."<br /><br />"No, that's the small picture. The big picture is that MS is adrift, and still hasn't acknowledged that its macro business strategies of the last ten years have failed. Massive R&D spending has resulted in a large patent portfolio, but few innovative products and zero successful new businesses. "<br /><br /><br />The Xbox entrance was quite successful. It took on Sony and Nintendo nicely. That's a clear innovation that requires vision and to a degree, patience. <br /><br />Azure will be similar I feel. SQL Server has always been a great product, nicely competing against IBM and Oracle. <br /><br />Windows and Office are in "keep steady mode". They support the many failing projects (and the few like the above that succeed). It's the typical S-curve, what's new?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-17024418439419619822010-01-29T00:24:45.109-08:002010-01-29T00:24:45.109-08:00Apple is working off the Darwin work Jobs did on t...<i>Apple is working off the Darwin work Jobs did on top of BSD in the ancient days when he founded NeXT.</i><br /><br />That would be CMU Mach, rather than BSD. BSD was monolithic and Mach went to a microkernel architecture.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-56134065569844939712010-01-28T22:20:33.924-08:002010-01-28T22:20:33.924-08:00Regarding the small number of people granted inter...Regarding the small number of people granted internal search in the 1400 and where I get my approx. number of 100: HR said "very, very few people were given internal search" in my meeting with them, and later on, HR said that there were 10 people working with those who had internal search, and each had about 10 people in their set. <br /><br />A number of people I talked with later on at the outplacement center - they had their notice on 1/22, exited the building after turning in all their hardware and losing intranet access on end of afternoon 1/23, got their 60 days of WARN notice pay, their severance a bit later, and never heard another thing from their former pals and managers. No internal search. They could apply like any new person, but no opp to do so from inside during the 60 days. Did talk to two guys who actually found something during their internal search, then got canned again. <br /><br />Being let go during this past year, whether you call it RIF, layoff, or kicked to the curb - there's not a lot of chance of a new opportunity in Microsoft. How many of you have rehired someone who was laid off from the company in the last year? I bet very few. It is what it is.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-67086221847693777342010-01-28T16:24:59.884-08:002010-01-28T16:24:59.884-08:00This has nothing to do with GUI vs CLI or whatever...<i>This has nothing to do with GUI vs CLI or whatever crap you're rambling about.</i><br /><br />The fact is that there's a tremendous amount of Unix (POSIX) software out there, mostly command line stuff, that's incredibly useful and valuable and Microsoft is more or less cut off from it since running POSIX stuff on NT is difficulty and kludgy.<br /><br />If you get the Linux kernel running on a piece of hardware (e.g., a new cell phone), then you can immediately do almost anything with it right out of the box. If you get the NT kernel running, then what do you have? Access to a handful of million-year-old DOS commands? No wonder Apple, Google, and Palm can turn around new mobile environments in a year or two while Microsoft can barely get Windows to run on netbooks.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-6064711811926457162010-01-28T08:06:18.175-08:002010-01-28T08:06:18.175-08:00If it is true that Winmo will go to Sinofsky then ...<i>If it is true that Winmo will go to Sinofsky then you can shut that business down. Sinofsky is great at running a monopoly type of business that you inherit. He is a genius at running a large ship, taking few risks, and lowering the costs. That is honestly not an easy thing.<br /><br />But innovation? Look at office they only did web support after he left. What is really new in Win7 other than cleaning up from Vista. Windows live he has had the UI team for almost 4 years and I have seen nothing new really from those 1,000 people. He had search for one year and did nothing. I worked in search at that time and all he talked about was titles, feature teams, standards, blah, blah. When you have <15% share all of that means very little.</i><br /><br />Thank you. I thought it was just me.<br /><br /><i>Windows live should be given to OSD and Satya who can innovate.</i><br /><br />Satya? Really? Gonna have to disagree with you on that one.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-24605856859299901372010-01-27T23:33:57.736-08:002010-01-27T23:33:57.736-08:00But, what is the model company we're looking u...But, what is the model company we're looking up too, seriously? Apple? ...<br />Google? ...<br />Oracle?...<br />IBM?... <br />SAP?...<br />Adobe?...<br /><br />How about: An engineering company with credible technical and business leadership. Credible technical leaders understand the importance of credible business leadership, and vice versa. Both are needed. <br /><br />Since we apparently no longer have credible technical leadership and vision, we don't have credible business leadership either.<br /><br />What we do have (and have had)is a bunch of great game players spending vast sums of money:<br /><br /> - Ill-conceived new projects that in almost all cases have failed<br /><br /> - Acquisitions that have been squandered<br /><br /> - Second-rate "me too" ventures that have fizzled out without even denting the products they emulated<br /><br />The company is seriously ready for the BOD to bring on that Jack Welch or Lou Gerstner moment, before we get to the point where even the now-elderly cash cows can no longer be maintained.<br /><br />Now what happened to SaaS? Salesforce.com have made a success of it, it seems...<br /><br />Interestingly, Salesforce now has engineering operations right here in Seattle. They know that now is a great time to extract some of the talent from Microsoft and actually do something useful with it. (No, I don't work there).<br /><br />OK, I'm done now.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-80250782515094396022010-01-27T23:09:28.898-08:002010-01-27T23:09:28.898-08:00Apple is now a $50 billion run-rate company, is gr...<i>Apple is now a $50 billion run-rate company, is growing faster than us, is better positioned than us, has fewer employees than us, spends way less on R&D than us, and has more cash. Within a year they will probably be larger than us in revenue and more valuable. All this while starting from near death ten years ago, while we were still dominant.<br /><br />Ballmer, please just quit.</i><br /><br />Add in that Google has achieved nearly all of the same by creating a completely disruptive business model and starting from *scratch* a little over ten years ago, and that pretty much sums things up.<br /><br />That both of these strong competitors are targeting different ends of the "80/20" of the MSFT biz is sobering indeed. If there is no significant change in SLT, expect MSFT share to shrink to a "middle 60". The top 20% of general computing devices will be Apple and the bottom 20 will be Chrome/Chromium/Android. The middle 60 will be Windows. In the mobile space (which as time goes on will show growth while the traditional space stagnates) we are now likely looking at a basically Android/iPhone world split probably 80/20.<br /><br />The fact is that there are MANY ways MSFT can *thrive* in even the worst case platform scenarios, but Ballmer seems to be aware of NONE of them. His *only* sweet spot seems to be keeping "full steam ahead" on a standing monopoly. NOT good.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-2121501800124687662010-01-27T23:04:23.738-08:002010-01-27T23:04:23.738-08:00What brilliant mind came up with the concept of ha...<i>What brilliant mind came up with the concept of having a GUI that supports CLI rather than vice versa? Maybe it was my dear and frequent correspondent from MSR...</i><br /><br />Is this a serious comment? Dave Cutler is the father of NT and the "idiot" that you're alluding to.<br /><br />Really... get a clue man. You need to drop your opinion of how smart you are down by a few notches and try to listen and learn more.<br /><br />The basic point is right - that delivering an entire OS from scratch is no longer relevant. And this is the real threat to MSFT. That Google or Palm (or anyone) can easily coopt the OSS movement and leverage it for commercial gain by starting with the solid Linux base. This was ALWAYS the real threat of OSS.<br /><br />Apple is working off the Darwin work Jobs did on top of BSD in the ancient days when he founded NeXT.<br /><br />The main theme is that in both cases you have a solid and portable *NIX core with flexible API support on top being leveraged across multiple devices with a low cost of implementation and support and a short time to market.<br /><br />This has nothing to do with GUI vs CLI or whatever crap you're rambling about.<br /><br />NT has a solid core and Cutler's original vision was to make it portable. Cutler has more knowledge about OS internals in the head of his man parts than you have in the one on your shoulders.<br /><br />The problem isnt NT, the problem is SB. MSFT could have *long ago* done the minwin work and made NT more modular and easily adaptable and portable. If they had, today they'd be enjoying the benefits of being able to quickly move a "free" and stable core around to different form factors the way everyone else can thanks to *NIX.<br /><br />Instead, time was wasted on creating parallel fiefdoms like CE, the XB OS, etc. When monopoly money is rolling in and the company is a collection of internally facing, waring, fiefdoms, it is easy to make bad decisions. The company should have been broken up. It would have, ironically, been FAR better for MSFT and for the Windows platform.<br /><br />Today there are a lot of bright spots, but the window of opportunity is closing and there is the added complexity of the massive loss of mindshare and damage to the brand. Plus, MSFT *still* cant get out of its own way and is *still* afraid to cannibalize a monopoly that is slowly dying anyway.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-12941018889395965212010-01-27T19:55:42.815-08:002010-01-27T19:55:42.815-08:00I'm all excited that Apple's tablet merely...I'm all excited that Apple's tablet merely appears to be pretty cool and not life changing. <br /><br />Kind of a sad commentary that not being embarrassed again about MSs execution is dictated by competitors.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-18168101014642966202010-01-27T09:49:42.685-08:002010-01-27T09:49:42.685-08:00"I may be over-optimistic, but the big pictur..."I may be over-optimistic, but the big picture is that we have a huge patent portfolio, are actively competing in 5+ fields, and have a whole bunch of talented folks (most I've met, probably I'm lucky)."<br /><br />No, that's the small picture. The big picture is that MS is adrift, and still hasn't acknowledged that its macro business strategies of the last ten years have failed. Massive R&D spending has resulted in a large patent portfolio, but few innovative products and zero successful new businesses. Meanwhile others have spent a fraction of that and created profitable new segments that now rival Windows in size. The company is competing in 5+ fields and losing share or money in all of them. And while the company still has a lot of talented people, it has repeatedly failed to take advantage of them either through world class innovation or execution. One of capitalism's most powerful forces is creative destruction, the process by which entrepreneurs create new value through innovation even as they destroy established companies. MS is slowly being destroyed and has been for at least five years. And the worst part about that is most of it was self-inflicted.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-16517980895226200632010-01-27T06:51:50.668-08:002010-01-27T06:51:50.668-08:00Interesting comparison between AAPL and MSFT:
Qua...Interesting comparison between AAPL and MSFT:<br /><br />Quarterly rev growth<br />AAPL +25%, MSFT -14.2%<br /><br />Quarterly earnings growth<br />AAPl +46%, MSFT -18.3<br /><br />While a rising tide lifts all boats, MSFT stock price has increased 67% while APPL is up 127%. What is surprising is that a lot of AAPL's growth is out of Asia aka emerging markets.<br /><br />Sure looks like all that R&D spending by Microsoft has not resulted in anything except an accelerating decline. Ballmer's trash talking/patronizing of competitors is not helping either.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-74479138040857145762010-01-27T05:30:28.906-08:002010-01-27T05:30:28.906-08:00Free food is very cool, going home at a reasonable...<i>Free food is very cool, going home at a reasonable time is cooler for me though.</i><br /><br />I never recall being able to go home at a reasonable time -- until Jan. 22, 2009. Now I understand: Working my ass off cost me my job. Glad you slackoffs are still riding high.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-21650122031395867282010-01-27T03:08:15.760-08:002010-01-27T03:08:15.760-08:00Ballmer compared Firefox to an OS, secretly taking...Ballmer compared Firefox to an OS, secretly taking over your computer, when he gave his keynote in Sydney, Australia in '08.<br /><br />How can this guy lead MSFT?! FF has no filesystem or kernel! Isn't the Windows version of Firefox (and Chrome) preventing people from fleeing Windows?! Why bash free software that's helping keep the public on your platform?!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7555958.post-17959335277274689702010-01-27T01:21:14.428-08:002010-01-27T01:21:14.428-08:00Who are the role models? I struggle with this too....<i>Who are the role models? I struggle with this too.</i><br /><br />That's a very personal question. For me, I want people to rave about my product to each other. I want to make people happy and make their lives better and that's worth a certain amount of salary, benefits, etc. Right now, if you work for Apple, or, to a lesser extent, Google, you can walk into any coffee shop, restaurant, or bar in the WORLD and find a dozen people talking about how great your company's products are. That must be amazing.<br /><br />People mostly complain about Microsoft's products, or talk about how they're somewhat better than other Microsoft products (i.e., Win7 vs. Vista). If you have the skill and talent and experience to work for any company, why would you accept that kind of morale failure?<br /><br />Basically, if my work experience is going to be s*** either way, with stack ranks and budget cuts and whatnot, I would rather be working for Apple or Google vs. Microsoft, Oracle, etc.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com