Microsoft: reorg, reshuffle, consolidation?

Thank goodness, I felt like we've at least been thrown a bone. Microsoft certainly needed a reorg - something like a good, vigorous shaking of one of those snow-globes. Now, how it's all going to play remains to be seen. But I hope that as part of the good shaking that some of the cruft breaks off and gets swept out and some of the cream rises to the top.

(Believe me, that's a much better metaphor than the enema one I initially started with late last night based off of the initial reorg disclosures in the comments here.)

And Jim, on your slow, shuffle out, don't let the door knob hit you where the dog should 'ave bit you (loud electric guitar chord with some wow-wow). Jim's continued participation in managing Vista just really doesn't make sense to me but I guess it's some kind of face-saving move vs. a public chewing out based on what happened with OS formerly known as Longhorn.

My only cynical take on this reorg is that it can be used as a Three Card Monty to break the continuity of accountable and hit a reset button to start the clock ticking all over again. Is it just shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic (or HMS Blackcomb)? It certainly makes me want to shut up and stop typing and just play a wait and see. One comment from last night had a great insight regarding some of the background to the reorg:

And contrary to others on the board - I actually believe that our challenge in leadership is not having too few people who understand technology - in fact I believe we have too many people who have never had to run a business or figure out a P&L or find a new profitable business venture - JimAl? He probably can't even tell if a P&L is upside down! BrianV? I think the world of him in terms of being an engineer, but understanding how to run a business and make money doing it? He's out of his league. KJ, Raikes, Robbie Bach, Orlando, BillG & SteveB are really our only broadly effective business leaders - I believe we need more of these kinds of guys not less. You'll recall, that as much as BillG is technically smart, he is even more "business smart". He invented an entirely new business model (independantly purchased software) and built a huge partner ecosystem to make that model succeed. Steve knows this and that's why we have a new COO from Walmart and why tomorrow's reorg is going to put business leaders running our businesses rather then techies. We need more business savvy people like Bill and Steve, not less.

Regarding Ballmer & Gates' take on the reorg: why does it all have to be forward looking, positive reasons for doing the reorganization? What's wrong with a little bit of backward looking honesty as to why it was best to do a reorganization? Was Windows a mess? Was MBS adrift and in need of a strong Office integration strategy? Were mistakes made? Admit at least there were and are problems and that the reorganization is going to be effective in dealing with those problems and that executive management will be held accountable for making sure that is so.

At a high level, the reorg appears to be musical chairs at our to be very, very well compensated executive level that really don't have a lot of impact on the hard work of designing, implementing, and testing great products. Now's just a fine time for ripping through some of these orgs and unleashing our old-time promoted-up-through-the-ranks Microsofties into our more dubious product groups just to get them back on track or out of here. But right now, I have zero idea how this affects anyone other than those few individuals mentioned in the reorg today. I have hopes, but not much more.

So, I can't look at this reorg too cross-eyed because we've been overdue. It seems subtle, though, and not as sweeping and drastic and as, well, innovative as it could be. But now, wow, you've really got my attention for the Company Meeting this Friday.

I watched the webcast. My first feeling, after it was over, was: You know, if they did something similar to this every other month or so, I don't think I'd feel all that much like posting here. There's a level of disconnect, a gap, between us and leadership that something like the employee webcast helps to close. Some old-timers have been posting comments here and to their own blogs noting all the times they've met with Steve and Bill and how incredibly impressed they are with their smarts and abilities. I'd like to see that more often than to rely on their public facing interviews which seem so disconnected from reality it makes me wonder which company they are working for.

So, at around thirty-nine minutes into the webcast, SteveB talks about the negative press from Business Week and Forbes. Snippets near that:

• "This is a great company. This is a company, though, that can and does and needs to improve. It's a company that has always needed, could and did improve."
• "We shouldn't undersell what we have here."
• "Last week, or last weekend, was not - it wasn't my most fun time of my twenty-five years at Microsoft. But at the same time, what did it say to me? Okay, for the first time in twenty-five years, all of the discussions we've had internally, about how we go be better, now the press wants to kibitz on. That's okay. As long as we do what we do best. We go out, as we keep improving. Just keep improving. Driving harder. And when we look back, a year from now, after this incredible pipeline has come to market [...] we'll be in a very different spot. [...] Do we have a corporate culture problem? No."

BillG's comments were more around the long perspective that we've been underestimated before and Microsoft perseveres and gets back on top. But what's coming to the rescue? The innovative pipeline. Chances to improve what delayed loading up that innovative pipeline and become leaner and efficient? Unknown.

I want to believe.

p.s.: with a small bit of attention (15 minute count-down clock is around 1:17) some offensive and just way off topic comments have tripped my Bozo meter. I will clear those out, over time, just to reduce some of the noise.

Update: blogger seems wonky - trying to publish a second time. Okay, third try a charm?

Microsoft Company Meeting... I'm looking for some dates!

(Whew, I'm worn out and scratched up from a long weekend. As the Mini fifteen-minute clock counts down, the comments are coming in at a much higher rate than usual. Yes, I wish Blogger provided a comments web feed as well. Some of the comments are sprinkled through some of the older posts, too, as folks find something particularly relevant to provide feedback to. If you're just subscribing to the web feed in your RSS reader, you need to actually peek in on the posts to see a lot of the discussion.)

Microsoft's Company Meeting is this Friday at SafeCo Field in Seattle. To some, it's a huge waste of time and money with little benefit. For me, it is a heel-clicking time to re-energize and re-focus on who we are and the great potential we have. I've mentioned that I find the Company Meeting an opportunity to drink the Kool-Aid and submit to the rah-rah brainwashing... and I'm quite sure that there's going to be plenty of opportunity for that.

I printed out Mr. Ballmer's Business Week interview Friday to re-read. By the time I reached the last page, my eyes were swirling hypnotic spirals and, just like that Malkovich plunging into the Malkovich portal scene in Being John Malkovich, the only word I could hear people utter was "innovate." Innovate, innovate innovate innovate innovate. Innovate? In-no-vate?!?

A few good, hard, long shakes of the head back and forth I was back to normal.

I'm sorely disappointed with Ballmer's answers. Not about me - whadjaspect? - but rather that there was a lack of honesty in the answers and a total sense of pure-politician evasiveness and redirection. I guess it usually works. Just answer the freaking simple questions directly! It's like he has three talking points and all he can do is mutex them into some variety that seems like an answer. One commenter refers to Good to Great author Jim Collin's web site, specifically the Confront the Brutal Facts page. I know that Ballmer could do this honest assessment in a series of bullet points admitting that we're late, we're shipping a lot less than we wanted to, and that we've got some big kinks in our process (along with way too much process). Instead he tips the hat to saying Microsofties are highly critical and have high standards.

So right now I'm feeling a bit bummed about the Company Meeting because I think between the recent Ballmer company-wide memo and this interview, I pretty much know the innovative flavor of Kool-Aid we're going to be served. But what would I want? What is one small step that I'd ask for executive leadership to provide this Friday?

Dates.

Give me dates. Okay, 9/22/05 11/22/05 for the XBox 360... I know that one. VS Whidbey: really, really soon now (I haven't checked my email this weekend, maybe the weight-impaired escrow agent has sung). How about all the flavors of Vista? How about Office 12? Give me dates all around for the big chunks in this pipeline of yours. You commit to them and your VPs commit to them. I want us to announce come-Hell or high-water dates so that the accountability clock can start ticking.

You announce those dates, I will stand up and clap.

So I'm glad that the Company Meeting is coming after the Business Week article and that there has been time for people to react to the BW article and the Forbes article. Those folks who have read them I'm sure will be looking for honest answers and will be squinting with skeptical eyes anything that seems too much like an amazing steam of innovative hype pouring out a huge pipeline of great passion.

What are you looking for going forward from our leadership?

I'll put up a Company Meeting post Friday for folks to share their post-meeting assessments.

---

Commenting on some of the comments and such... some folks didn't expect much more out of Ballmer. But all I can say is that his hype pipeline is so shallow that it doesn't take that much concentration to see through it. Oy! Any bit of criticism can expect to be met with all the great delayed software we've finally managed to scoop up and ship.

Some folks say, "Hey, it's bad all over, stop your gutless anonymous belly-aching!" Or, something like, "I came from IBM, and Microsoft is a much better place than IBM." That, combined with folks complaining about ex-IBMers fu-bar'ing the place up, reaches an interesting critical mass.

Microsoft is better than just about any other company I can think of. Where we're not, it's because we're sinking down to a mismanaged level vs. some of the excellence we used to imbibe and aspire to. Okay, sure, it's not like we had golden past days where Devs, PMs, and Testers held hands as they skipped around the X-buildings, giving each other shoulder rubs as features were designed, implemented, and tested. But it was / is a great place to create great software to change the world.

We're just way off track given our current entangled path, and I don't want to excuse our suckiness based on how bad it might be at HP or IBM or such. We're not that bad off. Yet. Though we might be on-course to see what that's all about.

Mark Lucovsky, world-class Distinguished Engineer and Flying Chair Hurdler, dropped by for a couple of comments, including a snippet of his "goodbye" note. Nice. A small bit:

After Steve's explosion, I discussed the situation with Sergey, Larry, and Eric asking if they still wanted me to join knowing that the war Microsoft is waging on Google will likely intensify as a result. All agreed that we should proceed and allow me to help Google do whats right for our users.

From the Forbes article, I love this small insight from Ray Ozzie:

"No one seems to feel comfortable in their own skin here. It's weird. They still need to succeed." He observes what Ballmer is too proud to say: "The top executives get the potential Microsoft has. But the next tier of employees doesn't because of the stock price."

You know, I think Mr. Ozzie's hanging around with the executives, not the "next tier" and we can get some insight here of what the executives think of that thar tier. And of themselves.

While we're on execs and looking at the Business Week article, the following has been noted in several comments:

Now a new pay scheme, scheduled to go into effect this fall, threatens to make the gulf even wider. If they meet incentive goals, the 120 or so vice-presidents will receive an eye-popping $1 million in salary a year, and general managers, the next level down, will get $350,000 to $550,000, according to a high-ranking source. But the rest of the staff is paid at market rates.

Cri-min-id-ally! I'd certainly like to know if this is true or not. It's a question going to my VP. Given that the article is hot off the presses, I'd pass it by your VP, too. It's a good question to ask as you're trotting around thinking about all the silly cutbacks we endure while our shareholder's money potentially gets misused in this entitlement. I guess our stock just plain isn't good enough for our leadership anymore.

A really great comment takes time to explain old-school BillG Microsoft vs. new-school SteveB Microsoft for folks who don't have the day-to-day exposure to appreciate the differences. I look forward to reading future postings here. A snippet:

Within the last 5 years, almost every manager I had from PUM (2 levels below VP give-or-take) was hired externally. They were hired from companies that move at the speed of wood like Oracle, IBM, HP, etc. They are professional managers, not engineers with reports. And they think like managers. They have no appreciation for what it takes to engineer software. If you explain to them that filling out CheckPoint or spreadsheets for project tracking on *every piece of code you check in* reduces the productivity of engineers, they don't care. They like to see graphs and press buttons. They don't know anything whatsoever about writing code.

Finally, "hey!" to Gretchen and Scoble. To potential hires looking into Microsoft and getting turned off from this blog... well, you know I'm looking for a smaller Microsoft so I'm not exactly selling sweet MSFT lemonade on the sunny side of the street. However, the insights into Microsoft can just as easily be applied as critical questions to any potential employer. So you learn about our scary busted-ass review model. Ask some deep questions of your other offers and see how they compare. And if you do come to Microsoft, you can hit the ground running and start managing up and setting your expectations with your boss.

And, ah, good luck with that.

Updated: fixed horrible 360 release date mis-type.

Troubling Exits At Microsoft - Business Week

First we had the quick, tasty snack of this week's Forbes article on Microsoft's Midlife Crisis.

Now, a cover-story article extravaganza at Business Week:

• Troubling Exits At Microsoft - the cover story (ooo, and go out and buy lots and lots of copies!).
• Online Extra: Steve Ballmer Shrugs Off The Critics - everyone should read this (more below).
• And something about me.

Jay Greene rocks!

I've got to say, Mr. Ballmer got thrown some really good, hard questions. What do you think of some of the responses? I felt, reading it, so much Ballmer sunshine was being blown up my skirt that I was going to go nuclear.

So there's PDC and people feeling rightfully proud of what they've accomplished and are preparing to ship. It's a victory of technology up and down the Windows, Office, and MSN spectrum. But a good chunk you've got to realize is Pyrrhic: too many more "successes" like Vista and Microsoft will be undone.

Some other quick things:

• What is Microsoft overhaul to avoid Windows delays all about? Sounds good to me (but I'm still stuff full of sunshine). I'd love to know more details.
• Rory: you're too kind. But you gave me the final inspiration of what a good button design we could have made for the Company Meeting coming up next Friday at SafeCo Field: the bottom of a Magic-8 ball as the button itself. The question? Will making Microsoft Lean and Mean Save It? The answer floating in a triangle? AS I SEE IT YES.
• Regarding this blog: most folks realize that while the postings are fun and all, it's the comments and participation and the related links and ideas elsewhere that make the bulk of Mini-Microsoft. If you're just subscribing to the web feed, you're only getting a small taste. Browse through the pages and read the comments to get the full-Mini experience.
• That's right, it's September 15th. The bonus has been deposited and you're free and clear to head for the exits...

Forbes - Microsoft's Midlife Crisis

Just a quick post regarding the below Forbes article - it makes for a very good read and is on-target with the issues I've posted about and especially with the comments that folks have added to this blog:

Microsoft's Midlife Crisis by Victoria Murphy.

(http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2005/09/12/microsoft-management-software_cz_vm_0913microsoft.html )

Snippet:

What has gone wrong? Microsoft, with $40 billion in sales and 60,000 employees, has grown musclebound and bureaucratic. Some current and former employees describe a stultifying world of 14-hour strategy sessions, endless business reviews and a preoccupation with PowerPoint slides; of laborious job evaluations, hundreds of e-mails a day and infighting among divisions so fierce that it hobbles design and delays product releases.

I've been asking some folks what it would take for them to consider coming back to Microsoft, to understand the level of change they are looking for. The two big responses I get:

1. Get rid of the process-ridden bureaucracy that inhibits our productivity and passion.
2. Throw out the stack ranking and replace it with something intelligent and fair (e.g., peer reviews or such). No curve.

Three Quick Things - Jobs, Dynamics, Monopolies

One: when I suffered through my first stack ranking experience, I was assigned a mentor to deal with my glowering funk. Strangely, the one bit of advice he provided me out of the blue was: "The best way to get a pay raise is to switch companies." And a year later he called me up, needing to staff up at his new company. Sure enough, everytime I switched to a new company a new big fat wad of cash landed in my account.

I bring this up given that if the job market is heating up so much that recruiters are hiring people to stand outside of Microsoft to hawk their openings, you can bet you can get a much better salary now. It's all about surfing the economy's inflection points. (Hint to recruiters: stand outside any entrances leading to Windows.)

While we're on that, have you left Microsoft during the past year or so? Are you in the process of leaving now? For various reasons, I'd like to hear more about it. Feel free to leave a comment here or drop me a note.

Two: regarding the whole "Dynamics" thing, I think this comment says it best:

I work in MBS. This "Microsoft Dynamics" business is such a joke. The division has such serious problems, beginning with the complete lack of leadership from the executives. Solution: waste a bunch of time and money on rebranding. Great. Nothing solved. Customers more confused than ever. [...] I think the next "logical step in our evolution" is firing the grossly incompetent executives and actually trying to have a strategy to *make money*. Anyone who thinks the MBS executives are not complete idiots needs to ask any MBS person about Doug Burgum's rambling, incoherent speech at the MBS Open House a few weeks ago. This is the guy that's leading us. ... Time to get out of that division while the getting's good.

Still no timeline to bringing in a profit? And still no accountability?

Three: Microsoft Bagholder's latest posting glowers, too. Basically it's concerned that if Ballmer's chair throwing tantrums are true, we're just going down the same path of destroying a competitive company at all costs and setting ourselves up for yet another anti-trust proceeding. I've had more than one conversation about that little chair story (usually accompanied by the soundtrack of foreheads being "D'oh!" slapped). Maybe we'll shoot our foot so well this time that the Feds will really break us up this time.

Maybe that will be the best medicine possible.

Dangerous Transitions + 1 Year = Shipped Already

Another year mark: Joe Beda's been at Google for a year. I think all former Microsofties at Google should probably celebrate their first anniversary by getting a cake with a flying chair blazoned in icing. Or perhaps a chair bouncing harmlessly off of the Google logo... hmm, there's a Google-doodle waiting to happen...

And most importantly for anyone looking to network with former Microsofties, Mr. Beda has the following note:

Oh yeah, and my non-compete and non-solicit contracts with Microsoft have now expired. If you are looking for new challenges feel free to send me a resume.

It is post review season and Labor Day. A double reason to contemplate more deeply if you really love what you're doing and whether a big change would do you good. Either you're going to work for change deep inside Microsoft (which has to be part of an outraged cacophony demanding accountability and cut-backs) or you're just going to free yourself up and see if you can rekindle the passion elsewhere.

Updated: formatting tweaks.

Back to Basics

Why in the world did I start doing this, given that there are so many other fun things to spend life doing?

After a year of posting the occasional note here and going off on various tangents, I want to recenter and refocus on why it's important to me to be so public about Microsoft's current problematic state and to foster some level of transparent discussion about what's going well and what's not going so well for Microsoft. I love Microsoft and I know we have the innate potential to be great again and to backtrack away from this path of mediocrity.

To do this, we're going to have to be a smaller, agile company keenly focused on shipping end-user wow'zing software on-time, shedding ourselves of any groups or leaders who can't deliver.

Upfront request: if you think, within these posts and the comments, there is something worth discussing and sharing, I'm going to ask you to do me a favor: spread the word, spread the discussion.

• One way would be to click on the little envelope icon for this post (or any post you find interesting) and send it to someone you know that would be interested.
• Another would be to send your own email with the URL to this blog, http://minimsft.blogspot.com/ , along with what you think.
• Another would be to plain blog about it, perhaps even discussing your own take on Microsoft's health and its vision for the future.
• And another would be to print a hardcopy of a particular post and put it up for others to read.

So, what are some top-of-mind concerns and action-items regarding Microsoft today?

---

Fire the Deadwood

Microsoft is bloated, big, and slow. During the dot-com boom-years, we hired a bunch of clunkers and brought in a lot of questionable talent as part of our even more questionable acquisitions. These folks brought in lower-quality new hires. And you'd better believe that this entitle-focused group of clunkers has their best interest at the center of all their decisions, customer and shareholders be damned. What a sweet job and such an easy system beat!

Sub-par performance and sub-par leadership risks every single product we produce and maintain. We need to focus on getting out the low performers and the dead-wood that just don't belong at Microsoft. Start with a 5% cut in employment all around. And make cuts that make sense for our customers, versus, say, dismantling our premier support across the nation or continuing to foster bad attrition.

Cut Middle Management

Middle management is the fertile ground in which bureaucracy and process and metrics flourish. Middle management isn't all dumb, either. It's going to create work to justify being around and to keep itself busy, and usually this is more meetings, changes and revision and addition to process, and broad initiatives.

Now, I don't mean we need to outright fire everyone in middle management (though that would be just swell). What we need to do is redeploy and reorganize and come up with that old fashion loose hierarchy with very few steps to BillG in the address book where managers have lots of people to manage. At least a 5:1 report to manager ratio, with closer to 10:1 being ideal. The best managers should stay managers and the others be given the chance to drop back to individual contributing. And with a large cut in middle management, a lot of useless, time-consuming process would vanish. Win and win.

Hold Leadership Accountable

If you can't ship a fantastic software product on-time in this day and age of the 21st century, you really need to be fired. Sure, the old IBM 360 mainframe operating system was a bear when this structured programming thing was oh so trendy. But Microsoft at this point is pretty much the planet's accumulation of what it really takes to ship successful software. As of late, we've been accumulating a lot of dung.

If you make a bad decision that trips up shipping key products on schedule it should be recognized as horrible failure. SteveB should throw your chair across the room and out the window - with you sitting in it. Chased with a good stream of swear words for you to listen to on your way down. "F------ slipping p----!" That's the leadership accountability I want to see!

Instead, we're doing a fantastic job accumulating deep knowledge in what it takes to screw up software development and rewarding that as how we do business. Whatcha gonna do? Software's hard! Our future leaders, doing all the hard front-line work today, can put $2 and $2 together and see that executives get rewarded for pursuing big risks and complex integrated initiatives but not actually having to deliver the best products on-time (let alone commit to making profits for the groups in the red).

Speak Up and Act

Where's the outrage? You see it sprinkled here and there in some blogs and in the comments here. You definitely hear it with the muttered voices at lunch. But where's the focused, productive outrage at the amazing downslide of Microsoft over the past five-some years into a passionless, process-ridden lumbering idiot?

Where's the employee outrage of seeing leadership that fumbles the ball constantly but is never held accountable? Where's the shareholder outrage at Microsoft's flat share price? Is everyone content and happy? If you can express outrage over political fumbles, you can absolutely express outrage over leadership fumbles.

---

Next-to-Finally: why be anonymous? Bock, bock? Why not sign my little ol' name to stand by my words? The main reason is I feel (believe it or not) I have something coherent and important to say here. I believe that many Microsofties share similar concerns and have lots comments to contribute. If my posts were wrapped up in who I was and what product I worked on and what kind of bike I rode, well, that message would get lost within some level of dismissive bias. I'm sure you've seen this, if you read enough blogs (especially the arrows constantly fired at Scoble).

I feel, at this time, that posting these ideas and furthering the discussion is a lot more important than the name and the oh-so-handsome-picture gracing my scratched-up blue badge.

Finally: what's on the top of your mind for Microsoft? What are the problems you'd like our leadership to publicly acknowledge and then visibly work to address and change?

 

Was it Good for You?

So, as you get your reviews and numbers, what do you think? Around this part of campus, there are some happy people bouncing around my hallway. And some rather unhappy people with loud voices behind closed doors. And some generally miffed: And Then?

One commenter says:

Got my review back today.

You are a good reliable employee that met all your commitments and does everything that is asked of you. 3.0....0% pay raise...0 grants...$0 bonus

This sucks

(Just as I cracked my knuckles to type up a reply, in comes a post way better written than anything I could bang out - snippet:

I have to hold my tongue, but let me just say this: there are 2 kinds of 3.0s. One is for the employee who does meet expectations and is trending upward (I know you guys will hate that phrase). These, in my experience, generally get rewards--not great, but not nothing. The other is for someone whose performance has neither improved or declined, but is still not failing to meet the minimum bar. These get 3.0s with no rewards. I disagree with it, and I think that MSFT should institute a policy of 3% annual cost-of-living-adjustments, on top of which they would then structure rewards. [...]

The most pronounced change I've noticed in my 8 years here is this: when I came to MS, I felt like my executives and I were on the same team--we all worked hard and worked together to achieve common goals, for which people were rewarded in proportion to their contribution. This is no longer the case. The executives live in a whole other realm and see employees more as a cost than as a resource. Hell--this is true even with some middle managers.

Well worth the full read. Thanks for taking so much time to post that.)

I know there are a lot of 4.0s out there who exclaim, "Geez! Why do you spend so much time talking about the 3.0s! They get what they deserve. You need to focus on your exceptional contributors and reward them for results that the 3.0s never will be able to accomplish." Yah, you know when you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, you can always rely on Paul's full support.

I am just tired of our busted review model. Stack ranking is just plain wrong. Yes, you need to have a yearly review system. I absolutely believe that. You need to reward the super contributors well. But the amount of angst and anger that goes into the getting the review model done poisons all of us. If my report decides, "Dang it, I'm getting a 4.0 by any means necessary," well, they are going to find some very easy ways to get that 4.0, and most of those easy ways are going to be self-centric and focused around decreasing / inhibiting the performance of their peers so that they can have better results:

There is also the problem with team members competing with each other on teams. By making team members compete with each other, we weaken teams. On my last team, team members would withhold information from other team members in order to slow them down in their work and make it easier to beat in the stack rankings (as I said, there was a lot of work and any delay in getting things done could impact the deadline).

(Thanks for taking time for that comment, too)

I've seen people do this, no doubt you have to. I've busted a few heads and have had to kick a few butts around the public square when I've stumbled across people creating their own little 4.0 fortress to the detriment of the product. Which shareholder wants this kind of Darwinian environment? What kind of products do you think we produce from that? Or, not produce... and slip and slip and slip until we have one big orgasm of RTM'd bits produced from heavy cuts and harsh triage. Buggy and slow? Don't care. Ship.

Back to the current crop of review numbers. If you don't like your results, your numbers, and / or have serious problems with the review system, now is an appropriate time to get a skip level one-on-one with your manager's manager and have a reasoned, deep discussion. Sit down, read comments here, comments elsewhere, talk about it with your Microsoftie buddies, and come up with a series of hard questions.

You might want to float a few pass the manager before hand so that they can give you better quality answers rather than ramble off the top of their head the HR-speak we whip out when cornered.

Example areas to discuss:

• If you got a 3.0, ask them if this was a solid 3.0 or a trended 3.0. Why?
• Why are there two kinds of 3.0s?
• What stuck out in their mind regarding your accomplishments this pass year (delve into your manager's defense of you)?
• (If you're below price-of-living) Why are you working for less effective pay this year than last year?
• Are new hires really coming in earning more than you?
• Do they agree with the stack ranking system? Why / why not?
• How can you improve? What are your peers doing better than you?
• What short term results would the manager like to see from you?

Now given all of this, there is another question you have to ask yourself: is Microsoft the right company for you? Maybe not. Maybe you should add it to the list above to have a discussion about. I've worked with some smart people who luuuv the programming, but they failed at Microsoft in a train-wreck sort of way. Like most corporations, it takes a certain kind of personality to succeed within the eco-system the corporation has. Personally, I think our eco-system has been contaminated over the years, but the core is still there. And there are some people who will constantly mean to do well but not succeed.

If that's you (and perhaps your first bad review is an indication), take a moment to channel your disappointment into an updated resume (something that should make really feel good about yourself) that you start to sprinkle around the area. Take a mental health day and do an interview. It will at least help add clarity to your life. And maybe you'll find that while Microsoft's Darwinian eco-system just isn't right for you, company Bar is fantastic and you get to fall in luuuv all over again.

Two additional random things:

One: probably most people read the article It's not all love for Google these days but I especially noticed this little snippet:

Google, Hoffman said, has caused "across the board a 25 to 50 percent salary inflation for engineers in Silicon Valley" -- or at least those in a position to weigh competing offers. A sought-after computer programmer can now expect to make more than $150,000 a year.

$150K for a new hire?!? Now then, I know it is in a much more expensive local market, but how much more expensive than Seattle? What does a 94043 $150K translate to in 98052? All I can say is, "Go Google!" and we'd better see this in next year's adjusted industry pay 2/3s point.

Two: there's an interesting read over at Ms. Mary Jo Foley's Microsoft Watch: If I Were Steve Ballmer (hmm, that's just dyin' to be put to the theme of "If I had a hammer"... I see a new funny video!). There are some good re-org ideas there (well, unless you're in MSN, in which case you get lumped into the Everything Else division). Note that Ms. Foley is interested in more ideas (email address in the article) so please share with here some of those great ideas you have, whether they sum up to ten or not.

 

Ready, Set, GO!

As of Monday August 15th the review model is done, wrapped up, closed, fini. And already one senior person on my team is saying "See ya, wouldn't want to be ya!" and is leaving Microsoft. All I can say is, if you are leaving Microsoft and like your manager and haven't told your manager yet, give your manager a little gift and say, "You know, you don't have to write my review because I'm going to be leaving for another company." "Bless you!" will be on of the things unsaid, simply because you just gave them back a few hours in their life.

If, however, you truly dislike your manager, be sure to ask their manager to push your manager into giving very detailed review feedback and a strong career path message, especially focused around that new snazzy Career Stage Profiles. Something that would take at least half a day, if not more, to write up.

As far as the year goes, this is one of those inflection points that folks starting making major moves around:

• Looking for a new position internally.
• Networking to find new people to join their group.
• Getting the heck out of Microsoft.

If you're thinking about moving to a different team, this is the best time because it at least gives you the better part of a whole year to prove yourself against your new peers (vs. joining later and needing your former manager to say how great you are and fitting into the new team’s review model - most people just say "fudge it" and get mightily tempted to whip out a 'welcome!' 3.0). And if you wait too long and too many key contributors move on, you might find your team locked down for a while and will have to wait to get that transfer at a non-optimal time.

I'm interested in gaining visibility into:

• Good divisions / product groups to be in.
• Bad divisions / product groups to be in.
• Good groups looking to hire stellar internal transfers.
• Groups currently locked down and not allowing transfers.

(This is for a, ah, good friend of mine.)

One of the recent comments made a great observation: the mspoll / OHI numbers should be available for everyone so that you can look into a potential group's poll results, up the chain, to see what state of mind your new potential peers are in. In fact, I'd add it to the list of queries against a new group: "Tell me about your poll results and how they compare." Shoot, ask them to bring the poll results up on their screen so you can look at them.

As for the continuing series of comments about racism and preferential treatment maybe / not / definitely existing at Microsoft: if you have an honest, serious concern over a specific occurrence, you should in this case really contact your HR generalist (no, really). This, in all things, is something they should take serious simply because it could result in a lawsuit (bad press, loss of money, yada yada).

I have never seen anything that's triggered such a bias concern and have only seen folks exhibiting exemplary decision making for promoting and rewarding contributors based on their accomplishments.

 

Marching Towards Mediocrity

I enjoyed this comment in the last post so much I wanted to repeat it here:

---

First, to be perfectly fair, you should add the promo budget to the merit budget to get the real average raise across the company. Though honestly, HR is doing some creative math since they say 1.7% + 2.0% = 4.9%. And even 4.9% is thin stuff. Oh, yeah, it’s a lot better than some folks have gotten over the last few years, but the thing is, MSFT needs the best people it can find in order to compete. The software market is very, very lucrative, and that attracts competitors. MSFT with average employees is a sitting duck waiting to be taken down.

And the company is crossed up and going the wrong direction with the compensation package. Salaries at MSFT are better than average, but not outstanding (and this is by design – the company targets the 67th percentile, meaning roughly a third of software companies will pay better salaries). So, all else being equal, the company will get employees that are better than average, but not outstanding. That means companies that can attract outstanding employees will eventually eat Microsoft’s lunch. Unless the company can find some other advantages in hiring.

Well, MSFT does have two things going for it there. Great benefits and financial security. Now, what sort of employee is going to value great benefits and financial security? A guy with a wife and a couple of kids. So, with better-than-average salary, great benefits, and financial security, MSFT could attract outstanding married employees with kids. But a guy with a wife and kids wants to go home while it’s still light out, and wants to spend weekends with his family. This guy also maybe is more interested in a good steady job than in grubbing his way up the corporate ladder. He’ll do good work and contribute to a solid product, but isn’t interested in working 80 hour weeks to get a 4.0 and a promo.

But the company clearly isn’t interested in that sort of employee. We want aggressive, ambitious people who will bust their butts to stand out and get ahead. People who will take risks to grab the brass ring.

Only, we aren’t attractive to those people any longer. Not the best ones anyway. The guy willing to take a flyer to make it big isn’t impressed with financial security – he’s a risk taker. He wants salary and stock options, and we don’t pay enough for the best ones any longer.

So, there’s a mismatch between what the company is willing to offer and what it expects in return. The end result is that we’ll drive away the outstanding people who would be willing to work for 80% of the salary they could make somewhere else in exchange for great health coverage for the family and the stability to stay in the same place long enough to put the kids through high school. And we’ll replace them with the second-best of the young-and-hungry kids, because we’re paying second-best salaries and not offering stock options any longer.

It’s just plain stupid. We’re not using our competitive advantages and instead playing a game that belongs to other companies now.

I'm disappointed.

---

For some reason, pasting this in made me think of an old-time Microsoftie I used to work with who kept a balanced, fun life and managed to be incredibly productive and effective at work. I wish Microsoft would study his work day to better understand how all of us can get great things done with the lightest of touch. Even when he scaled up to be a super GM, he was having "this attached routine would give you better results" or "from this profile, this code path could be massively sped up" moments that made the rest of us wonder how in the world he managed to do that. He continued to mentor us at key points and have tremendous impact on the product, bits up. He's quite an inspiration... like Mel.

It would be much better for all of us currently working for Microsoft to be super efficient like that with our collective wisdom versus trying to hire every hot batch of newly graduated potential, desperately hoping that the new shiny cog will work better than that old, mediocre cog who just keeps hanging around the group and (dang!) just won't move on no matter how few 0% raises we give 'em.

Anyway, lots of comments around the previous posting. Unfortunately, lots of those were comment spam that I haven't cleaned up yet. And a few were debating about racism / favoritism at Microsoft. From my experience, Microsoft is an exceptionally fair place where people are making decisions around money. When you're trying to make a profit, you're trying to assemble the best contributors there are. Period. Capitalism can make you color blind to everything except for the crisp green Benjamins.

Now Malcolm Gladwell might say we are still inclined to choose based on unconscious bias (like how my building oddly seems to only hire from Ivy League schools). But I personally haven't seen racial bias. In fact, rather than favoritism amongst similar groups, the only time I've had concern of discrimination was between folks of the same group holding their reports to an extremely high standard and perhaps being more lax towards the rest of us who sort of stumbled through a hazy, beer-infused American education.

So whatever bias we may or may not have is just a fleeting shadow to what I've been exposed to living and working elsewhere in the country. At Microsoft, flipping the Bozo Bit is much more prevalent, and I rarely ever see that unflipped. That flip usually manifests itself with your first 3.0 review rating, and if you get a second 3.0, you might as well realize that the bit has been really flipped and unless you're going to unflip it yourself, you should either move to another group or be like the rest of the cool kids and get the heck out of Microsoft.

 

6% raise? I want to work for Dilbert's company!

Holy whatsa, Alice got a 6% raise? I'd seriously consider hanging out in the bushes near Google-Kirkland with my aluminum bat to totally Tonya-Hardin-up some delicate competitive fingers just to get a 6% raise.

If you're a lead, you can bring up the manager review tool and check-in on how your reports are doing within The Model. Maybe some bits and pieces will move around, but the review model is pretty much done now and set to go into effect the 1st of September, with the mid-September paycheck showing any benefits.

One thing I've noticed kvetching with other managers is that once again, pay raises are minimal. I'm talking 2%-ish for a 3.5 review. That's barely keeping up with cost-of-living / inflation for doing more than is expected up of you. And of course, 3.0s, for the most part, get nothing. That's right: you're losing buying power for making a 3.0 - doing what's expected of you.

I watch the teams I work with lavish attention and interesting work on our summer interns to convince them what a fantastic place Microsoft is (it is, pretty much, but not that fantastic). I regale interns about my early days, too. Thing is, once you're signed on it's like that old joke where we go, "Oh, that was just the demo." So-so pay with marginal pay-increases and two, that's right, two whole weeks of vacation for you automatic-3.0 newbies!

It's as if someone is actually on my side and is all about getting people to either quit or not come work here to begin with... I think they have the resplendently passive-aggressive long-view.

Some other random things:

• Gretchen's Josh posted a very nice "Ten Crazy Ideas"-themed item: http://blogs.msdn.com/jledgard/archive/2005/07/26/TenCrazyIdeas.aspx
• I've actually been spending more time bopping around various web forums defending Microsoft and ripping dumb-butt online journalists and posters new ones when they can't manage to put a moment in to get their story right. Sometimes, it's easy pickings, like the recent skirt-lifting "OMG! VIRUS!" being shouted out about Monad. One thing I notice out of this: I think there's a tangible favorable shift happening towards Microsoft and the technology we're putting out. If Microsoft is going to be saved, it's certainly going to happen from the bottom up.
• Speaking of tangible favorable shifts: How 'bout dat stock price last week! Yep, sure enough: when you actually get around to shipping software, people think favorably of you. One thing that surprised me, listening to a couple of Wall Street analysts post-FAM, was how much they buy / echo what we're telling them. Huh!
• FAM again: The biggest takeaway from the "Word from Wall Street" meeting was this recommendation (one that made Colleen Healy look fairly nervous) to get buyers interested in MSFT again: stop with the unpredictable dividends and commit to a predictable dividend schedule. That would get more investors onboard for investing in MSFT.
• The weather's nice, I'm spending more time correcting egregious errors in cyberspace, and there's nothing fresh or interesting off the top of my head usually to post. Ergo there's not much currently happening here - so go on, enjoy the outdoors!