Meeting with SteveSi, cat-fights, and then some.

This is an almost 100% comment paste job post, with a touch of commentary at the end. The first two comments I think are just great and worth repeating, especially for those poor people who just read the web feed.

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One: Lou Giliberto provided the following interesting tale of sending feedback to SteveSi and then ending up having a meeting to follow-up on that email:

Hey Mini et al.

In my group we were having an e-mail discussion about process. Someone forwarded the link to Steven Sinofsky's blog entry on Bureuacracy.

In it he said:

We’ve put in processes that make no sense. We’ve decided things as an organization that are plain dumb. How do we excuse these? We don’t. MS people send me mail. I want to know about them.

So, I sent an e-mail to both him and Jim Allchin about process in Windows. I tried to make it not a rant, but I sure part of it ranted because it's a subject that burns me up.

But what I did was try to give personal examples of where the current process fails.

Jim Allchin took the time to respond to me, and he agreed with certain points, disagreed with others, and said he would look into trying one of my suggestions.

Steven Sinofsky thanked me for the mail and asked that I find some time to meet with him and bring some of my peers along.

So, on Friday me and 4 of my peers went and met with Steven. We outlined a bunch of problems we had with the process, how it affected us in our day-to-day jobs, etc. We had people from test, a dev manager, devs from two different windows orgs, etc. So it was from several points of view at the IC or low management level.

He listened, agreed with certain points, disagreed with others. He also challenged us to come up with a next step to fix things and offered to help us with it in any reasonable way he could.

BTW, Steven doesn't wear Gucci loafers. Though, he wasn't dressed like me either (hair past my shoulders, "No, I will not fix your computer" thinkgeek T-shirt, and torn jeans). AFAIK, Allchin doesn't wear Gucci loafers either. I don't have a foot fetish, so I usually don't pay attention to such things.

The thing to remember, especially about Sinofsky and Allchin, is that they started at a level where this stuff would affect them. They do understand how to do development. They weren't born into senior exec positions. They do have other concerns and a different view because they have different responsibilities at that level. So, opinions are bound to differ on some level.

But they obviously don't want things that stop us from shipping good products, so if there is a real problem, they want to know about it.

Sinofsky and Allchin want to fix any problems. When they disagreed with me, they were clear why certain processes were in place. That gives me an opportunity to offer an alternative to that process that may work better.

But, you can only have this kind of give-and-take discussion if you are willing to talk openly and face-to-face (or at least in e-mail).

Do I fear retribution? Nope. Because I didn't make a jackass out of myself, I stated things factually (with a tinge of bitterness and frustration), and by being non-anonymous they were given the opportunity to understand exactly how the process affected me and my peers.

By coming with some peers in a non-confrontational way to an invite from an exec, he was able to see this wasn't one disgruntled dev. Myself and peers have been at MSFT from probably like 3-13 years. We weren't people with a string of 3.0's (deserved or otherwise) looking to grind an axe.

But yes, I have received retribution from a manager who didn't like being confronted with the truth. The thing is, though, he could afford to be petty. A senior exec is not going to be petty. They don't have time to waste. They're not going to waste their time singling someone out who is trying to fix things even if it's bad news.

And it goes both ways. I don't waste their time. I'm not going to complain to Allchin or Sinofsky about a personal problem. If my manager is a jerk, I'll either tough it out or leave. HR is worthless as many people pointed out because they are there to protect the company, and admitting fault doesn't protect the company.

If you are going to raise heck at work about a serious problem, you need to target the right level, and you need to be clear about the problem.

In this case, comment was invited, so I took Steven up on his invitation. I never met the guy before because I was always in Windows or MSN, but if someone is willing to listen, I have something to say. I CC:ed Jim because Windows is his org, and I don't talk behind people's backs about them or their orgs.

Now, will things change based on the feedback given?

I don't know (LOL). Though I received agreement from both execs on certain items, some of the problems are really hard to fix. Some of them can't be done right now - you can't change how everything is built in the middle of a release, for example.

The important thing, though, is that I talked and was listened to without retribution. There is a way to provide feedback in the company without losing your job or getting a 2.5.

You have to find someone who wants to fix the situation. Managers apply retribution when they don't want to fix the situation or when they are the direct cause of it and they're CYA scumbags.

So, my advice is if someone says "I want to hear about it" the right thing to do is to tell them about it.

You can always find someone willing to listen if you try hard enough, and you won't get fired for telling the truth.

Anyhow, I just wanted to make the point it is possible to give non-anonymous feedback about touchy subjects. I encourage people to do so whenever possible.

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Two: I_LOVE_MEETINGS provides the following long-timer's perspective:

Geez. So much misinformation here. I am really surprised that so few (if any) middle- or senior- managers are saying anything.

Let's clear some of the rumours.

First, some background: I have been here for a looong time. I came in back when Developers were hired in as a "10" instead of a 59 or a 60. Years before the basketball courts were plowed to make room for the EBC. Back when there were half as many tiles as there are now in front of bldg 16. I now manage those who manage Developers, PGMs, and Testers. Saying too much more than that will give away who I am, but suffice it to say that I know what I am talking about.

Ok, here we go.

1. They do Stack Rank in MSN. I am not sure how Kevin's group is immune from that.

2. MSN is failing, and is mediocre, because it is staffed, for the most part, with mediocre people. MSN and all of the RedVest "Rest and Vest" teams are simply where the 2.5's, 3.0's, and burnouts from other (profitable) divisions go for in-office retirement. Hell, we've all been to RedWest, gazing at the women sitting around on the grass eating lunch, marvelling at the similarities between RedWest and a posh ski lodge. Many of us have seen the server labs that take up half of a floor, with their walls flanked with flat-panel HDTV LCD monitors that immediately switch from Halo2 to "Latest BVT Results" as soon as a senior manager walks in. Many of us know about the weekly morale events for the near-death teams (Autos, Homes) that include water-skiing on Sammamish and beer on Thursdays. The entire operation is a complete scam, and MSN should be spun-off as its own separate entity and allowed to die on its own. No more also-ran technologies. No more clueless SDEs and SDE/Ts who have benefitted from the rampant, stereoptypical MSN Level Inflation and promoted to L62 even though they only know how to write javascript and link together aspx pages. No more of my time spent warning my hiring managers to be wary when a L62 from MSN interviews for a L62 in our division, because more than likely the person is 2 levels higher than where he is supposed to be.

2. I severely doubt that if someone receives a 2.5 and is moved out of the org, that the ONLY reason it happened is because he/she voiced ONE dissenting opinion, one time, to ONE manager. 2.5's are held under careful scrutiny before they are given out, as are 4.5's. A lead/manager has to have some super compelling data that justifies giving someone either score. "He didn't agree with me once" simply does not cut it. On the other hand, though: "He never agrees with me, and is always moping around telling other people on the team that we are not doing the right thing, and in general is a drain on morale" is a solid justification.

3. I hate to say it, but here at MS, similarly to almost every other company in the world: Networking and social skills do help. If your manager likes you, and understands what you are doing, and sees your contribution, and doesn't see you as a drain on productivity or morale, he/she will go to bat for you.

4. The Stack Rank is a game, just like everything else. Learn to manage it. Learn to manage the perceptions that people have of you. Folks get ahead here because they increase their scope and span of influence. You'll get that next promotion when you have demonstrated that you can operate at that ladder level (in terms of scope, accountability, and skillset). A manager who promotes someone and then gives them a 2.5 (or sometimes, even a 3.0!) the following year OFTEN gets questioned. ("Why did you promote them to their level of incompetence? Are you not in tune with their ability?")

5. When the other senior managers and I sit around in {insert discipline here} Coordination Forum meetings, reviewing stack ranks for every team for that discipline in the division, there is always a person who is penciled in as a 3.5 yet who deserves a 4.0. When the manager cares, and goes to bat for the person with the right kind of data, I often see that person changed to a 4.0 instead. And do you know what helps? If that person has contributed in such a way that OTHER managers at that roundtable are aware of the contribution, and thus all can go to bat for the person. A senior manager is never going to argue a corner case, and is never going to push for someone whom they know has (choose one): angered folks on other groups, messed up a cross-team collaboration, rocked the boat with no apparent positive effect, etc.. A manager who cares will have collected the data beforehand, synched up with his/her peers prior to the coordination forum meeting, and communicated his/her intentions to "get an extra 4.0 for Susan". And when the support is there, it happens more times than not.

(Of course, this typically means that someone else might need to occupy the aforementioned 3.5 slot, which is where the "Rank" part comes in. But I digress.)

6. Someone asked, a few blog posts ago, why employees are asked to self-rank. For my teams, and the teams of my peers, the ONLY reason I want to see the self-ranking is because I care about the differential between the manager's rating of the employee, and the employee's self-rating. A differential implies a misalignment in understanding and/or communication. I always tell my managers: "The Review is not the time for surprises. If your direct ever leaves a review discussion surprised by the message or the overall rating, you have failed in communicating with that person over the last year."

7. A manager is NEVER forced to give someone a particular rating. If your manager says, "You deserved something else, but I had to give this to you because the curve forced me to", don't even bother escalating or pushing-back. Just start doing informationals and get the Hell outta dodge. If someone that weak has been promoted into a management position, it implies something about the overall caliber of the team that you really don't want to have to deal with. Trust me. I have seen high-performing, high-profile teams in my division where a full 40% of the team is given a 4.0, because the manager has gone to bat for the team, done the right thing, and made sure the VP(s) have understood why so many folks on the team need to be rewarded. Yes, again that means that there is a team somewhere else in the division that receives 40% 3.5s, or even 3.0s. At the end of the day, though, because we have divisions such as MSN which, in my opinion, are staffed with lifetime 3.0's, it all works itself out.

8. Yes, there are incompetent managers here. I have been here for a long time, and I am amazed that some of my peers are in the positions that they are. They are not leaders; they are pureplay "managers" who, because they can not innovate, lead, instill trust in others, or enable their teams to succeed... They spend the bulk of their time playing politics, name-dropping, dreaming up new processes that are ONLY meant to "get their name out there", etc.. It is frustrating, but I have seen it at other companies as well. My hope is that over time, the weak manager who promoted them eventually moves on, a stronger manager is put in place, and the person's incompetence 'rings loud and clear' with that new management. And that new management enacts change.

9. Yes, there are useless processes here. Some were obviously created by folks who were motivated to create them for their own self-preservation. It's not these people's fault; typically there is a situation where a person's ladder level demands an increase in scope, but the person is so hopelessly incompetent that they they are in a senior position on a product/team that has maxed out in terms of strategic impact. What's the solution? Make something up! No offense to Ben and the rest of the innovators on the Feature Crew effort, but there are parts of the FC process that were apparently put in place by people who just wanted to have their name on the FC process. Some of the fields on the Infopath form, some of the hoops Dev and Test need to jump through in Product Studio... The common conception is that they were put in place just so one person could say, "Hey that's the part I created". Yes, I predict that Ben, Dean, Stefan, etc etc may respond here and say "Let me know what improvements should be made..." For the record, you already know about them. I have told you in person. :-)

10. I have heard of people being prevented from interviewing for much longer than 90 days! I remember an acquaintance of mine who did an Informational with me for one of my teams last year. We spoke, determined there would be a good fit, and agreed to proceed with next steps. Immediately after that, he went dark on me. I pinged him a few weeks later, and he said that his manager had told him, "If you interview with that team and don't receive an offer, I won't be able to support you here any longer. Just wait until we ship, and then I'll help you". Mind you, this was last year, and the product in question won't be shipping until NEXT year. A 24 month 'stop loss'! I was going to say something, but the particular manager (a GM who over the years has also made a name for himself as being a complete incompetent) was "moved into a different opportunity" in another division only a few days later. And to make the situation a complete mess, the individual (who had almost a decade of tenure and a lifetime review average of ~4.0) left the company a short while after that.

11. I'll probably stop reading this blog soon, because most of the topics here are rehashes of the same issues, simply restated. But suffice it to say: We do work for the greatest software company in the world. Many love us, and many fear us. We are going through some growing pains. Some of them will be addressed as a result of the top-level reorg and subsequent reorgs that will be announced at lower levels in the future. Some won't be addressed until some of the mediocrity is drained out of the middle-management tier. But as Stephen mentioned in his blog: It will all work itself out. Posting here won't help; the gears are already in motion. If you want to expedite the cranking/turning of those gears, talk to your manager, or HR, or write up an anonymous letter and slip it under your VP or GM's door. :-)

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Three: the following comment builds on some of the growing disenchantment here:

I feel like the original intent of your blog - which was about how to help our company identify and perhaps stop some of its potentially fatal behaviors - has deviated way off course into a Redmond-centric developer and tester bitch session. I'll check back in a couple of weeks to see if you have it back on some kind of constructive track.

(Hmm. I've been on a constructive track?) Even I blew a gasket last night and had to plead to people to stop the... sorry, no other way to put it... dumb ass cat-fight bantering. Now, maybe I'm throwing a black pot around my glass house, but please don't go making broad, unsubstantiated put-downs of testers, devs, PMs, or HR. If you have a specific troublesome event you want to share, that's great. That's real. But saying that none of us knows how to format a drive? Geez. I'm glad to see at least a few people followed up with positive stories to help offset the sniping.

If you really want to explore Dev vs. Test, go create a fun blog or community space on your own and roll-around in it to your heart's delight. It is super easy to do.

Now, given the cat-fight, I think there is something at the heart of this. And I think there's an issue regarding the push for testers to suddenly wake up one day as SDETs and start cranking out automation as if that's going to be the solution to all of our non-shipping ever slipping woes. It's a solution. But in some cases, it's been taken too far and we have to be strategic in reducing it. E.g., if it takes 10 minutes to make a UI fix but two days to update all of the broken automation, well, repeat that many times and you start realizing you might need to tweak the process a little.

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Fourth: looks like my broad and somewhat insulting statement towards HR and the exit-interview process in my last post wasn't 100% right, according to this commenter:

I went through an exit interview not an awful long time ago at MS. Now I know some folks who didnt bother showing, just dropped the badge at reception. I know others who showed up and noted it being a formality.

For my experience, I took the time to ask every question I had about exit benefits and such. The fellow who conducted the interview was helpful and answered all the questions he could. Those he couldnt answer, he researched and contacted me to answer them a few days later. When we got to the "why" question, I asked how long he had blocked out. And I let it all out. The review process. The internal transfer politics. The directions the company was taking. The lack of action within my group on negative feedback in the company poll. I backed up the dump truck and emptied it. I went item by item down my notes.

To his credit, he listened attentively only interrupting to postpone a task he had on his schedule.

Now whether or not he acted on my opinions and experience is not known to me. But he at least did the courtesy of listening to me until i was done.

I'd still prefer that the reason for people leaving be collected and shared and turned into action items vs. the occasional bit of text cropping up in the blogosphere. As for HR in general: it would certainly benefit folks in HR if the rest of the company had some visibility into what you do and why their everyday worklife is better because of you. Most people, like me, only deal with HR when something bad is about to happen or has already happened.

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Finally: oh, great, another anti-trust settlement involving an orgasmic flood of shareholder's cash. When I saw the headline with the dollar figure my mouth fell wide open for a good ten seconds. How does that make you feel, Mr. Shareholder? I certainly hope this was the last act of contrition and we're not reading about our billion-dollar settlement with Google five years from now.

 

Bad Reviews from Bad Bosses

An interesting topic erupted on its own in the comments over the past couple of days: you get a crappy review score that you don't agree with. Options of what you can do at point vary, including the following:

• You sign it and that's that, other than any new strategies you put in place to get a better score next time.
• You refuse to sign it and begin conversations up the chain, pulling in HR.
• If you do sign it, you ask to have your rebuttal comments for this review be attached.

Sometimes, it works out to at least flush your manager from the corporation:

I didn't sign my 04 review (an undeserved 3.0) and my former boss was out of his job in a few months. Sometimes it really gets people's attention.

Regarding the feedback portion of your review (if you feel it overly harsh or unrealistic):

A good manager will work with you until you're both happy with the feedback (often it's just a wording issue). However, ultimately, nobody cares if you don't sign your review. Your PHB can tell HR "I've given the feedback but they still wouldn't sign..." and that's pretty much it unless it's an endemic problem with them. Plenty of folks don't even write their review let alone sign it.

Ideally, though, you want that pit-bull of a manager who is on your side to get the review score he/she believes you deserve:

[...] I know of a situation in the past where a manager gave someone some unfair comments, and that was used as part of the reason to push that manager out of the group (unfortunately not fire the person from the company - it's always easier to pawn them off on another group).

I also want to say this: if, as a manager, you don't believe in a score you think you need to give because of the curve, you can find a way to not give them that score. If you think you need to give them a 3.0 but you think they deserve a 3.5, you can find a way to give them a 3.5. It requires a backbone, and requires work in making the case to upper management, but I've done it. In short, it requires the manager in question to actually care.

It's interesting to get this perspective from various folks in the company. The rebuttal letter is considered the unspoken kiss of death in my group, for instance. It's not going to prevent you from going out on informationals (nothing should ever prevent you from doing that) but it has the potential to raise a flag in the mind of the hiring manager (some ask for access to your review history before meeting with you). But perhaps you don't want to work for that kind of manager, anyway. If you're coming out of a bad review situation, I think you should touch on it briefly during your informational and not dwell on it more than, "I'm looking to grow and contribute beyond what I can currently do in my group," and be ready to follow-up positively where that might lead the conversation.

The review comments erupted out of people taking exception to Mr. Sinofsky's post, e.g. on having a dissenting view:

Absolutely positively no one has ever received a poor review for merely having a dissenting view.

Yeah, right.

In my FY05 mid-year review, my manager told me to my face that I was tracking to a 4.0. A few months later, I made an "emperor has no clothes" statement in a "private conversation" with a colleague. Without an e-mail message, conversation, or even a performance improvement plan having been set up, my manager ambushed me in my written review. He/she quoted confidential e-mail messages and conversations in the written review, and he/she gave me a 3.0. He/she had this look on her face that pretty much said, "I am f**king you over right now, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it." He/she was actually satisfied with his/her very personal attack against me.

And this one:

"The first part is true, they're just 2.5'd and let go for performance reasons even when they don't deserve it (I know several people who had this happen)."

I was a lifetime 4.0 and current 4.0 when I was "asked to leave" because I raised issues. This wasn't unique. I saw it happen to literally dozens of people before me (not all 4.0's but all at least 3.5s) and know of it happening to several since. His comment is just flat out incorrect and shows how divorced even well-meaning snr mgt can be from the day-to-day realities at lower levels.

And how are you supposed to improve things given a current management culture like this? Lisa Brummel, is this the kind of management you want to keep in place? I don't. I want management dorks like that fired with a high-visible vengeance. I want people to speak their mind. Again, the important lesson I picked up from Bob Herbold's book: people quickly learn what it takes to succeed in their group. Right now, we're teaching them to shut up, get along, and have some sort of high visible successes (real impact inconsequential) in comparison to their stack-rank peers so that they can get that 4.0.

I'm really surprised at one-commenter saying he's been prevented from looking at an internal transfer for over 11 months under a "stop-loss" state in his group. Which groups are putting folks into such a horrible state of servitude? If you're not going to leave the company (which how can you not expect people doing) the only option I know of is to actually do an informational and an informal interview (like, if I pass this first interview, let's set up a real interview loop). If things are a success at that point, you'd have the other potential group bearing down on your current manager / HR rep and usually that's enough to set the gears in motion to at least get an interview.

And your group's HR is just not your friend here. As people have noted, perhaps cynically, HR's one and only priority is to prevent Microsoft from being sued. HR usually acquiesces to anything management wants to do around reviews, promotions, transfers, etc., as long as it isn't too shady. Another thing: when you leave Microsoft, they set something up called your "exit interview." By golly, you'd think that might be something HR uses to understand, if you're bad attrition, why is it that you're leaving and whether you'd be inclined to come back. Nope. Just about everyone I've been in contact with post-Microsoft said no one looked to understand why they are leaving. I guess they're too busy praising the Nero-esque stylings of our senior management's fiddle playing. The exit interview typically is just a paper signing formality, and let's say they don't exactly put the best and brightest in the HR seat to conduct the session.

Following on Steven Sinofsky's management postings, KenMo's call-out of MSN's good traits, and Kevin Schofield's various praises of Microsoft and it's current state being just swell, we have a comment from Bill Hoffman stating:

Mini, I think you need to give more specific examples of where you see useless process. I would be curious as to where you think we should cut process.

I'm a Dev Manager in MSN. I don't see any useless process. All I see is my team cranking out code as fast as we can... innovating as fast as we can... shipping software every couple months. In the past year, we have launched a completely new backend for Hotmail. We are embarking on a next generation backend now, a totally new architecture.

I'm not seeing any middle management getting in my way. All I see is my VP, GM and PUM asking the world of my team, supporting us, and telling us "Go."

What matters more to me is hearing from the Microsofties with their boots on the ground. It matters the most when they get out there and call me out and say where I'm wrong and specifically call out where things are right. The specific folks that I'm complaining about - not having a clue and supporting an inefficient system - are probably not the ones I'm going to look towards giving me a good, honest assessment about the problems people have noted here (and in the blogs of the Microsoftie dearly-departed to more effective work environments).

For instance, in my last post, I questioned the feature crew process that Mr. Sinofsky mentioned in his "bureaucracy gooood" post, based on what I'd heard. Some folks followed up saying how it worked well for them and they thought it was a good idea. Hmm. Furthermore, Ben Canning, who it would seem to be where the buck stops at Office for feature crews, posted a very honest comment here about feature crews, even going so far to call out where cumbersome usage of an infopath form was indeed going too far and how he knows there are improvements to be made and that he's open to hearing about them (Mr. Canning also posted similar comments in Steven's original post). What I like is the idea that the individual contributors are the decision makers.

And as for forms, an unrelated comment notes:

I assure you that the Bureaucracy the other ills of MS have reached far outside of Redmond. I am in the EPG sales organization and the sheer amount of process that we need to hack through to get anything done is mind blowing. Sieble entries and internal meetings and ROB ( Rhythm of the Business) has become the business. I often feel like I am at the DMV... no wait, they streamlined that..... I often feel like I am at the doctors office... no, they stream lined that tooo....

I know, I often feel like I am in microsoft spending my entire life filling out infopath forms, in triplicate.

Well, maybe the first sign that you have too much process is that you're using infopath. Is your process saving collective time or just feeding someone's need to track everything their way?

 

Middle Managers, Bureaucracy, and No Birds at Microsoft

Wow, out of all the crazy blogs in this mixed up world of ours, C|Net went and gave this little Mini-Microsoft blog a moment of recognition in their Blog 100. Thanks! (I have to admit to complete narcissism given I navigated there and gave into a "I wonder if I'm listed... OOO!" moment.) It's like someone turned the expired 15 minute clock back a few minutes and I unjumped the shark.

And what respectable blogging company! And if this blog is a new discovery for you, I have to let you in on the big secret: you need to visit the pages and read the comments. That's the heart and soul of the blog.

Okay, quick post: there are two Microsoft bloggers I'd like to give highlight to: SteveSi and KenMo.

Steve really didn't like that Business Week article. I'm mean really didn't like. He made the following offhand comment in his blog:

BTW, I’ve received some mail about the recent article in Business Week on Microsoft. Right now I will choose not to comment on it until I see if the writers and editors choose to correct or comment on some of the plethora of factual errors.

I'd love to hear his side of what was wrong. In lieu of any corrections, Steve went and started some pro-active blogging, even around two of my favorite duct-taped covered punching bags:

1. Ineffective Middle-Management Suckups, and
2. Bureaucracy. Threat or menace? Either, both, or neither? Or it depends!

I'm conflicted. It's incredibly cool that Mr. Sinofsky is a senior VP blogging about such topics. I don't want to throw snarky comments at his postings because I want him to continue this line of public dialogue (kudos to him for being rather cool in the comments that appear in his posts). But I disagree with where we are as an entire company... I'm not as sure about Office as a gauge. Better than Windows? I don't know how much of an accomplishment that is. The one comment I'll follow-up on is process and getting code done effectively and the feature crews that Office is bragging about. The one group I tend to deal with tells me that feature crews sound great but it ended up doubling their amount of effort to get their code in and stressed their dev and test team to the limits (somehow, the program managers were spared undo stress...). Meetings bloomed out of control. The feature-crews also stole time from their testers so that there was zero ad-hoc and zero integration testing. The gears are all given very detailed attention. How well everything turns together was not. Is that better? It seems like a fine idea that needs to be turned down a few notches so that people can do their jobs and not check off where they are on the process map.

If you're in Office, Steve has opened his door to comments and feedback. You've got to take advantage of that! You have a direct line to a motivated leader out to prove Microsoft got game. Drop him a note, start a conversation... let me know how it goes. Oh, and before moving on, I noticed that Mr. Sinofsky said he might address performance evaluations in a future posting: yes, please. I'd love to hear Steve's take on Stack Ranking and The Curve and why that's as good as it gets.

Second blogger... job opportunities galore! Scoble and KenMo. Yes, Ken, I've read "Searching for Answers - A Challenge for Mini-Microsoft." I absolutely loved the post given your description of the 'No' Birds persona. I've complained about such people in the past here (explaining how hard it is to actually ship a feature and get it out the door, usually at DCR time, with all the "cut this to make my life easier" hurdles you have to jump over) but now I have a name to slap on them. I hope you don't mind if I lift this snippet:

No Birds

2 1/2 years ago, I was asked to be the technical leader for a new team that would build from scratch a world-class search engine. Google already had a huge lead in quality and market share – and many people within Microsoft said "no way" or "Ken, you’re taking a no-win job" or "MSN doesn’t have the technical skills" or even "you’re going to have to use Linux…" I call these people the "no-birds".

Now, it’s important to distinguish the no-birds from people who are constructively criticizing. No-birds are usually very creative and intelligent people, but their efforts are misguided. All they care about is shooting down ideas. They take pride in talking loudly, getting listened to, and are content measuring their impact based on any change in a plan – even if it’s just making things so confusing that nothing gets done. They secretly are happy when things are screwed up. They are worthless.

Nice. I don't think I'm a 'No' Bird but perhaps that's the kind of thing such a person can't self-assess... anyway, when it's actually appropriate for me to consider looking elsewhere I'll look to see what http://career/ has to offer in your area and do some informationals if the fit seems right. I look forward further postings in the meantime about what MSN is doing well.

What's exciting about KenMo's posting and the visibility and defense that SteveSi is posting about is a constructive reaction to the negative press and hard questions that have come up. I'm going to re-iterate: Microsoft has problem in that we've got layers of bureaucratic process of questionable focus. This is a opportunity for groups that think they are part of the solution vs. part of the problem (real or perceived) to grab the spot light and show the way to the promised land of lean, efficient, customer pleasing, profit making, shareholder delighting corporate salvation. And don't forget "agile." And I hope at that point groups determined to remake themselves look around and say, "Hey, we sure don't need all these people to do that!"

 

P.S. A question for Lazyweb: I know you can go to a symbol looking for MSFT at Yahoo or say Money Central to find the major shareholders for Microsoft, some with hyperlink info. Is there another spot that you favor for looking up such information with far more detailed contact info?

 

Jumping the Shark

Some random things to comment on - looks like I might post more while out of town than in it... well, not much else to do in this here stretch of Podunk.

First, Dare has a heartbreaking post that speaks some truth: Some Thoughts on the Mini-Microsoft blog. I've certainly been thinking about a lot of the same issues. I could understand if Dare unsubscribed. He has my lasting thanks for being this little blog's early adopter. He was one of the first cool kids to take notice and even drop by with the occasional thoughtful comment. It's probably time for him to move on to a new cool thing.

As I noticed in the previous entry, things are a bit on the grumbling side here. Lots of surprising things happened all at once with the two negative articles, the Slashdotting, the reorganization, and the Company Meeting. It was a pipeline of revelations. Better, I say, than The Fonze waterskiing over a shark, but still it leads a bit of a gap afterwards. How the heck do you follow that? Right now, I just have an image of this blog's persona being a cranky parrot: "Rwak! Mini wants a layoff! Rwak!"

In fact, to grow productively with the current momentum, a blog isn't the best medium right now. I'd rather have something that was the combination of a blog, a community discussion space, and a wiki. As of now, folks continue to add comments to posts from long, long ago. But who sees them? Like Roy said, it's like tears in rain. I get to read every new comment that comes in and I'd like to elevate them to something worth reading vs. just having to create a new blog post.

The absolute best consequence of everything that has happened is that executive management finally got asked some really hard questions. And once enough blood was in the water, ever the most gracious of Microsoft-beat reporters asked the hard questions. Still sunshine and smoke with-respect-to the answers, but that was a big shift and the questions have been asked at all levels and the extraordinary public focus it brought. The fact that those questions came up makes me want to tip my hat and pedal into the sunset.

Other consequences might be as short lived as sparks: folks starting up their own blogs "in the spirit of Mini-Microsoft." I can only say, be sure you have an agenda worth more than ten weekly posts. It's one thing to have an ax to grind, and another to want to make a better ax.

As for recent comments...

Mini, have you ever stopped to consider that some of the "dead wood" could be turned into very high performers in the hands of better managers?

Well, let's talk about talented people who have ratings indicating that they are poor-performers. In this case, I've considered that those people could be turned around. That, however, is not the practical culture of Microsoft management. Look, if you can effectively turn someone around into a very-good to great performer, you just saved Microsoft a whole bunch of cash vs. hiring, moving, and training a new person. But that's not the day-to-day management philosophy except in rare pockets of Microsoft. I'm hands on, personally, but I was talking with a dev manager recently about how much time managers spend on their reports and his philosophy was: I put all my focus and energy on my 4.0s. They are going to deliver results no one else can. My 3.0s can come to me for help, but I'm not going to actively mentor them. I wish I had a picture of my face at that moment just to know what my face looks like when I'm thinking: Dork.

And the big question floated up (or driven down) when considering poor-performers or people who have hit a plateau: would you rather keep them on the team or get a hot new smart college hire? That's a bait and switch.

A pro-curve comment is a good read. Bits and pieces:

I do not want to work at any company that does not have a curve. We need to reward performance, individual performance. If our managers are not using the system correctly, lets improve the management, not get rid of the system. Frankly, we should target 10% good attrition at every level of the company, every year.

10% of the VPs get the boot.
10% of the partners get the boot.
10% of the rank and file get the boot.

[...]

Also, most people probably don't realize what we have with our latest head of HR. Lisa has a long career at Microsoft as the head of product groups. She has relentlessly focused on management and people development within her organization, and is considered one of the top 5 managers in the company. Steve was very smart when he chose her to lead HR...Give her some time to work on the issues. I can guarantee that she will push very hard on improving how our managers manage. On holding them accountable, and on getting rid of the ones who should not be managing people.

Sounds like a Righteous Bloody Curve to me. I look forward to hearing more from Lisa and I'm looking forward to a deep impact on the company. But when? Anyway, I'm still no fan of the curve, and neither is the fellow in this comment (who was kind enough to note his lifetime average to show he's not a career 3.0):

Here's a little story: I wasn't performing well because I came in to a group towards the end of its ship cycle and basically had nothing to do (we were in full triage lock-down for about 6 months). I was on track for a 3.0. So I started doing informational interviews to find a group where there was work for me and where I wouldn't be screwing myself into a crappy review because of lack of work.

My manager wouldn't give me permission to interview, because -- in his words -- they needed someone to fill the bottom of the curve.

That's a manager that Microsoft can do without asap. And if Lisa is working to get rid of managers who can't manage, how can I help? Another comment doing a reality check:

Looking from the outside, I think the stack rating system is the wrong place to start. What I have gotten from reading this blog is that the problems started around 2000 or 2001 when Ballmer became CEO, and Microsoft hired a lot of new managers who weren't very good. And that in turn seems to be because Microsoft wanted to get a lot larger.

[...]

I think most of the people here are taking the wrong approach. You can't straighten things out working from the (bottom) up if things are fouled-up due to a big strategic decision made at the top.

P.S. Dare: oh, I knew the ship-date of VS (and hell, all of us can to go http://msweb/ and directly pull up the ship dates of all sorts of products). But I also knew how friggin' late VS was running in reaching the golden bits. Embarrassing. And my email address is within the posts. Motivated folks have managed to find it. ;-)

P.P.S. Josh, thanks for the laugh. Whew! I didn't even know the Mini C9Soft page existed. If Ballmer had said, "I'm WhoDaPunk!" then maybe one of those roaming camera persons would have caught my outraged, "Hey!?!?"

 

 

Get Rid of The Curve to Reduce Microsoft's Headcount

Whew, is it time bring my hands together in a "T" and call time-out? There's a bit of nyah-nyah threading itself through the comments. Part of that is probably due to the lull between significant events: the build-up here at Mini-Microsoft over the past year timed with the one-two punch of Business Week and Forbes publicly bringing forth the discontent right before the reorganization of business groups.

And then? grumbling fatigue.

A comment from Saturday morning from someone flourishing at Microsoft:

I compare us to the rest of the companies in the world I think we do darn well. I have been in the workforce for over 24 years and have worked for several companies during those 24 years. In my 6 years at MS this is the best company that I have ever worked for. I have a great manager, I like the (client) group that I support, I love the work that I do and I have been promoted because of the results that I have delivered and customer focus not my political savy. [...] Like I said, if you think that there are high tech companies that are better and will compensate you what you think you are worth, then you should probably go there. You are obviously not happy at MS and you seem to lack any faith that anything is going to change.

If you're not happy at Microsoft and don't have hope and are not rolling up your sleeves to rewire every aspect of the Microsoft daily-business engine (and get lots of scorched oil squirted on your face), you need to freshen up that resume and look elsewhere. We have a lot of shipping happiness ahead to bolster our spirits, but we need to clean our cluttered house and that's not going to be pretty or enjoyable.

The house cleaning, starting from the bottom of the organization and cascading upwards, has to happen for Microsoft to be agile and efficient and productive and to ship more often and on time. We need our own one-two punch of:

1. Organizational flattening to reduce waste of effort, and
2. Headcount reduction for efficiency and cost savings (and to show The Street we're committed to a leaner, efficient running of our business).

Headcount reduction. Something to think about is why Microsoft is so bad at firing people (until, cataclysmically, entire groups are paved over or remade). First, firing someone for lack of performance is a terrible thing for a manager to through (and yes, it's a terrible thing to be fired). Unless as a manager you relish unleashing such misery, you're going to be resistant to it. You have to connect the dots that your poor performers are actually putting features at risk and most likely will result in the product either being buggy and slow or having less compelling features. You have to realize that you're not pleasing customers and increasing revenues and shareholder value by keeping around marginal or poor performers.

You have to get rid of your poor performers.

So you do. Let's say you get rid of a few folks over the course of a year. And since good, talented people are hard to find right now, expect those positions to still be open by the time the review model comes around. Then along comes the curve. Say you still have to provide a 25% fit for 3.0s, maybe 45% 3.5s, and 30% 4.0s. If your group is big enough, dropping a few folks didn't make a difference in the number of 3.0s you need to provide. You just screwed some of your 3.5 and, most likely, some of your 4.0 people to fit the curve.

D'oh. Where are those talking points from HR on giving hard review scores again?

Managers learn that lesson really well the first time they go through it. Better to keep low performing reports around to keep the 3.0 bucket full until you're absolutely required to flush them out. Or get some new hires to slap the "welcome!" 3.0 on. Otherwise, your high performers aren't getting the rewards you want and your eyes are twitching as you stare at that blue "Love 'Em or Lose 'Em" book on your shelf.

When Microsoft was roiling with growth, there was enough turn-over going on that the curve got lost in the noise. When we slowed and the dust settled, suddenly all aspects of the curve started to hurt, including 3.5 for people who have done great jobs. And 3.0 for people who had done better than expected. When I was at that manager meeting with HR, one lead related how his boss was ready to go on a hiring spree to help review-time compensation and morale in their group. What kind of hiring spree?

"We need to go hire us a bunch of 3.0s!"

Damn! The Microsoft manager was going out there to specifically hire poor-performers so that the rest of the people in his group could get better review scores (the HR presenter winced upon hearing the story but didn't say much). And you know those new hires didn't just go away quickly but rather settled down like a tick into Microsoft and managed their own success.

Sorry, this is indeed the bad management of The Curve when applied to Stack Ranking. This is the bad management of spoiling Microsoft with persisted poor performers that I doubt anyone has the strength to terminate. And you know that managers know how to avoid the people-review for 3.0s: how many calibration meetings have you been in when folks ruminate over the multi-3.0s and manage to get them to bob up to a 3.5 this time. The radar stops blipping.

My first thought here was to have a safe-harbor for firing people: every person you move out of Microsoft that's good attrition gets to fill one of your required 3.0s for the upcoming review model. The 3.0 bank, so to say. That sort of falls apart when you consider the next year and your bank account is empty. Then you're back to screwing people. I half like this idea. It does give managers the comfort of knowing that they are not going to trend down their really good and great performers just because they thinned their herd for the good of Microsoft and its shareholders.

So consider: if we got rid of The Curve, would it actually make it easier to move on the poor performers at any time during the year? I think so. I believe so. The Curve, for some groups, is actually causing Microsoft to stack up the dead wood so that the bottom of the Stack Rank and the bottom of The Curve are pre-filled.

 

Alternatives to Stack Ranking?

Alternatives to "Rank and Yank" stack ranking: rather than playing around with Monad or writing some gadgets, I've dedicated my free time to reading up on what to do after you get rid of stack ranking and try to center on having everyone actually work together to get the best results for the customers vs. focusing on how to politically get ahead to get a good review. I'm also taking some time to contemplate on Deming's points and assess how Microsoft is doing against them. In some ways, we're slipping backwards into the industrial-era muck.

What I would deeply appreciate is real-world experience from people living with stack ranking alternatives. Now, I imagine there's something worse than stack ranking. People have written me saying how great it is to be with companies that reward all-around performance vs. relative performance. They feel appreciated, well compensated, and can focus on doing a great job. Managers feel like they can actually tell people when they do a good job (versus having to hold their tongue should that report be on the edge of falling into the 3.0 bucket and then being confused when that 3.0 review is delivered).

Is peer-review more screwed up and political than stack ranking? Can you incorporate a 360 assessment for everyone? Can manager feedback be constant and actually affect the manager's review? How about if you could provide feedback all the way up the chain? Should everything be transparent: if you're going to keep a stack rank, should you just publish it? If not, why?

Published stack ranks would be demoralizing?

Dude, it already is.

November 9th - Save the Date! Have you ever been to the shareholder's meeting for Microsoft? Well, if you're a shareholder and you want to experience the meeting... perhaps have your concerns heard between bursts of sunshine and smoke... you should put it on your calendar:

The Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Microsoft Corporation will be held at the

MEYDENBAUER CENTER 11100 NE 6th Street Bellevue, Washington on November 9, 2005, at 8:00 A.M.

Executive Pay: now, within the Microsoft DEF 14A filling is information regarding pay and bonus for some of our executives. Worth a quick scan (as always, interesting documents noted in http://www.microsoft.com/msft/aspx/secfilings.aspx ).

Where are the Lone Gunmen when you really need them? There is no Mini. This blog is in fact organized by Microsoft leadership to make upcoming major changes and shake-ups appear to be organic and therefore easily accepted by the subtly manipulated rank-and-file workers of the company. They even got an amazingly good looking flunky, posing as the blog's author, to meet with a respected Business Week journalist. This blog is a place where people will blow-off steam and, having satiated their anger, be a compliant cog and jump back into the machine. One comment:

Hmm, I am starting to think this is just a PR stunt, this blog is fake.

Followed up into more depth here. I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted. Sorry, it's just me, my beat-up laptop, and a bunch of groovy people taking time to add their points-of-views.

Other random things: one comment following up on my last post:

Mini. Tell us more. Who was it that tried to fix the mess but went to Google instead?

I think I know - search the internal web for the PowerPoint named something like "BillG A Day in the life of a Dev" or such. The author, Mr. Perlow, moved on to Google last year or so.

Yep, that's exactly the PPT and author. The copy I have has the title Day in the Life of a Developer.

One comment makes a really good point about why the Longhorn reset was a good idea:

FWIW, the Longhorn reset was due to the fact that the main folks were distracted with Windows Server 2003 SP1 and then Windows XP SP2. During this "distraction", it was primarily devs that were working on Longhorn, and they were doing so in different branches. Release management had their 3rd string assigned to Longhorn. The testers weren't really even looking at it. The ones that were, were distracted with a new test harness and in learning/writing managed code automated tests. Very little actual quality assurance was going on because those folks were just too busy shipping other good stuff.

When folks finally came up for air and looked at Longhorn, the reset made sense because the Server 2003 code base was rock solid whereas some devs had been mucking with Longhorn unchecked for years. I think the scheme they came up with made great sense... instead of starting with a big mess and integrating changes from a solid code base, start with a solid code base and only merge rock-solid features into it. In hind sight, it's a no-brainer (though it was far less obvious back then).

Right. The issue I, and I imagine everyone else in the company, has is the circumstances that were allowed that led to the reset and that no one was held accountable after the metal had stopped screeching and the fires died down.

Okay, I'm hitting the road for some vacation-OOF. I'll pop in occasionally to follow-up on interesting developments.

(Updated: fixed some formatting and a bad hyperlink.)

Mini... Is That You?

I'm busy packing and organizing and trying to be efficient and lightweight about what I'll be huffin' down the long road with. I keep looking at the books about how to grow beyond using industrial-era performance reviews (yes, anti-stack ranking books are out there). I don't think I'll be able to fit the books in so they'll have to wait until I get back. But I am printing out for reading later some various anti-stank ranking articles I found, especially this one over at Curious Cat:

• Total Quality or Performance Appraisal: Choose One by Peter Scholtes.

Microsoft Company Meeting 2005 follow-up: what, did I go and drink the Kool-Aid? Baby, I didn't just drink the Kool-Aid, I shot it into my veins! At a superficial level, I enjoyed it through-and-through. And I was looking for a fun, superficial experience. It does make me very excited about what we will finally be shipping for our customers.

I was enjoying Lisa's speech until about 2/3s of the way through, and then I felt I was just being talked to and zero content was coming my way. It ended with a "trust me" vibe to it. Some folks have mentioned rumors here about a major comp revamp coming. It would have been great to mention that, if that's the case.

As for Mr. Ozzie: where I was sitting, the murmuring of people having low-level conversations grew louder and louder as he talked and people stopped paying attention. He wasn't engaging the folks around me with whatever he was strutting around about ("De cloud! De cloud!"). Sorry, Ray, you need to earn our respect with results right now. Lotus Notes and the saved-from-the-brink of bankruptcy Groove isn't endowing you with much currency.

Liddell? Straight talker. And I loved the little Maori tribal-chant-soccer game video clip. That was just so not Microsoft that it came back full circle. I'd much rather see our leadership lined up, squatting and chanting in unison to that, just as long as they bugged their eyes out and stuck out their tongues. I'm sure Steve would get on board.

Ballmer: the whole whaka-whaka-Eye of the-I Love This Company-whaka-Tiger was tedious. How is a tiger relevant to us? Tiger OS? Steve Jobs has got the eye of the tiger right now. But Steve's the man for getting people riled up and there's no stopping that. It was great that he told his little story about the mid-year review and how we all need to find our bit of cruft to stop doing so that we have more time to be effective. But a story disconnected from an initiative to cut back on middle management bureaucracy goes no where.

As for the missing ship dates I was bemoaning, one comment reflects:

I guess Mini's surprise at the company meeting confirms some of the outside speculation: that he is a low-level flunky outside the main product groups. Otherwise explain how he didn't know the dates and didn't know this stuff was coming. Relax Mini and let the people who actually know stuff run the company.

Whew, I'm sure you could have squeezed a be-yotch in there somewhere. Dude / Dudette, listen: like most everyone, I have plenty of access to the internal websites with all the projected dates about the milestones and RTM and what's supposed to be done when. More access than I need. But that's all internal and subject to slipping and slipping and slipping some more. I wanted VPs (and our presidents) to commit before the rest of the company what they'd be shipping when. They failed to do this. What exactly is it that they are accountable for?

Elsewhere

Managers: Mr. Sinofsky has a nice weekend posting up: What do managers do and how big should my team be? The first time I read it was after a long ride and I rubbed my eyes trying to pull together the main points of the article. Okay, I like managers with eight reports. Much better than the two of three reports I commonly see. Smiley faces! I like smiley faces. I think there might be something in there trying to justify the layers by saying that startups are able to flatten the org as compared to a big corporation. I'll have to read it again later when I'm more hydrated.

No ranking here: A comment noted the following:

Hey, Mini-MS: The review system is already fixed. There is no stack rank and there is no curve.

Microsoft testified as much in a court of law:

Ms. Willingham also said the company did not ask its managers to give a fixed percentage of their employees any given score. "We don't force that curve to look any certain way," she said.

Microsoft has no formal "stack rank" policy, she said.

Surely Microsoft wouldn't lie in court would it?

Microsoft has been doing lifeboat / stack-ranking drills for a very long time. Though I remember, probably around the time this article was written, HR was running review meetings for employees and review meetings for managers. I went to both. For the employees, HR was up there emphatically saying, "There is no curve." They stated as fact to everyone in the room that there was not a curve. Then I went to the managers meeting. What did we talk about? The curve. Especially how it sucks when you have a small, great team yet someone is going to get that 3.5 and worse someone's going to get that 3.0. The manager asked HR: how can I keep my great team together when I have to demoralize part of it by fitting the curve? HR: standard response of how employee's performance is relative to their peers. That wasn't going to help keep his team motivated, let alone together, for creating great software.

If you ever want to hear a bunch of Microsoftie managers start spewing, ask them whether they feel they've ever handed out review scores they felt were unfair.

WSJ: Where did that Wall Street Journal article come from (along the internetnews.com article)? I saw it briefly as I ate my cereal Friday morning and had to cover my mouth so that I didn't spray my screen. Talk about a fluffer - er, fluff - piece. Interesting that in Business Week Ballmer was saying how Vista wasn't ever delayed and not acknowledging the Longhorn Reset and then they go and discuss how at that reset event we walked away from most of the Longhorn features and suddenly it was critical to get the lab, automation, and process around quality code and builds working. A recent comment notes:

If that WSJ article is correct, it paints a very unflattering portrait of MSFT, its snr mgt and in particular BillG. Rather than being the one raising hell to fix the problem, he comes off as the guy who is trying to avoid fixing it while simultaneoulsy making it worse by pishing WinFS.

Here's something interesting that was noted in my inbox. Years ago, when Longhorn was just fouling up its 2003 ship date, a smart dude had recently transferred to Windows and endeavored to change Windows bizarre and truly Rube Goldberg check-in, build, and release system. I've been told that he even reviewed Windows horrible state, along with solutions, with Bill Gates. Whatever happened to this innovative idea and its champion? There was lots of talk and zero changes to the system until the catastrophic events of the Longhorn Reset. And the dude went to go work for Google.

He didn't just complain, Steve. He tried actively tried to make a difference. Why didn't it all happen until it was a crisis? How much shareholder money could have been saved? Talking about our own personal mid-year review getting scrapped is one thing. Visibly supporting and empowering the people trying to do it, and punishing the inhibitors, is another.

BW: Jay Greene has an article Less Could Be More At Microsoft reviewing what might happen post chair-shuffling.

Dividend? Schmividend! The one thing we heard from the post-FAM analysts is that Microsoft stock would improve if Microsoft provided a consistent, good dividend. Eight-cents? I don't even know if that buys a piece of crappy Bazooka gum anymore. Most disappointing.

Microsoft Company Meeting 2005

(Updated: reposted with Post-Company Meeting immediate reactions.)

Pre Company Meeting

So I'm getting ready for the Microsoft Company Meeting, ready to get to campus early and jump on a bus and get my morning box lunch, feeling deep sympathy for all the admins who get to SafeCo field sometime after 7:00 am to guard spots for their groups.

Do something nice for your admin this next week. And if you're smart, do something nice for your admin every week.

So in your dream Company Meeting, what would you like to see? Here, I'll share a few:

Dates: I said it once, I'll say it again: I want some dates for all of these innovations stuffing our pipeline. But wait, aren't date-based releases bad? Look, Vista was no longer about being a feature-based release after the Longhorn Reset. If it's not making the date, it's got a "Cut!" fate. Plus, our customer pay us good money to license our software and we need to give them value for actually getting around to shipping something on occasion.

Review System Overhaul: we announce that the "rank and yank" stack rank review system and The Curve is a thing of the past, where it belongs in the industrial era. For 2006, we'll have a new, fair, review and compensation system that is appropriate for a 21st century company that endeavors to hire the best, smartest, "A+" people. (I said endeavors.)

Management Flattening: as part of the reorganization, each of the three new businesses were taking on the mandate to flatten their organizations to reduce bureaucratic middle management and get the decision makers close to the front-line contributors.

Mea-Frickin-Culpa: no, it's not always been this way. No, it's not just that we have a culture of criticism. Yes, something has reached a critical stage where the best of Microsoft is peeling away from the company, some severely disillusioned with what a lumbering, slow beast it has become. All I'd be happy to hear is, "There is something wrong. We know what it is (tell us). We're going to fix it and here is how."

Dissent: No, I have no grand plans of organized dissent. How many dissenters are even out there? Fifty? One-hundred and fifty? A few thousand? Beats me. All I can say is don't clap if you don't want to, throw in a boo or a hiss. If something outrageously false is said, kick in with a "eeeeenk!" wrong buzzer. I guess that's my dream: when all the bogus claims of success and everything being alright is echoed through SafeCo field, the audience goes "eeeeenk!"

Post Company Meeting

One word: Wow!

Short phrase: I think our customers are going to be delighted silly this coming year!

Wishes:

• Investors realize that we can ship and what we are shipping is well worth investing in Microsoft. It's their way of saying, "More, please!"
• We never forget that a lot of what we're shipping is a year or even years late and commit to never letting this happen again.

I love Microsoft and I especially love the Company Meeting. I am so thankful that it's back and hopefully will happen again every year. Any vestiges of doubt or ennui get blown away once you actually see what we are on the verge of shipping. My only worry now is that we're shipping so much that some really good stuff is going to die on the vine out of lack of attention.

As for my wishes above: zip. We have Vista's ship-ish date as: before the end of next year. There was a slide showing all the software being shipped this next year, and both Vista and Office 12 were emblazoned with "Beta." Beta than nothing.

There were lots of good words from Lisa and from Steve about adjusting and what to focus on (e.g., finding your own personal mid-year review that you can do without). Good words. Actions, of course, speak louder. However, those good words can be used to your advantage to cleave through useless process and meetings and to focus on the customer and on the code.

The software looks fantastic in my opinion and I was pretty impressed that given how much they showed not much at all went wrong (the main thing that seemed problematic was Steve's clicker to advance the PPT slidedeck). The XBox 360 makes my heart beat fast and my fingers quiver. And I understand it plays games, too.

I'm probably going to stop posting here for a while just so that I can start writing my own gadgets for Start.com and look forward to them working with Vista. I'm energized and cautiously optimistic.

And I hope all the folks who do the real work of Microsoft are energized, too, and feel empowered to start managing up and kicking bureaucracy's butt around the building and to focus where we can have the best impact. We don't ship process. We don't get "Ship Its" for process. We ship software products. If whatever you're doing or required to do isn't focused on that, it can go join the old mid-year review on the junk pile. But it's up to you to start heading it towards that junk pile.

(FYI: I'm preparing for some OOF-age so updates here might be on the light-side.)

Your Wishes and Reactions?

What do you hope happens at the Company Meeting? What are your post Company Meeting thoughts?

Comment Overload at Mini-Microsoft

A short, paste-happy content-free prelude to the Company Meeting... first of all, what happened last night reminded me of an offhand comment I had made to Business Week's Jay Greene: "I fear getting Slashdotted." I was concerned about the vitriol level of the comments here exploding into a noisy spectrum. Well, the small Slashdot blurb showed up last night. It could be that things were saved by Google's Blogger having a server problem and the blog just being wonky when not completely offline (perhaps from being Slashdotted - if so, sorry! Nice load experiment, eh?). But then I didn't know how many people prefer to comment within the original Slashdot posting itself. Lesson learned.

In the end, I'm pleasantly surprised at the low number of bothersome comments. And I'm super pleased at the number of new Microsoftie comments. Too many good ones to truly appreciate them all in a short period of time. It will take me a while to read them in depth, let alone pull together any new patterns.

Some recent Business Week posts:

• Three-Part Harmony for Microsoft?
  • Copy of Ballmer's memo
  • Copy of Allchin's memo
• A podcast from Mr. Greene's Business Week cover story. Something to listen to while bouncing down the road to the Company Meeting?

Todd Bishop over at Seattle-PI has the Ballmer Q&A and Ballmer Q&A: Online Extra. Two precious questions that sent my socks flying (after many sock-flights out of my scruffy loafers over the past week):

1. Q: Microsoft has been criticized for becoming too interdependent and bureaucratic as it has grown larger. Is this a bid to become more nimble and responsive in that way?
2. Q: Is Microsoft today not agile enough, in your mind?

See, I couldn't have imagined Ballmer or Gates being asked those questions a couple of weeks ago, no matter how much I dreamed about it. The answers still don't satisfy. Here's the thing: how about some follow-ups, like a tough job interview question. Q: Can you give me a recent example of agility in action at Microsoft and how it created a superior software product? And you've got to (channeling Ballmer) drill into it, drill into it, drill into it over the next months as the commitments of these executives are realized to meet one of the main stated goals of this reorg: to be agile and efficient. Start building up the facts to show the proof. Cause... you know, folks aren't going to let this one slip away and fade from memory.

Interesting recent bits from the comments:

This blog really needs to be studied carefully. But not by Microsoft employees or even employees from other companies. Not by management either. It needs to be studied by psychology students so they can see what a serious case of DENIAL looks like. It's pretty clear that you're fully aware that SteveB, BillG, and the other upper execs are way less than competent. And that this reorg is totally pointless. Yet you continue to hope that somehow these morons, these proven failures, will magically fix things and MSFT will be great again.

Well, I guess de-Nile is not just a river. Another:

I worked for Microsoft for 15 years, and left a month ago, because of all the stuff that has been written in this blog - bureaucracy, useless level of management, product integration deadlock and so on. Seeing JimAll leaving and being replaced by a salesman, just reensure me that I did the right thing.

Jim's a polarizing figure. Either folks think he walks on water or that he's a walking disaster. Another 15-year marker:

I worked at Microsoft for well over 15 years; I left because the company was fundamentally not set up to grow people to taking on new levels of responsibility. One of the earlier comments stated that many of MS’s managers are not good business people. The fault, if true, is not with those people, but that Microsoft has not given those people the opportunity to take responsibility for their businesses.

Contemplating the "rank and yank" stack ranking system and how Ballmer indicated we move on 6.5% of Microsofties a year:

I am contiually baffled at the folks who believe that forced ranking is a necessary evil. WHY? Give me one good reason why it's necessary at all. Since when is it impossible to pick out the low performers without a ranking? This is a cop-out by people who are too lazy to set realistic goals by which to compare an employee's performance.

And

In my 10 years at MSFT, I've seen exactly four employees terminated for performance reasons: Two got caught stealing. One did literally no work for over a year. One got managed into a no-win situation. A great contributor who I later hired into my group.

And

The 6.5% forced attrition number is total BS. It doesn't happen. I have the same experience as a previous poster - I can count the number of people I've seen fired for performance reasons on one hand.

And

I'm a manager of a small team I was put in charge of 2 months ago and I "inherited" an utterly useless person. Almost all of the candidates I give no-hire I would rather have than this one, but I have no chance in hell of firing her. Why? Unions, lawsuits, bullshit upon bullshit. She got a 3.0 this year (former manager), a 2.5 last year but former manager had no balls. So now I'm stuck with an employee who is worthless, taking up a headcount and I can only give her a motivating speak in my 1-1s if I don't want her to be downright destructive. My god, if only I could actually speak right out of the bag and fire this dead weight! I may sound tough, but this really pisses me off...

Have a few years of 6.5% reduction of workforce (not backfilled) would be great. Perhaps the reductions are happening outside of Redmond. How about giving us some visibility into our reductions?

Bing! Alright, the fifteen minutes are up. Back to work.