And You're a Microsoft Shareholder Because...?

Hello. Just a quick check-in for Mini-land. As I start writing this, I should be out soaking up the sun biking down some nice trail, but my knee started making those wet twig-snapping noises so here I am, side-lined and typing.

Quarterly financials are due in a week, and I'll probably skip a post on this one. Other places do a pretty good job of tracking the financial results. I am really curious, though, of all the people either holding or accumulating Microsoft stock: why? Why are you a Microsoft MSFT shareholder? What kind of metrics are you using to deciding to buy and/or hold? Sure, we all set alarms on stock when we buy it, but usually that does not include stagnation. Rick Sherlund gets off the Microsoft beat and the next thing you know we're getting bounced around.

This past week, I was driving home, listening to Marketplace on NPR, and some fellow gets on talking about Microsoft: "Lumbering..." he starts off with. "Dinosaur" he adds. Wow, he ripped into us more than I ever have. And what else shows up today? Lumbering Giants, mentioning Microsoft and other Dogs of the Dow.

This, combined with reports of Microsoft's death (SteveB and BillG in the repository: "Sorry, we're what? We can't hear you over all the ruckus of counting these billions raining down on us."), means we've reached a cultural turning point: Who's afraid of the big Microsoftie bad wolf?

No one.

Thank goodness. Pretty soon, the institutional shareholders might actually rub their eyes really well and look over the data, stumble up to the microphone at FAM, tap it, and say, "Hey! What the hell are you Bozos doing with my money?"

Personally, I'm in the middle of extreme diversification and I've scheduled myself out to aggressively sell-off all the MSFT ESPP and stock awards I've left alone for all these years. I guess that's just another little death in my confidence that Microsoft is actually ever going to turn around stock price-wise. I'm holding on to my options, though, hoping to at least fund an extra shot or two in my occasional mocha.

Other goings on...

InsideMS: "hey, was that a shark I just jumped?"

Collision Domain has a new post - "Bunnies!" - discussing the state of LisaB's internal InsideMS blog. Readers of the comments to a recent post will get the title. InsideMS certainly had a lot of potential at the get-go, along with probably a deep desire of Microsofties to use it as a place to engage and help change Microsoft and knowing that they could safely engage in conversation with peers. Then, it seems, it all went kinda wrong. Chops to LisaB for keeping it running as long as it has but hell, I wouldn't have it on my commitments either at this point. You can't keep posting on HR topics forever. I think it could change with more guest posts and with follow-up posts that summarized the major themes in comments so that the comments can at least be acknowledged, if not acted upon ("order up!").

Or maybe any topics originally started by He Who Must Not Be Named are off-limits.

If LisaB were to be interviewed, what are the hard, unanswered questions you'd want posed to her?

Microsoftie in the Field: hey, my goodness, a new post. Keep it up!

Outlook 2007 Performance: so, as Joel Spolsky notes, an update for Outlook 2007 was released to address performance problems. And, by the way, Outlook PM suggests you trim down your PST / OST size so that it doesn't accumulate email and silly stuff like that. Outlook is a temporal organizer, not a repository! Anyway, my performance is a little better but I still have strange freezes with POP, which I don't even know if it's on the Outlook team's radar. I'd be interested in what SQM said was the percent of non-Exchange Outlook users.

But it has me thinking. Thinking about waterfalled monolithic product wave shipping. Can it go on? Can we keep with the every three year product pipeline burst? One issue with Office proper is that it's half client software and half platform, and some large chunk of each wired up to the server solutions. The corner we've painted ourselves into is the platform part, where it was a strategic advantage but now IT departments are wary of upgrading less all their custom platform-based solutions regress because of new features or deprecation.

What to do? Well, avoid making that mistake again. Can Office be saved? Could you write a feature and stabilize it and just ship it, all within three months? A release of Office becomes constantly updated as new features come out, at least ensuring we can stay competitive fresh.

"Oy!" You start screaming about service packs and QFEs and N minus one and crazy sustainability crap like that. Really? Do we really have that limitation? Is it leading us to the path of reward and success?

And do we have the culture and know-how to be on track to just incrementally ship new features as we finish them? I'd be interested in knowing which groups do this really, really well.

Take This Microsoftie Job and Shove-It: Ms. Mary Jo Foley picks up on a f(Microsoftie) = Googler post: Ouch Goodbye Microsoft; Hello, Google. Ooo, that item got deleted from the blog. Silly delete. Never delete your blog entry. Always update and just plain replace the content with a space or a smiley. Less people track it down in the BlogLines cache by looking for feeds with "David Bennet" or such.

Vizzini! You know I have to give a shout-out to Mr. Joe Wilcox for his Princess Bride reference in DoubleClick and Microsoft's Thrift Culture. DoubleClick. Well, I'm glad it wasn't Microsoft paying $3,100,000,000 for it.

(Oh, and Mr. Wilcox: man, you've got some interesting comment action going on in your posts. Whew.)

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft MSFT

Should You Stay or Should You Go Now?

A comment from the last post asks a question that turned into such a long response on my part that I'll go ahead and post it:

why aren't you looking for a new exciting job in a lean and mini startup?

Fair question. First, I'm a very clumsy Pied Piping Mephistopheles in my attempts to get other people to leave. But, part of that is putting out what the reality of staying at Microsoft entails, and it's not pretty.

You're not going to get rich.

You're not going to be a L68+ Partner.

You're no longer going to succeed based on your merits alone.

Ouch, think that's uncool? Then my good-looking Brothers and Sisters, there are better places for you. Elsewhere.

I'm a corporate animal and this Microsoft environment, with its toxic pockets and issues, is a well known savage savanna to me and I'm able to succeed and be fulfilled, seeing the situation for what it is. And of course trying to change those things that I believe the other Microsofties can attempt to influence, given insight. The great potential for this change for the better is an exciting inspiration.

But I almost left recently. True. It was a situation where I didn't have to worry about sim-releasing in N-teen languages and ensuring that the Lords of IT were well and pleased. I could put out some cool features and IT-fanboys would suck-it-up and use whatever we made available to them and celebrate each newly released gizmo feature vs. crap all over the product and boo-hoo complain about all the compliance testing they had to do before moving to it. Tempting.

It did make me realize the accumulated shackles we haul around given the greater responsibility we have in creating World Class Software. No one else does it near the scope that Microsoft does. I don't know if we appreciate that deeply enough ourselves. Or appreciate it as a distinguishing, competitive feature. It certainly does not make you nimble and I've seen more than one feature killed due to localization and internationalization.

So, I stay because I still care. I care about making a difference for Microsoft products, and for carrying on the conversation here to see what other issues there are that should be brought out into the light and discussed, with the hopes of change for the better of Microsoft.

But Microsoft continues to bloat in size, the stock is flat, innovation is still somewhere out there, inspiring leadership is absent, executives seem to be flipping stock-grants, and efficiency and agility are still unrealized for many teams. The aircraft carrier hasn't turned very well yet, and the crew has become more and more dispassionate. I know my blue-badge clock is ticking and I hope I can make some difference before I head for the door and get to have fun writing EN-US Class Software.

All of us of deep software talent (and I'm putting myself in that group) are volunteers. We work where we work in a voluntarily sense because we enjoy it and it's the best place we can imagine for ourselves. We can pretty much get a job where-ever we want. Right now, for me, that's Microsoft. And there are changes happening. Slowly. But I think I've personally made the mistake of being anti-this and anti-that vs. being pro-this and pro-that. When you're anti-something and it gets attacked and then reduced, what takes its place? Whoops. Hadn't thought that one through. Maybe something worse than what was there. You've got to flip it around and be pro: pro-agility, pro-efficiency, pro-transparency, pro-compelling features, pro-iterative shipping, pro-stock growth, pro-meritocracy, pro pro pro.

I'm enjoying it while I can, and taking notes. I'm growing more in a business sense than a technical sense.

I can tell you this: I, like a lot of senior Microsofties, can't imagine staying for another year of flat stock growth. I'll have to be developing the bestest, funnest software in the world to live through another year of watching a stock price that meanders around like a fat, gassy contented cow from Carnation. I see this next year as the loyalty tipping point for Microsofties who have held on this long, hoping beyond hope for the shares to finally perform. If that doesn't happen, the office spacing problem around large of chunks of Microsoft will start to ease up without new buildings opening. And be wary of those who do stay, because you'll have to ask why.

So. You've had a chance to go through the MSPoll recently and perhaps consider how things are going for you. Why do you stay? Is it something beyond great benefits? What would compel you to stay for a long time, and what's on the verge of pushing you out the door?

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

A Whole Lotta Movin' On!

For a while, I'd post just about anytime someone I thought was a Big Cheese decided to move-on from Microsoft. For me, it was two things:

1. A harbinger of change given some of the most loyal Microsofties who bleed multi-colored logos decide to pack it up, and
2. Attrition is attrition - good, bad, or indifferent - and it was the right direction for company growth, no matter how influential the departed might be.

Then it just became too much to always note such partings. Lately, there's been more than one time I grumbled at someone to go check with That Architect or This PM Lead and they wander back to my office after a few minutes: "Who?"

I type the name into Outlook and get an error. Damn, I didn't think that they spelled their name funny or anything. So I find some random meeting with that person from the recent past and double click their name in the attendee list, and get a weirdly blank Outlook property dialog.

"Ohhhhhhh...," the realization hits me. "Huh. Sorry, I guess they've moved on." (I'll be damned!) "I'll track down who's handling their area now." (I'll be damned!)

Mr. Todd Bishop points out various interesting departures as of late and even further back:

• Hillel Cooperman who was a key figure behind the buzz-worthy dead-as-a-doornail Microsoft Max now runs Jackson Fish Market. Hey, be careful with your fries around this guy (long story).
• Walter Smith who has headed to work with Mr. Cooperman.
• As has Jenny Lam of Vista UX.
• Brian Marr.
• Alex Barnett (old MSDN blog, new bridge-preserving non-Microsoftie blog).

Congratulations all! Again, I'll go for any attrition we can get. But are the right people leaving vs. the right people staying? There does come a point where you're left with a bunch of risk averse troops and no heroic generals. And I'm not quite sure what kind of uninspired, mediocre results you get, but at that point you've reached a point where you're back to destroying the village to save it.

Hey, Jackson Fish Market is hiring. As are lots, and lots of techies. And if you're interested in, say, the local Seattle scene, you should do what I do and go to events like Ignite Seattle (one's coming up this very Thursday, April 5th) so that you can get outside the Microsoft distortion bubble and talk with other techies regarding what they're doing and what they are passionate about.

It might be A Good Thing for you and your post MYCD-self. You can at least build your work network. That's a big first step.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Extreme Results

Folks read MSFT Extreme Makeover, right?

Website: http://msftextrememakeover.blogspot.com/

Feeds: http://msftextrememakeover.blogspot.com/atom.xml and http://msftextrememakeover.blogspot.com/rss.xml (it's still the old Google Blogger so you're not date vexed if you read your RSS feeds in Outlook 2007).

Latest post: well worth a read (long like Sinofsky, not near as dense): MSFTextrememakeover For want of a shoe, or time for a new rider.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Mini, a Devil, and Fine Whine

'So,' I wondered to myself, trying to get comfortable after a couple of weekends of digging and planting and valiant blackberry fighting, 'what kind of headlines do we have in Mini world?'

(1) Ballmer calls Google's growth plans 'insane' :

"They are trying to double in a year," Ballmer told a crowd of Stanford Graduate School of Business students on Thursday. "That's insane in my opinion."

(2) A comment on the Microsoft TCN award event in San Francisco:

In case people didn’t realize, the Microsoft award weekend event this past weekend in San Francisco was a big huge L68+ Partner boondoggle - 2nd annual boondoggle - for the Partners and their spouses to network and enjoy extravagance after extravagance, all expenses paid.

And give out some achievement awards and invite the nominees and their spouses to enjoy the extravagance, too (just, shh!, don't tell anyone else - seriously!).

Once upon a time, we invested money in making the employees happy as part of sharing "Hey, we appreciate you and the hard work you do. Let's party!." We had great entertainment at the Company Meeting, for instance. Now we supply the entertainment ourselves with employees up on stage singing to us. Great. Yes, let's save all that money for the Partners so that they can go to the Fairmont and enjoy Penn & Teller and meet George Lucas.

Sure. We'll eat cake.

(3) A multi-studded comment including this bit on the Career Compass tool:

Career Compass:

HR hates it as much as the rest of the company, they just don't want to piss of their fearless (and ex-developer) leader. Its true purpose is to provide documentation for use when employees start suing for being terminated or held back due to discrimination, and to provide ammo for the "why you will never reach Partner level" discussions that are going on all across the Collective.

About then, there was a little *pop* on my left shoulder and there stood my personal little editing Devil. "Oh, baby," he chuckled, bending down and rubbing his hands together, leaning in closer, "sometimes this stuff just writes itself!"

"Shouldn't you be out with Master Shake and Meatwad?" I asked. He jumped down and zoomed up to full size.

"You know I don't like those Frylock jokes. Hey, here's something else. Do you have one of the freebies - Seattle Weekly or The Stranger, or the Sunday paper?"

"Yeah, yeah," I started shuffling through the newspapers. He said to look for page twenty-seven or eleven and to read the groovy Microsoft Maps ad to him. "Here we go: '6 o'clock drinks. 6 miles from work. 6 doors down from that hammering statue thingy. one search.' Oh, I get it, six-six-six."

"They're not even making it hard. And you'd think someone in the paper's advertising department would say, 'Gee Microsoft, uh, you sure you want an ad with those three sixes lining up?' Ho-lee-crap! Anyway, I'm going to run downstairs and get a bottle of Col Solare. We're going to enjoy this post!"

Well, let's see. Mary Jo Foley already covered the Ballmer comment pretty well, though I was going to say something like Ballmer shouldn't be throwing black chairs around his overly crowded glass house. It's become exceptionally tough to recruit exceptional talent once Google gets in the picture. I know of more than one recent offer that the recruit initially accepted and then dropped once their Google ship sailed in.

As for the big award event - which in no means, according to leadership, was a L68+ Partner event (bull) - I really don't want to beat that poor dead horse again. First of all, I know some exceptional Partners. I might be an out-of-the-box thinker, but they think and deliver in an extra dimension compared to me and have obviously worked hard and had success to reach a Partner level. I'll have to have at least five more years of varied and harrowing adventures inside of Microsoft before I feel like I can have an honest conversation about being on the bench and being considered at that level. And it will probably really, really suck to be a Partner by then.

As for Career Compass: now here, we have a problem. And by problem, I do not mean something that can be solved by adding another process or tool to solve it. The Commitments Tool combined with the Career Compass is a cluster-f multiplied by a train wreck. Somewhere, some excellent folks got together and came up with a theory regarding how all the careers at Microsoft could be boxed up and measured with very specific calipers. And then they made a database and a tool on-top of it. And in the midst of Microsoft desperately needing to be efficient and agile day-to-day, we pooped out this time-sucking, burdensome, poorly aligned process and tool that messages people that they need to dedicate a huge chunk of time to managing their careers and laying down a database stream of just how limited they might be. All while the competitions, unencumbered by such inspired dreck, passes us by.

Yes, now we all have our own personal bureaucratic system to manage.

"I'm back!" Ooo! Clinking glasses and the nice *pongk* of a bottle of wine being opened. "Allow me to pour. Okaaay, let's see what we've got so far-r-r-r-r-what the hell? I like the Career Compass bit but come-on, Ballmer pissed at Google for reckless hiring and the Partners and their spouses traveling to San Francisco for their second big social event? With the guests and the luxurious accommodations and fantastic awards that's probably nearly 1,800 people for two-thousand a head! That's easily over three-and-a-half million dollars! Take them towels and shove it! No, no, write that down: 'Take them towels and shove it!' Don't you take a sip until you do!"

Tempting. I'd do just about anything for a nice full glass of Col Solare. But then. "This is rabble rousing. And it's a bit of whining. I don't disagree that the Partners have fallen when it comes to fiscal leadership. The stock is flat and their rewards are not in sync with shareholder value. Their rewards should be transparently tied to the measurable results they are responsible for delivering. But to ding them for a party, well... hey, did you read Anthony B. Robinson's column Saturday in the Seattle P-I?"

"The, ah, spiritual columnist?" Sip. "No, doggone it, I somehow missed that."

"So it was titled The unfortunate age of entitlement in America and it's worth a read. And it got me thinking. First of all, since the Microsoft stock sucks and pay-raises and bonuses are the only way to get rewarded in a meaningful fashion, people have decided that they are going to focus their career on being a Microsoft level 68-plus Partner so that they can get what they deserve. The thing is, what, one-percent of the employee base is level 68-plus?"

"Well," he pursed his lips and thought, "more than one percent. So far."

"And people haven't figured out that they are not going to be Partner. Or maybe they have. And they are pissed about not getting compensated well enough. Now conventional thinking is that I never can be compensated well enough and that I deserve so much more for just being me. And to see people in the company enjoying the good life is a personal affront to me."

"So...?" My Devil shrugged.

"So I don't feel like fanning the flames over a party. It was a wasteful indulgence but it's not a defining problem. The problem is that there's a growing gap between those below level 65 and those above level 68. And very little being done to bridge that gap. Stuff like the Town Hall meetings help a lot. Where there is true exchange of what we're doing and why, there's understanding and the banishment of speculative grousing and whining. I think every Partner should have a blog where they post every couple of weeks regarding decisions that they've driven and the reasoning behind it. It would help explain why they do what they do and help everyone else understand and raise their level of enlightenment."

"Hmm, they could make a... process out of that blogging!"

"Funny." I was thinking about adding a Borat accented "NOT!" when my Devil continued:

"The thing I want to know is - and feel free to enjoy your glass, I was just funning with you - so why be so secretive about it? And why defend it saying 'Hey, whoa now, this wasn't a Partner event at all, it was a celebration of technical achievers... just you know, celebrated exclusively with the Partners and their spouses in a luxurious location in an out-of-state city.' Fiscal responsibility my butt! To be truthful, the memo should be rewritten: 'Weenies For You, Shrimp For Me.' And all of this is happening in the middle of what should be the redefinition of Microsoft as a company. It's shameful. And it shows the leadership at the top do not realize that appearances matter. It's a big 'screw you' message."

I enjoyed my sip and looked out the window at the newly planted shrubs. My Devil asked, "What's your little first rule of being an effective manager?"

"If the team has to suck-it up and eat a shit-sandwich to get the job done, I take the first and biggest bite."

"Not very tasteful, but it gets the point across. And do you see leadership taking that bite?"

"No. But whining about it accomplishes what? If I don't like it, I either accept it as the way it is and push up my concerns within the political corporate system or I move on to another company. Hell, I'm like a lot of people with Google executive recruiting and head hunters checking in with my non-Mini self to see, quote-unquote how things are going at Microsoft and if I'm interested in talking. I'm here because I want to be here. Complaining about every offense that comes my way means that I've made the wrong decision in staying. And that I should move on to where I'm not bothered with such silly messes."

"Well," my Devil says, finishing his glass and placing the bottle on my end table, "there's one more step in that direction. Let's wrap this up."

*Poof* Dang, he disappeared before I had a chance to mention the Microsoft Channel 9 article in Wired 15.04 and if, given that Microsoft had a dossier on Fred Vogelstein, my Devil could track down any dossier on me. Ah, well. Next time.

What else? The last post certainly had a number of interesting conversations going on in the comments, ranging from Microsoft Research's place in the company (worthy of its own post), the business of Xbox, and a lawn-mower selling experiment. Hey, I hope Mr. Barr sells it. I'm just not that sure that the comments are an effective Microsoftie watering hole, but, ooo!, there's news with respect to comments! You now have a comment feed per post! I'm sure there's some Blogger gadget I could put in here to make it obvious, but for now you're going to have to use your RSS feed auto-detection mechanism when you visit the individual blog-post web page and subscribe to what should be the third item to get the comment feed.

Some other items from that multi-studded comment above:

A few more tidbits from deep within the management ranks of the company:

Exec reorg: Stay tuned, there's lots more to come. The Blake Irving-Alex Payne-Satya Nadella three-step is just the opening moves in a very extensive executive dance. Look for several more big names (i.e., ones that Mary Jo loves to toss around at parties) to either decide to spend more time with their families, or move to roles for which they are as equally unfit for as their current ones.

[...]

HR: There's lots of dissatisfaction within the HR world, and lots of personell changes happening there, as well. Note that most of the recent mangement hires within HR have been from the outside. That tells you something about their reputation within the company.

Mini and InsideMS: Management is even more pissed about the fact that this blog continues to thrive than they ever have been. It's beyond the level of chair throwing, and well into the foaming-at-the-mouth stage. Lisa's blog is a disaster, and she is trying to get permission to kill it. Anonymity has been removed (never really was there), and Partners are being notified about inflammatory posts from their employees. Also, it's sad to see Dawn-Marie leave.

Exec Re-org: it's always better to do big changes quickly and together versus having an ongoing stream of randomizing changes that induce anxiety over what the next change might be and starts stalling out important initiatives.

As for this blog and InsideMS: well, this blog and its conversation changed pretty dramatically when InsideMS came on the internal Microsoftie scene and there's no denying that. And it provided me an opportunity to change the direction of this blog, which I don't think I've been effective in doing. Yet. I was trying my best to hit the big pause button here anyway and await my Mini 2.0 muse. To tell you the truth, reading the comments on the InsideMS blog also depressed the hell out of me and it was a little mirror of some-kind of justice held up to me to see another's point-of-view of what's been happening here.

My suggestion would be to shelve InsideMS ("Jealous much?"), Career Compass, and the Commitments Tool and... do what? (1) Replace InsideMS with a leadership blog where L68+ Partners / VPs communicate with the company what recent decisions they've made and the reasoning there (and, call me a hypocrite, but no anonymous comments), and (2) determine that high-maintenance, process-focused, bureaucratic management of your career is not efficient, agile, or effective and go back to the (a) What went well, (b) What could have gone better, and (c) What is your future plans for growth review form.

I have come to deeply appreciate the flexibility of a simple, mostly blank and wide-open Word review form.

Of course, this would involve admitting mistakes. Somehow, that is the anti-matter to everyday business at Microsoft.

P.S.: fill out your MS Poll form! And use the comments to provide frank, brief feedback regarding what's going well and how things could be better.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Stirring the Microsoft Comment Pot on a Rainy Weekend

I'm quite impressed with the incoming amount of comments. This week, I'm just stirring the pot here - I'm slammed busy at Microsoft and my free time is consumed by developing a strategy to blow the remains of my fun money with an expedition to Molbaks (because you must have a plan before entering Molbaks, lest you succumb to vertigo given all the abundance).

They Done Gone and Published a Whitepaper About It: the commitments tool gets a write-up as a showcase piece here: Facilitating Effective Employee Reviews at Microsoft. It might just be jumping the gun to slap the word "effective" in there. I suppose we can expect a write-up on the other tool, Career Compass, Real Soon Now. If I wanted to go for the cheap laughs I could whip up something ripping into the Career Compass tool. While I've been turned off by the initial heavy investment of time (not only as an employee but also as a frazzled manager), I hold some hope in my heart that the payoff is out there and that it doesn't become a time-sink like it is now.

Some reactions to the new HR tools below. I'd also like to read positive impressions of the tools. No, really. In the meantime:

(1) It IS NOT HR's job to have me waste time that I should be spending working with customers, improving my skills on our new technologies, or maybe trying some of that 'life' part of work-life balance going through the BS that is Career Compass and then not getting any "how you're doing so far" feedback on my mid-year.

(2) Career Compass - Christ, what a nightmare that thing is. Tons of busy work, and nothing that I think will ever make a difference in my career. But on the plus side, it did force me to look at how long I've been in my various roles, which helps me get started on my resume. [Mini: same here.]

(3) (What is the rest of the world going to think when they see how complicated the MSFT review process is. It's ironic that we're actually proud of such a monstrosity.)

This is clearly proof that the devil finds work for idle hands.

(4) It wasn't enough for HR to screw around w/the review process and form every review period to justify their existance. No! They had to come up w/CSPs, Career Compas and force us to use crappy Infopath. [...] This is surely a sign that HR has too many people and too much of a budget.

Office 14: Not-so-great / Great! Looking towards the next version of Office, we have some back and forth:

(1) [...] I am at a loss regarding what in the world it is we're going to be selling that is actually interesting to an end user. I ask people what they are excited about on their team and, by the look on their face, you would think they had just caught me with my hand in their pocket. Everyone is just shuffling along, spec'ing or developing or testing whatever boring thing comes their way.

(2) I work in Office too and have a different experience. Most of the teams I work with (Word, Excel, Visio, Proj, Server teams) are well into feature-speccing and prototyping already. Some teams (you probably know which ones...) even have shorter term deliverables. I can guess that some teams (for e.g. the one where everyone left after 2007) are still in a state of limbo and are trying to figure out what to do for 14. I interact with Windows on a frequent basis and I think things are significantly worse there, though.

(3) I work in Office and I've just about had it. I've looked over our O14 planning documents and tried hard to convince myself that the product will be worth 2 more years of my life. But it isn't going to happen.

Office is has a unhealthy combo of bureaucracy and senility. There are more than a few people here who are just hiding behind process to mask their own incompetence. There are even more people here who are just collecting a paycheck while newhires shoulder their work load. I've gone through a few years of this now and I'm done.

Looking For Career Love: the last Office comment above ends with the question:

So my question is this: Office is dying. Where in MS can we start living again?

And:

Random side-question: Which groups do people think are *awesome*? and which ones should be avoided? why so?

Are you in an awesome group? Tell us about it. Awesome-ness should be rewarded by lots of people pounding on the door to get in. Remember that the new intent-to-interview policy prevents you from being locked into your job or your product release cycle. If your last interview loop to get into your current position is over eighteen months ago, you're free to pound on the door on some awesome group and prove you're awesome-worthy, too, and move on up.

Well, unless your VP is going to step up and officially stop your transfer. Has that even happened to anyone?

One Little, Two Little, Three Little... VPs? First Blake Irving, then Christopher Payne and Dan Ling. Those shoes dropping lead to all sorts of speculation. You'd hope that if this is mass-house cleaning that the clean-out happens in a fell-swoop vs. being a slow duration that leads to Street anxiety. Of course, if it is house cleaning, we'll never know because we're too dysfunctional to actually admit to moving on a leader for failure to lead:

• Who Shot Windows Live? Joe Wilcox looking for a shooter given the VP bodies strewn about. Something tells me the shooter is somebody Sin-fully good at getting their way (see below).
• Tracking Microsoft's online losses, search missteps and Director of Microsoft Research's Redmond lab to retire from Todd Bishop at the Seattle-PI .
• Who’s going to lead Microsoft’s search effort now? Mary Jo Foley conjectures.

One comment has this take on Blake:

Blake is leaving because he can't stand Sinofsky, he doesn't want to follow Sinofsky's organizational principles and strategy and has simply lost the fight. Sinofsky is way too influential even for mighty Blake.

The fun part is gonna be watching the domino effect as Blake's MSN boys club gets dismantled for good. That division is doomed. By the time the long due cleanup is finished, the train to compete will be long gone.

Other call-outs: Very nice entropic organizational Brownian motion closer on this comment regarding three big things wrong with Microsoft:

Without a mission, it’s impossible to create a technical or marketing strategy. Without a mission/ideology, Microsoft will continue to be killed by internal entropy and organizational Brownian motion. However, a salesman cannot create a great mission statement, and his peer product person does not seem to be capable either (see above).

BizDog leaves behind a very nice long comment worth taking time to read in full. A snippet from near the end:

Our core problem as one of my friends put it is many of our products work better together than our people do. Fixing that is a cultural thing and all the HR tools, comp packages and other rantings won't fix this. Leadership will, but we are devoid of that at the moment.

MSFTextrememakeover I've fallen and I can't get up - Chart goodness. Or, well, badness. There's charts.

And one last comment to rain on your financial future:

Meanwhile, April is approaching and a lot of options will expires worthless.

Updated: s/bad gerund/proper past tense/.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft.

Hey, There's Ray! Commentary on Ray Ozzie's recent Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium appearance (transcript, webcast) :

• Reading the Ray Ozzie tea leaves by Mary Jo Foley collects some Ozzie-isms that caught Ms. Foley's attention.
• Mr. Joe Wilcox does a nice technical dive into the Ozzie-arena:
  • Ray Ozzie Speaks Out
  • What Is Microsoft's Services Platform?
  • Wanted: Dead or Live
• Mr. Todd Bishop at the Seattle-PI:
  • Excerpts Microsoft's Ozzie talks strategy, competition
  • Ozzie's comments leave 'em wanting more
• MSFTextrememakeover Limbo, limbo, like kimbo - includes commentary on Mr. Ozzie.

Overall, the reaction seems to be: "Meh." For whatever reason, I feel there's an increasing expectation for Ray to walk onto the stage with a TabletPC cradled in each arm blazing innovative thoughts for the future that leave the audience agog. Now everyone is looking towards Mix07 for the "Wow" because this last presentation came up short.

I hope that we manage to make this a wave of shipped innovation with a squad of technical leaders - not just Mr. Ozzie - delivering connected service after service that both acknowledge the need for an open, non-insular connected existence and that heavily leverages the power of a rich-client environment running under Windows. Right now, one shinning example of this to me is Windows Live Writer. I love that little bugger. And it's not just tightly coupled with Spaces but rather plays well with others.

Where's Blake? There goes Blake Irving, another Corporate VP:

• Microsoft Windows Live VP to resign - All about Microsoft ZDNet.com Mary Jo Foley broke the story of Blake Irving resigning from Windows Live Platform.
• Report: Windows Live exec plans to leave Microsoft - Mr. Bishop follows-up and tries to get a quote from Mr. Irving.

Ouch! Snap! Some recent Vista / Office 2007 unluvin':

(1) SpendMatters Vista, Office and Outlook 2007 are a Nightmare: specifically, the same problems I've having as well with Outlook 2007 being mega slow:

The problem -- which is absolutely inexcusable -- is that Office 2007 (Outlook, specifically) crawls, even on this superfast machine. The hard-drive is also constantly in motion, slowing things down even more. I'm not alone in these observations. You can read other Office 2007 horror stories here and here. Despite a small .PST file -- I reduced mine from close to a gig to less than 150 MB -- my Intel Centrino Duo-driven notebook chugs along like a 386 trying to run an application originally written for a mainframe system. Even such tasks as composing a simple email are delayed by a few seconds before my typed words ultimately appear on the screen (and send / receives and related activities take an eternity).

(2) Windows Vista I’m Breaking up with You ~ Chris Pirillo - Movie Maker crashes, LifeCam no-workie, no device drivers, software incompatibilities, and more and more woes. Best quote: "The Whoa starts now."

What I tell everyone: just buy a new machine to run Vista on. Unless you're a fan of flagellation (and relieving the sting of via blogging), don't upgrade an old machine that's collected precious application cargo and devices. Goodness forbid you have an unsupported Creative sound-card, for instance. Mr. Pirillo got a load of comments on this one and follows up with Where Windows Pundits Went Wrong and Switching from XP to Vista to XP to… (where he affirms the cool things that Microsoft makes. Just not Vista.).

Post Stack-Ranked Future First Step: something that I think would be a significant first step from unhealthy peer vs. peer performance ranking: Team Compensation for Performance. I was talking with a friend who used to work at big hardware manufacturer. He said their main bonus budget and dispersion was directly attached to the goals their team's leadership put together to deliver for the upcoming year and how well they did on those goals. Regular updates through the quarter were shared with the employees. The goals were S.M.A.R.T. and aggressive and directly tied to business results.

The better the whole team performed on delivering those results, the better all of their bonus was. Stock and raises were used for distinguishing individual performance.

Brains! Now I'm really scared. First I was pissed-off and horrified at how much and how quickly Microsoft's number of employees grew for no obvious business need. Now, hearing about the contents in the latest InsideMS post by Chris Owens, we're not only expanding our building construction and acquisition in the Redmond area quickly to deal with the stuffed-sardine situation most groups have but we're also... hold on, I've got to steady myself... we're also planning to accommodate another... deep breath... 10,000 to 12,000 Redmond-area hires.

(Insert your favorite sound effect of my head exploding.)

Why?

Is your group lacking talent to execute? What have we done to rebalance and recruit internally? We're already staggering to operate effectively with our current mass of employees, how in the world do we expect to be effective with even more? And if Redmond grows by 12,000 people, how much of that will be matched with global hiring?

And Redmond certainly doesn't need another 12,000 Microsoft drivers bumper-to-bumpering the local streets.

Let's take a hiring breather first and do some quality internal recruiting. I would then usually insert a pithy, "...and then you know, fire a bunch of underperformers" remark here, but right now I'm singularly interested in holding the line.

Comment round-up: some comments that caught my eye over the past week:

(1) Been a few places since I left MS. Landed at a startup with a whole lot of older former MS folks. They're all good, know what they're doing, and have lots of experience. Makes it a real fun place to work. Keep whacking the Kim's over there - they make great hires.

(2) Dr. Seuss meets Mini-Microsoft commenters (the beginning - navigate for the rest):

Oh the places you'll go! Oh the things that you'll do! You'll work your ass off To be ranked Limited II! You'll listen to morons Who know not what they do! [...]

(3) Manager feedback is closed, but something to think about regarding honest feedback: Right now, my career in this divison is basically over - I'm given conflicting feedback on career progress and progress against commitments. I'm at a level where the jobs are few and far in between so I'm just laying low and waiting for something else come along because I need the paycheck.

(4) Regarding Career Compass and HR career management fatigue: I almost wish there was a checkbox on the benefits website where I could opt-out of receiving stock options & bonuses as long as I didn't have to waste time with reviews and whatever other ridiculous paperwork HR forces on software engineers each year.

(5) Some folks are receiving an HR survey about the compensation system. One comment on that from someone filling out the survey: I came out very well last review but to put it bluntly, I had to manage up, manipulate, etc to get my reward. I delivered great results (E) but this is Microsoft, everybody delivers results. How do you stand out? So I did what I had to do and I know it came at the expense of other Es - I know this for a fact

I wish I did not have to do this and since I was able to manipulate the process, the process is flawed.

I could keep quiet about this and say the process works but I do want to make this place better. Somedays I don't think it will never get better but hope springs eternal.

I was very honest in that survey and the results on the 1st page was UGLY for us as a company.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Quest for Happiness

Following up on Ballmer and the Stock: the post Steve Ballmer's Horrible, Rotten, Awful, Really Bad Day by Owen Thomas has this reported overheard Steve Ballmer conversation after the financial analysts meeting:

Ballmer: "That didn't go over so well."

Flunky: "The reaction seemed about 50-50."

Ballmer: "At best."

Kevin Kelleher refers to the above conversation in his interesting write-up Microsoft Gives Up the Grail and has the best analogy I read all week (one so good that I wish I had written it). Snippet:

[Ballmer] uttered those magical, market-cap-killing words about the company's new Vista operating system: "Perhaps people are somewhat too bullish."

On Wall Street, of course, that's the same thing as wandering down a dark alley and wondering aloud if you have too many $100 bills in your wallet.

Interesting comments: first up: a simple question - "Do we get paid to ship process or features?"

Which is more important? Meeting some commitment and junk that HR came up with or shipping a quality product? Customers won't be forgiving if my (very critical) area's quality is crap because I took a whole bunch of time out to focus on "career development".

Around Vista ship expectations and what Mr. Ballmer has said, Charles shares the following:

Seriously, Ballmer himself is responsible for setting unrealistic expectations in the first place when he said:

"We think in the next three months, we'll probably sell five times as many copies of Windows Vista as we ever did with (Windows 95) in the equivalent period of time," he said. "We'll probably go double what we did with Windows XP."

Notes From the Field has an excellent comment (once again) that if you haven't read you should just do right now to see a take on Vista features and how relevant to the real world they are. A nice summary (as opposed to the lengthy technical list on Wikipedia - can we get a consumer friendly version of that?). Around the Ballmer Vista comments:

Even though I think Ballmer was totally incompetent in his communication of the message, I think many analysts were overly optimistic on the early Vista successes. Yes, there was a spike in PC shipments when Vista released to consumers. It was a one-time event and many analysts used it as a basis.

I still question why Ballmer felt the need for a press conference instead of just "whispering" the data to the key analysts. That would make for a softer landing.

BizDog's take on the message content and the messenger:

Does Ballmer need to be accurate and honest with investors - YES. Does he need to be accurate and honest with employees - YES. Does he need to be accurate and honest with partners and customers - YES. Does he do a good job at this, ABSOLUTELY NOT.

There was a lot of back and forth discussion regarding the problem of major technology providers - like Creative and nVidia - having their drivers actually done and at a high-quality level for Vista ship. Who's problem is that? Microsoft's:

If all a user does is buy and install a Microsoft product and it causes his machine to not work as well, then who can possibly be to blame besides Microsoft? If Microsoft didn't sell the product or encourage users to upgrade, people wouldn't have these issues. Creative and nVidia are not the companies trying to sell Vista.

And one last comment to put some distant thunder in your day:

There are a number of high-level departures that have already been announced or soon will be. There is a major org shake up in process that will dwarf any others in the company's past, and many of the exec's don't like the looks of it.

Scoble and Microsoft: I was pleasantly surprised to see a post from Mr. Scoble that meandered back into deep MSFT territory: Microsoft has no innovator’s dillema. The comment stream is interesting, too, though to hmmm me up and say that Mini-Microsoft is to blame for any malaise at Microsoft is, in my opinion, like taking a ol' big bite from the dumb-ass tree fruit and saying, "Hey, let's beat that kid up that pointed out that the emperor is naked!" Things were not right. People moved on. Change happened and is still happening. More change is needed, but I'd say the company is in a far better position than it was two-and-a-half years ago.

Anyway, back to Mr. Scoble's post: an interesting snippet regarding the departure from Microsoft of Chandu Thota :

But, yet again, another developer left Microsoft (this time Chandu Thota, on the Virtual Earth team, who is starting up his own company). Just remember, happy workers don’t leave. And the continual flow of smart developers leaving Microsoft tells me that Microsoft has deep managerial problems that are going to prove challenging to overcome.

At least for now it seems that Mr. Thota's new endeavor will be building on Microsoft technology... and he'll probably reap far more rewards outside of Microsoft than he could inside. Good for him. I look forward to seeing how it turns out.

As for happiness at Microsoft... well, in my circle of associates the trend has been to realize Microsoft is indeed a huge company doing many things and if you're not happy doing what you are doing now, you can pretty easily find something amazingly interesting to do elsewhere, even if it's just cold-calling a cool group and building your own opportunity. Talented, motivated people are in short supply. Maybe it was the whole intent-to-interview change or maybe it's just the timing of big releases, but I'd say half the people at Microsoft I know are someplace radically different this year compared to last.

And happier.

And all this comes as risk of losing their career momentum and not limiting yourself to just being savvy at the politics of the internal review system.

I imagine they'll stay at Microsoft - and stay happier - only if they see the risk of moving to where they're happier pay off and not come back to bite them.

And note that I said "happier." Not sunshine and bunnies bursting all-out happy. There's still a melancholy sense all-about, which I personally think is directly due to the flat stock price and the two self-inflicted foot-shots we've taken to the stock price during the past year. Thank goodness we're out of feet to shoot... right?

Quest for Firing: from what I'm told, it looks like the L68+ Partners are getting an update on The Quests from DavidV. Have you been so, err, lucky to be involved in a Quest yet? It ain't no Puzzle Hunt, but it's quite puzzling (as in: Must. Not. Roll. Eyes.). Perhaps one of the Quests can be for finding properly aligned growth goals to be associated with SPSA cha-ching payouts. Nah. Might as well throw a party in San Francisco and invite the significant-others to enjoy schmoozing and fiddle playing by the open pit fire.

Analysis of Mini-Microsoft Discussion of Stack Ranking: derived knowledge is interesting to muse over, especially when it's a Microsoft outsider analyzing the discussion here and elsewhere regarding Stack Ranking and its effect on a corporate work force: Human Resource Management - Steve Gall at Walden University - Stack Ranking in the Performance Appraisal at Microsoft. Snippet of the conclusions:

• The stack ranking system, if not implemented carefully, can result in legal issues being raised
• The use of the stack ranking method may have value as an internal tool for Human Resources when used as a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the overall employee review system, but as a performance measurement that is shared with individual employees, it is shown to have far-reaching unintended consequences. Employees are smart, and they quickly figure-out how to manipulate the system to their least disadvantage.
• Stack ranking provides questionable value as to insight into an individual’s actual job performance. Its use highly politicizes an organization. The rank number is most often based on unsubstantiated subjective judgment by an evaluator who may feel pressured to respond according to a narrow set of guidelines.

What do you think of the write-up and conclusions and alternatives, especially given the changes implemented in CY06? Stack Ranking is of course not the term to be used anymore. It's calibration. New lipstick. Same pig. Same little piggy games.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Stop Him Before He Speaks Again!

Please Hammer, don't hurt him.

Just keep him quiet! Should we expect another mea-culpa in the inbox?

• Seattle-PI: Stock falls on Ballmer speech
• Seattle-Times blogs: Ballmer's update: Reading (between) the lines and Brier Dudley - What's up with Vista?
• Ballmer Vista forecast too rosy - Microsoft The Seattle Times
• Barron's: Microsoft: Mixed Analyst Reaction To Warning On Vista Sales; Stock Sells Off (via Brier Dudley)
• All the rest (hmm, is there a theme?):
  • Microsoft shares fall after analyst conference
  • Ballmer Sends Microsoft Shares on Slide
  • Microsoft shares tumble on CEO comments

I especially liked reading MSFT Extreme Makeover's take on the analyst's presentation: MSFTextrememakeover I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. Snippet:

Finally, what can I say about Ballmer? Beyond questioning, as I have, what content was included while leaving major issues - like investment track record to date - largely unaddressed, I have a real problem with his tone and attitude. The word that comes to mind is flippant. I'm sure that's not his intention, but it nonetheless seems to be the result. You get almost no sense that this is the CEO of a publicly-traded company who is accountable to his Board and shareholders.

And it just gets better.

When listening to the webcast, I certainly spat out a non-acronymic version of WTF! when Ballmer brought down the hammer on Vista expectations. "Wow, that could have been worded better, as if the impact was well understood," I muttered, flipping over to check in on after-hours trading. Additionally, I'm no great presenter, but someone has to work with Ballmer on his ability to get through a lot of information (editing it down to begin with is always nice) without droning in some sort of anti-pentameter: "blah blah dee blah dee BLAAAAAAH, blah-blah blar buh da BLAAAAAH," etc etc repeat a few dozen times.

Off-hand, if we see irrational exuberance around expectations we do need to put some reasonable restraint on it. But who let the bears out?

Along the lines of doing the right thing:

I find all the people above plain ignorant who are blaming Ballmer for the stock fall afterhours yesterday.

:

I have never found anybody who has blamed Ballmer for failing financial target of Microsoft business. Therefore he is doing his job well. Those who prefer to keep stock price up on false estimates are like people who sell their own personal stuff by lying to a potention buyer (a lemon car is passed as a perfect car). Or these people see stocks as lotto instead of the economic engine of a capital market.

Fortunately Ballmer has better ethics and sense than these two types of people.

As for lunch-table conspiracies:

Ballmer, in case one of your assistants reads this BLOG .... please shut the *&#% up or I'm going to begin to agree with those who say you want our April options to stay under water!

Getting back to the Hunt for Ray (that should be worked into the next Puzzle Hunt):

Ray isn't the answer. Ray has vision but his execution lacks significantly. Have any of you actually used Groove? or Notes? I'd rather swallow glass than work with either of those gems.

And:

Ray has stepped back to reassess his commitment to put some sanity into the Live strategy.

To wit:

Office Live is a disaster. Usability sucks, support sucks, and there is a lot of infighting between them and the rest of the Live services. Also, it is beset with many of the same problems as previous projects like NetDocs and Hailstorm: not enough focus on what the customer wants and too much focus on fancy code. Coincidentally, many of the same leaders from those projects are now leading the Office Live project.

:

"Live" is .Net all over again. No one knows what the hell it means, even those who are supposed to be leading the effort. Ray wasn't around during the .Net days, so he is getting a dose of what it is like and he doesn't like the taste.

Finally, as for Ray and his vision:

We need more engagement from Ray and his brigade about what's happening and what kind of coherent vision is coming about.

I'm sorry, but this is NOT what you need. You do NOT need vision from Ray. At this point, what you need from Ray is code!

I have a very long history with Microsoft, and I am no longer a softie. One of the reasons I left is the whole vision/strategy vs. code problem. In the old days, production quality code really mattered a ton. In the new Microsoft, from Forum 2000 onward, code was much less important. What really mattered was laying down a vision and a strategy.

Death to PowerPoint decks! Okay, next, it seems as though the Orange-Badge life has more ups than downs:

I just left my Level 59 job, the level is between $68,000 and $78,000. I was at the top of my level doing great work, great stats, and couldn't get promoted. Over time, I found out it was because I just happened to be working on a product that management couldn't wait to hit the end-of-lifecycle.

Now, I'm a vendor, and I'm making $130,000 a year. And I don't have to put up with the corporate political bullsh-- that kept me down, mainly the stupid review process because I didn't go bowling with the boss' team every Wednesday night (no sh--).

Now, I have a job that's singular in focus, and I can't wait to get on campus every day to do my one little complicated job that I do incredibly well, and I am well-paid for the excellent work that I'm putting in. Blue-badging is dead to me.

That led to a resurge of former FTEs quite happy with the non-review, pay-me for the time I'm hear is the life-for-me. Something to think about. If you're not risk averse.

Lastly, for those going through career-management exhaustion, here's a comment that certainly resonates with me:

Particularly apropos for anyone who has seen the HR deck for midyear reviews, or waded through any of the hours and hours of reading and data entry (nevermind the training, manager meetings, etc.) that accompany this brand-new vision of how we're supposed to (apparently) spend about 8 months of the year either working on, reviewing, revising, talking about, or learning how to update our careers or performance measurements.

Are we actually supposed to do our day jobs at some point too? Or is that incidental now?

I used to work at IBM, and even there, we didn't have this kind of mind-numbing, process-upon-process bureaucracy around *anything* - nevermind around something like "career paths."

My favorite part was a sentence on one slide saying this was all because "You asked for it!" Not in my wildest dreams would I have "asked" for this kind of B.S. I like my job. Can I just do it, please? At least some of the time?

Or I will be just another ex-MSFTie wondering what the h--- happened to such a great place to work.

Not only should we be agile and efficient about shipping our next generation of products and services, we should be just as diligent as being efficient about running our business and not running it into the ground with more and more of Satan's Process Excellence.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Where's Ray? Where's the Vista Campaign?

Random unconnected things...

Where's Ray? I'm sure Ray Ozzie has been busy being the wizard behind the connected services scene of the future, but he's just plain running too silent for my comfort. And I'm sure with Mix07 he's going to go through presenting some new technology we're thinking about... perhaps even add single 2007 entry to his unloved blog. But if Ray is the bridge to the connected future from the present Gates, we all need more obvious leadership infrastructure getting us there, and more engagement from Ray and his brigade about what's happening and what kind of coherent vision is coming about. Silence makes me edgy.

Micronews, RIP. To me, Micronews died when they dropped Dilbert. When I joined Microsoft, I was quite delighted with my weekly Micronews and it's rather direct view of what was going on. I viewed it as a benefit and an affirmation of my good decision to join such a groovy company as Microsoft. Of course, I was also thrilled to get an espresso coupon, let alone "thank you" movie tickets (thrills came a lot easier to SDEs back then). Anyway, Dilbert was funny because it seemed so foreign to the Microsoft way. "Pity the people that's relevant to!" I'd chuckle.

Then Dilbert became more and more relevant, and eventually faded... in the meantime, Micronews came the place for softball promo questions and more rah rah Oprahesque-profiles than the occasional forthright question.

Micronews then went electronic and now has been dispersed into the bits of history. In a way, something like a weekly Micronews is needed more than ever, if only to connect the very disparate parts of Microsoft together so that we have a clue what the hell all these 70,000+ people do. Or even to let us know where Ray is. If the original 'zine spirit could come back, it would be worth it.

Vista Ads. We did ship Vista, right? Do you think the world knows about it? Has Microsoft done a good job of owning the message about Vista? I don't think so. So far, the message has been more dominated by lukewarm "eh" reviews and bloggers looking for any scrap to fuss loudly over to get some link love. My worst fear was that Vista would slip out into the world like XP SP2 (copies of which we should have carpet-bombed the world with to justify the importance).

What's our campaign slogan, "Microsoft Windows Vista. Hey, you're going to end up with it anyway."

Death. Taxes. Vista?

That's not worth $500,000,000 in my book. So far, the Vista ad I've heard talked about the most is the latest Apple Allow or Deny ad. What does it take for us to own our own marketing? Joe Wilcox did notice the "Wow" ad on TV the other night and discusses it in comparison to the Apple ad (which then brings out the Apple apologists swinging blindly in the comments at the slightest besmirch to Apple).

How about a marketing campaign that makes us all say, "Wow. That was worth $500,000,000!" That would be a refreshing change.

What's a matter you? WhatsWrongWithU? Me? I don't like us spending shareholder money on campaigns that seem pretty insulting to our customer. And that use Google Analytics technology for tracking usage. WhatsWrongWithUs? We waste money on crap campaigns, it would seem.

When Microsoft sneezes... Yes, in the last post I returned to tooting my scratched and beaten "fire! fire! fire!" horn. Brier Dudley noted that and pondered the devastating economic impact a mass down - mmm, er - rightsizing would have. But what we have going on right now is just as poisonous to the local economy. Like sepsis, we continue squeezing hires into a region that's packed and it results in increased stress and strain. I heard once that every Microsoft job supports two other local jobs, so it's not just Microsoft bodies popping up and driving around and finding a place to live. (Well, maybe that "two" figure was back when new shiny sports cars would spring up after every review cycle, but you get the idea.)

Microsoft in the Puget Sound is full, and I'm beginning to be about as welcoming to new hires (and the crowding and economic strain they bring) as Oregonians to Californians. Especially when the quality of hires matches this story from the comments:

Case study, our org. We had 5 busy, excellent IC's. We had more work. We had to hire. We kept turning them down, but lead pressured us to let some people through because we HAD to get the extra work done, and we didn't have enough time to do it ourselves. We did. We got one productive person, one neutral person, and one person who is after 6 months on our team still a time drain on the productive members of the team. The net manpower effect was an improvement of around 1.5 for the price of 3. MSFT would rather hire 3 mediocre performers than pay for 2 superstars.

How did we handle this?

We created another layer of management so that there would be people to help the neutral and time drain performers, while having the minimum effect on the high performers that don't have time to baby sit. We were split into two teams of 4, with two new people brought in as leads to give extra attention to developing the two FTEs that should have been no-hires. Now it's a net improvement of perhaps 2, for the price of 5. So in our org, the quality of individual we've been able to attract lately has had a direct affect on the number of layers of management in our org and the amount of headcount bloat.

So should leadership's upcoming Microsoft success book be How to do Less with More!? Reads Good to Great backwards indeed...

Bad Dogfooder. Who is feeling sheepishly bad about dogfooding? Me. Sure, like everyone I dogfooded Office 2007 Beta2 onwards. I suffered through, and while Outlook 2007 seemed to have a few folder-switching hickups against Exchange and I usually had to give it fifteen minutes to settle down when I booted it in the morning, the new features seemed worth it.

Then I finally installed my Company Store copy at home and enabled Desktop Search. You'd think I had just sprayed the inside of my poor mega-laptop with saltwater to induce non-stop fritzing. I've learned to meditate while Outlook ruminates over ten incoming POP messages of 69K. Perhaps it takes a few seconds over each incoming message or RSS feed to contribute to solving a Grand Challenge. Or it and Desktop Search have to play 333 iterations of rock-paper-scissors everytime a change has to be written. I don't know. But I feel bad for not dogfooding this home experience sooner and if I could do a six-month tour of duty to get Outlook back to 2003 performance I'd sign up in a flash.

For our customers' sake, I hope that I'm the only one and that there is just something funky about my setup... we'll see, given that I haven't had time to go Russinovich on it yet. In the meantime, it serves two lessons for me: (1) yes, you suck-it-up and dogfood at home, too; and (2) performance is a feature.

Other comments: some additional comments from the latest post worth calling out, including one on bad decision making:

Microsoft's main problem isn't too many employees. It's an inability to make strategic decisions and then trust in them long enough to see them through to implementation (and ultimately, to payoff).

Inside of Microsoft, decision-making is distributed among too many layers of managers, and every decision must be endlessly questioned and second-guessed. No decision is ever final or certain. No decision is ever 100% embraced consistently by all managers up and down the management chain or by managers of parallel teams that need to work together.

:

Decision-making power needs to be taken away from middle-managers (who also tend to come and go pretty frequently, further muddying the decision-making process by taking and bringing different opinions with them) and returned to the hands of qualified "benevolent dictators" at the top (who generally stick around for terms long enough to span several releases of a product and therefore see their strategic vision through to completion). Middle managers should be stripped of all strategic decision-making power and instead simply provide personnel management.

A snippet from a nice level-pulling comment:

The company wants ambitious first string superstars who work their butts off, but is only willing to pay for ambitious third string mediocrities. Or first string superstars who aren’t as ambitious and would be happy with an interesting job with good benefits for the family. But the company doesn’t want them either, and is pulling levers to chase them away. But it isn’t pulling the lever to attract ambitious talent with the kind of potential rewards that matter to that kind of person. So, the ambitious first stringers go to Google where they can still (potentially) become millionaires, the unambitious first stringers leave to have a happy life, and the ambitious third stringers fill the ranks.

From SteveL on effective MSR transfer of skill and ability inside of Microsoft:

What I've seen work best is if the researchers move into the product groups to help implement it. Not only are they the best positioned to xfter the technology, they learn a lot by building products. Like test centric dev, team processes, project management, etc, the stuff that individual researchers in and R&D lab dont do so much of. Then, once the tech is transferred, when they go back to research, they take with them what they've learned.

MSFTExtremeMakeover takes on senior leadership (oh, and my apologies for jinxing things in the last post when I remarked how the stock hadn't dropped below $30):

It would also be nice if faced with a near non-stop meltdown that's destroyed ~$20B of shareholder value and dropped the stock back through key levels that have taken YEARS to get above, the senior management got front and center and reaffirmed confidence in Vista sellthrough to date and financial projections for the year. Instead, the CEO and CFO are mostly AWOL, and not one senior exec has even bothered to refute ANY of the statements in the recent very negative Barron's article (generally credited with sparking the most recent selloff). The market continues to signal a lack of confidence in MSFT and its management, as it has for many years now, and - incredulously - the management team in small and large ways too numerous to list, continue to earn that lack of respect. Time for a wholesale change, starting at the top.

And one to end on:

Reading some of the comments I got reminded of a quote from Peter Drucker:

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things

The question is does MS have management or leadership? or neither?

Administriva: I'm not going to suffer through, or even send to CRF anymore, Mac vs. Windows posturing that's reactive and content free and/or dregs up crap. Life is too short to endure that. If you like what you got, spend time enjoying it. Or doing something useful. Cause you know what? I'm probably going to put up some pro-Vista stuff because there are some pretty sweet features in that little leadership disaster that finally made it out the door.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Closure.

I showed up on campus Monday to find most flat surfaces at eye level adorned with neon stickies:

REMINDER: Windows Vista & 2007 Office System Launch Today - Jan. 29! 1:30 pm.

Closure.

Saying that our corporate nightmare is over is over-the-top, but having Vista (oh, and Office 2007) out there and shipping and for sale finally makes RTM real. The Microsoft launch event was fine, though everyone in Cafe 34 was gasping in pain as it appeared that the Uno Live demo was falling apart, only to have it re-appear working. Head shaking and groans turned into relatively shocked cheers. It was one of those fractal-emotional moments that probably summed the ride over five years.

I liked the "Wow" commercial, and I hope we have more tangible advertising. Personally, I'd love a DVD inserted in the big monthly magazines with slick content showing how Vista and Office works and lots of raw content to play with.

Also with this past week, two departures: Jim Allchin and Bryan Lee. Seeing some of Mr. Allchin's internal emails I can only say I certainly haven't, in comparison, pushed the envelope here with criticism of Microsoft vision and strategy; too bad he wasn't, ah, in a position to effect change when it was needed. Mr. Lee has been griped about in the comments here before and it looks like someone is, via graceful career aikido, tapping a piece of paper on his back with "Hi! I'm responsible for Zune!" as he slips out the backdoor.

I was recently talking with a fine individual on the Mini-Phone and the flow of conversation turned to reflecting on the changes at Microsoft since summer of 2004. The changes I note that happened:

• Open discussion and criticism about bumbling bureaucracy which has led to flattening in some of our major organizations (and certain managers either moving on or transitioning back to individual contributor duties) along with adoption of agility and efficiency.
• New leadership for Windows (Sinofsky, DeVaan) coming from an organization relatively well known for making sure the trains run on time.
• Hard questions being asked in public of upper leadership and that same leadership recognizing that Vista development didn't go well and swearing never to do that again.
• A revised review cycle meant to do away with a harsh curve-based quota system. Well. Sorta.
• Bread and circuses around towels and dry cleaning.
• Increased transparency - far from complete - on the inside of Microsoft.
• Continued support for employee transparency via blogging, videos, and other direct engagement. I don't know of any other company Microsoft's size and influence that has put so much trust and support behind its employees to talk directly to the world, and doesn't freak out and bring down the banhammer for the occasional bit of schmuts in the eye.
• HR leadership engaged with the employees and the employees discovering / rediscovering their internal voice to challenge the way things are and work together on solutions.
• Some refocus on the consumer market with the Live moniker.
• A mostly new IE team that came together and re-invigorated our essential web browser and platform to make IE7 stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the competition... if not on some wobbly, repentant knees (hey, we didn't start the fire).
• The stock has cracked $30 and stayed above that mark.

Unfortunately...

• We've ballooned in employee size by nearly 15,000 people - 25%! - beyond reason and beyond need.
• Oops! I guess Wall Street really doesn't like being surprised about a billion here and there. Hello!
• It has become clear that Microsoft is a two-tiered company with-respect-to compensation, with the Partner L68+ ranks of the company raking in rewards under dubious goals, especially in the midst of long-term depressed stock performance.
• Our internal review and career management continues needing a serious beating from the common-sense stick.

So what are the big levers left to pull to help ensure that Microsoft in on a good course and stays on a good course? I kind of felt like enough-was-enough before and slipped into a sustaining mode here. And other than discussing Limited II things have been quiet. Right now, things that I personally keep an eye out for:

• Hiring: stop it. Just please stop it. Unless it's an A+ super-hire, walk away and refocus all hiring energy into internal hiring and redistribution of people inside of Microsoft.
• Internal job moves: this process has to be as easy as me deciding I want to work in a group that's personally interesting to me, talking to the the right people, doing whatever interviewing they need, and then I start my new job over there. Their budget goes up to accommodate my overhead. Yes, all of this is "me me me" based, neither permission nor stated intention based. I have a new position before I even involve my old group to say goodbye. There is too much drama and stress and bridge burning around internal job moves, and this results in unhappy people being mis-aligned with what they want to be doing. This is not good for business and long term, strategic growth.
• Research: I've come to recognize that MSR is actually doing some things that I'm really interested in seeing in our customers' hands (or, more specifically, my hands). Is this as effective as it could be? Where's the leadership and ownership to ensure the deep investment we have in our researchers is translated into exceptional returns in what we deliver?

I'm still not sure if that's enough, though, for generating interesting posts and discussions in the meantime. What big levers do you believe still need a good pulling for Microsoft to get on the path of a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine? And, you know, not so much the messes and the stains but the positive changes that not only solve problems but create new opportunities.

Oh, and one last thing: let's touch on risk averse, unhappy people just suffering through their Microsoft J.O.B.

Not happy doing what you're doing? Full of criticism of how Microsoft could be a better place for little ole you? Risk averse to looking for a new position in Microsoft or outside of Microsoft, perhaps knowing this is as good as it gets for you? Within a dispassionate environment pulling down a direct deposit and satisfied that's the way it's going to be?

Well, you're my original core demographic group.

The group that I want fired and moved on and out of Microsoft.

I'm willing to bet a dinner for two at The Herbfarm that Microsoft would produce better results slimmed back to a size of 35,000 well-positioned passionate people than 70,000+ with marginal interest and alignment to what they want to be doing. And even if we do have 35,000 passionate people embedded now, they spend their days encumbered with the grind of a huge, unfocused machine. We end up with feature strategies splattered about like a Jackson Pollock. I want the abundance of mediocre resources that produce mediocre results replaced with a restricted set of high quality, happy, motivated, well compensated people producing out-standing results given the focus required to use what we have most effectively. We'd be at measure-twice and cut-once vs. let 'er rip and ship!

Maybe there's another way there. I'd like to know it. But right now, I still believe the biggest challenge left to our long-term success - post Vista - is dealing with our burden of too many employees. It's time to start spinning off and spinning down large groups in Microsoft to what's reasonable.

Updated: typos fixed. Thanks! Updated again: fixed another typo. I had it right in my mind, but somewhere between my mind and the game on the TV it got dropped. Lesson to self. Updated... sigh. Time to go to the blackboard and write out I won't type while watching the game... a few dozen times.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft