Whether Life Here or Life There, Life is Short.

Long time, no blog. I'm lurking indoors today, taking a break from the abundant northwest-summer sun and re-hydrating. Lots and lots has happened over the past couple of weeks. Let's see what we can cover here before the wonderful weather becomes too much of a temptation...

The Long $1,000,000,000 Kiss Goodnight: now come on, how can you have to put aside $1,000,000,000 to cover faulty Xbox 360s and not go and hold President Bach or VP Moore or VP Allard accountable and fire them? Let's go back in time to November 2005 and a comment I made then about what I called the Ring of Fire showing up on the initial 360s:

First, XBox sucked up one billion dollars from our company and broke that division's wallet. Now is 360 going to break our heart, too?

I can only have faith that this is one place where Microsoft will endeavor for quick turn-around to get replacement units out, no questions asked. With a kiss... give the folks having to exchange their XBox a bunch of Live Points. And I hope this is just a small percent of units. One poll had 14% of people responding that they had a 360 brick shortly after playing it for a while. Oy!

Let's see, over nineteen months later we fess up and - although it seems forced - we do the right thing and cover warranties for our customers. In the meantime, a lot of customers with broken boxes have been jerked around (including Microsofties, complaining internally about how awful it is to try to get their 360 repaired). Look, either at ship time we knew about this problem and decided to ship or we didn't know about this problem and kept shipping once it showed up. Either way, it's a screw-up in knowing and going forward or not doing enough to know about the quality of the box. Deming weeps.

And now we're putting aside a billion, bringing up the bitter memory of the billion point five we deferred because Vista was so late to ship that it missed back-to-school and the holidays so we had to cover with Vista upgrade coupons. It is only because of the abundance of cash left over from the successful cash cow days that we're able to screw up like this, dig into our deep pockets, drop the money on the floor, shrug our shoulders and shuffle on. We're lazy and we're lax and no one is being taken to the public woodshed for this, and I would be surprised as hell if anyone on the Board of Directors, or the shareholders meeting, actually spoke up and said, "Hey, um, excuse me, but, this Xbox business thing seems to be a black-hole money pit. Is it wise to continue investing here? How about spinning them off so that they had to survive on their own decision making?"

The only thing I've seen the Xbox business accomplish, besides making a lot of money disappear, is make Sony dash themselves against the rocks with the PS3. Monkey-see, monkey-do even better. In the meantime, the Nintendo little piggy gleefully exclaims, "Wii! Wii! Wii!" all the way to the bank.

Additional new orifice ripping: MSFTextrememakeover What's another $1B among friends. An interesting thought coming out of that is people wondering about Mr. Bach's loving indulgence in selling MSFT stock is his bailing out while he could and if there are any concerns about the SEC investigating here.

Life and Work Changes: some goodbyes I noticed recently:

Josh Ledgard (of the power couple Josh & Gretchen): Today is my last day at Microsoft.

Adam Herscher: Why big company life didn't cut it - snippet:

So, with that, there were only two things I couldn't get at Microsoft (and probably not at any other large corporation) that helped lead to my decision to leave:

1. Any semblance of something like a work hard-play hard culture
2. The ability to take big risks and reap big rewards

[...] allow me to propose one potential solution. I would love to see a large company like Microsoft give employees some sort of equity in the products they work on, in addition to company stock, thereby providing a risk/reward system in which one's work can have a direct impact on their stake in equity.

Adam's comment aligns with my belief that Microsoft needs to be more focused on team rewards and less focused on individual non-team aligned achievements that is coupled with demoralizing bucketing and 10% witch-hunts. My friend from a large technology company showed me some old internal memos that detailed (a) what the group's goals were for the coming year, (b) a progress update on those goals, and (c) what the bonus payout to everyone would be based on achieving those goals. Nice.

Life at Google: Adam's post links to an email circulating inside of Microsoft that reflects on working at Google. Eh, I wanted to read about the review and compensation system and how the Googlers felt about it, fairness-wise. No such luck, but probably right now Life at Google is so much wild fun that the review and compensation system is minor. Everything else in that post sounds like stuff we already knew or suspected. I think we have to live with the fact that Google culture is - and will remain - different than Microsoft culture. We're too big and systematic to go and try to retrofit a Google work-environment across Microsoft, no matter how alluring it might be. I think our only choice would be to break-up into four smaller companies and then reboot and rewire the culture in each to meet the demands and responsibilities for the new company. For instance, an Office culture has to be different (probably quite stodgy) than an online / Windows Live culture. The imposition of a mono-culture right now is slowing us down.

The comments in that post would make for an interesting short essay: Google lovers, Microsofties demanding blood, bemused outsiders, and the occasional interesting insight. Oh, and this one from Andrew Gamache, out hiring the best engineers:

So now it’s clear there’s no career development at Google; and little at Microsoft… If you’re at either one, it’s time to take your future more seriousely than they do. [...] PS- The OS engineer behind XBox, and several of the guys on the original Google Earth Team are happy clients of mine- some makeing over 700K in salary a year– NO options or stock. Cash. Every year. at 28 Years old.

485 comments and trackbacks to this point. Wowza. I can tell you, given the desire to understand how Google works, a Mini-Google blogger would get lots and lots of attention right now. Or an insider could wrap it in a parody with a Fake Sergey / Fake Larry / Fake Eric blog. Those certainly seem to be all the rage nowadays. As evidence, we don't have just one Fake SteveB, we have 2.0!

Life is Short: there's lot more to talk about today, but I've decided to go out and enjoy the rest of the beautiful day, so let me close with the below comment that came in on July 3rd that I'm exceptionally grateful for the commenter taking time to share:

Today is approximately my one year anniversary of leaving MSFT after 11 years. I was a Level 67 woman, banging my head against the wall (or more like glass ceiling) trying to make "partner" and killing myself & my marriage in the process.

I now work for a hard-working start-up in Seattle (30+ people and growing) and couldn't be happier. While not every day is perfect, it's refreshing to read this blog and realize what a different world I am in now:

1. The people I work with are really smart(a number of our employees are of ex-MSFTies with more joining every week), motivated to do their jobs, and treat each other with dignity & respect.
2. Our Executive Management is mentally/emotionally mature, grounded in reality of business, value work-life balance, and treat the employees with honesty and respect. (see a theme here?)
3. Decisions are made quickly and executed rapidly. No grand-standing, land-grabbing, ego-boatsing, political posturing, etc. We're all pulling towards a common goal.
4. We are accountable to our deliverables, our professional behavoir, and each other. I no longer have to tolerate actions and communications from peers who hide their own incompetency behind obnoxious management styles or the protective shield of HR.
5. I recognize that when I work really hard (and I do, every day), it directly contributes to my company's success, and therefore my own.
6. Tomorrow is a holiday. I don't expect there will be much email across the team (except maybe a little from us ex-MSFTies...old habits die hard) that will be waiting for me on Thursday. I don't feel the need to have to spend a day off "catching up."

Net net - if you're spending alot of time reading this blog and have been thinking about leaving, then do it. You don't have to tolerate the working environment you're in, or feel vitimized by the realities & circumstance beyond the majority of your control. There are more feasible alternatives out there. Yes, there is some risk - and less freebies - but life is short and do you want to spend it feeling trapped, frustrated, and ultimately used?

Do what you like. Like what you do. Truly. If you're working in that kind of environment and are looking to hire talented Microsofties ready to grow and shrug off the bureaucratic systems all-around them (ever so much in evidence during this review season... oy, that review tool), a short comment here about why your company is so different and groovy would be welcome.

Because if we Microsofties can't change Microsoft to be that way, then we should at least know where's a good place to move to.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Guy Kawasaki for Microsoft's Next CEO

So my first reaction at Terry Semel be booted from Yahoo! after shareholders complained about lackluster results was, "What, you mean you just have to demand accountability?!?!" What a concept! Hopefully any of our Microsoft shareholders who have done even the most shallow technical analysis of MSFT will start clearing their throats and find their voice, too.

But it seems for now most analysts are in the "eh," stage of looking at what Yahoo! decided to do post-Semel, though re-orgs seem to be popping up here and there. I was hoping for something bolder that would cause YHOO to shoot up, just to serve as an example of good decision making. Part of this criticism was choosing Yang to step into the CEO role.

It made me wonder about who would be my choice for our next CEO, when that day comes. Maybe that day will be soon, maybe that day will be far, far from now. Will it be someone from the inside, accustom to our culture and well-connected through-out the company? Or an outsider? Someone with a clear, focused vision not blurred by years of integrated, innovative Kool-Aid splurting out the sun-shine product pipeline? Who do you think it should be?

Who do I think?

Guy Kawasaki. Someone suggested this recently and it stuck in my little head. Crazy to the Mac-head world, I know, but what would Guy Kawasaki do? Like Brian Boitano, I imagine he would kick an ass or two. Built in BS meter, a committed focus on passionate users, a deep desire to break out of any hegemony, and ready rules for firing people. Someone like Guy would serve as a nice sledgehammer and bring a fresh air of start-up fever to Microsoft.

I've very tempted to ask Mr. Kawasaki to be my friend on Facebook - wait... maybe... maybe if a bunch of Microsofties launched a be-my-friend surge on Facebook, we could start a Be My Guy! campaign to warm Mr. Kawasaki over to the idea. You know. Should opportunity come a knockin'.

Speaking of Facebook: I'm still loving it. Come on, be Mini's friend. I'd also invite you to be my enemy, if they had that feature, for you folks - like the orange-scarfed-dementor-brigade - who aren't that cool on me. Actually, an enemies list feature isn't all that bad of an idea. Hold your friends close but your enemies closer, eh? I didn't really (holding my hands up and making air-quotes) get social networking sites until the latest Facebook iteration. The applications layer is brilliant and provides rich interaction between my content and what my friends are doing. My Facebook page is practically my new desktop. I futz with it endlessly. There's so much potential, like if they go and add private groups then - bang - suddenly they have a collaboration space. Roaming synchronization of Facebook application content for off-line access?

Woof! I haven't been this excited since I learned C.

So who knew? Crazy Uncle Mark Canter was right about opening it all up.

Speaking of opening up: while enjoying some nice Redmond Saturday Market food on a recent Saturday, I overhead a lunch conversation with someone from a company's HR department: what's the first thing they do with a promising potential hire nowadays: zip over to Facebook or MySpace looking for them, and quickly drop the applicant if there's anything fishy or disturbing associated with them. You'd better be careful how you end up being tagged (and have real fun tagging your enemies with crazy photos) and ensure what ever you're building in Facebook puts your best forward. If you care.

I'm sure Caustic Phil wouldn't care, and he'd explain in deeply profane and eloquent prose just how much he didn't care about Facebook and if he had a Facebook account. Never read causticTech? Oh, you're in for a treat, because Caustic Phil has a new one up: the interview zoo - a must read for anyone doing technical interviews, covering both sides of the process.

And speaking of interviews, Packet Storm has a link to a must-read story off of Worse Than Failure: Does this remind you of Microsoft - actually, it makes me appreciate that our bureaucracy isn't that bad and that there is actually a fate worse than being stuck in your current sucky job. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't change what we have. People need to be able to find their new spot in Microsoft easier than just deciding to interview outside, as this comment illustrates:

Permission to interview always caused me anxiety, even after the 10+ years I've been at Microsoft. Even considering that I've moved groups several times.

I've been at my new group less than a year and don't like it (micromanagement and bureaucracy are the main issues). Rather than wait the full year to ask permission to interview, I am leaving the company. I now realize that it was easier to ignore all the nonsense when the stock was moving up.

I was nervous, but in the interviews outside the company I blew them away. Microsoft alumni are well respected and valued outside the company, I can tell you that for sure! I was surprised that some companies have better benefits, too.

MSFTExtremeMakeover posted Who us - leadership Nah, we just vest here as a review of the various odd leadership-less decisions Microsoft has made. I'm telling you, Guy would kick some ass here. We at least wouldn't have to deal with Fake Steve Jobs calling us a pussy when we blinked at Google's pulling on our consent-decree nipple ring. And guess what? Looks like Google is ready for another yank or two.

Speaking of vesting: so we know about the urban legend of Microsofties with buttons decorated with FYIFV. I guess nowadays, looking at all the expiring options that die underwater, it'd be more appropriate to have a FMIFV button. Anyway, I was thinking of this for two reasons: (1) Ben Smith popped up here briefly and posted a comment about the Mini-Microsoft site here that was also cross-posted on some internal mailing list. (2) A comment made the observation that when things were good for employees (financially) that they were fearless and not so review and reward focus. It didn't matter. It was a completely different culture than today.

Ben's comment covers a good amount of ground looking at things here over time, including the negative implications of transparency. The culture part is near the end:

...one aspect of Mini that I find very troubling is what I see as a culture of victimization and disempowerment. At Microsoft, this is the beginning of a vicious feedback cycle because we have a culture and comp system that favors creative, ambitious, results driven technical and management leaders. Frankly put, people who are self-disempowering aren’t going to get a lot of helping hands (maybe to a fault). Microsoft is a company of opportunities if you don’t take them, someone else will. As a lawyer here once told me, Microsoft’s internal slogan would aptly be “Who’s eating your lunch today?” To be clear, this does not mean we each need to be sharks looking for the bloody water; rather to excel at Microsoft each of us must find our own way to contribute to the great products and services we build.

MSS provides this insight:

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a manager here (not at Microsoft). He said, essentially, that if you have large compensation changes between levels, it causes politics.

There's two ways this works. First, it makes people badly want to be promoted, and therefore more willing to engage in behavior that is destructive to the organization if it helps them individually. Second, it gives the managers great power - they get to choose the lucky ones. From both sides, this drives toward political behavior.

Now, in the past at Microsoft, this was mitigated by everybody having options and the stock climbing through the roof. This meant that employees didn't have to have the promotion, because the stock was going to take care of them. They were better off just helping the company as a whole do well. But when the stock went flat, it also quit being a counterbalance to the steep compensation curve, and political behavior ran wild.

If this is the correct root cause of the politics, the only way to fix the situation - and save Microsoft from what it is becoming - is to flatten the compensation curve.

I certainly don't see myself as the patron saint of the disempowered victim. I understand some steam gets let loose here, much like when InsideMS went through a meltdown. But there's plenty of productive conversation, too, and I don't understand if you can fix a problem without calling out there's a problem first. I do now recognize, however, that change - like corporate culture change - is irrelevant unless you can identify where your culture is, what problems it has, what change you intend to make, and why that change will be beneficial.

As a small example: it would be good to drive away anything justifying fear within the company. Fear of changing jobs because of your H1B status. Fear of providing frank feedback about your management hierarchy. Fear of sharing constructive criticism regarding why you're leaving Microsoft for another job. Fear leads to silence. And silence leads to fortifying the status quo, stagnation, and competitive disadvantage.

Fear is not a Microsoftie trait. Nor a trait of any corporation that aims to be a success. If we accept there are people being silent due to fear then we can reassure that it's not justified, that their insight and feedback is important and that their input be used to make the company better. And successes here would lead to trust.

Oh, and memo to Microsoft PR: stop worrying about me and pay a little closer attention to any pieces you approve for BusinessWeek, perhaps thinking it's quite the coup. Holy crap. Look at that comment stream. Did we just pants ourselves?

That takes talent.

Really, really bad talent.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Ballmer, Bozos, and Crazy Sweet Facebook Yang

Oh, another Fremont Solstice festival where I stay off of my bike, keep my clothes on, and enjoy being a spectator. One of these days, I tell you! At least I know what piece of art to paint on my back when that day comes.

Ballmer Ballmer Ballmer! MSFTExtremeMakeover is some kind of fired up:

• Where is the MSFT-Ballmer outrage
• Some days you really have to wonder...

I agree that it's amazing that Microsoft shareholders continue to bear and grin it through the flat stock price versus calling for accountability. This is a sobering observation:

MSFT's leadership can continue to run the company - as they have for this entire decade so far - as their private fiefdom and for their personal enrichment versus as a public company charged with rewarding its shareholder owners.

That and the vague talk of muscles leaves me a bit on the pissed-off side of life. And in D5 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the hot seat:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that his company was a lot more nimble today than when it had 30 people. He was responding to a question from conference co-host Walt Mossberg how the company deals with huge scale of the company, with 78,000 employees. "The people we had then weren't as good, weren't pushing that hard." Mossberg asked about Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Ballmer came back, "Paul and Bill were good…the rest weren't, and they are gone."

All we had to do was get rid of those 28 and replace them with 78,000! Yes, I see the nimble-math equation right now! It's... so... obvious...

Bob Herbold weeps. Perhaps fake Steve Ballmer could at least follow-up on the commentary here. The Secret Diary of Steve Ballmer.

Bring Out The Crazies: Now then, interestingly enough, there's the technical analysis article Sell Apple, Buy Microsoft by Alan Farley. That was a delightful surprise to see. And to the Mac faithful: (1) Please follow-up with Fake Steve if you feel passionate about that article, and (2) This is not a dig at Apple - I want to make this clear because I know anything that sniffs of an insult always bring the crazies out. And watching the poor Microsoft journalists pounded on by the crazies this past week was almost too much:

• Leopard looks like … Vista All about Microsoft ZDNet.com and Leopard vs. Vista Take two - Ms. Foley gets both barrels from the crazies - even Fake Steve takes a swipe at her in Apple faithful, we must prepare together for the media backlash.
• Microsoft Watch - Operating Systems - Cupertino, Start Your Copiers!
• Antitrust Google's statement on Windows Vista

Post aQuantive: if I could do an acquisition right now, it would be Facebook. Goodness knows I'm having fun with it (drop on by - I'll do the occasional profile update [jamie, I hope it's okay I snagged my profile picture from C9park]). It makes me wonder, given the acquisition, what the benefit would be of switching our users in Spaces over to Facebook. It could be in stages... first open up all of Spaces so that porting from Spaces to Facebook would be an API 2 API matching. Then, just walk away from Spaces and send everyone to Windows Live Facebook. I know, we have a bajillion Spaces users. I've got to say, though, they'd be a bunch more happy if they had Facebook as their foundation. Snappy.

You're The Salty Yin To My Sweet Yang: another Test versus Dev spat erupted in the comments for the last post, but it brought out some good points, especially around considering what the career path for Test is and should be. One rumor that I like:

Good news on the STE front...fairly reliable sources have confirmed that they will be coming back!

Looking at the short-term results, I can get behind the return of STE for QA and cheer. I really don't know where the automate-everything religion came from, but I saw some mighty-good testers who came up with excellent issues and that drove customer-focused quality disappear from Microsoft. Now we have fragile automation and less testing to make room for repairing automation breaks from period to period. I see more and more late minute bugs where the incredulous triage team usually starts with, "...and how the ____ is it that we haven't found this until now?!?" Well, you know, no one had written automation for it yet.

Over There: a comment regarding pending Microsoft hires getting unhired:

You can see blogs of people hired by MS but screwed by the H1B, popping up all over:

http://marchfirst.squarespace.com/blog/2007/6/6/its-official-my-microsoft-career-is-over-before-it-even-star.html

http://awesomearpit.blogspot.com/

I am now a US citizen, but came here on an h1B.. I shudder to think about what these people are going through.. any managers out there that can help people like these out?

Internal Job Transfers: a while back, before the myMicrosoft 2.0 announcement, I put on my wish list a further simplification to the Microsoft internal transfer policy. Pretty much, if you wanted to join a different team and it was mostly a direct match to what you were currently doing, you could join the new team with the blessings of the hiring manager.

You know, not such a popular idea.

Both here and when I mention it at work, the first reaction I get is, "No way! We'd end up with a bunch of bozos! Haven't you ever done an internal interview?"

Yes, I have, and yes, we do have a bunch of bozzz- er... - lower-than-expected-quality-employees working for Microsoft. I write about that from time to time. So what do you do? We have overstaffed teams. We have understaffed teams. We have teams slogging on making work for themselves even though their team members should be distributed away and matched up with positions that best suit their skills. We have folks who still guilt their unsatisfied team into staying together, telling them that, hey, they "signed up" for the next release and even if everything is going to hell in a handbasket, they're expected to grab on hard, suck it up and stay.

To hell with that.

That just allows people to get away with bad decisions and with no consequences to the leadership. If your team disappears from underneath of you, hmm, that looks like a consequence you're going to have to deal with. I want it to be easy for you to find the best position for yourself at Microsoft. You know, I'm not asking you to reach personal fulfillment via your job at Microsoft. Nor to define yourself as an individual just based on your Microsoftie contributions. I'm not in to that. But I'd like for you to like your job. And enjoy your team. And heck, even be proud of your product. And feel that your job is the best match for you. And for that, it needs to be easy for you to find that job, see if you're the best fit, interview, accept the position, and move.

I love the dropping of permission to interview for folks who have been in their current position long enough. And I love HR's fervent support for this policy - I know of a particular HR generalist that I'd want by my side in any knife-fight. I think it needs to go further, though. I want folks to be able to interview without even notification. If they get the job, two weeks notice and they are starting their new position. Just as easy as if you were interviewing outside of Microsoft. Bang! It should be at least that easy, right?

Ideally, easier.

One of the internal business cycles we have is people waiting for the review model compensation and promo to be locked in and then looking to join another team so that they can start on their new team and pretty much have a full-year on that team by the next review cycle, and not get screwed by the transfer. I guess those discussions and interviews usually begin in earnest come mid-August. Are you ready? Are you researching groups, building your network, having informationals, putting together your resume, etc. etc.? If you're writing your review you might as well update your resume. It would be great if, come the review model lock-in, we had a further simplification to the internal move process to help defrag Microsoft, from the bottom up.

And of course, if your resume is up to date, nothing is stopping you from looking outside Microsoft, too, and seeing what's-what in the post-Blue Badge world.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

End of May Conversations

Checking in on some recent conversations here... break-out the Welcome Mat for AQNT: okay, Mini-Microsoft is probably not your first preferred Microsoft-focused blog to read:

Thanks for making us feel so welcome!

(An aQuantive employee)

You could drop by MSFTExtremeMakeover and, ah, see if that helps. And helping to provide some perspective comes this comment:

To the poor aQuantive employee feeling unwelcome after reading posts here:

Don't take it too seriously. This is a blog devoted to making Microsoft smaller; we'd complain about an acquisition of 2,000 employees even if they were all super-geniuses carrying big carts of gold bars. People commenting here aren't going to be too happy about it.

Microsoft is so big it varies a lot from team to team. Personally, I've found that joining Microsoft's online services division brought me a substantial salary increase (15%, though my previous employer was admittedly underpaying and bleeding employees like crazy as a result) and a pleasant working environment where performance is expected but the rampant workaholism that plagued Microsoft in years past is not. It's not all bad by any means.

This said, it's not all good, either. The stock's not a good investment (and may never be), the review process is schizophrenic (we can't decide if we're a company of stable, career engineers or genius workaholic alpha males, so we end up pleasing neither), and the fastest way to move up the salary scale is still to quit for a year and come back at a higher level.

I'll go on record with stating I'll welcome anyone coming to Microsoft with big carts of gold bars and that I'll hug 'em long-and-hard right after they drop off my bar. So let's turn to our future co-workers with open arms and --

I'm not looking forward to having to work with Microsoft employees. From what I've seen, all you do is bitch about your jobs.

We ship software, alot of it, and hardly ever have to work more than 40 hour weeks. And our products are highly reliable and actually work.

I don't look forward to having a bunch of Microsofties working on our products, bitching about our processes, because thats all you guys seem to do, I'd put one of our offshore developers against 10 of yours, attitude is everything. Your egos are sickening.

:

What makes our company great is teamwork, and positive attitude, and Microsofties, all I see here is attitude, the bad kind. Its just like in life, if you think negatively, you get what you think, and you think your company is so aweful to work for and broken, guess what, IE7 is broken, office is broken, your OS is unreliable.

One thing good about the aquisition, it will be one if the few pieces of microsoft software that actually works.

Shh-snap!

InsideMS impending restructure: a number of comments about the change around the internal Microsoft discussion blog:

There has been lots and lots of constructive, on-point, substantive commenting on that blog (though why people bother is a good question) and she has systematically ignored just about every bit of it. No mention of people's honest and realistic questions of her when she's posted new entries. No mention of the influence of people's suggestions or concerns when she rolled out MyMicrosoft 2.0 (uh...yeah, well 1.01 or whatever you want to call it).

Now she complains that it's just degenerated into a mess. Well, honey, if you're not going to pay attention to the kids or listen to their concerns after setting them up to expect that, then you get what you get. Take some of the responsibility.

First of all, I hope beyond hope that the recent myMicrosoft post (with comments) never slips outside of Microsoft... it's shaken my confidence in my comfy wardrobe. Second, I expect there will be a common sense re-org for InsideMS. More interaction with the posters, certainly, if the conversation is valued. Comment moderation, perhaps? I think even the threat of moderation would help. Third: I've written about the need for sophisticated comment handling in blog infrastructure and this internal comment flame-out is a classic example of how entropy sets in within a linear, unmoderated, untended world.

I can't imagine the top priority for any blog technology provider beyond innovating in community managed comments (e.g., something like what Slashdot uses). Personally, I would also prefer the case where there's a feed for the most recommended comments for those comment jewels that come in that surpass the original blog post contents. That happens here quite often.

Re-org Intrigue: some speculation regarding what the recent re-org might mean:

Interesting re-org in putting STB under Jeff Raikes. Does anyone else think this looks like a pre-cursor to a break up? I mean, now we can cleanly carve off Windows into its own company, MBD into another and then whatver we do with Live and Entertainment. Honestly, that would be cool. I want the company broken up. I'm in Raikes' world and I'd love that group to be decoupled and given some more freedom to innovate.

As for MSFT insider trading this comment notes:

Robbie Bach dumping a s--t load of shares on the market today...what a shocker!!!!

Everyone pales in comparison to Mr. Gates, but it looks like Mr. Bach and Ms. Brummel are in hot competition for #2.

New Microsoft is Just Fine for Me: here are a couple of positive comments around compensation at Microsoft and the strategy going forward:

Once you factor in the few grand from stock and occasional bonus, even measly ones, the salaries at msft are pretty damned good in the Puget Sound area. I was lucky and bought my house in 1999 when I moved here, so I have zero complaints about the numbers. Coupled with working on software that is run by hundreds of millions of users, I really don't see what all the complaining is about.

New Microsoft:

The new Microsoft is willing to enter new markets, very quickly, and do quick iterations or quick acquisitions. The journey and the learning is important - not duplication of someone's existing product. This generates the insight which enables building something people will want to have versus the old way of rebuilding something they already have. XBOX, ZUNE, Windows Live, MSN, and its incubations (under Ray Ozzie & Gary Flake) have all internalized this. The leadership is willing to quickly make the changes needed to ship current versions and add the right functionality to new versions of projects.

Rank-my-Yank: And here we are on the verge of the major review season. And by season I mean the entire summer, 'cos it sure seems to take that long. Do you know when your stack-rank aka rank-and-yank aka calibration meeting is? Somewhere along the line, we'll figure out that having co-workers compete against one-another for their differentiated compensation lessens our teams, our innovation, and our ability to compete externally (how can we compete in the market place while we're competing internally?). This comment from Simon G notes a study:

If rank-yank is still a hot button with you, here's something for Stanford about it "Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer ... faults businesses for spending too much time in rank-and-yank mode, grading and evaluating people instead of developing their skills."

http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/features/dweck.html

I'd expect it to be one of those revelations that changes Microsoft completely for the better. In the meantime, let the ankle kicking begin...

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Ack! As in Ack!quisition...

A is for Ack! As in acquisition of aQuantive (wow, now that is a five year chart).

Six billion dollars.

$6,000,000,000USD.

Holy crap.

In my opinion, this is a huge demonstration of fear, desperation, and dim-dog market tail-light chasing greed on our part. Every acquisition represents our failure to use our 70,000+ employee base to solve a solution or create a new market. Rather than buying back stock or pushing out a dividend, shareholder money got mis-invested in a hugely overpriced acquisition. And you're a shareholder why?

Seeing how much aQuantive is aligned with us and our technology stack makes you on the surface say, "hmm, yes, excellent strategic acquisition." Then you see the price tag (and goodness help you if you see it in the middle of taking a sip of something). "Who the hell is in charge here?" And of course, that reckless, desperate spending is now what disgruntled people will hold up as the paragon on executive spending, wondering why we're being so pound foolish while saving relative pennies for ESPP and other cut-backs.

Deal Journal - WSJ.com Bubble Wrap How Will Microsoft-aQuantive Be Remembered has this interesting gameplay comment from Steve Yuen:

Speaking of News Corp, its $5 billion offer for Dow Jones’ stable of premium brands is eminently rational compared against Microsoft’s $6 billion proposal for aQuantive. MSFT is playing checkers while GOOG plays chess.

24-7 Wall St. Microsoft Bid for aQuantive Signals Desperation

Shares of AQNT were trading at $36 yesterday and that quote was pricing in a lot of buyout speculation already. Somehow they got Ballmer and Company to offer more than $66 per share in cash, an 85% premium. Such a bid puts Mister Softy on the hook for a cash outlay of $6 billion. In return it gets a business at 104 times trailing earnings, 86 times current year earnings, and a whopping 67 times 2008 earnings.

The Key Why Microsoft's purchase of Aquantive is So Smart

Aquantive, through its Atlas division, has built the most advanced ad tracking and management technology out there. It can follow every detail of an online display ad--and help advertisers figure out where to target an ad and to whom with incredible precision. But Aquantive also tosses search data into the mix--and certainly it will do this more and more as part of Microsoft.

Microsoft agrees to buy aQuantive for $6 billion and Microsoft faced competition in aQuantive bid

"When Google bought DoubleClick, which is the prize here in the industry, it made Microsoft look more and more behind, and I think they just had to do something," said Tim Bueneman, senior vice president at McAdams Wright Ragen in Seattle and a devoted aQuantive investor who speaks highly of the company.

Even so, Bueneman said he "was just totally shocked" at the price, adding that it seems to reflect "a little bit of desperation" on Microsoft's part.

And of course there's the addition of the, what, 2,600 potential employees? Ah, screw it. If people haven't figured out that we have way too many employees by now I'm certainly not going to be able to help.

Post-Town Hall and myMicrosoft. Hey, was there a change in the way we're granted stocks? Man, what a wonderful demonstration of a small bit of poor communication that resulted in heated discussions. I think people are still trying to figure it out. Okay, backing up: I think it is great that the Town Halls happen, hopefully on a quarterly basis. It provides an important connection between executive leadership and the rest of us (and the potential for audience video cameos by [slick down the eyebrows, straighten the shirt] damn good looking Microsofties). This last one was pretty light in content, though; I would be just as happy with a few emails to skim through instead. It would be nice to have a big topic or two to cover in the future... things like:

• Microsoft and The European Union: how is this going? This isn't just a thorn in our side but rather a bramble growing through our veins. And we hear very little directly from our leadership regarding how this is going and how we expect decisions and outcomes to affect the company.
• Intellectual Property vs. Open Source: what's the strategy here? For the longest time, we've held off throwing punches here because we knew, although there are infringements, it would be costly to wage this battle on the public stage. What changed? GPL3?
• Windows 7 and Office 14: how are the cash cows next iteration shaping up (I mean, I know, but I'd like to hear what leadership thinks)?
• Windows Live / Core / MSN / Search: is this relatively detangled and figured out? So much groovy potential.
• Zune / WMP / WMC and DRM: I know, no where but up for MP3 player market. Have we acknowledged the anti-DRM movement? Are we brave enough to take a step in that direction?

Regarding myMicrosoft: tweaks. Iterative tweaks that seem to be focusing on the tail-end of being a Microsoftie and not even getting close to undoing Mr. DiPietro's professional failings as an HR manager. The workflow evil, time-consuming career performance tools remain, they just get consolidated into one site. You can provide feedback up the chain and provide ad-hoc feedback for other people. The financial planning stock grant change. The ability to ship packages again-OMG that's awesome! Lisa I love you! I-ahem, eh, excuse me.

Hey, my gushing reaction to the return of employee shipping really surprised me: again, they're returning an easy benefit that was yanked away some time ago. An awesome, time and money saving benefit for those of us who ever have to ship packages. I still miss the flip-side to that coin: direct office delivery of personal packages shipped to me at work. Both of these save me time and help me get work done. Now, I have to occasionally clear my schedule so that I can work-at-home the day that my new personal laptop or handheld or some other package I have to sign for is arriving.

Oh, and Limited II? Well, now you're just a 10%'er. You were before, but because of the screwed up metrics not being well thought-out managers wanted to soften the blow for you ending up in the 10% bucket. I don't think we're going to introduce 10% II or 10%+ but I wouldn't put it pass HR once managers start seeing super valuable high-level employees that have plateaud dropping into the 10%.

But nothing about 15% ESPP or increased 401K or the MSPoll. Well, it was probably too early for the MSPoll numbers to be revealed, but... OUCH! I'd say anything below 60% requires action and anything - from the broad-Microsoft-as-a-company questions - below 40% requires executive leadership action. Or at least acknowledgement.

Some interesting comments to wrap up on: from the school of suck-up-your-salary-compression, T.Higgins shares:

As a person who has been with Microsoft for 8 years and contributed (in many public facing ways) to improve the perception of Microsoft in the developer community, I [was] provided information that shocked me. Actually, it makes me angry. A new hire straight out of college (read: no experience) will be compensated slightly less than I currently earn. Never mind that there is a $5000 signing bonus AND because there is, apparently, no space will be given the summer off before even swiping her badge.

Is it time to just give up stock compensation altogether and just give the people cold-hard-cash (or acceptable raises):

I think it's time for Microsoft to end giving stock awards to low and mid-level employees. Keep, and even bolster ESPP, but let's stop pretending that stock is a significant portion of the compensation package. It's been years since anyone worked harder because stock options were vesting. Let's admit to ourselves that there is now a rank and file at Microsoft; pay them commensurate to their value in the marketplace and even base raises on group/division profitability, but let's not pretend anymore that employees have an ownership stake in the company.

As a manager, it had become rather embarrassing to hand my L59-61 employees their pittance of shares. Incentivize people with promotions to technical leadership or partner jobs, and work to returning promotions to a merit system from the nepotistic buddy system in place today.

And one last one to reflect on our awesome compensation package vs. the potential raise you can get working beyond Microsoft:

I left Microsoft one year ago. my biggest fear when I made the decision to leave was the health benefit change. As you mention, no one even comes close to what you get at MSFT. Well, let me share my experience with you. Background - I have 3 kids and I am 35. I left as level 63 and made back then about $115K a year. I left because I got an offer (that most people at MS could get but just don't try) of about $180 a year.

My total out of pocket in health is about $1000 a year. So the math becomes very simple. you CAN MAKE much more outside of MS. There is so much going on outside.... benefits at MS are OK but JUST OK.

Striking my best Arsenio Hall pose here: "hmmmmmmmm..."

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Pre-Town Hall, Posters, and Micronews

Post-Town Hall Update: so, what did you think? Nothing too shocking. Rather than address the whole Limited label issue HR just decided to go with percentages. No more Limited II, true! Now you're just a 10%'er and your manager gets to beguile you with numbers. It still means: time for you to leave.

Speaking of being beguiled with numbers: can someone put a spreadsheet together to compare similar stock awards under the old and new programs? Given the stock going up two bucks a year and the stock going down two bucks a year. My very shallow first impression is that you lose if the stock price goes up, but that surely cannot be. No one would design something that way and say, "Hey, at least the stock is going up! Stop yer whining!"

Meh.

Administrivia: I'm having an unhappy blog connection, so things might get blocked up here and there.

The Week Ahead: it's a Town Hall meeting on Tuesday. I value this and I believe it helps build a bridge between executive leadership and the rest of us everyday contributors. And it looks like a potential w00t! fest: it's not myMicrosoft 1.1 nor is it myMicrosoft 1.5, but rather myMicrosoft two-point-freakin'-oh. That turns my expectation dial up to significant.

What are some example announcements or topics you'd like to see that puts Microsoft on an efficient and productive path with appropriately reward and motivated employees? Some of my top of the mind include:

• Reflection on our awesome package: I think before you look at any changes or other rewards and compensation, you do need to take a moment to reflect on our total compensation package. It is still awesome, especially the medical benefits. Sure, they could be better, but they were great when I joined and have just become even more awesome: way more than any company I've worked for (or have considered working for).
• Limited and Limited II: aka, "Dumb and Dumber." If during the past year no-one in HR has managed to do something about this poorly chosen designation, let alone the Limited II insulting moniker, everything else is useless. Limited II is today was the trended 3.0 used to be: a demoralizing kick in the pants to what is an effective, valued employee. Should a Limited II stay with Microsoft after that slap to the face, you are setting a low performance bar for them to drop their contributions back to and meet. Why would any review system have this? If this is fixed, I wonder whether to clap: "And, hey, we fixed this abhorrent insulting mistake we shouldn't have made, just for you." "Yeah! Hurray! OMG, you're soooo awesome! Hopefully you break something else this year so that you can fix it next year and we have something else to clap about!"
• Internal transfers: easy and easier. Only if you're moving between job descriptions (e.g., SDET to SDE or SDE to PM) should you go through a full-blown interview loop. A hiring manager can decide an interview loop would be appropriate but would have to get HR's buy-in. And if it's just between teams in a product group (say, between Access and Excel), it's just a done deal. Excellent teams with excellent leadership should find it easy to attract the best in the company. And poor teams with poor leadership should likewise discover themselves giving over a bunch of empty offices.
• Hiring: I want internal transfers to be easier as part of load-balancing within Microsoft and to stop the hiring madness. But I know the madness will continue. We have to ensure that the best are getting in and that the best actually want to be here and can be effective. Hiring should be clamped down on, and we should go through a year of where only Microsoftie interviewers who have made the best "no hire" or "hire" decisions for candidates - matching their feedback on hired candidates career velocity and reviews - are put on loops. Everyone else has to go through retraining to get back on.
• ESPP: back to 15% and the way it was. No clapping for this because it's just fixing another dumb mistake that shouldn't have happened in the first place.
• 401k: And in addition to a pony and a milkshake, I'd also like Microsoft to match our 401k at a higher percent and even contribute some to it as well. The stock isn't working out as a retirement plan, so Microsoft should make this their focus now in retaining employees who suddenly have that, "Ooo, I need to think about retirement" revelation.
• Tool fatigue: the Rube Goldberg machine that is our current review system toolset has to be streamlined. I feel bad enough managing my career vs. focusing on getting great results for my product team, I really don't want these tools managing me and sucking up a week here and a week there for my team. It's so bad I want the return of the old Word document. Again, I feel a bit abused if I clap for simplification here: you made my life suck and now you're making it suck less. You're... awesome? (Well, okay, I guess you are awesome. You pushed for a change for the better to address employee concerns. I think it just got a bit too Frankensteined up along the way.)
• MSPoll: early results from the latest MSPoll are... ? And don't go and sugarcoat any bad results. I think you can rely on InsideMS to bring-up ad-hoc discussions of the bad numbers. Please don't let it come up that way.

I really don't care about Bread and Circuses like food service, dry cleaning, and the like (but, uh, please don't take my Starbucks machine away because I've become quite addicted, even to its little brewing cycle clucking).

I'd appreciate Mr. Ballmer taking this chance to hit the reset button and go over major changes in what we value in this company. First of all: we reward for shipping and for profits. Followed by accountability. In addition to a second milkshake, I'd also like a change in perspective about the stock: if the stock price is not a valuable measurement of a publicly held company, what is? And if anyone dares to put up a one-year chart and strut about saying, "Hey, hoo-yahh, lookie at that break-out stock performance!" they, and anyone who cheers, deserves a solid dope-slap to the back of the head. Gee, how did we get all the way down into that slump to begin with (remember: Wall Street + $2,000,000,000 surprises = huge stock drop)? How does the last five years look?

I'd also expect all that Quests that the L68+ Partners have been involved with to turn into results that Mr. Ballmer is going to put into action and share with us. Otherwise... what were all those Quests for?

Anyway, I look forward to reflecting on the changes coming this week and then dialing things here at Mini-Microsoft down to low-key here and await the FY07 results.

A Plan For The Posters: this past week my mailbox came stuffed with gobs of promo-stuff, including a glossy about the Technical Community Network. Look, there's Queen Gertrude's observation over protesting too much. Bragging too much is a sign, too, and a rather desperate one at that. And as I flipped that TCN into a recycle bin to let it join a large stack of its siblings, I looked at the weekly replacing of the internal promotional posters. Okay, I'm not going to complain. Complaining doesn't solve anything. My solution to all the expenses around this mostly ignored internal promotion stuff?

The return of hardcopy Micronews. Slick. In color. Ad supported. That's right. No more posters. Your group advertises in Micronews instead. And if you really want to put up a poster, well, you still give a percent over to the Micronews budget. One pro being that people will have your website address in front of their computer vs. having to remember it after wandering the halls. And I'd expect Micronews to change and be less of the softballer it ended as but rather an advocate of engineering excellence across the company and to have a hard-nosed Microsoftie editorial freedom. We have a bunch of great writers: have the editors grab interesting blog posts or have those internal / external bloggers write an occasional piece. Summarize great resources in Microsoft. For instance, we have fantastic training at Microsoft: have a monthly summary of some of the more interesting classes.

And sure, have an online version, too.

Finally: two interesting news bits I saw today:

Microsoft claims software like Linux violates its patents - May 28, 2007 - an interesting confrontation to manage. We've been circling this boxing ring for a while, and it looks like we've at least put on our gloves and have started jabbing the air to warm up.

Why Doesn't Microsoft Have A Cult Religion - Microsoft Blog - InformationWeek - it is rare to see a Microsoft fanboy. It's something I've tried to work on for my responsibilities and my desire to build relations with the Alpha-Geek crowd. I think we need to cultivate fandom. If we can't, we have to be honest as to why people are not fans of our technology and our products. A snippet:

Think about it. When was the last time an editor was fired because of a scathing article entitled, "10 Things We Hate About Microsoft?" When was the last time a group of developers stood up at a VS Live show and shouted ... "Yea, man! Orcas Rocks! Language Integrated Query is da' Bomb! New and improved ADO.Net? Oh, no you didn't!" It just doesn't happen.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

MicroYa! and Thinking About a Big Reboot

(A refreshing post. Not because of the content, but rather just because there hasn't been a post here for a while. First, some administrivia: the new Blogger template here has at the bottom of the post a link to the comment stream URL. Plus some other goo. Another note: hey, tried running the blog without moderation for a while to see if it would decay into the lunacy you see sometimes in the InsideMS blog. Not so. I might try this more often.)

Given past jinxing, I hesitate to mention how MSFT is above $30 again. The $30+ price is too late for the set of stock options that expired a week prior, however. Leadership who wander around saying how stock doesn't matter have to take a moment to remember what it was like to be in a work-group when the stock was excelling. Folks were motivated and excited and engaged. Yes, they did put in extra effort and - at least in their minds - saw a direct connection between their contribution and their team to the Microsoft bottom line.

And now?

As the stock meandered towards $31 that MSFT/YHOO rumor out of the New York Post came out. My first thought of a Microsoft / Yahoo! merger was: "Oh, yeah... Steve Ballmer and Terry Semel: together at last." That was followed by imagining a film being shot in heaven, with Rodney Dangerfield and John Candy playing CEO roles of two Wall Street stock-price losers out to combine forces and get some due respect. Only to be foiled by those rascally Google boys... and I'm not quite sure who would play those rolls roles.

Regarding the MicroYa! rumor, my feelings echo that of Brier Dudley: Microsoft merging with Yahoo!?!#@!!!. Mr. Scoble does a pretty good cafe stool analysis, too, regarding the overlap and issues involved. Of course, my shallow-self freaked out over the possibility of incorporating 11,700 new employees into Microsoft. Well, no, it would be less than that. You figure it would serve as a proper time for the remaining superstars to detach and go into Start-up-Ville. We could hope for some fun, though, by Thunderdoming up the overlapping groups: two product groups go in, only one comes out!

Looking at Yahoo!, the main thing I keep reflecting on is: I like flickr. And having more data centers couldn't hurt. The rest seems to be as scattered and randomized as most of Microsoft's online offerings and initiatives. But I see Microsoft's online and connected story finally coming together in a pretty impressive series of well thought-out releases. Yahoo! still seems to be on a dithering path with interfaces that get more and more DHTML'ized noisy and busy overtime. Seven plus or minus two, right?

Anyway, going a bit backwards in time, interesting posts about the financial earnings:

(1) MSFTExtremeMakeover: Show us what you've got.

(2) Joe Wilcox: Microsoft Q3 2007 by the Numbers. Even taking out the results of the deferral, the results are impressive. Now, scanning through the comments, it's interesting that Mr. Wilcox is engaged in a debate whether he's a Microsoft basher or not. I've noticed in the past that his comments have attracted people who like to engage in their inner /. in their hatred of Microsoft.

(3) Todd Bishop: Microsoft revenues up 32%, profits beat estimates and the follow-up Microsoft shares rise 3.5%, both posts reminding us of the big plunge that happened a year ago. Mr. Bishop also posts about my new favorite guy, Andrew Rashbass, in Economist publisher pokes fun at Microsoft. The highlight:

He got in several zingers while speaking on a panel discussion after a keynote presentation by Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division. One of them: "I thought it was great, by the way, that Robbie Bach was giving you a talk, which 2,000 people attend, about monetization and business -- and he just lost $300 million in the last quarter," Rashbass said.

What, else, what else... the major review season is (unfortunately) right around the corner. Just when you thought all that career management was over and you could be productive comes the march of myMicrosoft 1.5, or 2.0, or whatever's next. Wake me when it's at 3.0, because then I'm sure it will be mostly ironed out and people can focus on doing their job versus managing the perception of doing their job. Personally, I don't think we need incremental changes at this point. Given where we are and the challenges we have, we are not going to succeed based on incremental steps.

Sure, the Starbucks machines are great, but we need a company-wide Back to Basics (or a rewrite of our basics) from the CEO level to shrug off the past and focus on what's important today:

• Delivering: products, solutions, whatever. You don't get rewarded for talking about things, you get rewarded for shipping things.
• Deliver Often: efficient organization around not only delivering but also being able to quickly deliver quality results and features again.
• Team Success: teamwork needs to be rewarded over individual success. Teams that work well and that deliver and deliver often should get exceptional rewards.
• Streamlining: if it's not profitable and not going to be profitable, we can walk away. Also, we don't have to ship a product in every possible imaginable software market in the world. People are efficiently placed just where they both want to be and need to be.

We need a reboot. A reset. A refocusing on what's essential for Microsoft to succeed and realign its culture into the fantastic, crazy, wonderful place that it has all the raw potential to be. And by hitting the reset button, it gives people the permission to push the boundaries and align with the positive goals of success.

We'll see what this summer holds. If we were going to hit the reset button and align against some basic, positive goals, what would you get behind?

Updated: as always, thanks for the roly-poly syntax check.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft MSFT

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