Brummel! Brummel! Brummel!

Wow, just in time to go into next week's Company Meeting with blushingly good PR. Much better than two years ago! From the upcoming BusinessWeek magazine:

(1) How To Make A Microserf Smile - profile on Ms. Brummel with some background about her contributions to HR since being appointed. Interesting snippet:

Nothing got people buzzing more than Brummel's overhaul of the performance review. Employees dreaded Microsoft's ranking system for all the usual reasons: It pitted co-workers against one another at a time when the company needed to be more collaborative; it was unfair; it made frank evaluations less likely.

Here Brummel faced a political third rail. Ballmer was the godfather of the forced curve, believing that differentiation—giving a few people the top grade, most a pass, and laggards failing marks—was the key to Microsoft's we-take-the-hills culture. And when Brummel broached ditching the curve, it was his turn to say "No way." More yelling ensued as they darted in and out of each other's adjacent offices.

(2) ONLINE EXTRA: Playbook: The New HR - I can has rewardzburger?

(3) ONLINE EXTRA: Q&A with Microsoft's Lisa Brummel - I'm sorry, but aren't there supposed to be questions and answers? Anyway, the Microsoft Office of the future (as in, where you're going to be planting your tocks during the day):

So HR chief Lisa Brummel is creating Microsoft's next-generation workspace: the elastic, meet-my-mood office. Here too she is going far beyond what most companies consider: open plan or not? Instead, she's creating a hybrid workplace of sliding doors, movable walls, and urban-loft-like spaces tailored to individual needs.

(4) ONLINE EXTRA: Reshaping Microsoft's HR Agenda - Q&A with Ballmer and Brummel. Lord, I'm still laughing from the below snippet: thumbs up, Mr. Ballmer, for the honesty:

She went on a listening tour to hear from employees. And one of the things she heard was frustration about Microsoft's forced ranking system. Did that resonate for you? Did that seem like something Microsoft needed to remake? Ballmer: No. No? Ballmer: Uh-uh. It wasn't top of mind for you? Ballmer: Uh-uh. But were you averse to changing it? Ballmer: Uh-huh.

More interesting nuggets in there about how our review system is still pretty much the same from Ballmer's POV, the potential for free-lunches like Google, and the $1,500 you get for buying a hybrid vehicle. And whether Ballmer would ever blog (sorry, secret Steves!).

(5) ONLINE EXTRA: Microsoft's Mini-Me Susses Brummel - interview with some dashingly good-looking loud-mouth blogger.

(6) Graphic: Chief Happiness Officer - well, graphic with interesting text. What, we're going to get a free bus service? With WiFi! OMG!1! P0n13s! I LOVE YOU LIS- ...ahem. That's swell.

What else do you find interesting in the articles that's either in there or not in there?

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Meanwhile, back in RealityVille, Microsoft Extreme Makeover has a new post: Wanted Significant MSFT shareholder with a spine. Rock'em sock'em! The post mulls over the article Of Microsoft, china pigs and hungry bears Mixed Signals by Rupert Goodwins. Talk about a dash of cold water. Perhaps you should read that before diving into the feel-good Brummel articles.

This snippet looks at inflection points in Microsoft future:

This is the weather for a coup, whether by a posse of external shareholders with inside support or a rebel group of managers with help from the investors. The trigger point isn't far away – we're nearing the end of the multi-year transition period that's seeing Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie replace Bill Gates. By now, the changes in Microsoft should be visible – but it's not looking that good. The two big moves – into advertising, and into Net-delivered cloud services – look more like Google-chasing than anything else; neither address the many and extremely deeply ingrained reservations even Microsoft's closest partners have about dealing with Redmond. Neither properly answer the question of revenues in 2017.

Evokes this response:

The "rebel group of managers" willing to back away from the SPSA feeding trough long enough to finally do the right thing for the company and shareholders, sounds like a tall order. A "posse of external shareholders" seems a lot more likely, but right now there's no obvious sheriff - or posse. A third option would be a former MSFT manager with external shareholder backing. Someone like Brad Silverberg, for example, who was right about the web when Gates and Ballmer were wrong and is no longer there because of it. But lately he's been praising them. Or maybe he's just laying the groundwork for an impending return :-)

Hmm. Need to step back into HappyVille? Okay, here's a question: Hey, do you think they'll install Starbucks i-Cup machines in our new commuter busses? And what speed of WiFi do you think they'll provide?

(Oh, and I know I put up a new post in the middle of everyone sharing their review numbers; feel free to keep on adding to this one, along with anything new. Sorry that it all ends up being spread across three posts.)

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Reviewzapalooza!

Let's talk about you: it's Reviewzapalooza time! How do you like the new numbers sheet - does it help with the context of what your awards are? Once again, the charmingly good looking folks who participate in the comments here have started sharing their numbers to help get an idea of how they stand and how it compares across groups in the company. You can see some comments in the Gone Fishin' post, and the template that has evolved into is basically:

Position: Job Title
Level:
Commitment: Exceeded / Achieved / Underperformed
Contribution: 20% / 70% / 10% I or 10% II
Merit: %bump
Bonus: %of bonus
Stock - $USD of grant (% of Target)
Promo: %promo

Plus anything you feel like adding. Healthy approximations are appropriate to fuzz your rewards should you be concerned about consternation from above for sharing. You know, I wish there was a way to do this inside Microsoft (hmm, Inside MS) and especially wish there was a way to do it so that the division / group was obvious. As I've moved about the company over the years, it has become depressingly clear that, yes, career velocity is very different across the company, with some teams shooting their people up the levels on aggressive schedules and other divisions letting their reports languish for long durations before their level bumps (making it a vicious cycle: the folks at the next level up are now really really good just because they've been there for a while, so you're going to be parked here for a while, too).

I will say, as someone participating in the review process, it feels better and I feel better about the rewards distributed through-out the team, though there are always the hard conversations around "Why didn't I at least meet 100% of the target?" Look, there is still a curve and ratios to track for performance ratings and there are still misunderstandings in self-assessments that "Exceeded" is appropriate for soft commitments.

The review tools are a Himalayan blackberry infestation running through my gut. The clumsy workflow hammered in around the tools is just too restrictive and results in me spending more time getting HR IT's help, managing the tools and process and less time giving (hopefully) useful feedback. And when your editing package can't even copy and paste between its own fields without barfing out some kind of new, exotic formatting, well, you should just go back to Word.

Of course, Limited II is still around. It's just called 10% II. New non-offending packaging, same demoralizing message.

Stuff o' Interest: some links I'd like to pass on (some of which I've already posted in my Facebook profile, so apologies mon amis):

Microsoft Extreme Makeover has two excellent posts: (1) Growth play, value play, or just lousy play?, and (2) Home runs, base hits, virtual aspirations and actual failure. An extraction of the facts covered in greater detail in (1):

1. Fact: Microsoft stock has performed abysmally over the past 5 years
2. Fact: Investors have been more than patient
3. Fact: Management's statements are at odds with observable facts and the stock's performance
4. Fact: The leadership team's actual track record of investments is decidedly mixed, if not in fact poor.
5. Fact: Management is arguing with the market and results, and shareholders are paying the freight for that hubris and failure
6. Fact: External shareholder are the majority owners of this company

And there's a corker of a conclusion in there...

Collision Domain on the way out the door? My interpretation on this other anonymous Microsoft blogger is that it's time to discard the Blue Badge and move on: Preparing for Take-Off, Lift-Off, and Orbit. Snippet from Lift-Off:

One tidbit that I did discover this go-through was that the shiny, happy compensation target numbers on hrweb are figments of policy imagination.

Way ahead of you, dude: Already off and into Redfin's orbit is former Microsoftie Jeff Yee: Will work for food: why I left Microsoft for a startup. Snippet:

While I was at Microsoft, many things didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t understand the massive “re-orgs”, which, if you hadn’t heard about ahead of time, it meant nothing material changed for you. I didn’t understand why we’d try to enter dominated markets with an uncompetitive offering. I didn’t understand those little table tents on the cafeteria tables or the giant banners and posters promoting intranet websites. I didn’t understand why site searches on MSDN were abysmal. I wasn’t the only one who was confused. Minimsft would try to speculate about a re-org or an acquisition. And on popular internal aliases like “litebulb”, for instance, there’d be email threads where people would ask why Vista had 6 (ok, 8) SKUs, why Zune wouldn’t work with PlaysForSure, why their product had to be renamed from something cool to something like Windows Communication Framework, or why there were 2 confusing boxes on local.live.com (or so adverse to just calling it “maps.live.com” in the first place). Legitimate questions often got defensive responses. To paraphrase one developer, “Why are these responses always along the lines of, ‘We know what we’re doing’? Personally, I’d welcome the feedback, because that’s how I’ll improve. Why can’t you provide the reasons that led to your decision?” I couldn’t have agreed more.

Who's on First? Mr. Romano at the Seattle Times has a three-fer: Microsoft Microsoft's new leaders prepare for the post-Gates era, Microsoft Craig Mundie Company envoy will keep that role, and Microsoft Ray Ozzie Collaborative leader has coaching style. Who's is next? Well, who should be next?

No-one! Jamie has a new C9Park: Iron Chef.

Company Meeting: I don't think I'll be as vocal about my love for the Company Meeting this year. Yes, I love the Company Meeting, just as much as I love the potential for Microsoft to be the best company ever. The Company Meeting is where I hold out both of my arms and let myself get hooked up into two I.V.s of pressurized, concentrated MSFT-Kool-Aid. It, along with the occasional Town Hall meeting, allows me to become re-enchanted and re-committed to Microsoft.

I like the change of theme this year of celebrating individuals who represent the best of Microsoft (I'm not sure about the moniker Champions of Change because my eyes roll everytime I read it). I mean, first of all, big thumbs up for not doing Microsoft Idol again just because we did it last year. That's a change I could champion. But finding people who truly represent the best of Microsoft and its culture does allow people to get to know them and find out what kind of person our corporate culture touchstone resonates for. Maybe your boss does indeed sucketh in comparison. Or maybe not. Anyway, it's mostly a really really good idea that I wish I had come up with to propose.

It's too bad , though, it looks like our continued celebration of the individual. Do we have a celebration in there for a team or two of distinction? I'm sorry, but we need a change around this lone-wolf achiever culture. Team Gold Stars and Team Achievements that everyone could clap for in wild agreement need to be next.

What would I like to hear about in our Company Meeting? Some things off the top of my head (not too different than last year, just compacted):

• European Union: whoa, Nelly, I think we're about to get kicked really, really hard in our money maker. Can we talk about this?
• The Stock Price: what do we hear from analysts about the stock price? Let's enumerate them so that we have confirmation that we've actually heard advice regarding the stock price: cut expenses, increase the dividend, etc. and then, Beloved Leadership, tell us what you think.
• Windows Live Suite: this actually addresses an analyst's concern, about showing radical growth in rich, connected services. Is it going to do it? What's is about and where is it going? And is Spaces going to do something to out-Facebook Facebook?
• In Between Cows: between now and Windows 7 and Office 14, what's releasing and what does the product stream look like for profit?
• Hiring Slow-Down: please, tell me more about this. And then even some more again. It just doesn't get old.
• HR and Compensation: first of all, before LisaB, did we even hear from HR that much? Anyway, I'm sure we'll hear how great the poll is looking any maybe some other goodies. On my mind:
  • ESPP: Bring back the 15% ESPP: yep, it goes against the cut expenses goal. Suck it up and give back what we once had. I'll even part with my Starbucks kitchen coffee maker machine for it. And that's saying something.
  • Internal Recruiting: we need to aggressively recruit talent within our company and not leave it to the individual to meander through the internal machinery and find a job. Additionally, totally drop permission and intent to interview and just let people interview at will.
  • Mid-year review: yes, bring back the mid-year review. Compensation would be nice, too, but let's make it a full review. We do all the work and create review numbers, so let's just go ahead and share the numbers officially so that it's not an all-or-nothing once-a-year tell-me-if-I'm-doing-a-good-job Hell Mary. This also swings nicely into letting people move around more easily so that folks don't feel locked into their job for an entire year in order to get a fair review vs. moving groups and losing their perceived momentum.

Anything you'd like to hear about and discussed by our leadership?

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Gone Fishin'

I'm spending my days singing that Bing Crosby + Louis Armstrong tune "Gone Fishin'" while I enjoy still waters, quiet trails, and generally sunny skies. As I sit on the hill in between family romps and watch the clouds go by (trying not to hear that Madonna launch music), it certainly causes the reflective "and what am I so concerned about?" moments to kick in.

So here's a quick post to keep the pot stirred. I hope you're out there, enjoying life, too.

Town Hall + FAM + Analysts Coffee Talk: damn, what a past week.

Regarding FAM, MSFT Extreme Makeover has the following post: MSFTextrememakeover Like us, or leave us. In the comments, Charles points to the following post off of Seeking Alpha: Microsoft Investment Requires Too Much Patience - Barron's - Seeking Alpha. Snippet:

Some of the issues that worry analysts:

1. It was clear from the presentation that many of the growth prospects will take 5-10 years to bear fruit.
2. The company overspends ("nothing would delight analysts more than a nice big round of cost-cutting.")
3. The businesses MSFT says it's entering (e.g. advertising and consumer electronics) are far more cut-throat than its current mix.
4. Microsoft's focus on building internet infrastructure rather than building sites that bring in users is "backward."
5. Bill Gates's plan to pass control of product development to Ray Ozzie "will not be a smooth one."

Those are certainly all issues to be really concerned about, though #2 reminds me of something Dylan Yolles brought up a couple of times at the coffee talk: control expenses via cost efficiency. Now one grand way to start is to not blow a billion dollars here and there and to avoid any future money losing ventures. Brilliant, I know. Can I have an SPSA grant now?

While Mr. Bach has been appropriately contrite and saying "the billion plus buck loss stops here," the commitment I want is forward looking: we will no longer produce product lines that are sold at a loss. One fine day, the third generation of Xbox will be out there. How about committing to pulling a Nintendo here and making it profitable from day one?

Cost efficiency and controlling spending is a pretty broad area to improve in. I'm glad that head-count growth is so visibly discussed now and that Mr. Liddell is saying that it's not sustainable. Let attrition do its thing for a while. I think the analysts would be thrilled - thrilled I tell you - if we actually shrunk headcount and optimized employee career assignments. Around cost efficiency, I'm concerned that one of our new hires will look over the financial books and, with a twenty-five watt light bulb blazing above his head, say, "Hey, I know, we can save some money cutting back on this luxurious towel service here!"

Around our performance and wondering when our stock price will take off, I just have to ask, "If not now, when?" When will we emerge from the post-growth purgatory Charles DiBona mentions? Can we get a software plus services product line out that that resonates with everyone and makes clear the value of Microsoft rich-client applications plus on-line services?

I hope that the upcoming Windows Live Suite is the beginning of another Office Suite. For free. Hmm, wait a minute... well, anyway, it includes my favorite little application, Windows Live Writer, and given that the Office Suite story turned out so well there's an abundance of opportunity for another suite to emerge. Revenue around this, I can only assume, is built on advertising around the content you generate with the suite. That makes me feel a little dirty, still.

I'm glad that there's more focus on creating products for the consumer. Waaaay back, three years ago, it was part of my reason for launching this little blog. I was tired of all the IT-focused features we were so focused on vs. the forgotten home user. I want the cash and attention of everyone walking along the street. I want knowledge workers demanding to have IT deploy the new Office because it's so friggin' cool and because there are features in there they can't wait to use. I have hope.

Shields up: a while back, Ms. Foley asked if Microsoft can go silent running on features vs. blathering about them years and months before they come out. I hope so. I think everyone of us who has watched a Steve Jobs presentation has always felt envy when he unveils something surprising and new and then says, "And you can buy it at the Apple store this afternoon!"

Well played, sir, well played. Even if it's something I'd never want, my inner geek starts running around screaming OMG OMG OMG!

For anything consumer focused and small, yes, we should be able to do this. Obviously, features that are going to rile up the IT department need a soft landing. But I would prefer to announce the cool stuff right at launch or before launch, to avoid the months and months of discussion and criticism that leads us to, "meh" on launch day.

Other bits:

• Following along keeping quiet, Jamie has a new C9 park about liberating user feedback. It includes me (blush), Fake Steve Jobs, and Fake Steve Ballmer.
• Fake Steve Jobs is actually quite on the roll and has two of my favorite recent posts: It's called zeitgeist, have you heard of it and Freetards in deep denial (oh, man, nice!).
• Mr. Pincus dropped by in the comment stream of the last post and certainly brought some life into the comments. I'm glad that there is so much internal enthusiasm associated with Mr. Pincus (of Prefix and Prefast fame) but what I'd like to hear more of is not so much the journey he is rallying but the destination.

Okay, back to the hill. Ooo, that cloud looks like Ray Ozzie, confused, pondering, 'Dude, what is this bag, and why have you left me holding it?'

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Microsoft FY07Q4 Results

Here comes the fourth quarter results for FY07 and some peering into what FY08 has in store. Well, as much as we're willing to reveal. My favorite post analysis sites for the results:

• MSFTExtremeMakeover,
• Mr. Joe Wilcox, and
• Mr. Todd Bishop.

I'll summarize what folks are saying and link to their posts later.

Some articles started showing up earlier in the week forecasting what the results might be and that totally got derailed by Mr. Peter Moore leaving Microsoft for a better, family friendly job location with Electronic Arts in the Bay area. I know a lot of gopher heads popped up questioning, "Accountability? In action? At Microsoft?"

That was quickly put to rest. Of course, even if Mr. Moore was asked to head for the nearest exit, we wouldn't want to piss him off over at EA. So, I'm marking this up as how it was presented, with zero amount of accountability being exhibited. Again. Whatever the SPSA metrics are for this upcoming shower of gold, I'm sure none of the bad news around Xbox will affect the payout.

What do you think will be the interesting parts of the end of FY07 results?

What questions would you ask if you were on the conference call?

Some topics:

Vista: how is deployment? And analysts will probably fish for news on SP1, given that SP1 should increase Vista deployment. To me, the secondary issue is around Vista 3rd party drivers. I still walk into people's office and see some cool device and hear, "Yeah, well, when the Vista drivers are released I'll be able to use it again..."

Oh, and hey Windows Vista: you remember Chris Pirillo? Let me jog your memory: (1) Copying Xerox, Vista Mistakes, and VP and Perspectives (2) There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft. Don't shrug him off as a whiny complainer nor doubt his ability to get press, because last week the Chris Pirillo focused "6 Months Later, a Report Card on Vista" / "Six Months On, Vista Users Still Griping" / "Little Annoyances Still Big Vista Issue" took its sweet time spreading to about every news site I read.

Acquisitions: probably we should hear a question about aQuantive and how things are looking there. It would be nice to also conjecture about other acquisition targets... I know, we can't. Again, I would enjoy Microsoft acquiring Facebook and then letting only the best people help them build it out (e.g., sorry, no one from Spaces allowed - you had your chance and you'd probably be bitter). Of course, when it comes to acquiring Facebook, Scoble says we ain't good enough.

Duuude. We're well over having the Microsoft network membership pass one-fifth the number of current employees. We're not just dating Facebook here. We're (leaning forward with a knowing glance) involved. Ooo! I'm going to invite Bill Gates to be my friend on Facebook right now... okay, done.

Staffing: last year, Mr. Bishop was the first to gather that Microsoft had an explosive year in employee growth. How bad is it going to be this year? And who the hell are all these people? What parts of the company are growing and what is the demand that the growth is addressing? How the hell can we sustain this growth globally let alone poor little cluster f'd Redmond / Bellevue? It just makes my language go to pot.

Anti-Trust concerns: the elephant in the room. Do we expect any discussion about Europe progress, let alone the US? We yanked Google's anti-trust chain for the DoubleClick acquisition, now they are yanking our anti-trust nipple ring around desktop search.

(Later...)

Follow-up posts to our earnings announcement:

• Seattle-PI: Microsoft quarterly profit, ad revenues rise
• Seattle-PI: Slowing of headcount growth! Microsoft hiring slows from last year's record pace - Mexican Hat Dance time! Yes, I'm one broken blogger, down to celebrating moderate employee growth vs. actually shrinking and mini-fying Microsoft. Perhaps we finally woke up from our hiring bender, uttered, "Holy frickin' Nelly!" and things will start being far more reasonable.
• Mary Jo Foley: New hires, datacenter investments evident in Microsoft earnings - looks at data center growth and employee growth in certain parts of the company (hmm, maybe the field is exploding).
• MSFTextrememakeover Q4-07 Earnings
• Microsoft Watch - Corporate - Microsoft Q4 2007 by the Numbers - Office 2007 outshining Vista?

I was surprised that Liddell shrugged off the importance of Vista SP1. If it was an attempted Jedi Mind Trick, he forgot to wave his hand.

Other goings on:

• Oooo, you wiley Facebook, I'm even more intrigued with your acquisition of Parakey. I've had my eye on Parakey for a while given that they started implementing something that reminds me of a question Dave Winer posed on Scripting News way back in the late 90s. And of course, the wine loving devil on my shoulder is just tickled with the prospect of Microsoft acquiring Facebook while Blake Ross is an employee.
• What do you know, Google stock can actually go the other direction.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft MSFT

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