Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Six Hopes for This Year's Microsoft Company Meeting

(Updated below for the Extra-Long-Labor-Day-Vacation-Layoff of September 3rd 2009)

I'm one of the biggest Microsoft Company Meeting fanboys *evah*, but even I'm surprised that we're having a full-blown Company Meeting this year at Safeco Field in Seattle. I thought it and MGX were going to be cut without a second thought given the economic reset we are all enduring. I'm wrong. Given that it is happening, it's my opinion that this year's Company Meeting sure can't be a clone of last year's. I mean, last year's was great and everything... but now our everything is different.

I think about the context around this year's Company Meeting. There is what the crowd brings, what the crowd expects to see, and what the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) wants to accomplish with this meeting. Look, against this current economic tide the Microsoft SLT is putting on the Company Meeting. There has to be a pretty big goal they are shooting for, not just rah-rah party-demo time.

Because there are two very large elephants sitting down front and center with the hand-picked floor crowd. Two grumpy elephants with very good memories, one of January 22nd 2009 with 1,400 Microsoftie layoffs and the other with May 5th, 2009 and 3,600 further Microsoftie layoffs. Folks are going to come into Safeco, grab their box lunch, sit down with their co-workers and friends and as they fold their pink paper airplane, they are going to remark, "I can't believe they are spending all this money for today. <<Fill name in the blank>> and more could have kept their job if they just cancelled this horse and pony show."

These folks might have on their Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters buttons, but they've scratched out the Proudly part. They are staring at the grumpy elephants, and are looking to the SLT for some serious L.

I'm just imagining what corporate baggage people are bringing in during the Company Meeting. Maybe they were part of the original 1,400 and had to scramble through interview loops to find a new Microsoft position. To be clear: I wanted cut-backs when we were in the 50,000 range of employees, let alone approaching 100,000. 100,000, man. That's crack-pipe craziness. Had we been more prudent and efficient over the years, we wouldn't have reached the stage where the light bulb went off over Ballmer's head and he said, "I know... layoffs!" We got bloated and we cut, and we should cut more. But our leadership shouldn't have gone down that crack-pipe path to begin with.

Anyway, looping back to the 2009 Microsoft Company Meeting, some of my hopes and expectations:

One: I expect Steve Ballmer to come out front first, before any other Microsoft leadership, to speak the truth about the last year and where we are now. He must acknowledge it starkly. We had layoffs. We had inefficiencies. Positions had to go due to the economy being unable to sustain those parts of the business. There are people missing this year that, last year, were some of the biggest Microsoftie fans.

And, there are people here this year that will not be in the audience next year.

Take that in.

With success in the middle of hardship, this is a rare opportunity to enact change in Microsoft culture and recalibrate to being efficient and streamlined. I want Ballmer to get out front and say, "Today, we're celebrating our success of Windows 7. From this success we are learning and we are acting. We're learning why it was a success, how to do even better, and then taking those lessons and putting them into practice. In Windows. In Office. In Dev Div. In all of Microsoft. The rest of today we will not only tell you where we are and where we are going, but we're also going to discuss honestly how we're changing to be an efficient, streamlined company that smartly uses its successes to leverage good change. For the benefit of the company, our customers, our shareholders, and our employees."

Two: Any vision this year has to be practical and realized with one, two, or at most, three years. And, closing the loop on accountability, there's a discussion and a review of how the vision of the past has brought us to practical results. The pie has come down from the sky and now it's time to eat.

Three: demos are short, sweet, powerful, and made especially for a crowd of some of the smartest (plus good looking) people on earth.

Four: if it's new and hot, we get to see it now. That new Halo game. Zune HD. Stuff that even Beta testers haven't seen yet. Give us some reward for actually working for Microsoft and being excited about seeing things that are new and known by very few. Hell yes we'll tweet and blog about the coolness. And to assuage any anxiety over that: happy, enthused Microsofties sharing their enthusiasm for Microsoft with the world == a good thing in this day and age.

Five: a short introduction by LisaB of the new, efficient, streamlined review system: a simple Word document that let's you cover what you were responsible for, how you did, and your manager's assessment. Hey, I can dream.

Six: wrap-up by a serious Steve Ballmer. No running around high-fiving people or shaking his fists in the air to get a "YeAAAH!" from the crowd. But rather a serious Ballmer who covers what we've been through, how we're going to change, and a re-enforcement for the success at Microsoft being something that has to spread through-out the teams.

After the Company Meeting, I intend to sit down at Pike Brewing and ponder over: what did the SLT intend to accomplish this year at the Company Meeting? How are the Microsofties attending better for having been there?

My concern is that the template for the meeting this year is the same as it ever has been, with some comedic hijinks, Kevin Turner covering all the "gooood" results that we should be fired up about, music, Liddell's financial review, an opaque speech by Ozzie, very late arriving busses full of people wondering why we can't figure out traffic control, rambling demos of misbehaving and barely competitive technology, paper airplanes smacking the back of my head, and a big cheerleader Ballmer at the end, all screaming and full of gusto... and totally passing over the hardships of this year.

I hope that all doesn't happen, but if it does, later I'll just sit at the bar between the grumpy elephants and drop some tears into my beer while still musing over what the SLT's intentions and goals might be.

What goals and expectations do you have for the Company Meeting?

Addendum: as of September 3rd 2009 it looks like it might be two large grumpy elephants and a little baby elephant:

Weird. How much more than 27? And just who is affected? I don't see it on the WARN site yet. Snippet from Ms. Chan's post:

Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said the company is making cuts across the country, but he did not elaborate on how many more jobs in the U.S. were affected.

"I can confirm that part of our effort to reduce costs and increase efficiencies involved 27 job eliminations here and in other regions across the country. While job eliminations are always difficult, we are taking these necessary actions to realign our resources against our top priorities."

-- Comments

Posted by Who da'Punk at Wednesday, September 02, 2009 132 comments

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Microsoft Annual Review 2009

Just a quick post: some of you enjoy posting information relevant to your review, both looking at numbers and a critical view of the message given to you. It has started to happen a bit in the last post so I'm just going to capitulate and put this small post up for the 2009 Annual Review share and compare.

Oh, and obviously grab yourself a few grains of salt. Folks seem to like this format:

  • L# (promo'd?)
  • (Exceeded|Achieved|Underperformed) / (20|70|10)
  • Bonus $K
  • Stock $K
  • (Promo $K)
  • Optional comments about Division / Group, discipline, impression of review

The promotion budget is significantly less this year meaning that if you got promoted you're really at the top of the heap. If you didn't, well, you're going into a long line.

And as we know: no merit raises this year (though you will get a raise if you're promoted). But bonus and stock awards are the same, ensuring we have the flexibility to reward our top performers.

I would expect that the Underperformed Microsofties have already been managed out. If you are an Achieved/10% then I'd expect you're given a very short term idea of what success looks like and can expect to be closely managed. Great time to update that resume and see what else is going on.

I found a bunch of old reviews of mine recently. Flipping through the review forms started with refreshing simplicity from over a decade ago, rapidly turning into confusing churn (company value ratings and all that crap), to now a fragmented collection of task-driven thoughts. While it's nice that the review form has pretty much stuck to the current form now and we don't have new components coming and going (yeah schema?) it really doesn't compare to the first couple of reviews I did at Microsoft.

Of course, I had great managers who knew how to give concise feedback, both daily and as part of my review. Where you don't have demonstrated collective excellence, you have process.

-- Comments

Posted by Who da'Punk at Sunday, August 23, 2009 438 comments

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Microsoft FY09Q4 Results

This is it. The wrap up of FY09, coming fresh to us Thursday July 23rd. I'll put this up a bit early in case there are any initial questions, thoughts, or insights regarding how FY09 is closing.

Some of my favorite places to track insights and opinions on MSFT quarterly results:

Topics I'm interested in:

  • Description of efficiency so far and an enumeration of which groups are going to get Sinofsky'd.
  • Assessment of further financial risk at the hands of the EU Commission.
  • Oh, any more layoffs? If not, it would be wise for the SLT - for the sake of employee morale - to close the door on this now.

Given how negative Ballmer has been about the economic reset, I can't imagine any rosy picture painting just yet, even if Intel looks like it has bottomed out and Apple is frantically trying to create as many iPhones as it possibly can.

Posted by Who da'Punk at Tuesday, July 21, 2009 373 comments

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Microsoft Has Turned The Corner

I've got to say: in my opinion, Microsoft has turned The Corner.

You know The Corner.

The one that gets us off of pothole ridden Vista Avenue (one street over from Lincoln in Blue Velvet). The Corner that requires Microsoft to shed some of the fat it has layered on recently just to make the turn without flipping. The one that requires a bit of humility for past failings (the aforementioned Vista, Xbox losses & red-ring, Zune's market performance so far, WinMo asleep at the wheel, no coherent brand strategy, search lagging behind for so long, the abandonment of IE after IE6, a confused developer story, a bungled Yahoo! acquisition attempt, etc etc etc).

The Corner that perhaps doesn't get us out of the bad neighborhood, but is at least pointing us in the right direction. What has helped make the turn?

  • Windows 7
  • Bing
  • Silverlight
  • IE EU chutzpah
  • ...and award worthy, coherent ads that aren't a demonstration of how best to destroy millions of dollars quickly.

Redemption takes a while. Time is needed to allow perception to change and to re-earn trust and respect. Once Microsoft was the scrappy underdog playing catch-up against many competitors. Later Microsoft was the dominating OS and application suite, so drunk and arrogant on its own power (pre-monopoly designation) that it made some truly dumb, strong-armed moves (and even worse, did sloppy "nuh-uh!" cover-up maneuvers). After that, Microsoft went from getting beat-up by the US government to the dot-com bust to the development of Vista, reset after the huge effort of XP SP2. The Evil Empire became The Bungler, hatred turning to scorn and frowning distaste. And the EU hurried over to slip in a few kicks to the wallet.

While all of that could have been avoided with competent senior leadership, it at least served as a hard enough whack to the side of the head that even our mediocre leadership took action to aright the ship.

Now we have the potential to start shaking this off and achieving solid, if not stellar, results.

This is happening, too, while the shine on Google is dulling. Rather than pulling an Apple on us anymore, Google has picked up the nasty habit of pre-announcing technology. Guys, you stole the wrong playbook. And, uh, we don't want it back. Plus the government's gaze has moved from the fallen-working-on-redemption of Microsoft to the obvious domination of Google in search and information strong-arming. A dose of the medicine Google's now getting:

Anyway. Let us enjoy this success of Microsoft turning The Corner, all while being a wee bit smaller and more efficient. 5,000 jobs eliminated so far and a declaration from Ballmer that efficiency is his key focus right now. Wall Street likes how that blood in the water tastes so far.

I'm going to start my whole "and we can cut a whole lot more positions" screed in a second. But first a moment to reflect on the flesh and blood people caught up in the layoff mess we've gone through so far. There is certainly a sobering perspective on this within the abundant comment stream of the last post.

It's not their fault they were part of the layoff. It's not their fault that their position was considered part of the inefficient part of the company that was eliminated. I certainly don't blame anyone for wanting to work for Microsoft. Large parts of Microsoft are magical, exhilarating places to be. In its bones, Microsoft is a great company with amazing potential. It's just turning The Corner and directing itself to where it can focus on efficient, lean-mean, profit making products that engage and delight Microsoft customers.

At Microsoft a lot more positions still need to go to achieve efficiency and focus. 15,000 more is my magic number. It's not personal. But to achieve efficiency and resolution of what to focus on with determination, we need a whole lot less people and to publicly admit there are opportunities we will focus on and others we are okay walking away from. ("That's right, Adobe: you can charge as much as you flipping want for your Photoshop line of software.")

For efficient product development: Yahoo!'s Carol Bartz has a good point when she swears like a sailor over having way too many program managers vs. actual developers (overloaded with one program manager for every three developers). <<edit edit edit - this went quickly into the weeds - let me sum up some quick thoughts>> Looking across groups, I still see exceptionally inefficient use of broad, front-loaded thinking and design locked into a 1970s waterfall model that leads to reality and focus coming way too late and a bunch of frantic, mediocre consensus driven crap floating like chunks into an end product. Kaizen. Kaizen. Kaizen. Efficiency is not going to happen as long as we continue rewarding people for this status quo. Shedding a respectable chunk of the company would bring an exceptional amount of upfront focus to our teams and result in high-quality features end-to-end, vs. what we see in misshapen compromise that we can fit in.

Microsoft has turned The Corner. But our car's suspension is still wobbling from the load we're carrying, and while some fine spots of leadership has gotten us around this bend, it doesn't take much for the remaining mediocre leadership to assume that the pressure is off and to get their grubby hands on the wheel and start turning us back towards Vista Avenue. The job isn't done. It's just beginning. We iterate again.

(Oh, and hey, here's a question for you: if you could create a new Microsoft leader based on the best attributes of our current leaders, what would you create? For instance, I'd start by combining the efficient layer-busting profit focused philosophy of new President Steven Sinofsky with the campus design skills of President Robbie Bach. Ideas?)

Administrivia: to subscribe to all comments here, use the following: http://minimsft.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default . While I enjoy providing the freedom of unmoderated comments over in The Cutting Room Floor, I had to turn off anonymous comments for the time being. You can still post unmoderated comments, you'll just need to provide a Blogger ID / OpenID.

CRF: unmoderated comment thread: Microsoft Has Turned The Corner (plus a snippet of what I deleted from this post).

-- Comments

Posted by Who da'Punk at Sunday, July 12, 2009 192 comments

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Microsoft Layoffs - Cinco de Fire-O

Well, if ever you wanted to console yourself with some tequila, today might be your day. Phase Two of the big Microsoft 2009 layoff engages today.

Is this it? Will there be more? From Mr. Ballmer's email:

With this announcement, we are mostly but not all done with the planned 5,000 job eliminations by June 2010.

Strangely, Ms. Brummel have asked folks to avoid emailing each other today because the last layoff's email volume was so distracting. Gee, sorry to be a bother while people are trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Let's see... how to avoid that... I know, tell people what the hell is going on and which people / groups are affected. Oy.

Please, if affected by today's events, note which group you're in and any messaging about things going forward (as appropriate and proper).

(And please, Ms. Brummel, if you talk to the troops about this, don't share how people affected by the layoff are thanking you - that just seems creepy.)

Dropping moderation for today, but as usual: be responsible. I will delete comments later that are off-topic, along with any other comments that react to the deleted comments. If in doubt, go visit the CRF parallel thread: http://minimsftcrf.blogspot.com/2009/05/comment-stream-microsoft-layoffs-cinco.html

Posted by Who da'Punk at Tuesday, May 05, 2009 1545 comments

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Microsoft FY09Q3 Results

Last time we did quarterly results, it was a doooozy. Immediate layoffs for 1,400 Microsofties and sometime-in-the-next-18-months layoffs for 3,600 more. Of course, the layoffs were offset somewhat by continued crazy hiring for Live Search (should we expect a work of Shakespeare to pop out of there sometime soon, too?).

What kind of questions do you want to be asked during the conference call? Some off of the top of my head:

  • So... how's that, ah, layoff... thingy.. going?
  • Which groups and products are specifically being affected by layoffs?
  • What other cost-cutting measures are in effect?
  • What are the causes in drop of revenue and what are the expectations going forward (will Microsoft give guidance this time)?
  • What bright spots are there in profits?
  • How is gaining share going?
  • The EU seems to be pulling its leg way back for a full-on kick to Microsoft's financial groin. How does the defense against EU charges look to protect shareholder money for additional EU fines?
  • What does a financial geek have to do to get a beer at The Commons?

And you know, speaking of The Commons: I trekked over there today (meh, not the sunniest day) and I have to say it's an impressive space. I walked around admiring the scope of the project, thinking "This is what Windows built. This is what Office built." I then reflected on the irony that it's Mr. Robbie Bach's Entertainment and Devices moving into the new campus with The Commons. Windows and Office funded this extravagant place for the folks who managed to burn through $8,000,000,000USD+ on the Xbox, be shown how it's done right from Nintendo with the Wii, dash the Zune against the juggernaut iPod, and have the iPhone drop-kick WinMobile to Mars.

Microsoft Senior Leadership Team is rewarding something here moving these people into such a great place, but it's not anything that I could make sense of while I wandered the new campus...

I'll update this post later with commentary about the quarterly results. In the meantime, some of my favorite places to track insights and opinions on MSFT quarterly results:

Update: closing the loop here a little bit later than I wanted (sorry, I was bounced off the grid for a while):

Wow: have a plunge in profits and get rewarded by your stock shooting up 10%+ in one day! Sweet! And by "Sweet" I mean none of this makes a lick of sense except to look at an article like Cost-cutting saves Microsoft stock after rough 3Q and realize that the market is supposedly rewarding the stock price and recognizing appreciation for the reduction in overhead and expenditures.

So now, we must have a plan to have constant announcements about reduction of expenditures.

Announcement #1: No more Company Picnic. Ever. Next?

What would be on your short list of things to cut back on? MGX? The Company Meeting? Beer at morale events? Soda? The Company Store? Whole product groups? Your group? Yeah, I don't know how often that last one makes the list. Though I have friends who have sniffed the way the FY10 wind is blowing and are getting the hell out of groups that have spent more time talking about what they are going to do than actually doing anything or - get this - shipping something to actual customers. You know, the type of groups that make Yahoo's Carol Bartz slip in the F-bomb.

I'm surprised to learn from Ms. Fried's Company Picnic article above that The Company Meeting is still on. As much as I love the Company Meeting, it was totally dead and gone to me in my mind. Talk about the most challenging Company Meeting ever. Yes, we'll have Win7 and coming in close Office 14, along with other emerging products. But how in the world to you manage to pull off a great Company Meeting within our current environment? You have to take the big issues head-on, and part of that will be looking at the upcoming MSPoll numbers and actually sharing with Microsofties who they hell were let go as part of the layoff. And why.

The Company Picnic boggled my mind just looking at the logistical nightmare it had turned into. Tell you what: if we reduce the company size back down to something reasonable, we should bring it back. But for now, I'll be happy with my group renting space for a family morale team event at Vasa Park.

CRF: unmoderated comment thread: Microsoft FY09Q3 Results.

Posted by Who da'Punk at Wednesday, April 22, 2009 239 comments

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Spitfire Backfire, Live Labs, and Not My 1,400

Here's a quick post before next Thursday's quarterly results. Given the layoffs in the last quarterly results I know there is some increased anxiety about any additional cost cutting Mr. Ballmer might be ready to unleash, like more staff reductions or, you know, "Hey congratulations on entering RC and all. Now... about that next release and, well, you specifically..."

Mr. Joseph Tartakoff over at paidContent has a post around further reductions: Microsoft Still On Track To Cut Another 3,600 Jobs.

Contrition time for me: last post I shared how amazed I was that everyone in the 1,400 that I knew or that were in my extended network got rehired. Pretty much the feedback I heard here and on Twitter was, "Wow, you're one lousy sample set," because a number of you are either in the non-presently-Microsoftie 1,400 or know plenty of people in that pool.

I wish I could blame it on drinking too much at Spitfire but, (1) it wasn't opened yet, and (2) it will never be opened thanks to the brazenly stupid idea to have it planned and ready to go for what seems like the better part of a year and then three days before it was to open, Microsoft yanks the rug out from under Spitfire and thirsty Microsoftie patrons.

You know, if upfront the Senior Leadership Team had decided that a bar was an interesting idea but didn't make sense for Microsoft I would have just shrugged and scooted over to a Mustard Seed, had I even heard of the idea. But to have this set up for so long with curious expectations building in Redmond and then to have a last minute revelation and cancelling Spitfire really calls into question basic judgment and execution abilities.

So-- what, what's that? Hmm, checking in over at the Bring Spitfire back to Microsoft Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70887074034) it appears Spitfire is on track to open at the end of the month? From Jonathan Sposato:

thx for everyone's support! OK there's GOOD NEWS today; the spitfire has reached an agreement in principal with msft to open on the west commons campus later this month : ) over the last few days, both parties re-engaged and worked creatively to find a way to deliver on a great spitfire experience on campus.

('scuse me while I tweet that.) Great! Allow me to raise a glass. Now I'm vaguely curious to know about all the soap-opera court-intrigue going on behind the scenes here. And I can cancel my idea for a BYOB + Towel Commons protest.

Update: well, not so fast, you twittering fool. Looks like the compromise is pretty extreme, in that drinks will only be served for scheduled special events. Hmm. More by Mr. Todd Bishop here: Microsoft revives Spitfire pub under compromise arrangement.

One last thing: Live Labs recently restructured, with some projects going forward and others getting the axe and the researchers being repurposed into groups like Mobile and Search. I've only had superficial dealings with Live Labs folks and I found them very refreshing compared to other teams in research I had planned with: a sort of practicality that was uncommon. To add a few more words here, we'll end with a special guest writer reflection on the recent Live Labs happenings:

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is downsizing its high-profile Live Labs group, which was created three years ago to speed up innovation in the company’s online business, paidContent.org has learned. -- Joseph Tartakoff, Microsoft breaks up its Live Labs group, 2009

Microsoft describes it as a "restructuring". About half of the team will be moved to various product groups. The remaining half, still run by former Overture/Yahoo star Gary Flake, will focus on search, data organization and user experience aspects. There's more information in articles by Mary Jo Foley on ZD Net, Ina Fried on CNET, and Gavin Clarke in The Register.

Contrary to recent whispers and tweets, we are not shutting down, disbanding, dismantling, or anything of the sort. In the coming weeks and months we'll bring you updated developer tools, new ways to use Seadragon, and much more. Going forward, we intend to focus on a smaller number of projects relative to what we've done in the past, but invest in them at a much bigger scale. -- What's next for Live Labs, on the Live Labs blog

Mary Jo comments that "Microsoft execs often touted Live Labs as proof that Microsoft is an innovator, not just a follower," and there's no question that the acquisition of Seadragon and merging it with Microsoft Research technologies has a chance to be transformational. Photosynth is an encouraging start, and there's a lot more to build on. A tighter focus and bigger bets could be a good thing here. On the other hand, Live Labs was also supposed to be a company-wide (or at least Windows Live/MSN-wide) innovation center. Gary's 2006 Live Labs Manifesto and coverage at the time like Ina Fried's captures the original vision: bridging the gap between research and the product groups and revitalizing how software is developed. This was always going to be a tough sell, with senior executives like Steven Sinfosky firmly against the idea of a separate innovation group outside of their control. The restructuring seems to throw in the towel on this front. And Microsoft spokeswoman's Stacy Drake McCredy's comments in paidcontent.org are somewhat alarming:

Economic conditions are imposing constraints that challenge the original Live Labs model by diminishing the group’s ability to transfer innovations to business groups who’re understandably giving priority to “needs” vs. “opportunities.”

Well yeah, it is understandable. But what this is saying that Microsoft product groups aren't in a situation where they can take advantage of opportunities. It's really hard to see that as a recipe for long-term success.

Administrivia: The Cutting Room Floor is unmoderated and folks have been pleading for me to shut down the red-hot discussions over there. I moderate here - when I can manage - to keep things on track. If the CRF can be the crazy diatribe magnet and that makes moderation here all that more easy: fan-damn-tastic.

CRF: Unmoderated thread for "Spitfire Backfire, Live Labs, and Not My 1,400"

Posted by Who da'Punk at Wednesday, April 15, 2009 75 comments

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Shared Sacrifice and Microsoft Free Radicals

How have you been doing? Me, I've been doing some kind of wonderful.

Since I pressed the pause button (a button I'm going to be enjoying quite often) a lot has happened yet not happened. Sort of like those layoffs. Just like you and your fellow Microsofties, I talked to a lot of people who where either affected by the 1,400 cut or who had a friend affected. From just my perspective, everyone I know or know-of through someone in Redmond was... rehired.

When's a layoff not a layoff?

I mean, even the folks I muttered, "Whew, thank goodness they took their badge and finally got rid of 'em" got rehired. Sheesh. We can't even do layoffs right. For at least the slice of people I know of, this was more a rebalancing than a layoff. Sorry, Ms. Bick, I guess I don't know the folks you wrote about.

Also during this time, both Toyota and HP made interesting moves to deal with the impact of the crisis on their business. I pay attention to Toyota thanks to writings like those of Mary Poppendieck's that look at Toyota's approach to empowering its engineering employees to make direct front-line team decisions, sort of like the feature teams various product groups at Microsoft have. And of course, HP is a big Microsoft partner. Both went down the path of avoiding layoffs. Both cut salaries vs. having layoffs, a "shared sacrifice" in Toyota's word (more on Toyota: Japan's management approaches offer lessons for U.S. corporations).

Mark Hurd's memo about the HP salary cuts should have been the memo that Ballmer wrote. Why? Because in it Mr. Hurd reviewed how they already had done due diligence to become a lean and mean company, and that further cut-backs didn't make sense. Also - call it a token gesture if you will - he and the executives took the biggest salary cut. Yet he re-emphasized that HP will pay for performance. None of our executives had said anything about taking a cut back, but rather just re-iterating that their SPSA payout will be less because the company's bottom line is suffering just like everyone else in this crisis. But zero details other than "significantly less."

Winking while we stuff our pockets AIG-style.

So yes, HP will have restructuring, but they don't have 3,600 additional cuts hanging over people's heads.

Do you think that the concept of shared sacrifice would work at Microsoft? If it still felt like a company driven by the employees, probably so. That's my perspective. I think if we still felt like the drive and ambition of the front-line employees shaped the company and defined it, then helping one another would make sense. But the huge growth shattered that sense of employee ownership, abetted by the abysmal Microsoft stock performance we've had since, yes, Mr. Ballmer became CEO. With that all these layers and organizational obstacles spread about and it went from a different, special place for crazy-happy geeks to a jay-oh-bee.

Mr. Mundie recently reflected on a number of topics. One idea was the desire for Microsofties to move around in the company more effectively. I love it. If someone, like, oh, our Senior VP of HR, was to take a moment and muse, "Now's a great time to go back to basics and focus on what it is to be a Microsoftie" one of the keystones should be job movement through the company as part of following your passion and ambition. Maybe it was easier to take risks, be bold, and honestly do what the hell you really wanted to back in the mythic days of FYIFV. And gee, guess what? What do you get when you have people doing what they want to do? Great results.

Obviously we've got about zero job movement right now, so that has to be fixed first. Microsoft gorged itself at the buffet bar of mediocre hires. And now we're bursting at the seams and deadlocked. We are stagnant right when we have two major product releases coming in for landing - Windows and Office - and you'd like those people to be ready to move around Microsoft and cross-pollinate good engineering. Especially those responsible for the obvious success of Win7. Maybe some movement will happen within Windows and Office themselves, but not across the company and probably not into their groups from other parts of the company. Hell, you have people in Windows worried that the Senior Leadership Team is waiting for them to get to a safe RTM harbor so that the 3,600 quota can start getting taken care of. Do you expect people to look around - to take risks - in that environment?

FMIWIWFV!

Zero attrition. Stagnation. Organizational constipation. Nothing good comes out of that but corporate sepsis. Given that our leadership team has had their cage rattled by the global crisis, has examined all sorts of horrible past economic situations, and has locked down on the hiring and gotten on-board with some odd variant of firing, you'd expect they are playing out the forward-looking implications for the product groups and other Microsoft divisions, right?

I'd hope so. But it's not based in any sort confidence based on past results. And it's certainly not based on our leadership engaging with us as we work and live through this crisis. Things are certainly uncomfortably quiet. It's the worst side of "best of times, worst of times" but one hell of an opportunity for re-birth and re-engagement and truly building a stronger Microsoft. A few challenges and opportunities I'm thinking of ahead of Microsoft:

EU: you say "ee-you", I say, "ewwww!" As long as the Microsoft ATM continues shooting out cash fines the EU is going to keep mashing our buttons. Kudos to the folks in Office for demonstrating foresight to jump on documenting their file formats and protocols, even enduring the inevitable attrition such onerous work forced upon the team and the delays to O14 it caused. I'd say, at the end of the day, this saved a large chunk of a billion dollars in fines that the EU would have gone after. You talk about people who deserve to be in The Circle of Excellence? If they head off another EU money-hunt, it's the O14 crew. And good job, Win7, in making IE8 removable. Now, what's the next EU target?

Review Reset: as organizations look to clear out the recent mediocre hires to make room to hire excellent people suddenly really interested in working at Microsoft, middle management is discovering that the review tools have really screwed them over. Told you. To keep everything clear and accounted for, I spend four times the amount of energy dealing with the new review tools through the entire year to get the same results before with the Word form. The current system is wasteful. If it can't be modified to spit out some fixed commitments based on your level, it should be replaced with the old simple Word form.

Free Radical Career: I'm pondering ideas about making employees more mobile within Microsoft. The one I've come up recently is to let anyone who has reached a certain career achievement (Exceeded/20, or just in the top 20%) to be free to move to another part of the company and to have their headcount and associated budget go with them. E.g., the destination team doesn't even have to have open headcount, they just have to be willing to have this new (great) employee come over and join. Okay, they do have to have office space. Sucks for the former team, great for the new team. I know, my first worry there is that you get one crazy charismatic leader and suddenly everyone is working on BoonDoggle '12. But my goal is that if you're great, you can literally write your own ticket to be where you want to be in Microsoft. We need something to break the career stagnation because I know of folks already dorking with their organization is small, petty ways, and remarking, "Well, where are they going to go?"

CRF: Unmoderated comment stream for "Shared Sacrifice and Microsoft Free Radicals"

Posted by Who da'Punk at Sunday, March 29, 2009 118 comments

Press Play

Click: play.

Hoo-boy, things get dusty in the blogosphere pretty quickly. This is a pre-amble post to a regular post to kick things off again here. But in a different way.

While I will start moderating comments again, for most regular posts I'm going to create a shadow unmoderated comment stream post over at the Mini-Microsoft Cutting Room Floor blog (aka, the CRF). Given the comment freeze I put here, some regular commenters found that place pretty quickly. And, well, new readers over at the CRF naturally discovered the entropy that happens rather quickly within an unmoderated comment stream. Yeah, welcome to what I had to read everyday and discard.

Around moderation here:

  1. I'm going to boost up moderation. If you think your comment is the least bit iffy, you'd best post at least a copy over at the CRF, too, unless you want to see those bits disappear into the grand bit-bucket in the sky.
  2. I'm not going to be particularly predictable about when I get around to moderating.

For those that care, let me share where I am with respect to this small corner of cyberspace.

Soon to be five years ago, I started this blog up because I felt Microsoft was a train not only off-track but also heading straight for a cliff. We were massively expanding and incapable of dealing with the exponential complexity that a fast growing Microsoft required of us. It appeared as though we were growing for growth's sake and without a particular elegant plan in mind. So I spoke up within the public wilderness of the blogosphere to ask, "Err, isn't this crazy?"

And. We. Just. Kept. Growing.

Microsoft dramatically changed. The stock price remained flat, with the occasional plunge downwards when our CEO said something that spooked investors or when a surprise $2,000,000,000 investment popped up. We burned billions upon billions of dollars into a game console, to which people say, "At least it has improved Microsoft's image." Okay, step one: don't have a bad image.

Early 2009, we publically reached that cliff and went flying off. There were way too many people on the train to let it brake in time and we had to boot a bunch of them out, old-school layoff style. Folks asked me, "Well, aren't you happy now, Mini? Microsoft is finally cutting back on people!" and I just have to say, "Excuse me, I'm too busy screaming my fool head off as we fly off this cliff."

Now leadership can say, "You know, that multi-billion dollar budget growth year-over-year just wasn't sustainable. We all knew that." D'oh'pe slap for that. After this, I had a stark realization that for all the publicity this blog has garnered and the awkward questions it forced to be asked, none of it helped to avoid that cliff we've been steaming towards the last five years. My reality check has been cashed.

<<edit: cutting out a bunch of blah-blah-blah-me-me-me stuff>>

In what seems quite appropriate for now, I'm stepping back in medium-sized way and letting this be an occasional hobby vs. an initiative. For what it's worth, I'll pick up the Twitter-ing over at http://twitter.com/whodapunk (fingers crossed they are more enlightened than Facebook and don't get stealing what could be my new bucket). See you here and there.

Posted by Who da'Punk at Sunday, March 29, 2009

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

MSA - MSPoll Closing Soon

Microsoftie Service Announcement - the MS Poll is closing soon so put some time on your calendar to go through and share your opinions and insight.

Some advice:

  • In all the groups I've been in, the Poll results are poured over all the way down to the front-line manager level. This stuff matters.
  • Don't punish your local team for decisions out of their scope of influence. For 99.9% of you, your manager didn't have any say in the recent layoffs. Judge them and your team and your VP based on what they are actually responsible for, not for the company as a whole. There's an area for that later.
  • Happy with your team? It is just as important that your participate so that your happiness is reflected in your group's numbers so that they can keep doing what they are doing right vs. being told they need to change.
  • Yes, people do read the text comments at the end. But you can easily erase any good feedback and have the bit flipped on your comments with one small snark.
  • No manager feedback this year? Well, here's your chance to bubble up that feedback.

Unmoderated comment post to go along with this quick reminder: Mini-Microsoft Cutting Room Floor Pause Place to be Refresh - MSPoll etc

Posted by Who da'Punk at Wednesday, March 11, 2009 0 comments

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Time To Take a Mini-Microsoft Pause

It's time again for me to press the Big Blog Pause button.

I've put up a post over on the Cutting Room Floor for you to share any comments and ideas you have in the meantime.

Right now, I'm going through a long building change in perspective and simply reconsidering where I want to focus my energy and spare time (hint: writing, but not here). Also, you can only bang your head on the wall for so long without something getting knocked loose that probably needs to be put back in place.

(Is this pause layoff related? Sorry to disappoint the Just Deserves club out there, but, no, I'm not in the 1,400 and I can't imagine my group being touched by the remaining 3,600.)

Getting back to focus, I have lots of forward looking thoughts and it's interesting to me in how few of them I imagine myself at Microsoft for the long-term, let alone mid-term. Four years ago that would be unimaginable heresy. Now: well, in my opinion, the company has fumbled and tumbled into an awkward future with little sense of rigor and spoiled by the abundant cash of Windows and Office. Windows survived Vista and it looks like Sinofsky/DeVaan have a Winning 7 to make amends. Hope. Enough?

I love my team. And I like Microsoft, but I can't say I love it anymore. And that makes me channel Arsenio Hall and go... "Hmmmmmm."

BillG is long gone. Within our leadership, there's no one left who wants to read your ThinkWeek paper, so they're killing that off. In our future, employee-led innovation, I guess, starts at Level 68.

Microsoft needs a back-to-basics ground shaking rebalancing. And that's not going to happen with the current Senior Leadership Team.

I'll certainly be back in time for the next quarterly results, along with any major Microsoft events. You're welcome to send me email in the meantime, but note that I'll be pretty intermittent in checking it (and even worse at replying). During the pause, I intend to go through some of the recent gems within the comments here and ensure they get proper attention.

Over time. Cheers.

Click.

Posted by Who da'Punk at Wednesday, February 04, 2009 0 comments

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