Of Cogs, Bozos, and Backbones

Okay, time for another post-break of random goodness...

The post The incident at the WinClient All Hands by Drie over at Of Cogs (and other aspects of life inside MS) provides some insight into a BrianV meeting and guest-star Kevin Johnson. Kevin: sounds like Papa needs to get a brand-new shtick before everyone knows the punch-line. Having clarity and enthralling indignation is easy come resignation-letter writing time. You could say this whole blog is one long resignation letter, should Microsoft not re-invent itself into the Next Microsoft.

I think everyone would be a lot more impressed with a contemporary update of that letter, written to Microsofties, our customers, our partners, and our shareholders. Not resigning, but frankly admitting where we were, where we are, and where we need to be to be successful and how we're getting there.

Is Google not all that it appears to be? I'm still waiting for that Mini-Google site to fire itself up. Perhaps being hosted at MSN Spaces for a delightful bit of irony? Anyway, Valley Wag is a fun read, between letting us know that Googlers have pay-raise issues, too, and that Larry Page is just this close from throwing chairs over bad 20% usage.

Mark Shavlik, an ex-Microsoftie and now CEO, has an interesting post: Microsoft employee perspectives. Snippet:

Rapid success is not always good, growth comes fast and internal structural changes come slower creating a company that could be out of balance. Hiring can go too fast, where the quality of available to hire talent is not large enough to meet the needs of the business. That is a tough point for a company. One of the HP founders apparently said a company should only grow as fast as it can find quality people to hire, but if you do that do you miss markets? I am not sure, but I have found its better to grow at the rate at which you can hire great people.

And some people were so desperate to fill positions they'd hire just about any bozo, or bozos to fill up the 3.0 quota to reward their current team. What do we do with the bozo's that have us going around making us flip the bozo-bit all the time? First rule: don't hire anymore bozos! I think we've already had a bozo explosion and now we're dealing with the aftermath from explosive growth and low standards. Anyway, we shouldn't want to do that again. Guy Kawasaki put up the initial post of how to avoid this mediocrity bozo bloomer, followed by Scoble's take from a Microsoft-bozo / anti-bozo point of view.

Though I'm afraid the bozos are going to starting harrumphing "Scrum! We got ourselves some scrum, right here in Salmonburg city!"

Results. Accountable results.

As for the occasional external commentary on the Mini-Microsoft blog, I'm seeing a lot more of this as of late:

[...] Same goes for blogging if the blog is relevant, although I doubt that Mini-Microsoft will be listing his on a resume anytime soon...:) Speaking of Mini, anybody notice lately that his/her blog has basically degenerated into a bitch-fest for MS employees? Mini throws out the raw meat for a few sentences or paragraphs, and the piling on in the comments commences immediately. I read the comments more than his stuff now...lol

This past post was probably a prime-candidate for that observation. I went into low-moderation mode, just about making it appear as if moderation had been turned off. Some folks put up some great discussions, and some folks went off on wild, argumentative tangents. And some folks broke out the "nyah-nyah" factor that at least makes everything else look better by comparison.

Anyway, it's an interesting conundrum that I've typed myself into. How can you be critical, perhaps even constructive in your criticism, and not become the patron saint of the eternal complainer? Let alone a negativity magnet? Perhaps the very people you're trying to hunt down and move out of the company? The whole "bad attitude" post was perhaps too oblique in taking that on.

To quote Jeff Raikes... it's a pickle.

As for this past post, there was a nice thread of comments discussing loosening up the internal hiring process. One commenter waved a yellow flag, though, cautioning about what it was like at Enron from a note put up by Malcolm Gladwell:

Among the most damning facts about Enron, in the end, was something its managers were proudest of. They had what, in McKinsey terminology, is called an "open market" for hiring. In the open-market system--McKinsey's assault on the very idea of a fixed organization--anyone could apply for any job that he or she wanted, and no manager was allowed to hold anyone back. Poaching was encouraged.

Yes, if we start trending towards that you'll see posters slapped up every week for each group with new, open positions, leading to wine and cheese events where you'll hear embolden tales of innovating against all the odds... so I don't think we need to go that far. People shouldn't be burning through the corporation leaping from group to group every quarter. But you shouldn't be inhibiting them, either, worried about the worse case offenders. All this delay of being able to interview represents one of the worse behaviors of fiefdom building... people getting lost inside the corporation once they are hired just isn't productive or worth all the money Microsoft and the shareholders have invested in hiring them and training them.

(Actually, that whole article from Malcolm Gladwell, The Talent Myth, reprinted from the New Yorker, is an excellent read.)

As for financials, Microsoft Nears Xbox Equilibrium has this nice little challenge to Liddell regarding Mr. Liddell's preference of buybacks over dividends:

...a large asset management company who questioned Liddell from the floor (and was thus anonymous under conference ground rules.) "Microsoft is still overcapitalized," he said. "And that's why the stock hasn't moved," he said.

He added that investors don't want to see Microsoft embark on a series of acquisitions. "The market fears that Microsoft will throw a lot of money to buy media or Internet-related companies. "We're strongly opposed," he said.

I hear backbone cracking into firm alignment! What have analysts told us before? A significant dividend on a reliable schedule would boost the stock. And, yes, please, no more acquisitions. How about this week's Microsoft Research Tech Fest show off all of the innovation we're quite capable of without having to go and buy companies? Every acquisition is a failure on our part to innovate and another reason we have to ask, "And why do we have all these people around?"

Finally, looks like BillG and I might agree on reducing the amount of folks working on software development at Microsoft. One commenter notes that LisaB's internal site has a version of that wonderful Ten Crazy Ideas paper that includes feedback, including from BillG and the ever so dreamy AlexGo. One the point about reducing dev team headcounts:

I think Mini would be heartened by one of Bill's comments regarding reducing headcounts on large dev projects:

BillG: “Headcount cuts. This is very tempting.”

Tempting indeed. Give into temptation! Give our bozos the bums rush to B-as-in-Bozo-FE!

Microsoft Campus Expansion... foo!

Let's slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine! Mini-Microsoft, Mini-Microsoft, lean-and-mean!

"$%#@ you, the horse you rode in on, your little dog, and your little company-aspirations, too!"

So Mr. Barr was first out with a summary of Microsoft's revised Redmond campus expansion plan. What do you know, the athletic fields are back! What is the name of the technique where you share a plan to take something away and then people complain fiercely and then you give it back without it ever costing you anything but letting them feel as though you're listening to them? There should be a name for that.

I have a future pastime to look forward to that is especially called out in the recent color-map: a round-about in the center of campus?!? Oh, you know I'm going to have to bring my picnic and sit down (at a safe distance) and enjoy that show. When the everyday bright, good-looking Microsoftie drives onto campus, anything they've learned about being a considerate, safe driver gets flipped right off: "Faster, faster, Puddy-cat! Must! Be! First!" A round-about is certain to be better entertainment than Project Gotham.

Anyway, the expansion certainly seems like a series of nails on the coffin of any aspiration for Microsoft to slim down into a company that management can handle effectively. Now, I feel for the folks who are doubled or tripled up and continuing to do a great job. It seems odd that our leadership didn't see the overcrowding coming. So it seems like a good move to acquire and spread to relieve the pressure that we're currently under, though I continue to believe the best way to relieve that pressure is to release everyone not contributing to the success of the company. And then resell and make a profit on any of these edge buildings we no longer need.

As for continuing to grow and to hire people: why? How about first looking inside of Microsoft and making it easier to move within the company from job to job, especially considering there are two big groups wrapping up major product waves? It's highly unproductive towards our company that once you're inside Microsoft it's probably harder to move to another group than if you were an outsider. Try loosening the restrictions first so that:

• Anyone can interview and move-on when they like. You plain don't need permission to interview. The new boss and old boss can negotiate a transfer timeline, if need be. Just see if managers don't change a tad if they realize they actually need to value and re-recruit their people vs. banging the drum and chanting, "Code! Code! Code! Code!"
• A lighter interview process: interview with your potential future boss and the as-appropriate. It boggles my little mind as to why this is treated as a full-press interview.
• Support aggressive internal recruiting. Technical recruiters should know the rhythm of our product groups and when it's best to recruit people internally to new positions. This allows people to continue grow and unleash their energy vs. staying in the same group and job until they suffer skill-attrition and become more of a liability than an asset.

If we had more fluidity to Microsoft careers, you'd have some good business Darwinism where healthy groups attracted appropriate growth and unhealthy groups shed team members until the leadership got fired off and replaced with something better. The only good reason I can see for having a heavyweight process is that it helps groups identify and avoid some of the deadwood hired during the major expansion years. But just about anyone can suss them out. And hopefully a revised performance review process that doesn't encourage keeping 3.0 filler around to make up the bottom of the curve will make it way easier to move the deadwood out.

Jeff Raikes All Hands with special guest star Lisa Brummel

Along comes a comment:

If you're really into seeing what our executives are saying internally as of late, you should:

(1) go by our internal website for serving up cached videos, (2) go to Monday's listings, (3) Watch JeffR's all-hands meeting.

Well, not all of it. But JeffR does address some of the concerns that you see bubbling up here and near the end, before the Q'n'A, LisaB shows up to do a short version of her listening tour.

At the end of last week, some interested folks gathered around my peer's laptop at lunch to watch this off of http://studiosmedia/, all of us agreeing anyone could skip through any boring parts. Well, actually, we first found LisaB's presentation about an hour and a half (Oy! Is this an All Hands or The Company Meeting?) into the video and that's as far as we got, other than enjoying Mr. Raikes mea-culpa over office space at 1:20-ish. It's a pickle, alrighty.

If you missed a Listening Session and want more than what Lisa's internal site provides, this video provides a great, quick summary of what the LisaB buzz is all about. Interesting quotes:

• "The curve is essential to the people agenda we have at this company."
• "I would like to see the curve go away."
• "In the end, the curve needs to change."

To think about the potential for big change here that will be industry-leading and help Microsoft re-invent itself just makes me go quoting Jean-Louis Gassée.

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Tags: Mini-Microsoft, Microsoft, Lisa Brummel, Employee Performance Management

Comments, GM vs. PUM, and random links

(I've been busy typing along the weekly post and I didn't like how long the post was getting. So, I'm extracting out the miscellaneous stuff from the end of the post and putting this up first.)

"Oh, the comments are the best thing here!"

For the comments are the shiznet here inclined, you might want to check-out this new Co.Comments.Com comment service Scoble mentioned recently. Co.mments.com does indeed track new comments here over time, vs. you having to reload each and every page. I haven't tried every feature, but there also seems to be a way to subscribe to all the posts you're tracking so that you can be back in RSS land. They have some HTML goo I could flip into here to make comment tracking easier - let me know if you think this is worth while. It serves as a nice bridge until a comment RSS feed starts happening here at BlogSpot.

The GM versus the inbred

Not quite The Hills Have Eyes, but still a scary story of when a GM meets an inbred PUM and they just disagree (snippet):

They say perception is reality. I left Microsoft a year or so ago after being there five years as a GM. When I started at Microsoft, I too loved the company. I had the passion everyone speaks of so fondly.

I then ran into my first 'professional Microsoft' PUM who was running a 300 person organization creating nothing. I called bullshit on his efforts, and had no idea what I was stepping into. This individual was hired into Microsoft from college (what I refer to as a 'Microsoft inbred') and had never experienced real life. I have three successful startups behind me, 8 rounds of VC money, VP of two different public companies. Guess who won the battles? Not me. I ended up working for someone with little mnagement experience, also a Microsoft inbred, and the rest is history...

Another ex-Microsoftie has thrown in the towel, too (snippet):

[...] Things were great the first couple of years, I loved being a part of the MS culture and well the options at the time more than made up for the lack of salary and long hours and political BS. I learned so much and had a blast doing it!

but... after many years of salary compression, incompetent managers, watching the people that couldn't even pass a tech screen get hired anyway just to fill a spot while my teammates and I had to take up the slack I have decided MS sees no value in a long term dedicated employee so I put my notice in...

The village isn't destroyed yet, but it's suffering damage.

Other web going ons

(1) The blog 64-Bitter starts off with the post I'm just not that into you, talking about leaving Microsoft after ten years:

You stay because you are averse to risk, crave stability and are scared that you can't do better.

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm just not that into you any more. I can't die the death by risk aversion. I wish you all the luck in the world, because I have a lot of friends there.

(2) There are a couple of posts at http://minimsftinterns.blogspot.com/ about being a Microsoft intern in Canada. Yah, we treat our group's interns a lot different than it sounds like this blogger is experiencing...

(3) Next Microsoft continues along at http://nextmsft.blogspot.com/ and http://spaces.msn.com/nextmsft - the MSN Spaces area (it's still branded MSN, right?) gets more comments and - who-da-whatza?!?

Update: Just got an invite to a discussion on this exact topic from the Director of Development excellence. Eric Brechner is a great guy I respect and enjoy his columns and feedback, and I am looking forward to attending this.

Congrats. Sinofsky in the comments and Brechner brainstorming! Hope that turns out well for you.

(4) Oshoma Momoh has a few notes on compensation, looking back at Microsoft after moving on:

• On Employee Compensation: Note #1, Microsoft Through the Rear View Mirror
• On Employee Compensation - note #2, NewCo Compensation Principles
• On employee compensation – note #3, Democracy in Action

(5) Mr. Bishop over at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a copy of Sr. VP David Cole's Goin' Fishin' internal email: MSN leader announces leave of absence.

(6) CNet reported that Mr. Gentoo-Linux Daniel Robbins left Microsoft. I haven't been able to track down the reason. Does it mean anything in the larger scope of things?

(7) A commenter provided a link to the story Lacking identity, Microsoft stock crawls along. Relevant snippet:

[...] Microsoft shares have underperformed every major equity index since the start of 2002, a slump that could continue until the world's largest software maker finds a clear investment identity as a growth stock or value play, fund managers and analysts said.

Basically, it appears that Microsoft stock is stuck in limbo with no obvious leadership to get it out. Are we a growth company or are we value company? Right now, it's not clear to the outsiders what path our leadership has chosen to direct the company towards. Uncertainty and doubt. Never a good combination on Wall Street. Another snippet:

"The company undoubtedly is doing some of the right things, but it's not going to move the needle for some time on a company of that size," said Scalise at Duncan-Hurst Capital Management.

Ah, if company size is an issue, I've got a great idea how to take care of that.

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Tags: Mini-Microsoft, Microsoft, Scoble, Co.Comments, Daniel Robbins

"Rarely does a bad attitude solve the problem."

The comment request seemed simple enough...

Mini could I make a humble request? What do you think of having one post solely dedicated to discussing the things we love about this company?

Yeah... but no.

Yet I would like to calibrate my outlook here (and I'm not talking about making that Outlook Beta1 actually run fast without my laptop's CPU melting into my desk and hard disk paging clear through time into next Tuesday). While I'm all out of Pollyanna flavored Kool-Aid, I do want to make a few things clear about my perspective.

All the way back from that Blast Off post (ah, yapping alone in the blogverse) to the Back to Basics post, I've done my best to make it clear that I love Microsoft and that I don't want to work any place else. Like most Microsofties, if there was someplace else I wanted to work, I most likely could get a job there (though I'd really have to ponder bopping an interviewer on the nose if they asked me something about resistance between a knight's move on an infinite plane of resistors... what, while bisecting all the of gas stations in the USA?). So I'm staying. And I'm rolling up my sleeves to make a difference at Microsoft. Daily. I enjoy what I do and I'm empowered to make a difference, mainly because I've decided I'm going to make a difference. Microsoft is that kind of place.

And here at Mini-Microsoft? Here I do point out the issues as I see them. Dudes and Dudettes, it takes less than three minutes to get your own blog, if you don't have one already. Want to extol to the world about the greatness of Microsoft (and it is great, don't get me wrong), type away! And by golly, if you direct link to one of my posts, it just happens to show up down at the bottom. That's a great way to provide any point / counterpoint you might ever want, free of my little moderating.

But as I continue pointing what I think are issues to be solved, I'm worried. Worried that we've all taken such great indulgence in pointing out all of the problems that no solution can ever work. You know, any solutions that come up are not going to solve the problems to everyone's enjoyment.

In most ways, I'd love to be in Lisa Brummel's shoes right now. She has such a fantastic problem solving opportunity in front of her... one that almost no one in the history of corporate culture has so grabbed by the horns and said, "I hear you, and I'm going to fix this." It makes my eyes dilate to just imagine having such a powerful and terrifying opportunity. She has the potential, working with the executive leadership, to transform employees' careers, and therefore Microsoft, into something explosive and far beyond what Microsoft is today.

But in a few minor ways, Ms. Brummel is the last person I'd want to be. In one sweeping move she kicked over Pandora's box, flung the Genie out of the bottle, and popped that dang cork out. Expectations, including mine, are so exceptionally high you've got to wonder how anyone, let alone everyone, are going to be satisfied with where it ends up.

And folks are going to complain.

I look at some of the comments posted here and I've really, really got to ask you: geez, why do you work at Microsoft? Now I know folks ask me that, but it's because I know these problems can be solved and the resultant Microsoft will be such a fantastic corporation that it will be worth all the risk of putting up a few web pages in public to say, "Eh, the executive leadership looks naked to me. And that mole on his butt might be cancerous. Better have it looked at."

I do feel these pages have resulted in galvanizing discussions and people have asked questions about topics that they either never knew (you'd be surprised how many team members [aka, individual contributors] didn't know about stack ranking, let alone the curve) or only knew scant bits about (I didn't know about gold stars and the bench until the conversation here brought it into the spotlight).

Back to the complaining, to the lack of positivity, to the feeling of disempowerment and general grumbling towards anything anyone does that affects you. Okay, I've got to admit a reason I've put the light on our problems, issues, reviews, and wage-compensation is to let you think about it and decide whether it's worth toughing it out in this Microsoft environment or if you think your good looks and hard, dedicated contributions would be better invested in a different company.

If folks looked at the issues and honestly decided to leave Microsoft to find a job elsewhere, great. That's a good move for them and fulfills my own little agenda for a smaller Microsoft, one bit of attrition at a time.

If potential hot job candidates read some things here and told their recruiter no thanks and that the whacky curve and the stack rank sounds like austere corporate career BDSM BS, great. Much better they didn't find out a year or two later into their Microsoft career.

I have faith that change will happen at Microsoft. Change is either going to happen because we have executive leadership that steps up and cleans house or because the village is destroyed when enough of the pure talent moves on and all that's left are the village idiots leading meetings and initiatives of excellence.

If you don't share my faith, if you don't believe change is going to happen, if you don't think there are any solutions, if you don't think there is a cause worth winning here, well, then, my friend, get the hell out. I really don't understand why you'd stay in such circumstances.

I finished reading Seth Godin's "The Big MOO" today. It has some interesting points I'd like to thread together here. Mainly for you to think about with respect to: if you're staying at Microsoft, why? And how are you going to be part of the solution to all the hard challenges we have ahead?

"Rarely does a bad attitude solve the problem." True dat. I don't have a bad attitude. I'm pissed off. Our CEO is puzzled how we reached a state where lots of folks are doubled or tripled up in their offices. There's a Think Week paper from Liddell discussing how Microsoft can grow to a 100,000 person company. The people doing all the hard work aren't even getting cost-of-living raises. So now, that doesn't give me a bad attitude. No, it gives me an incredibly motivated pissed off attitude to ask, "Why?" That's the 64-point-font question.

"Ignore the critics and embrace the criticism." I'd say that's LisaB in action right now. And like agile software development, the solution to the problem is to be iterative. Whatever might start as a solution by LisaB is not going to be The Solution but (hopefully) an iterative series of disruptive changes to throw off what doesn't work and refine down what it takes to have a great environment to do our work and be fairly compensated, while not having to stop and add up the numbers and ponder, "Why are all those partners getting showered with stock and money and not being held accountable in the least?"

Kanban. The story about kanban in The Big MOO is interesting, given that I'm thinking about accountability right now. Quickly: Japanese car manufacturers moved to only having one or so spare parts to replace defects discovered while putting cars together. If they ran out, the entire production line would be halted while a replacement was procured. Ends up no one wanted to be responsible for supplying defective parts to the car manufacturer that might stop the entire line and quality from suppliers shot through the roof. Simply because higher quality was expected of them and that they knew they'd be very obviously held accountable. It'd be much better for all of Microsoft to have obvious gates that stopped product development until the quality improved. Because, if we don't hold ourselves accountable, our users will.

And you know it's a damn different environment now. Sometimes it seems every pissed off person has a blog. Maybe you remember those Visual Studio 2005 posts I put out when users got a hold of the RTM bits and started posting, "Dang, sure crashes a lot. Dubya-tee-eff?" I still have people come by to share their latest frustrations with VS on those old posts. It doesn't matter how solid all those components are if there's one weak link in the IDE that crashes. It all comes down.

A service pack to fix all of this cannot come soon enough. What are we teaching our users? Wait until VS releases its first service pack before deploying. Just like Office. Just like Windows.

Are you embracing that criticism? How are you making things better? Are you holding everyone accountable?

So this post started with a call to focus on the things we all love about Microsoft. I love the fact that Microsoft has the potential to solve these problems. It's the source of Microsoft's solution, whether through true, hard leadership or full-blown crisis, that we currently have a chance to influence. We'll come to a solution. And I plan to be along for the ride, because I love this company.

Even when it pisses me off.

Recent Themes... Dilbertless in Redmond

Just and overview / commentary on some recent discussions and such...

LisaB

The comments here were pretty divided between (my paraphrasing):

1. I'm so inspired by Lisa! I have new found hope! and
2. Don't believe the hype! Less talk, more results!

As a nice compressed example of #2:

Brummel scoured Mini's blog and has picked off the top 5 points of contention. Patriotic employees view it as a good effort. Anyone with a brain will call it what it is - crisis management.

The way Ms. Brummel has been talking certainly leads to a lot of hope for some kind of revisions come the major review period. But even with that, someone mentioned how HR is trying to roll-out new tools for June (and running into strong, subtle opposition).

Regarding HR implementing change by this summer: looks like HRIT is honestly trying to put new tools into place for this June.

As of today, they can not succeed. Not because of any fault on their own, but simply because the people they partner with and work with do not under any circumstances want them to succeed. The current system has worked absolutely fabulously for them, and they don't want to change.

The follow-up comments there were very negative around the HR tools being worth the bits they are encoded with, especially if designed by the management that got us to where we are now.

Which begs the question: if a new compensation system / review system was implemented for this summer, what changes would you expect to see and expect to be acceptable? Is this a no-win situation?

You're not the people I thought you were!

A recent comment in an old thread probably didn't get seen by many. It is one person's shocking introduction to Microsoft team hubris upon joining a Microsoft training organization:

When I was recruited up to Redmond 5 years ago into a training organization, I was so excited! I naively visualized a dynamic, creative, and curious team of brilliant people – afterall, this was Microsoft! What a silly dream that turned out to be – in fact it was a total nightmare from day one! I found that most people on my team knew nothing (nor cared) about instructional design or web-based training (which we were charted to begin creating, and which is why they recruited me to their group) but because of the overly competitive environment, they spent most of their time trying to convince people that they were adding value and kissing the managements' behinds.

I've thought in the past that our internalizing and team member isolation from customers, partners, and competitors really ups the internal reality distortion and hubris field regarding how great and smart we are. A little bit of humble pie from time to time actually helps you realize how much more room you have to grow and improve, and let's you get to it. As is, some groups calibrate themselves to degrees of relative mediocrity. I guess for them The Curve is a blessing.

Next Microsoft

Best of luck to the Next Microsoft blog over at http://nextmsft.blogspot.com/ - I'm surprised more Microsofties haven't started their own public visioning blogs but I certainly realize it does take (1) a large commitment of time (quite larger than I'd ever dream of) and (2) endurance (or ignorance) of the risk involved if you cross the line and push some buttons. And a certain bereavement of not being able to kvetch over experiences with the A-list-bloggers you deal with on and off (yeah, yeah, river crying in progress). Anyway, the blog is also cross-posted over at MSN Spaces - here's a snippet from one of the comments there:

The simple fact is that since about 1998, Microsoft has not had to listen to any customer about how to make their [products] better. Listening to customers is inefficient and gets in the way of making "innovative" products. I personally heard Sinofsky tell a senior executive (from a large customer) that Microsoft knew what customers wanted and that we didn't need to ask them.

Prodigal Microsofties

Hmm, with Michael Howard noting that David LeBlanc is coming back to Microsoft, I wonder if we have the beginning of a Return to Redmond trend. Probably not. For most people noting their "good bye" notes here and that I've been able to follow-up with in email, they'd consider coming back if Microsoft could prove it had shaken off its slumbering, bureaucratic way that encumbered creating and shipping great software and if Microsoft also developed a compensation system that didn't celebrate dysfunctional personal excellence but rather something more productive towards Microsofties actually working together and helping each other out to create a great product (do we even have a value like that?).

The depart and return cycle, however, has also been discussed recently as the only effective way to get a promotion or higher pay, given salary compression issues. Yes, salary compression sure does suck. It's not fun to have a new hire coming in that doesn't know the first thing about creating and shipping world-class software getting paid just as much, if not more, than some people who have been around for a few years. Given that the three-year person hasn't probably even been getting cost-of-living raises, it's understandable that their pay is stuck.

My first mentor gave me this key advice which remains true: the best way to get a raise is to switch companies. It's a risk and Microsoft may not take you back in a year or two, but if you're that good realize that the job market for software folks is really hot (again).

You strike while the iron is hot and you look for that new dream job while the job market is hot.

Like this Mini-Microsoft commenter who has made the leap:

I agree 100% that the longer you stay in the company the bigger [penalty] you pay. That is one of the reason I left Microsoft couple of months ago. I was hiring fresh college graduates making more money that some of my folks who were in the company for 3 or more years. I had a L60 employee(3 year at MS) making $6K less than someone I hired from college at L59. Then the thing that really blew me away was when one of my peers who left the company 2 years ago, rejoined MS and came up 2 levels higher. I know when he left MS in 2003, he was L61, and now he comes back at L64, and I was stuck at L62, and fighting hard to make it to L63. So that revolving door really works.

I still miss Dilbert, but...

While I do miss Dilbert being in the Micronews, I can read him anytime I want anyway thanks to the internets. I think we dropped Dilbert about the same time Dilbert started getting too relevant (that was probably dead canary warning #3). Well, that was replaced with Bug Bash, and it actually does have sharp moments as it has grown into its own. It's interesting which ones, internally, don't show up externally.

See Bug Bash's Tips for Rapid Advancement as you prepare for the major review. The mid-year stack ranks should be about all wrapped up now. Now we go into the five-month-long knife fight to get that 4.0 for your major review.

Administrivia: although they are not in the least related, both Blogger and my mail service have had a series of interruptions as of late. Sorry about that. If you feel something was lost in the outage, please feel free to resubmit or resend.

Lisa Brummel on Channel9 - She Reads Mini?

I haven't discussed the Lisa Brummel listening tour too much out of respect of her request to keep it internal (and it's been absolutely killing me on the inside). I did drop by one of the tour stops near me and, like most people, I give her an A+ on the topics she discussed. People have commented here that hearing LisaB have reset their leaving Microsoft clock by nine months. Other than the Company Meeting, it was the first time I heard her talk. I was some kind of impressed.

New Channel9 video with LisaB:

Reads Mini-Microsoft and Wears Shorts in Winter - Lisa Brummel, VP of HR

(Hey Charles, thanks for bringing up Mini-Microsoft! YouDaMan!)

One bit from Lisa regarding folks who blog about Microsoft (paraphrase): "Request to all bloggers out there: try to be productive. People listen much more clearly to feedback that's productive."

Microsoft FY06Q2 Results

Collection of FY06Q2 results:

• Microsoft: Microsoft Reports Second-Quarter Earnings
  • Excel spreadsheet.
  • PowerPoint deck.
• Todd Bishop @ the P-I: Xbox 360 sales figures released
• Joe Wilcox @ Jupiter Research: Microsoft Fiscal 2006 Q2 Results
• BusinessWeek: Microsoft 2Q earnings advance to $3.65B
• Red Herring: Xbox Shortage Dogs Microsoft
  • Microsoft: Too Much, Too Late?
  • Bonus! Microsoft’s Challenges in 2006
• CNN/Money: Microsoft's X-rated results (somebody's been waiting to use that headline).

Go SQL server! I'm glad we finally got you out there.

Xbox? The main revelation was that we've sold 1.5 million Xbox 360s. We were asked what the specific problem was in production and whether the 3rd manufacturer is going to do any good if there's a systemic problem. Liddell was evasive. There was a component problem (supply? quality?). I think we should be 100% clear why we're struggling for because otherwise you're going to have conjecturing... like the only reason not to say the problem is because the first generations out there getting the heck played out of them all have the issue, like a ticking bomb.

As for Vista: yes, out by end of 2006. In time for the back-to-school computer purchase rush? Not saying yet. And que Mr. Wilcox:

I remain convinced that Microsoft will have missed a major hardware upgrade cycle when Windows Vista and Office 12 ship later next year. Every PC sold with Windows XP is potentially a lost or significantly delayed Windows Vista sale, starting later this year. Microsoft is betting on new licensing options available late next year will increase volume license uptake for Windows Vista.

Let's hope, as the analyst's question was quite leading in this regard, that we get Vista out in time to meet the 2006 back-to-school market.

And folks in MBS should go kiss their CRM colleagues... or at least give them a friendly pat. Location of their choosing.

Microsoft Town Hall, Google, and OfficeBallot.com

Just some random notes I wanted to kick out before I go stock up on crazy delicious food for the big, silly game (I've certainly come to appreciate having a game's violence on the field than in the stands).

MSFT: The FY06 Second Quarter results are coming this Thursday, January 26th. It will be interesting to see if we're positive or cautious analyzing where we are and looking forward through FY07. I can't imagine any other time where we couldn't beat the drum of enthusiasm and profits than now, given that we're shipping new versions of just about every single software product we develop. A good, upbeat outlook would shine within the current conditions.

And, should we get any hard questions and if the hard questions regarding stock performance keep coming in, perhaps we'll have to implement what one recent commenter came up with:

Is the CFO of Microsoft going to hold a "listening tour" to pacify shareholders?

Well, the context of that was actually more around BusinessWeek's Dirty Little Secrets About Buybacks and Microsoft's dirtiness there. Most people look at how few shares are being flung in their direction and doing the math. Some part of Microsoft is getting a huge distribution of stock awards, and it's not the folks doing the front-line work.

Microsoft Town Hall: that was one crowded town hall meeting with Gates and Ballmer - I think that shows the enthusiasm and desire that Microsofties have to hear from our executive leadership more often and I for one am absolutely thrilled that it's quarterly. It helps to close the gap that I believe exists between front-line contributors and top leadership. And important messages don't have to stumble their way through dithering middle managers. I hope that it rotates through the presidents and senior VPs over time so that it stays fresh. While I know Gates and Ballmer can come up with answers for about every question, I'd like to hear answers from those one or two levels closer to the action, too.

I don't have a whole lot to kvetch on here. There's Doug Mahugh's report and the Keiji Space report to read. Some of the questions were hard and interesting and while the answers sounded honest, some were just deflections (e.g., the whole ad-hoc Google-time request discussion: take it up with your manager [hello?!?! that's not working so well currently]).

One deflection that irritated me came at the end of recognizing everything we do is the result of the people we hire. Then, Ballmer somehow tied the stock price going up based on the increased contributions of each Microsoftie. Right before that there was mention of enabling and incenting people and how LisaB is now a Senior VP. But the flipping around seemed to come too soon. Please show that current problems are indeed being fixed and then say, "Okay, we believe we have a system for honest compensation and recognition now. Let 'er rip and let's go ship!"

Oh, and Mr. Liddell, I have an excellent solution for our current Redmond over-crowding space problem: fire people, fire people, and fire people! Ballmer doesn't understand how we ran into this space problem? We over-expanded and hired way too many people that we just plain don't need. Plus it's impossible to move-on people.

Additionally, I don't understand a goal for Microsoft to be a mega-corporation at 100,000 people. While the majority of that might indeed end up being in China and India (pointed out at the meeting as places where CompSci graduates are still being produced), there's just no good business reason to grow (other than those horded employees are not potential competitors). Is there a stack of specs executive management is reviewing longingly and bemoaning, "shucks, if we only had more people we could have delivered these great products..." I don't think so. The problem is that we're so big that we're stumbling over ourselves as is.

And we did get to have a crickets chirping moment: Ballmer addressed the glass ceiling on the stock and went through the rah-rah blah-blah speech about looking forward, three-year review, deliver innovation, watch the expenses, keep the faith, and deliver results. Pause for applause.

<<crickets>>

Hmm, no applause. Ballmer observation: "Awfully quiet here." Though I have to admit another nice deflection was comparing how Microsoft runs our business vs. Enron (?!?!) and how Enron was entirely focused on the stock price and we're focused on good business fundamentals. Can we, ah, find a different company to compare ourselves to?

Google slips: First comes along BusinessWeek pondering Is Google Out of Steam? and then Friday lands a sucker punch to Google's moneybag (well, along with a bunch of other stocks). Wired magazine wrote about click fraud recently and how that could eventually catch up to burn Google. Of course, the R-rated named site f-'d Google has been predicting the click fraud ruination of Google for a long time (and general collapse in general). And throw in that curious collection in the Google Pack that has most people politely coughing after their confused consideration of just what the heck good all that is. I can only guess it's helping Google feel their way through the dark world of suite packaging and distribution, let alone support. I guess they had to cobble something together for CES...

http://www.officeballot.com/ - This new website has come up in a few comments as a place to anonymously rate and provide feedback on anyone in your company (your boss and co-workers, especially). Looks like a potentially explosive idea. I'm a bit suspicious (work email registration + employee complaining = crazy suspicious ?) myself but I'd be interested in hearing anything interesting that people find there. Their about page has the following inspiring snippet:

Our Mission: To use the Internet to bring open meritocracy to the workplace. We believe today's corporate world is slowed down by corporate bureaucracy, politics, and incompetence. Most companies spend a lot of time on HR policies to reward their best employees. But at the end of the day, despite their efforts, most corporate organizations fail to develop a system that adequately measures and rewards performance, especially among managers. Our aim is to use the Internet to empower employees, to harness the open feedback of the workplace to bring meritocracy to corporations.

Interesting. Perhaps a way to channel all the thoughts coming to your mind as you fill out your mid-point, attend all those stack ranks, and fill-out Microsoft's version of the manager review feedback.

Manager review feedback: speaking of manager review feedback, one thing I got out of the wonderful LisaB listening tour is that she reviews the feedback comments but can't act against supposedly awful management because the comments, by the time they are rolled-up, are disassociated with the person the comment is talking about. Fix: when filling out the text fields for your manager's feedback, be sure to put your manager's alias in there. And now might be the most important time to provide this feedback. If you've got a good boss and want them to stay your boss, spend a few moments praising what they do well. If you have the worse micro-managing bureaucrat in the world, well, spend some time provided cases describing what they just don't do well at all. And slip in that alias.

Goals for a Brave New Microsoft Review and Compensation System

It's that mid-point review time of the year, and (surprise!) I feel that Microsoft's performance review and compensation system is outdated and sorely needing a major revision. Looking at the problems with the current system and where we want our employees to be going forward, what should the goals be for a new review and reward system?

I want to focus on the goals first, and I'll throw some of my own out there down below. Why focus on the goals first? Because I want to see what kind of system organically arranges itself to satisfy those goals. Right now, any sort of new system is going to suffer under arrows of "oh, it's so much more worse." Anyone and everyone can come up with reasons as to why we shouldn't change, just like I can come up with reasons why I think the current stank-rank-based-performance-curve compensation system is utterly busted. I think it helps focus on where we want to be, and then arrange a system out of that. Let's first see where we want to be, putting criticism and sarcasm aside, and see what kind of system can meet that challenge.

Articles folks have pointed out as of late:

• Forced Ranking: Making Performance Management Work. The article is by Dick Grote, who has a new book out about stack ranking / rank and yank.
• Excerpt from January 2006 HBR: Evidence Based Management.
• Business Week, Jan 09 2006: The Struggle To Measure Performance - interesting to read how Yahoo! is getting a rude awakening by implementing stack ranking. Perhaps we craftily implanted some borg HR technology over there with their ex-Microsoftie hires... watch out for those new hires, Google! You might start finding Mini-Microsoft less entertaining and more relevant if you're not careful.

In general, most companies are beginning to realize that there are fundamental problems with slavish devotion to some sort of bucketed based compensation system. It's certainly come to a head at Microsoft, now that we're not growing like gangbusters and the stock as been flatlined since 2001. Microsofties have had enough.

Some ideas:

First of all: Microsoft shouldn't be determined to copy any other company's review system. Forget GE. We are not a GE so there's no reason to go to the altar of Jack Welch and implement his business scripture. There really isn't any other big-ass company like Microsoft out there given the background of our employees and the focus of our business.

Microsoft is entirely capable of creating its very own review and compensation system that best fits the needs of its employees and shareholders. We have the technology and brainpower to do this well (and, yes, the risk to fallback to some sort of consensus driven cluster fubar without strong leadership). To continue to copy and paste ideas from mismatching companies will only make things worse. We should be the leader here in coming up with a new review compensation system that other software companies eventually copy and implement because it's a good fit for them and for rewarding their staff.

What should the end results be? That our employees work in an environment where their compensation and performance management positively affects the quality and shipping frequency of the software that they design, implement, test, market, sell, and support, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and increased shareholder value. That the employees can see a direct correlation to their good hard work, the increase in quality of what's delivered to our customer, and the compensation that they receive. Employees do not succeed at the expense of other employees.

Note: I just banged these goals out one by one, not as a cohesive set, so some goals would be irrelevant if other goals got implemented.

Goal: when someone is justly fired, someone else on the team should not have to have their review suffer. "Huh?" you might say. Maybe even, "Duh, of course not." The scenario is when you have either a 2.5 performer or a person who is on the low-end of 3.0 rating and who is not reliably getting better. So you do the right thing for the company and move that person on outside of Microsoft. More than likely, that just opened up a new slot for the bottom of the stack rank and now someone else on the team who was getting a 3.5 now is at risk of getting a 3.0. And they haven't changed what they are contributing to the company at all. It's an evil sort of Tetris, and they just went down a notch for no fault of their own.

Once you're a manager and you go through this painful experience ("why oh why did I ever fire that knuckle-dragger?!?"), do you think you'd want to support getting rid of someone if that means now more good people are trended downwards?

I personally believe one reason we have a hard time getting rid of people is just because it's nice to have your consistent low-end 3.0 folks around to fill the bottom (hell, there are even some managers who go out purposefully to hire 3.0 quality people to push up the bottom and increase rewards for their current team). Maybe the lifetime 3.0s are plain happy to have their job and benefits. What looks like win-win is lose-lose in too many ways.

Goal: people are rewarded based on their results and not relative to their peers. The whole performance-curve based relative to your peers trended-downward score legacy that we still limp along with should be taken out back and shot out of its misery. I want to give honest review results and not have to re-message someone's review according to the bucket they got fit in. Trust me to manage honestly. If you don't trust your managers to honestly run the performance review, it sounds like you've identified some managers Microsoft could do without.

Goal: you should be able to give true, encouraging feedback anytime. Good feedback, or feedback of anysort, should not have to be an encoded game about communicating people's potential rating to help motivate or scare them. Maybe I'm a bad boss. But I spend more time finding things that people do wrong and getting them on track because I don't want them trended downwards and risk getting a dreaded 3.0. We spend more time managing our "at risk of 3.0s" than supporting our 4.0s and pushing our 3.5s to be 4.0s.

Goal: dump the loose-structured Word review document and make someone's performance a living website. I can't imagine that we're going to continue with that Word review document much longer... it's so 1995. The problem with it is that most people dust off their previous review / mid-point once every six months. They go to the eval site, probably wondering, "La dee da... hmm, what were my commitments anyway? Whoa? Really?"

We're bright, good looking people and we should be able to figure out how to discard the Word form for a web site that can even be used to drive weekly 1:1 sessions. A place where commitments can be updated quickly and feedback can be dropped in anytime. And maybe even a place that you can track enough progress through the year that it merges together most of your formal review when the time comes, with a little bit of editing on your part.

A website like this should easily accept:

• Feedback directly to you, anonymous if need be, regarding your work. Kudos or constructive criticism.
• Feedback to your manager regarding your performance, areas where the manager might want to consider focusing. Mentors to the employees could us this to provide feedback to the manager.

And maybe we can even come up with our own version of Microsoft achievements, like Xbox Live, that people can share on their personal my-site. Get a gold star direct from the VP? Brag about it if you want (yeah... okay, maybe bragging on that is not a good idea).

Goal: anyone can provide positive or constructive feedback anytime, and not have to deal with consequences in the stack rank arena. I've been a goo-goo-eyed optimistic in the past, proactively engaging in deep one-on-one feedback with my management peers about my, and their, team members. Oy, did that honest sharing put me at a disadvantage come stack-rank time when they pulled out the knives and tried to wipe the floor with me and all the issues I'd been dealing with. I'd much rather brainstorm with my peers about how my reports (members on their same product team) can improve their career and results and not worry that this will be shot back at me come stack rank time. I value their feedback, but for right now, I'm keeping my mouth shut and probably missing out on some great advice. And expert backstabbing.

Goal: managements commitments are public. Anyone who is a leader makes their commitments visible to anyone in their group, at any time. Your skip-level-manager reviews every manager's commitments and provides relevant feedback. Maybe your commitments show up on your internal my-site and change with your edits according to circumstances. These commitments are made available during your management review for your reports to provide feedback upon.

Goal: management feedback is broadly open. Anyone can provide feedback on someone who leads. Sort of a consequence of the above goal, where management feedback should also be based on the manager's commitments. When I find a person doing a good job of leading, I send their manager an email letting them know. I'd like a better system for collecting this, along with any constructive feedback. An end goal of this is that it becomes very clear who are the good managers and who are the managers with problems. If everyone is saying we have a management problem but there's no way to find the good and bad managers, let's start breaking out the spotlights.

Goal: if you do a good job contributing to Microsoft, your raise starts at the increased cost of living for your region; any merit is added onto that. As part of transparency, you're notified what your region's cost of living is. If you see that your raise is less than cost-of-living, you hopefully take this as a message that you're not very much valued for your contributions. For now, folks on the low-end of 3.0 should be the only ones not getting a cost-of-living increase. I just don't see why, if a person is doing a good job, that a person should be earning less effective money this year than last year. Are we just doing it because folks, up to this point, have been too busy to notice that they are getting paid less year-by-year? That they should be happy and thankful for just having a job? Well, if that's the message, deliver it honestly that way versus tiny or no raises.

Goal: if stack ranking stays around, I can find out where I am in the stack rank and why. And how I can improve my placement. For instance, some teams end with a nine-bucket stank rank (where you want to be in the first bucket, and you're probably going to be looking for a new job soon if you're in the last bucket). Where did you end up? Why did you end up there? What was valued in your team regarding the people who ended up above you? So many people just get a rating (3.0) and then have to, if they have deft corporate skills, figure out what the heck to do in their particular team to succeed. You're not going to find a whole lot of peer support for that.

Goal: reward for individual excellence. I believe we still have to keep this. For team members / individual contributors, this is probably a majority of their reward still.

Goal: reward for team excellence. If your team rocks the world, your whole team deserves an excellent extra dose of compensation. If your team sucks rocks, well, I don't see the need to lavishly compensate your failures. As you go up the management chain, this increasingly becomes the majority of your performance compensation. I think a lot of people will stress out over implementing team compensation. Perhaps up front it's never punitive but reward only.

Goal: more transparency. A broad statement... how about a small example. Eh, I'd like to bring up a page to see everything my manager can see about me. What's my stock rating? I'd furthermore like to see that information in somesort of comparison to my team. As long as you're comparing me against my anonymized peers, roll it all up and let me see it, too. If not, why? What, it would cause an uprising? Your system is pretty busted if it would cause hard-feelings and rebellions if people knew more about their compensation within the big picture.

I'd go so far as to say that your team's stack rank results should be available for people to see. Dangerous and potentially demoralizing? Dude, again, it already is.

Other goals? I don't mind some criticism here, but right now I'd rather cast our nets for goals around a revised system that would be win-win-win-win for Microsoft, Microsofties, customers, and shareholders. What would you value most in a revised performance compensation system?

( Mini-Microsoft, Microsoft, Compensation )

When Partners Collide

I'm up to my elbows in recently inherited features, so I'm sharpening my nose on the grindstone vs. spending much time here other than being the moderation monkey. But given the incoming flow of great comments, all I really need to do currently is put up the occasional post and then let a lot of the excellent readers / commenters have their way with this little bit of the blogosphere.

Now, yes, I appreciate the recent comment that most of the commenter identities have to be taken with a grain of salt. Was that really markl dropping by? Dunno. It would have been a lot more certain if he'd logged in via his Blogger account since he has a blogspot web page set up.

When Partners Collide: So, with those few grains of salt, let's enjoy some of the partner comments as of late. First of all, you can only poke Smokey so many times with a sharp stick before he errupts: "I am Partner, hear me roar!" This is a refreshing read since I don't hear so much from our upper management on the issues discussed here and the gripes about the overpaid, underperforming highly over-staffed Partners at Microsoft. In excerpts:

I am a Partner.

[...] I am sick and tired of reading all the whining, and "I deserve to be rich too" comments on this blog. Jeeze, get a life, or better yet, go find another job!

[...] My job now is to manage and to direct strategy for my teams features. This is a very difficult job. Have you ever tried to coordinate and manage a team of hundreds? Spread across multiple continents? Within a broader group of thousands? Yes, I get paid well for this job. I'm sorry, but frankly, I feel that if anything, I am being underpaid! I will be lucky to gross $350k this year and my big stock awards someone mentioned earlier in this post vest over 5 years. That means that for me to cash in on that $5m payday, I have to stick it out for another 5 years! You want this job? Then EARN IT!

[...] I took risks with Vista. Did I do everything I said I was going to do? NO! Did YOU? Should we be fired for this? Thats right. I don't think so and neither do you. I screwed up a little, but my screwup was your screwup to. Afterall, it was YOUR CODE that failed, NOT MINE. It was YOUR SCHEDULE, NOT MINE!

Another self-described Partner kicks in with what I'll describe as a more reasonable perspective:

[I]n 2000 partners were awarded ~400,000 shares, then we had a split and another round of huge grants. Each partner had ~1m options which unfortunately were underwater so Microsoft arrange that infamous underwater option buyback program. Regular worker bees collected a few thousand dollars at best while our illustrious partners collected a cool $1m each. Not the $20m+ that Steve was hoping for when he first issued the huge grants, but still not bad given the situation.

[...] I think that the only thing thats seriously out of whack with the current system is that there is a huge disparity between the raw number of shares for partners and regular folk, and the partner awards seem completely disconnected from company performance.

I know we like to use stock awards as sort of a golden handcuff to retain people, but here, I think it is working against us. Instead of placing our partners on an 8 year program with huge grants, I think we should award them with yearly grants where the raw number of shares is directly related to company performance across a wide range of variables from the previous year. I would include customer satisfaction, industry perception, openness, innovation metrics, schedule prediction proficiency, etc. as the measurement criteria, not just financial results. With the current system, 3 years ago when we thought things were going to rock with Longhorn, before we were afraid of Google, etc. we awarded these guys $5m each. In retrospect, after looking at our broad performance over these past few years, clearly we have overpaid these guys, BUT we have virtually no ability to recall their grants and we certainly don't have the backbone to fire them. In my proposed system, I would dole out their options yearly and would have seen the errors in time to avoid over paying them.

I am a partner, and as a priviledged partner was part of the compensation review committe where I had an opportunity to give feedback on all of the options being discussed. I voiced my concerns then, and gave feedback similar to what I have said here as well as a few other major issues that I thought were wrong with the then proposed compensation plan. While I will likely benefit hugely from the plan, I think the plan is fatally flawed for a number of reasons, and I hope to see it eliminated asap.

Thumbs up! I agree with that and it's wonderful knowing that such a person is working at the Partner level and might effect real cha-

Sorry guys. I'm out of Gas. No one really wants to address the real issues around here so I am planning on leaving in the Spring. I am definitely in the minority around here when it comes to driving change, driving hard core accountability, eliminating schedule chicken from our processes, etc. I love your blog and will keep reading and contributing, and hopefully in my new venture will not make the same mistakes you all have been pointing out. When I startup my new gig, I will be sure to send out an "I'm hiring" notice to this blog.

Oh yeah, and to whoever claimed that partners still get paid, still vest, etc. after they leave? Thats complete BS. You are just fanning the flames. When you leave Microsoft all vesting stops and you have 90 days to excercise remaining unexcercised but vested options. Stock Awards are a little different because those "auto-excercise" on vest so they immediately transfer to your control on the day of termination. Trust me on this. As someone who IS leaving the company on April 1, I would know and have already been thru this with my attorneys and with Microsoft HR.

Dang. Well, an ex-Partner provides this additional perspective:

I am an ex-partner. I left Microsoft a little over a year ago. The number is legit, and if anything is a bit low. Partner level comp of $250k with ~50% bonus is the norm which would result in gross comp of $375k. That coupled with existing options, grants, and future grants is designed to payout a minimum of $1m/yr.

Each quarter there is a secret, partners only meeting where Steve and Bill discuss issues of the day. I remember one meeting in particular, one where I had the priviledge of sitting next to "markl". Steve was talking about cutbacks and accountability. Markl looked at me that Steve doesn't have the balls to do the right thing. He thought that if Steve was going to send this message to the masses, he should first send a crisp message to the partners, that they are going to be held to a higher standard. He should have set up the meeting in advance with 400 pink index cards placed randomly under all of the chairs. He should stop the meeting, ask everyone to reach under the chair and hold their index card up in the air. He should then bring in security and escort all of the partners holding pink cards out of the building, immediately terminating their employment with Microsoft." His point was that we had far too many old timers sitting around doing nothing, and that if we need to make some hard core changes, we should start at the top. He felt that Microsoft would get along just fine with a random 50% culling of the partners, and that the impact this would have on the remaining partners would be a hard core wakeup call and they would likely step up and perform at the level that they should perform at.

After watching our performance over these last few years, and watching our current accountability crisis, I have a feeling that Markl's idea was a good one...

(Excuse me while I replay that scene in my mind... one more time... oh, that's so good.)

Measurable Recommendations: Too much complaining and too little solution brainstorming? The Specific, Actionable, Measurable commenter took care of that by going above and beyond in identifying a whole slew of issues, possible solutions, and how the solution's success can be judged. It just gets me all fired up!

Some interesting follow-ups to that, along with some recent lunch conversations I've had, have to do with compensation not being tied to just individual accomplishment but also to team accomplishments. One commenter suggested that if we're going to have a curve, make it more gentle for excellent teams and more brutal for fumbling teams, along with compensation. And just think if we can align compensation and recognition with something that actually positively affects our products, our partners, our customers, and our shareholders. Anything changes being contemplated that don't have that in mind are waste.

Orange Badges: I just had this strange brain connection between the Microsoft orange badgers (contingent / contractor staff) and the red-shirts that would beam down on Star Trek Classic. You know how this is going to end and, soon, our ranks will be a little smaller. Historically, I've personally always first treated every orange badger as someone to recruit to be fulltime. I'm not so much in the hiring mood anymore and I can't remember the last orange badger's path I crossed. Anyway, as Mr. Bishop noted in a front-page Seattle P-I article, the orange badgers now have a discussion site setup, orangebadges.com. Talisman there makes the following familiar observation:

Microsoft used to be one of the best examples of meritocracy I ever knew. But it has increasinly become, in many quarters, a cesspool of feudal fiefdoms populated with petty princes and petty prince wannabes who won't hesitate a moment to use anybody to advance their own agendas. You just have to be careful what part of the kindgom you occupy and keep an eye on your back.

And A_nomore throws in:

And I thought micro-management was bad in the Navy. I got on as a temp at a little off campus site. I was amazed in my six months there of the constant backstabbing that my boss (BB/good guy) endured.

It continues and the post reminds me a lot of Satan's Process Excellence. The site has some interesting perspectives from people working beside us.

CES: Congratulations on a big ole Microsoft demo that did not crash! There was one online service request hiccup that worked on the second try, but otherwise it went well. I better acknowledge our demo success to adjust my demo karma given my inclination to go on the firing war path when demos blow up. But given that at least the first part looked like the same thing BillG did at the Company Meeting, I think it was all easy for Mr. Gates to just go through the motions of doing it all over again.

As for getting some celebrity personality spice... maybe next time we can do better. Yahoo! had Tom Cruise. Google had Robin Williams. Microsoft... Justin Timberlake? Well, maybe if Justin had forced a wardrobe malfunction on Bill it would have been funny ("ai-yi, Bill's codpiece was supposed to stay put!"), but nothing says safe and boring as Mr. Timberlake.

Given the consumer move to more and more devices I personally feel good about what we're doing. If we can provide easy gadget wrangling then people will see greater value in Vista. I personally will love it when all my doo-dads are wireless and I don't have to do the wire plugging stumble and the vendor specific synchronizing... I just want to come home and let them opportunistically update their content while I'm trying to get visions of new automation violations out of my mind...

(update: fixed a grammar error I actually noticed.)

Whew, that was a bunch of comments...

Whew, holy smokes, talk about some busy commenters over the holidays... 175+ comments on that last real post regarding The Passion of the Googlers. If you find yourself with some spare moments, it's worth bringing it up and reading through the discussion. While some folks saw the 4am working late as the focus, MarkL followed up saying no, no, it's about the passion. How is the passion at Microsoft?

From my perspective: you treat brilliant people like cogs, they transition to cog-like passion. And passion certainly gets drained into the grayness of pulling a paycheck once they get clued into the grotesque difference in compensation and accountability between individual team members and upper management.

I've spent the time flying home re-reading about 350 comments (out of the 4600+ comments so far... please, Blogger, can we have a comment web feed soon?). Some of the recent interesting ones follow...

This comment certainly read my mind... from the middle:

Why can't a quick decision be made: 1 - Realize the 65% percentile pay target relative to the industry worked well when our stock options were splitting every 2 years, now it simply doesn't work. A change is needed.

2 - To afford the change, e.g. costs, something else has to happen - some cost cutting somewhere else.

3 - What's everyone complaining about? The fat cats, middle- and upper-management that are not incented to being risk-takers. They want to minimize the decisions they have to make to ensure they can stay at MSFT as long as possible. This the the best target for reducing costs.

4 - Biggest, quickest change: Offer incentive package for the "fat cats" to take early retirement. If they don't, make it clear their role, success measures, and compensation will be changing, i.e. they will need to start justifying their salaries. Not only make it clear, make it so obvious they will not succeed in the "business as usual, rest and vest" fashion that 80% of those offered the option of leaving w/the package take it. Then simply bump the 65% percentile to 75% or higher.

One comment from someone who used to work with MarkL ends with:

OK, now put MarkL aside. Look at Longhorn. Definitely not his fault. A lot of interesting bottom-up ideas that could make a great release. New file system, new desktop composition, sounds great. But that wasn't enough for the execs engorged on Powerpoints. DotNet Everywhere was the command - it's ready because it *has* to be ready. It's a Big Bet. You cannot question it... until 3 years are gone by and the Big Bet isn't paying off, and the top-down architecture is a piece of shit.

I do not think MarkL is 100% correct. But (apparently unlike most other commenters) I can see a true picture being drawn. At Google you can engineer your way if it excites you. Your peers do the reviewing. At Microsoft you have entrenched management controlling almost all visible initiatives. [That sad little live.com was probably just a small team doing something cool in a short time; now they have to carry the mantle for Ray Ozzie and a company wide intiative. God bless them.]

• New products need small teams getting work done.
• Coordinating with fiefdoms can be the death of small teams lacking in political talent (NOT engineering talent).
• Engineering talent is disgruntled and increasingly jumping.
• Key recruits are no longer at the IC level.
• The focus is on process because the other mechanisms of maintaining quality have failed.
• Growth has slowed and progression through the ranks is more political as openings are scarcer in the older businesses.

Another that worked with MarkL during the Hailstorm days posted their perspective on Hailstorm, including the following bit:

Hailstorm was a mess because it was trying to fix too many problems at once for people that didn't want them to be fixed. It was orginally trying to fix the online storage problem. It was trying to fix the proprietary interfaces and PR problem. It was trying to be the first web service. It was trying to get all the MS and industrywide apps to use the same data schemas. It was trying to make IIS based servers scale to millions of users.

Innovation is almost impossbile to sponsor at MS because whenever you want to solve a customer problem, you're stepping on the toes of three other products that are already offering something to that customer or selling something into that market.

An ex-Microsoftie notes how it came to a close for them at MBS:

I spent the last period of my employment with MBS, and that just summed it up and made it very real for me (so in many ways, thanks for illuminating that it was time to find greener pastures). Man, talk of a place that needs a very serious shake-up. I have never seen so many people and teams trying to f*** it up for each other. SAP and Oracle aren't the biggest challenges this unit faces - they are their own worst enemy, and until they get it sorted internally, MBS will never fulfill the potential, which is there. I am amazed that noone has done anything about it. Hopefully someone will, now that Doug Burgum has stepped down.

And finally, the MarkL poster loaded up both barrels when responding to the Robert Scoble criticism (and be sure you flip your sarcasm bit for that first paragraph):

Any finally Robert, Sorry about the mess I left behind, thanks for cleaning up after me. It was my idea to flip off the united states of america by giving them a version of windows that wouldn't boot, by telling the attorney general to go to hell, and by manufacturing phony demos. And yes, it was my idea to put our customers on a 3 year subscription cycle knowing that there was no way in the world that we would ever deliver them updates within their subscription window. Oh yeah, it was also my idea to crush all competition in the browser market and then once we one the war stop working on ours. Oh yeah, Vista is my fault too. Bill and Steve wanted to ship it 18 months after XP. I convinced them that an OS every five years is more than enough. Sorry, forgot about stack ranking... Me and a few other guys thought it would be a fun to give huge options and bonus awards to 1/3, give a cost of living adjustment to another 1/3, and then screw the bottom 1/3 with no raise or bonus. But agin Robert thanks for stepping up and offering to clean up this mess. I am sure that your non stop blogging (hey, how come your blog isn't on msn spaces?) is exactly the right way to fix this stuff. Shoot, if I knew you while at Microsoft, I would have voted you in as a partner and awarded you a 200,000 share restricted stock award. After all, as a partner, your contributions are certainly worth a cool $5mil right?

And just one small correction in your post. I was not a manager at Microsoft and I am not a manager at Google. No one has to kill themselves to get my respect. They just have to be smart and creative, willing to work the entire software stack from metal thur ui, and finally, do what they say their gonna do and do it in the timeframe they say their gonna do it in.

Another year. The pipeline is flowing. The MSFT stock went down 2% during 2005. Todd Bishop has his own stock comparison post today. I can only hope and pray (for what, the fourth year now?) that it's upward bound from here, though our leadership doesn't gauge success from our stock price.