I can feel the iSheeps feeding in the dark.
Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
101–110 of 117 posts
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Spending time identifying unmanageable poor performers does generate very high returns IF YOU FIRE THEM. In software, poor performers can actually have negative productivity: Their presence slows the rest of the team down. excellent advice. Before going into mission, platoon leader should better shoot all his bad soldiers, so they wouldn't slow the team down.
I don't know about shooting them, but removing them from the platoon might help.
nice, correctly incentivising, performance management system - if you shown yourself a bad soldier then you don't get to go to dangerous mission(s). I bet you'd be a respected 4-star general ...
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#103"Use Occam’s Razor in interpersonal relations: look for the simplest, most straightforward explanation that assumes the best of everybody."
Works in general, but not when you are dealing with an outlier.
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#104If you consistently deliver what the business needs most, and you do it well, it’s impossible not to get promoted. People tell me this isn’t true, that it’s all about the people you know and about “visibility.” I have no idea how to consistently deliver impactful business results without becoming visible as a side effect. I hate it when developers ask me how to become “more visible.” They hate it when I tell them to…
Unless you're at a non-profit, revenue/sales/profit are what drives the company. If you can duct tape a product that gets me $1B of yearly recurring revenue then I will take that over the cleanest architected product that no one wants to pay for. In one of my other comments from a different thread I made the point that a lot of developers don't realize that they should understand the business. When you do understand…
Right. The time to worry about IT quality is after the duct-taped fraud of a product has collapsed and exposed millions of credit card numbers and personal information. Lawsuits, legal penalties, and potentially criminal charges are generally not good for the business.
Or maybe the gradual weight of technical debt simply slows you down so much that smarter, tech-focused competitors steal all your business.
That's just scare-mongering from IT guys, until it actually happens to your company (and you can always just blame them anyway).
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#105It is hard to believe that someone that managed so many is focusing in his parting words on (1) telling people that got bad reviews that they aren't as good as they think they are, and (2) telling them to aim their sites lower (since not everyone can be president). That's not the kind of manager I'd want. There is nothing wrong with confidence and ambition; just redirect it towards taking risks to accomplish tasks that no one thought could be done.
Those people complaining, btw, probably have valid complaints, regardless of what they've output. Often people that have low output are a sign of poor hiring and/or management. Why didn't he focus on suggesting changes to remedy this?
In addition, he was ditching on the Litebulb mailing list, rather than suggesting an alternative. What if he were to suggest that MS had 20% time to work on Litebulb requests?
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those of you who think and operate this way, I'm sorry, but this WILL catch up with you eventually. At my last job our sales pitch was "Yes". I won't use the word "literally" here as it would be an outright lie, but it was pretty close. Our sales guys went into meetings with the assumption that we could pull off whatever the clients wanted in nearly any time frame they wanted. This was all decided on at sales tim…
It's amazing that you get so defensive over "learn the business". I never said to be a meek dev. In fact I clearly state that you should attempt to change minds with principled arguments that have the business in mind. But based on my experience, that's not what I've seen. I've seen devs fight to do a completely rewrite that management won't fund because everyone wants to continue to use the old LOB solution. The dev…
It's amazing that you get so defensive over "learn the business"
"Learn the business" wasn't your only point, whether intended or not.
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#107"Practice articulating positions you disagree with faithfully and persuasively. Unless you can do this, you’re implicitly assuming that people who disagree with you are idiots. Smart people understand why smart people disagree." This should be taught to everyone from a young age. "Individuals are the sole cause of anything that’s ever happened." The most inspiring quote in the article. Reminds me of the Margaret Mead…
good stuff
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#108I didn't read the whole thing... After I realized how stuck on himself he was, I just skimmed it. Do quirky people really brag about how quirky they are? Do they write essays and call them farewell letters? I've never yet met a fun person who goes around telling people how much fun they are.
>I've never yet met a fun person who goes around telling people how much fun they are. Hmmm, but I've met boring people who walk around complaining about how bored they are..
This is so very true. When I was young and said 'I'm bored', my mother used to say "There's no such thing as boredom, only boring people."
A hard tactic, but ultimately got me to where I needed to be.
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#109It is hard to believe that someone that managed so many is focusing in his parting words on (1) telling people that got bad reviews that they aren't as good as they think they are, and (2) telling them to aim their sites lower (since not everyone can be president). That's not the kind of manager I'd want. There is nothing wrong with confidence and ambition; just redirect it towards taking risks to accomplish tasks th…
the attitudes in #1 and #2 are very typical of Microsoft managers
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#110If you consistently deliver what the business needs most, and you do it well, it’s impossible not to get promoted. People tell me this isn’t true, that it’s all about the people you know and about “visibility.” I have no idea how to consistently deliver impactful business results without becoming visible as a side effect. I hate it when developers ask me how to become “more visible.” They hate it when I tell them to…
Unless you're at a non-profit, revenue/sales/profit are what drives the company. If you can duct tape a product that gets me $1B of yearly recurring revenue then I will take that over the cleanest architected product that no one wants to pay for. In one of my other comments from a different thread I made the point that a lot of developers don't realize that they should understand the business. When you do understand…
> If you can duct tape a product that gets me $1B of yearly recurring revenue then I will take that over the cleanest architected product that no one wants to pay for.
And that's an excellent reason not to tie a given salesman's compensation directly to sales value, but to time-averaged client profitability.
If you skin your client and sell them more than they need or something impossible to pull off, then retire and leave a mess for legal to sort out, you are not exactly a good salesman.