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Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

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Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#81
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ballmer is a buffoon. Even if we are to accept that MS was caged. I remember being at a launch party during an internship. Suddenly half the people ran out of the massive tent. I thought it must have been a fire, I ran out too, grabbed someone and asked why the mass exodus. Their reply was that Ballmer just went on stage. With that response I figured I have to see this. I went back in and recorded it. I was not disap…

Well that "buffoon" trippled Microsoft's earnings and doubled profits. But let these new growth areas slide because of the antitrust suit. If the market judged Microsoft by its earnings, it's stock would have been up. The internet, mobile was the blockchain and AI of the era.

In my country we call it an "effective management", a tongue in cheek for a situation where on paper all company KPI are perfect and growing but the company is for a huge nosedive in a long run.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everybody experiences bullying at some point in their life. That makes them feel they understand the problem. But it's the dose that makes the poison. Some people and groups are at the receiving end of so much of it that to say "we all have been bullied" really belittles what the targeted groups receive.

> of so much of it ... but how do you know? How could anybody know that?

Believe it or not, on gender, it is actually possible for most of us (men) to verify this empirically.

As a cis male, one way to do this is to represent yourself as female, and see how much more you get questioned. You don't have to go so far as to cross-dress -- you could simply sign an email with a majority-female name in the signature.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#83
post #4

As a woman who worked at MSFT through the Ballmer era, I have to agree with this whole article. It really nailed it. Especially this part near the end where I never felt it would get better: "But my former female colleagues who reviewed this document in advance of its publication are unconvinced. None of them report feeling emboldened by the new Microsoft. They continue to withhold reports of discriminatory managemen…

That paragraph tracks with what I've heard from female peers that work at Microsoft too. Microsoft talks a good game but fails to do the right thing when the going gets tough (e.g. senior leaders can, and do, retaliate against individual contributors that annoy them with the full support of HR business partners).

I'm expecting a massive backlash against the "culture-forward" style of running a company as the article describes. There's always been a lot of cynicism around things like company values, but that cynicism appears to be increasing at a rapid pace with a meaningful portion of employees (see all the recent articles about Google's internal culture). It doesn't have to be a majority of employees, 20-30% is plenty to materially affect an organization.

Personally, the reason is that a company ultimately isn't "culture-forward" unless if it's willing to take a financial hit in order preserve its culture. Few companies are willing to do that, and that's OK, we are a capitalist society after all. It just isn't OK to hammer culture like its the most important thing while twisting themselves in logical knots to justify highly-profitable activities and actions that the employees call out as being counter-cultural. Some of those conflicts become public & newsworthy (ICE contracts), most of it doesn't (retaining that effective asshole).

Importantly, whether or not senior leadership agrees with the vocal (often significant minority) employees is besides the point. It's a communication issue -- they've created an expectation that isn't being matched -- not an issue of truth. Many of these "culture-forward" companies are losing the ability to tell their employees to "shut up and work" because they've explicitly said they don't want day-to-day work to operate in that manner. But for some reason senior leadership hasn't figured out that they can't operate like that anymore either when they push a culture like Microsoft has.

I think the end game here is companies like Microsoft painting themselves into a corner where a big, big, fight over unionization is all but inevitable. Knowledge workers want a seat at the table precisely because companies have told them they should have that precisely because it improves the bottom line on a small team to be self-organizing (see: Google's project aristotle for more).

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#84
post #66

This was my experience of Ballmer-era Microsoft management hires at my previous company. They were the perfect combination of narcissism, manipulativeness, toxicity, and above all else, idiocy. They did a lot of damage, probably irrevocably. They were know-nothing bullies who liked to yell if you ever questioned them, completely convinced of their own superiority. I've heard a lot of similar stories about these peopl…

Usually you call them tools. They turn your screw at the command of their superior in whichever way they are told to. They provide great leverage for a weak upper management.

So add misanthropy onto the list?

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#85
> The unsurprising result is that Windows continues its tradition of boring...

Come on, I understand the criticisms of botched updates, but Microsoft under Satya has been anything but boring - the incredible push towards open source is something many thought could never happen!

WSL and the upcoming WSL2 are likewise anything but boring - Linux! In Windows!

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#86

>The Microsoft of the 2000s, under Steve Ballmer, was almost exactly the opposite (of gates). >Bruised and battered by the consent decree handed down by the DoJ for the very same ambition that brought it to dominance, Ballmer’s Microsoft was sales-forward and CAUTIOUS. >It was... nervously clutching its pearls at the approach of Google in its rearview mirror People bash Steve Ballmer for missing Search, Social Networ…

>>This is the real reason behind's Ballmer's failure. Yes, I am sure it had nothing to do with him lacking the basic vision one would expect in any tech CEO and saying idiotic things like "no one would buy such an expensive phone" (about the iPhone). If you look like a buffoon, you act like a buffoon, and you talk like a buffoon...

It sounds like he had to say/believe that to keep the lawyers away.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#87
post #13

> At its core, Microsoft is a company that makes its money the old fashioned way: by creating products of value that people willingly part with their money to use. Call me skeptical, but there's not a whole lot of products I willfully pay Microsoft for. Most of them I pay for with a strong feeling of resentment that I have simply no other choice, since there are no competitors to the market or the lock in is too stro…

[deleted]

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#88

>The Microsoft of the 2000s, under Steve Ballmer, was almost exactly the opposite (of gates). >Bruised and battered by the consent decree handed down by the DoJ for the very same ambition that brought it to dominance, Ballmer’s Microsoft was sales-forward and CAUTIOUS. >It was... nervously clutching its pearls at the approach of Google in its rearview mirror People bash Steve Ballmer for missing Search, Social Networ…

>>This is the real reason behind's Ballmer's failure. Yes, I am sure it had nothing to do with him lacking the basic vision one would expect in any tech CEO and saying idiotic things like "no one would buy such an expensive phone" (about the iPhone). If you look like a buffoon, you act like a buffoon, and you talk like a buffoon...

Ballmer may be the best example of a Shaved Gorilla currently living, but I think he became the official scapegoat of Microsoft when they put him in charge.

Things were already going horribly wrong, and they put a despot in charge to soak up the blame for all of the terrible things his peers, subordinates and predecessors were already cocking up. The next person has a comparatively easy job of leading a Renaissance, assuming he didn't manage to run it into the ground in the interim. Which he nearly did.

I really miss http://minimsft.blogspot.com/ and not just for the schadenfreude. There was quite a bit of wisdom to be extracted from hindsight is 20/20 commentary, when you're an outside observer.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#89
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but you are just wrong. We can't go on our individual experience, the only way to understand women's perspective is to listen to what they're saying and how they're treated. The past few years has made it pretty clear (although there were certainly reports even before then) that women have faced, and continue to face abuse and discrimination to a degree that men don't. What you're saying sounds to me like t…

>I'm sorry but you are just wrong. >The past few years has made it pretty clear (although there were certainly reports even before then) that women have faced, and continue to face abuse and discrimination to a degree that men don't. Do you have anything to add besides "you are wrong" and (paraphrasing) "women are right"? The point GP makes about an old boys club that attacks men and women equally rings painfully tru…

> The point GP makes about an old boys club that attacks men and women equally rings painfully true to me also.

He's just saying shit. I can make one story up, but I don't need to.

Making up stories that seem likely doesn't make them true, even if you feel that they're right.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#90

>The Microsoft of the 2000s, under Steve Ballmer, was almost exactly the opposite (of gates). >Bruised and battered by the consent decree handed down by the DoJ for the very same ambition that brought it to dominance, Ballmer’s Microsoft was sales-forward and CAUTIOUS. >It was... nervously clutching its pearls at the approach of Google in its rearview mirror People bash Steve Ballmer for missing Search, Social Networ…

>>This is the real reason behind's Ballmer's failure. Yes, I am sure it had nothing to do with him lacking the basic vision one would expect in any tech CEO and saying idiotic things like "no one would buy such an expensive phone" (about the iPhone). If you look like a buffoon, you act like a buffoon, and you talk like a buffoon...

> saying idiotic things like "no one would buy such an expensive phone" (about the iPhone).

This is something that people keep saying but he way actually right and at this point this is just an Internet meme.

I remember that moment. The iPhone costed $800 with a phone plan. Insane. Nobody does that even today, so in that regard he was right.

Only after the iPhone 3 and $200 phone with a contract did it ever start selling.

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