Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

#41

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 6:47 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #19

rbanffy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but Apple has Steve Jobs. Microsoft has Ballmer. There is a difference. ;-)

But the name of the iPod originally came from a freelance marketing guy, not Jobs himself. After the success of the iPod, the iPhone name was pretty easy. With that said they could have called it the Apple Phone and probably not lost a sale.

Since the iMac is a Mac, the iPod is not a pod, it seems the name "iPhone" shares more with the iMac than the iPod.

Microsoft's product problems are not that related to naming.

Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

#42

Post by DavidChouinard » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 6:47 PM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #11

mw63214 wrote: post #7

I still don't get how all these articles frame the debate as Microsoft playing catch-up with all the "innovation" coming out of Apple? I get the management culture and internal struggles and "analysis paralysis" that comes with the cover-your-butt mentality, but as far as I can tell, Microsoft is one of the very few companies that has entire departments dedicated bringing cutting-edge technologies to market. The only…

> Microsoft is one of the very few companies that has entire departments dedicated bringing cutting-edge technologies to market. So where are these technologies? And why isn't Microsoft hauling huge sacks of money home each year from multiple products that didn't exist in the 90's? As far as I can tell, they make money from vendor lock-in with Office and Windows, and a gaming division founded by a visionary who left…

"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have." —Steve Jobs

Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

#43

Post by ytNumbers » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 6:52 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #20

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #6

This is the natural end-game of being a hugely successful company: you box yourself in. You make so many rules about what can happen and how it all has to work that nothing can escape. They have to break up. I just don't see any other way around it. Each little new idea that might help somebody competes with dozens of special interests all looking out for some little fiefdom or concern that may or may not be importan…

Agreed. But I don't think the situation is as dire as the article paints it. Office is not going anywhere anytime soon. The rise of smartphones does not suddenly mean that there is any lesser demand for Office. The enterprise trusts Microsoft (with good reason IMHO) and if they stay on their game they can continue to dominate the market. Can you imagine trusting your billion dollar company to Google's half-assed supp…

> Can you imagine trusting your billion dollar company to... > some upstart pitching support for OpenOffice (okay maybe eventually)?

Perhaps Microsoft could hasten that day by increasing their prices for office licenses by, say, five-fold. OpenOffice is looking better and better every day.

Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

#44

Post by lotusleaf1987 » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 6:52 PM UTC

g123g wrote: post #15

dsuriano wrote: post #2

"Windows Everywhere" is a bad strategy for Microsoft. I still don't think Windows Phone 7 was a good name. Why didn't they just go with Microsoft Phone or something?

xPhone would have been nice, reminding people that they also created something as cutting edge as XBox which gave Sony and Nintendo a serious run for their money.

That would just remind people of the iPhone every time they mention an xPhone.

Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

#45

Post by justanotheratom » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 6:53 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #16

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #6

This is the natural end-game of being a hugely successful company: you box yourself in. You make so many rules about what can happen and how it all has to work that nothing can escape. They have to break up. I just don't see any other way around it. Each little new idea that might help somebody competes with dozens of special interests all looking out for some little fiefdom or concern that may or may not be importan…

The open question is whether Google and Facebook will also end up in this same spot. As you said, everyone will end up here. There's virtually no way a rational company can avoid it. It's textbook Innovator's Dilemma. Eventually you're faced with a situation that there is a new product/service that is cannibalizing your product. You can hasten the cannibalization of your cash cow and maybe succeed in this new space (…

But Apple in contrast has turned out to be surprisingly nimble and my impression is that their employees are quite happy.

Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

#46

Post by kenjackson » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 6:59 PM UTC

ibdknox wrote: post #40

kenjackson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article makes a point of MS being focused too much on itself, and I wholeheartedly agree. One of the things I was praised for was knowing what the rest of the tech world was doing (I worked on VS). I have to admit that I find this odd for a few reasons: 1) VS is one of the best products MS ships. And its probably best in industry. 2) VS has done a fair bit of really good work in the past few years. The work in C#…

1) I agree. It's probably one of the best IDE's out there and C# is undoubtedly a fantastic language. 2) In what ways is C# ahead of its peers in the industry? I think Async is a great step forward, but it's been in other languages for a while now. 3) He could and he has no impact on VS whatsoever. Scott is essentially a community PM. He talks for a living about stuff. He's a great guy and he's done some good on the…

I think in general we agree -- you just have an insider perspective so you can see some of the strings that I can't.

The only big contention is "In what ways is C# ahead of its peers in the industry?" This comes down to a language war where there is no winner, but the way C# has put together great feature sets around key scenarios. Generics done right, much improved co/contravariance, nice lambdas, dynamic support which is actually pretty useful, extension methods, and of course async. While async exists in some languages, it doesn't exist in what I'd consider peers (other popular languages) from Common Lisp, Python, Ruby, Java, C/C++, and Javascript. And frankly, I think this probably isn't all that important -- and more religious than anything else.

But I am curious about one thing you said, A big part of what I did before I left was prove that most people don't understand how to use VS. Moreover, there's a lot you don't see - all of the failed attempts to do things even more amazing than async.

Could you expand?

Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

#47

Post by MartinCron » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:09 PM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #38

MartinCron wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office is also legitimately innovative. Love it or hate it, the whole "ribbon" thing was a big deal.

Excel is a thing of beauty. But let's be real: When you've got other companies bringing home billions in revenue on product categories that did not even exist five years ago, it's tough to be impressed that Microsoft gave a facelift to a product that was new in the early 90's.

I am being real. Even discounting some mis-steps (Kin, Zune, Vista) the incremental improvements made to Xbox, Windows, Windows Server, Visual Studio, SQL Server, and even IE9 are impressive.

It's perfectly possible for a company to be successful and innovative without having huge successes in product categories that didn't exist until recently.

From a perfectly selfish perspective, if Microsoft totally gave up on tablets, phones, search, and social. I wouldn't care or even notice because Apple, Google, and Facebook are meeting my needs nicely. Maybe it's unrealistic to expect them to just keep making the things that I use every day better and better. I don't know.

Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

#48

Post by MartinCron » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:13 PM UTC

ibdknox wrote: post #40

kenjackson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article makes a point of MS being focused too much on itself, and I wholeheartedly agree. One of the things I was praised for was knowing what the rest of the tech world was doing (I worked on VS). I have to admit that I find this odd for a few reasons: 1) VS is one of the best products MS ships. And its probably best in industry. 2) VS has done a fair bit of really good work in the past few years. The work in C#…

1) I agree. It's probably one of the best IDE's out there and C# is undoubtedly a fantastic language. 2) In what ways is C# ahead of its peers in the industry? I think Async is a great step forward, but it's been in other languages for a while now. 3) He could and he has no impact on VS whatsoever. Scott is essentially a community PM. He talks for a living about stuff. He's a great guy and he's done some good on the…

In what ways is C# ahead of its peers in the industry?

I'm assuming that the most obvious peer in the industry is Java. As I've recently worked in both, it comes down to Linq and the fact that Visual Studio + ReSharper is just a better IDE than anything I've used in the Java realm.

Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

#49

Post by smtf » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:21 PM UTC

kkshin wrote: post #21

One of Microsoft's biggest problems that contributes to their insular view is that they are located in Redmond. They're insulated from the rest of the highly competitive technology field (except for Amazon). This works out great for them when it comes to retaining talent in Redmond as employees are usually not willing to uproot their lifestyle to head to 'greener pastures'. Contrast this to how Google handles compens…

Can someone explain why this was down-voted? Opening with the somewhat inflammatory remark about Redmond might not have been the best choice; however, I thought it was well argued none the less.

Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way

#50

Post by potatolicious » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:25 PM UTC

MartinCron wrote: post #39

kkshin wrote: post #21

One of Microsoft's biggest problems that contributes to their insular view is that they are located in Redmond. They're insulated from the rest of the highly competitive technology field (except for Amazon). This works out great for them when it comes to retaining talent in Redmond as employees are usually not willing to uproot their lifestyle to head to 'greener pastures'. Contrast this to how Google handles compens…

I'm not going to claim that Microsoft isn't too insular (it is) and I live and work in Seattle on purpose, so I'm a little biased about this, but I don't think it's just about the location. Besides Amazon being a huge presence, more and more established tech companies are opening development offices here (Google, Facebook, Zynga) just to take advantage of the talent that's here. Not to mention the fairly healthy star…

I agree leadership, culture, and politics are bigger problems than geography, but it's still an issue.

Sniping younger people from MSFT is sometimes trivially easy because of its remote location in Redmond - surrounded almost exclusively by nice, quiet suburbs. I know a lot of MSFTies braving the commute across the lake daily (1-1.5h each way!), but people get tired of it fast, and by and large the young want to live on the west side, in the city proper, not out in the 'burbs.

There's a reason why Google is now in Fremont, Facebook is downtown by the Market... I know personally (and some others who feel the same way) that there's not a chance I'll take a commute over the lake every day, and likewise no chance I'll live on the east side.