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

#51

Post by pnathan » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:30 PM UTC

ozziegooen wrote: post #3

It seems like most of Microsoft wants Steve Ballmer to make a major change to Microsoft. I'd really like to see him follow the "New Detroit" idea and announce a major re-thinking of the company. But, I'm sure he won't. They'll complain, his approval ratings will get worse, Microsoft will decline, and he will stay in denial. Peter Drucker is rolling in his grave.

You mean MS isn't applying the "Business X-Ray" and start cutting products? :)

Right now, the only MS product I rely on is...

...

... ...

Yeah. Everything MS that I use is in a support role (Windows). I don't use any MS products directly.

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

#52

Post by protomyth » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:31 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #31

michael_dorfman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the feeling he looks at how Apple is thriving on a closed ecosystem ("OS X Everywhere") and wants to succeed in a similar way, but he is utterly incapable of it. Ah, but that's the thing-- Apple didn't go for "OS X Everywhere", they were willing to segment their OS strategy, and developed iOS for the iPhone and iPad. There's no telling what the tech world would look like now if Microsoft hadn't tied their table…

iOS is based on OS X though, but anyway the technical distinction is irrelevant to my point. The point is that Apple integration is very tight across devices, in a way that must be very appealing to Microsoft from a business perspective. But Microsoft has it's own strengths, such as catering to the support and feature needs of the enterprise. In a way it mirrors Apple's strategy of targeting the high-end consumer mar…

The difference between "based-on" and "Windows everywhere" is subtle, but makes for a huge difference. Apple is willing to fit the right parts in place where Microsoft has made some truly bad and confusing technology selections (e.g. full Windows on tablets instead of a grown-up phone OS).

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

#53

Post by anamax » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:32 PM UTC

ozziegooen wrote: post #3

It seems like most of Microsoft wants Steve Ballmer to make a major change to Microsoft. I'd really like to see him follow the "New Detroit" idea and announce a major re-thinking of the company. But, I'm sure he won't. They'll complain, his approval ratings will get worse, Microsoft will decline, and he will stay in denial. Peter Drucker is rolling in his grave.

> I'd really like to see him follow the "New Detroit" idea and announce a major re-thinking of the company.

How about we wait until "new Detroit" actually succeeds before using it as a model?

Folks are constantly doing "major re-thinking" of various things and most of the ones that get implemented turn out to be disasters, especially the urban ones. ("The projects" were one such "re-think".)

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

#54

Post by greyman » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:34 PM UTC

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…

Finally some opinion I can agree with. I have a suspicion it's some perception thing, like the opinion leaders proclaimed that "Microsoft isn't innovative" and every media repeat that.

Actually, Microsoft is an innovative company, and after reading the blog of the Win7 developers, their software development methodology is far ahead of most other software companies. Maybe, just maybe, they are around for a long time a became very big, so people expect more of them...or, I don't know.

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

#55

Post by mw63214 » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:36 PM UTC

forgotAgain wrote: post #37

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…

I've begun to wonder lately if all of the money they've spent on "innovative technologies" shouldn't be counted as marketing expense for their core products. I mean they're not going to convince many people to buy Office for the first time with advertising. People buy Office because it's what you do when you have a PC. On the other hand by spending money to appear to be a cutting edge technical company they can more…

I wonder if Microsoft needs to define themselves, as Apple and Google have. Apple: "Make it Shiny", Google: "Don't be Evil", Microsoft "Not afraid to fail". Maybe they could increase the velocity of bringing their research infrastructure in-line with their broader interests.

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

#56

Post by VladRussian » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:40 PM UTC

everybody/everything is subject to natural lifecycle. At 35 one is completely different from the one at 15. The complex living system like a large company is subject to it as well. You go through life, you change, you age [the undead of course are exception from the rule, like vampires or IBM]

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

#57

Post by lukev » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:51 PM UTC

justanotheratom wrote: post #45

kenjackson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I imagine Apple as an absolute monarchy, with Jobs handing down dictates from on high. If I imagine decisions at MS, I imagine a committee process.

I think the results the companies are having bear out those impressions.

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

#58

Post by bad_user » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:57 PM UTC

    A survey of more than 1,000 Microsoft employees 
    conducted in October by Glassdor.com showed that 
    only 51% of them approved of Ballmer's performance 
    as CEO.

I'm familiar with these types of corporate surveys -- the questions are more likely phrased with bias, like "Do you agree that Ballmer is a good CEO?" (careful, he's watching your answers).

And then they do an all hands in which results are discussed with team-level granularity to keep anonymity, but if the team has 5 people, out of which you're most likely to speak your mind (and everybody knows it), then everybody knows it was you who criticized the CEO.

I've seen such a survey end up with 80% in favor of everything, even though the people were actually discontented with the way the company was being managed -- 51% is pretty bad ;-)

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

#59

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 8:24 PM UTC

justanotheratom wrote: post #45

kenjackson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They probably made the necessary changes in the 90s.

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

#60

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 8:33 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…

While VS is good I think they made a huge mistake pricing Team System to up to $10000 per developer. The Express versions are nice but they don't contain a profiler for example. I don't think it's smart trying to make money from developers. Apple made the same mistake with the Newton when they priced the dev kit at $800 (not sure if that's accurate but it was expensive) while the Palm dev tools were free.