Microsoft lost its way once Gates left. He was the visionary that started the company, and Ballmer was just a businessman. They need a visionary to lead, and from what I've read they need to do away with the internal turf wars. I know I've read a lot of blog posts from insiders saying that great ideas get smothered by other divisions all the time when they feel "threatened" by them.
Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
81–90 of 113 posts
Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, come on. How about F# and Kinect, to name but two?
They bought Kinect from another company – the hard work of getting approvals and resources and everything else to start on it had already been done outside of Microsoft. It's definitely an impressive bit of tech, but would it have been possible were its genesis subject to the byzantine internal politics of Microsoft? I dunno. I wouldn't put money on it. Meanwhile, consumers don't buy functional programming languages.
They bought the sensor. The machine-learning approach that allows the kinect to run @ 200 fps was built @ MSR by Shotton et al.
Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wh…
C# programmers are always bragging about how generics are so much better than Java's. But when I've looked at the common day usage cases they're really about the same. I know about the type erasure issue but unless you're doing some crazy reflection stuff it never comes up. I'm not trying to start a religious war here but what is it that in practice makes C# generics so much better than Java's?
Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wh…
C# programmers are always bragging about how generics are so much better than Java's. But when I've looked at the common day usage cases they're really about the same. I know about the type erasure issue but unless you're doing some crazy reflection stuff it never comes up. I'm not trying to start a religious war here but what is it that in practice makes C# generics so much better than Java's?
The lack of erasure means that you can use generics to do sophisticated type magic, sort of like in C++ templates - specifically using reflection. You don't usually want to do this too much, but doing it in one or two places can simplify code tremendously. This also allows you to eliminate boxing and reflection overhead in a lot of places by letting you use generics to bind to reflected types/members at runtime, which is really important if you're trying to build a performant app in C# that's got extensibility support.
For example, I use this to create strongly-typed bindings to individual fields/properties of class instances at runtime, which lets me pass around objects of types like 'BoundMember', and generically store into them - essentially the same as 'ref int', except it can outlive function scope. This is really useful when doing asynchronous programming, and it lets you kill duplication when building things like configuration dialogs.
Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
#85Earlier 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 was told projects in Apple are generally endeavors by small teams. Five people write this app, four people write that subprocess. While feature staffing is similar at MS, the overhead of management, program management, and test often smothers any attempt to move fast at MS.
Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
C# programmers are always bragging about how generics are so much better than Java's. But when I've looked at the common day usage cases they're really about the same. I know about the type erasure issue but unless you're doing some crazy reflection stuff it never comes up. I'm not trying to start a religious war here but what is it that in practice makes C# generics so much better than Java's?
The lack of erasure means that you can use generics to do sophisticated type magic, sort of like in C++ templates - specifically using reflection. You don't usually want to do this too much, but doing it in one or two places can simplify code tremendously. This also allows you to eliminate boxing and reflection overhead in a lot of places by letting you use generics to bind to reflected types/members at runtime, whic…
Hmm, sounds like what I said with "unless you're doing some crazy reflection stuff ", and it sounds like a solution that reduces the readability and maintainability. But maybe I'd need to see a good example to appreciate it.
Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
#87A 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-lev…
My former employer did these types of surveys a couple times in the last few years I was there. Supposedly 100% anonymous but the survey link mailed to each employee had a hashed (unique) query string. People not taking part in the survey got follow up notices till they complied.
No one believed any of it was anonymous. The results were worthless, but quoted regularly. It was that type of place.
Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
#88This 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…
That "upstart" is IBM -- Lotus Symphony (the current product carrying that name) is an OpenOffice fork.
Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Its interesting to me that one of the most successful absolute monarchies, Great Britain, in the end became ruled by committee. And eventually lost its empire, with the next great power ruled a committee constrained by a constitution. And that constitution eroding away has led to the committee pretty much pissing it away. So, yeah, committees are not good. A system governed by sensible rules that rewards smart action…
"A system governed by sensible rules that rewards smart action, punishes bad actors and forgives errors is better."
Good luck writing that RFP. Especially the "smart action" part.
The best government, in the end, is one that's transparent and, ultimately, replaceable. Whoever is in power is always going to seek to retain power; you want that to be dependent on them making decisions that benefit everyone else.
Even if you had a "perfect" government, but it lacked transparency, you'd have a problem as that lack of transparency would make it difficult for everyone outside the government to make long-term decisions about investment, etc.
Re: Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Its interesting to me that one of the most successful absolute monarchies, Great Britain, in the end became ruled by committee. And eventually lost its empire, with the next great power ruled a committee constrained by a constitution. And that constitution eroding away has led to the committee pretty much pissing it away. So, yeah, committees are not good. A system governed by sensible rules that rewards smart action…
> Its interesting to me that one of the most successful absolute monarchies, Great Britain
Was Britain ever an absolute monarchy? Possibly under its first king, James I, but none of the succeeding monarchs ever had absolute power.