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

Post by iramiller » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 3:00 AM UTC

michael_dorfman wrote: post #23

dasil003 wrote: post #20

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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…

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…

Post by cabalamat » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 3:03 AM UTC

archangel_one wrote: post #79

stretchwithme wrote: post #71

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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…

True, but there is no evidence that such a system can remain for any significant length of time (or in most cases even come about in the first place) in practice. If you look at any country of significant size they mostly appear to be ruled by a committee or an absolute dictator. The committees could be said to generally be doing a bad job but nowhere near as bad as the worst cases of the dictators, but nobody has th…

Post by kenjackson » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 3:27 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #86

kevingadd wrote: post #84

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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.

Post by altano » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 4:17 AM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #78

kenjackson wrote: post #46

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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…

There's a big difference between the c# language team and visual studio. The c# language has left java for dust, they are doing a bloody brilliant job but on the other hand were essentially playing catch up with python and ruby until 4.0. The dynamic CLR stuff has really changed the game. VS, on the otherhand, has stagnated, between 2005 and 2010, apart from integration with the new hotnesses like Silverlight, MVC an…

Post by waqf » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 4:56 AM UTC

blacksmythe wrote: post #74

kenjackson wrote: post #16

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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 (…

>> If you do the math its almost always better to >> NOT hasten your own demise for an uncertain future. In the short run it is always looks better to not cannibalize your products, and managers are driven mostly by short term objectives. >> for an uncertain future. If you don't cannibalize your products what is almost certain is eventual failure: http://www.economist.com/node/14248815?story_id=14248815