Am I the only one who has never heard of this guy?
Not at all, I expect my parents have never heard of him either.
Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
21–30 of 232 posts
Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
#22Sinofsky, though seen as highly talented, was viewed at the top levels as not the kind of team player that the company was looking for.
Dear lord. This sounds like something from Office Space. What exactly is the kind of "team player" the company is looking for?
Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
#23So I've always wondered what happens to you as a human when you're effectively fired from a high level, high visibility position. How does Sinofsky feel right now, emotionally? How does he feel professionally? Is this something someone shakes off as differences between opinionated guys in an organization? Or is this something that rocks him to his core? Does he go for another job right away? Or does he write a book and retire?
I have absolutely no perspective on this issue and often wonder what it's like.
Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
#24"Andy Rubin is sweating right now." — @llsethj
Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
#25Ouch. I never worked in one of Sinofski's orgs, but I know quite a few people who did. I got the impression that a lot of old timers and under-performers disliked him. Most of the people that I really respected liked him. From my perspective, that's the best kind of "divisive figure" to have. Maybe he pushed too hard...
My understanding is that Sinofsky was just purging many partner-level folks. I'd be curious if that created a chorus of dissatisfaction, but I'd never heard of anything that would have caused his ouster.
Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
#26This is quite a surprise. As someone who worked on Windows for five years after undergrad and catching the tail end of Vista, people were thrilled when he was brought on board for Windows 7.
As a low level peon, I respected how he could get the org to ship on time. I think he'll be missed.
Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
#27http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-next-ceo-of-microsof... Sinofsky was just too popular? Ballmer's CEO position is not sacrosanct. Some internal guy being a prominent public figure is the biggest risk for him i guess.
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Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
#28So I've always wondered what happens to you as a human when you're effectively fired from a high level, high visibility position. How does Sinofsky feel right now, emotionally? How does he feel professionally? Is this something someone shakes off as differences between opinionated guys in an organization? Or is this something that rocks him to his core? Does he go for another job right away? Or does he write a book a…
Yeah, I wondered the same thing when the Petraeus scandal started. I know people that have been fired, but they've just left it out of their resume and moved on to another job. That doesn't work so well when you're in such a prominent position that your firing is all over the internet.
Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
#29I worked for Microsoft for 4 years - this is a HUGE surprise to me. Most of the people I know who worked in his orgs were proud to work under his direction.
I thought he would replace Balmer eventually.
Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
#30Good riddance. I left the company because I didn't want to deal with his idea of an ideal organization. I figured he was a shoe-in for CEO and it was just time until everyone was under him. Unfortunately I think he leaves a large trail behind him- too many lower-level people saw no chance to escape his way of doing things other than to leave the company.
What was his idea of an ideal organization?
I can't be positive what the parent post was referring to, but it's likely it has something to do with re-balancing the dev/test/pm/manager roles. Microsoft had started to get top heavy, so Sinofski had a lot of managers demoted to individual contributors and invented this odd "triad" system of dev/test/pm to try to keep things more balanced. It struck me as a passive aggressive and politically correct way to force some under-performers out. It had the positive side effect of preventing runaway PM orgs, but had the negative side effect of encumbering some well balanced teams. I assumed that it was an interrum strategy to get a handle on organizational complexity. However, other orgs around the company started being "Sinofski-ized" without any real understanding of what that meant.