Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft

#141

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:26 AM UTC

jkimmel wrote: post #135

andralex wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm nowhere near that level but extrapolating from my experience and that of people I know: such abrupt departures are never amiable and are the tip of quite complex political junctures. As a human being, someone like Sinofsky is no longer hurt by lost income, but that's a blessing in disguise because his motivations were for a long time not of financial nature, which means he is hurting in other dimensions. Feelings…

As an aside, I've noticed many of the factors and symptoms you note in members of any sufficiently large corporation. Perhaps in a microcosm of society, the frictions necessary to create psychological tension are amplified with respect to the size of the corporation and the degree of isolation. In the case of Microsoft, this phenomena may be more pronounced. Software engineers/developers exist in a smaller subset of…

The tech community in Redmond/Bellevue is limited, but in Seattle overall its actually quite rich; and the young kids can commute east on a connector right?

Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft

#142

Post by wilfra » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:27 AM UTC

yllus wrote: post #89

I can't help but wonder if Forstall (Apple) and Sinofsky (MS) are two men who would have been strong, maybe even visionary leaders had they been allowed to reach the position of CEO at either company. I tend to feel that Jobs only made CEO because he had also been founder and ex-CEO, and had a certain cachet from that.

Pretty difficult to be the CEO of a tech company without founding it.

Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft

#143

Post by kamaal » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:32 AM UTC

ww520 wrote: post #136

j_baker wrote: post #22

Sinofsky, 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?

I don't know. I found out the hard way that being too good a "team player" will hurt you. People would just shove work to you or to your team. Or take resources from you in the guise of good for the team. One time in a prior company, an important database/server was under my team's responsibility. Another team needed processing power and asked to borrow some capacity before they ordered their own hardware. Being a te…

>>Did people remember I being a team player and helped the other team and the company overall?

Screwed if you do, and screwed if you don't.

Generally happens in companies where people don't have what it takes to own things up. Keep shifting blame on people until they take responsibility, take credit for wins. But when there is a failure conveniently announce if wasn't your responsibility at the first place. And if they don't take responsibility name them as bad team players.

The game is set to use you and throw you. You can only lose in such a game.

Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft

#144

Post by cududa » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:33 AM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #41

Interesting. Sinofsky was, along with J Allard, supposed to be one of the product visionaries capable of filling the gap Gates left. When Allard left, and Microsoft put its weight behind the "unified Windows" approach instead of the Courier concept, it was thought that Sinofsky "won". Now it appears they both lost.

No one ever considered Sinofsky a product visionary. He just picked people he trusted. J is another story.

Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft

#145

Post by aik » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:45 AM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #138

colmvp wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even as a Mac only guy, I don't see how Surface is thought to be underwhelming. I think the tablet gestures they have, especially using the edges, are steps beyond the iPad and iOS and I expect Apple to copy them at some point in time. And then the actual interface is pretty nice as well: distinct, clean, beautiful. Again, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple riffing on them.

I like it as a product to disrupt the market. I think the product itself is incredibly underwhelming and would agree with psychotik.

Ok you both said underwhelming, but I'm curious in what ways you think so?

Personally I think the product is incredible in many ways, and overall very overwhelming/impressive relative to my expectations, however to me it has two very core faults:

1. Performance. Many actions are perfectly fine, however v things like videos can be choppy, and even reading a Kindle book is choppy.

2. DPI of the screen. It's a nice screen, and the responsiveness even beats the iPad (incredibly), though after using new high-res displays, the Surface screen looks pixelated (primarily when rendering text).

Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft

#146

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:45 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #140

ChuckMcM wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scott McNealy would occasionally send a note of congratulations on a promotion, typically he would say "One step up, one step closer to the door." That was of course figuratively true, and in the case of building 4 at Sun also literally true since the executive offices were right next to an employee entrance :-) As others have noted departures at this level are always much more nuanced than simply "this was bad" or "…

Gripping read. Its really rare to read battle ground stories especially from people who have already 'been there' on the ground. Its really great of you to stand up to what you believe and go that way. I think that's the reason why you are the VP of blekko now. Any advice to young folks like us, who dream to make it big some day? P.S: Read your HN profile just today, although i've been reading your comments and reply…

Thanks for the compliments, I've found that advice tends to be situational and so hard to transfer generically.

I am a firm believer though in three fairly general things; follow your passion so that you don't find yourself regretting today what you didn't do yesterday, seek out contrary views to help you understand your own ideas, and choose not to take things personally. Doing that won't necessarily make you popular or successful but they will let you stay centered and happy with yourself.

Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft

#147

Post by InclinedPlane » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:51 AM UTC

j_baker wrote: post #22

Sinofsky, 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?

A puppet who bends to Ballmer's whims. I wish I was joking. Every indication is that he can't handle anyone in a position of power that puts up any resistance to him.

Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft

#148

Post by psychotik » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:57 AM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #124

psychotik wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I said it was underwhelming. Underwhelming != failure.

Even as a Mac only guy, I don't see how Surface is thought to be underwhelming. I think the tablet gestures they have, especially using the edges, are steps beyond the iPad and iOS and I expect Apple to copy them at some point in time. And then the actual interface is pretty nice as well: distinct, clean, beautiful. Again, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple riffing on them.

How do you hype a product, and release the lesser of the two variants (RT vs Pro)? How do you go months without announcing a price, and then don't price it competitively? How do you release a product where your flagship apps (Office suite) doesn't run in the new paradigm? How do you not have a working email client? Need more...?

Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft

#149

Post by utopkara » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 6:03 AM UTC

randomfool wrote: post #36

benihana wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was his idea of an ideal organization?

He was a big fan of the triad- Dev, Test & PM, at every level. From what I experienced, at every level you'd have to get sign-off from all 3 for any features to be implemented. That, combined with Microsoft's incredibly deep org structure created a massive number of 'committees' to go through to get signoff for any work to be done. He was also one to dictate things from up above and it was extremely difficult to unde…

This is probably how things work in most big old software corporations. It is not open to big surprises, like a revolutionary new product, or a catastrophic failure. If the company is on a profitable turf, I would say, it is the way to go.

For individuals though, it makes the utterly limiting environment, where gatekeepers and not the ones with merit flourish.

On the bright side, my unscientific observation is that, in the best case, such an organization can go on like this only for one career time (~20 years). So, if you are coming in towards the end of that period, you are in for an adventurous ride.

Re: Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft

#150

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 6:06 AM UTC

graue wrote: post #139

ChuckMcM wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scott McNealy would occasionally send a note of congratulations on a promotion, typically he would say "One step up, one step closer to the door." That was of course figuratively true, and in the case of building 4 at Sun also literally true since the executive offices were right next to an employee entrance :-) As others have noted departures at this level are always much more nuanced than simply "this was bad" or "…

I'd be curious to read a little more about what happened at Google, why your goals were incompatible and what the “good fight” was.

Technology companies do 'R&D' which stands for Research and Development. You can think of that as a spectrum where on one end you have 100% research, the end goal is a published paper, and at the other end you have 100% development where the end goal is the implementation of a solution to a specific problem. All of the engineers I've met land somewhere on the spectrum in terms of what motivates them to do what they do. When I was at Google most of engineering was very 'research' focused, there were a lot of what you might think of as science projects, prototypes and experiments which might, or might not solve a problem. I'm more of a 'products' guy which puts me much closer to the D side of the spectrum. I know myself well enough to know I don't do well in places that lean heavily toward research, and so from that standpoint there was always an impedance mismatch between my values and those of the company.

However, it was a company and there were people who put in effort day in and day out that kept things working, people that were indispensable to day to day operations of the company, who were not getting the recognition that folks who would create a solution to a problem nobody had were getting. These unheralded people were 'fighting the good fight' and I worked pretty hard to wake up HR to that oversight on their part. They had just started giving out 'infrastructure awards' as a way of recognizing those folks when I was leaving. I was glad for that. I didn't get a chance to work on one of the committees that evaluated that sort of work which was too bad. Given the changes I've read about since I left it would seem that the company has shifted away from some of that stuff.

To give you an example of how sad a case I was, when I came to the Bay Area I had offers from Xerox and Intel and was totally excited to go work at Intel because they were shipping the products that were changing the world. My wife worked at Xerox and so I got to see a company that could envision an amazing future, and not ship it, and even then I knew it would drive me insane not to get things out the door :-).