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Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

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Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#21

Post by bunderbunder »

kvb wrote: post #5
taligent wrote: post #4

It seems pretty clear that Microsoft's problem isn't with their ability to innovate. It's in their complete inability to get to market quickly, take risks and work together. And that is directly related to their HR policies in particular their ranking system.

None of what you wrote is obvious to me. Partly this is because Microsoft is big enough that I find descriptions that treat Microsoft as a monolithic entity unconvincing. After all, they got Kinect to market quickly. SharePoint seemed to come out of nowhere to dominate its market, too. Thankfully, I've never had to deal with stack ranking, but I find it unlikely that it's the explanation behind Microsoft's various fa…

Microsoft's got a weird dual personality in that regard. There are plenty of smaller units within Microsoft that manage to do really great things. At the same time, oftentimes when the Mothership decides to try and get involved, what ensues frequently looks more like meddling than coordination.

For example, look at how their mobile offering's .NET-based APIs and "WCF lite" GUI toolkit lasted for precisely one generation before someone got the bright idea of yanking it and replacing it with a whole new system based on a gussied-up version of COM. I have a really hard time believing that's an example of coordination. From the outside, it looks a lot more like someone from the Windows division becoming jealous of what folks from the other divisions were accomplishing, and deciding to horn in on that game while simultaneously reasserting the old Win32 technology base at the expense of newer technologies.

It's also a spectacular waste of effort, and left a lot of us developers feeling like we just became collateral damage in an internal power struggle.

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#23

Post by dman »

DenisM wrote: post #19
jug6ernaut wrote: post #2

No one involved in the transition from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone should be satisfied, it was a complete failure. At the time Windows Mobile pretty much owned the Smart Phone market(unless you consider BB at the time smart phones, they were close to but not just IMO. No where near the freedom as WM). But over Windows Mobiles life time it completely stagnated, but even with that had a large following. With there…

You're mixing the time frames. When Widows Mobile Smartphone came out in 2003, it was the most advanced, most open, most app-friendly phone OS. However, there were not substantial improvements for the next 5 years - the product was in fact stillborn. The Windows Phone team was then brought in to bury the corpse, and start afresh, which is what they did. It wasn't their fault that the predecessor has died several year…

Microsoft invented their own troubles in this market. How many parallel mobility teams can one company reasonably sustain -

a) Windows phone 6.5

b) Windows phone 7.x

c) Windows phone 8.x

d) Project Pink / Kin

e) Danger

f) Windows 8 RT

g) Courier

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#24

Post by nonamegiven »

potatolicious wrote: post #7
taligent wrote: post #4

It seems pretty clear that Microsoft's problem isn't with their ability to innovate. It's in their complete inability to get to market quickly, take risks and work together. And that is directly related to their HR policies in particular their ranking system.

Not sure why you were downvoted. Upvoted even though I don't particularly agree. Having lived in Seattle for a couple of years, and knowing many Microsoft employees during that time, my outsider's view is that MS's consumer-side failures are largely geographical and cultural. Redmond, or even Bellevue, is extremely isolated from Seattle, which in and of itself is not exactly deeply intertwined with the cultural cente…

Based on comments like yours, and general awareness of MS, I think Microsoft has long ago moved from to generic mega corporation. In such a company, an individual's success depends on learning how to operate the corporation, and operate within it.

It's a destination for MBAs and project managers, not a place to innovate.

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#25

Post by larsberg »

taligent wrote: post #4

It seems pretty clear that Microsoft's problem isn't with their ability to innovate. It's in their complete inability to get to market quickly, take risks and work together. And that is directly related to their HR policies in particular their ranking system.

I'd argue against your statement that the company doesn't:

> take risks and work together

When I was there, I was _constantly_ being told (as a manager in DevDiv) that our next release had to work together with each and every new technology that might almost be ready near our ship time (Windows, SQL, Office, etc.). This added not only a huge amount of schedule risk, but dramatically slowed everything down. When your development team has to wipe their machine and install a new build of Windows every week (literally true during one ~9 month cycle of a product I was on), you lose a lot of time. Especially when those builds each pass basic smoke tests, so they're sufficient for running tests, but do not pass basic usage tests, so you can't, say, install Visual Studio successfully on some of them.

Microsoft is well-practiced at the strategy of lashing together all of the boats before they head off to a battle at sea...

And unfortunately I have little sympathy for people who complain about the ranking system. The numbers of "poor" ratings required were so low even back in more-aggressive days that they served more to prevent managers from copping out on delivering hard messages than unjustly delivering bad review scores. Though, certainly, many leads delivered the, "oh, so sorry, couldn't get you a better score" message. But, that's often part of why they're still leads and not managers.

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#26

Post by mynameisvlad »

dman wrote: post #23
DenisM wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing the time frames. When Widows Mobile Smartphone came out in 2003, it was the most advanced, most open, most app-friendly phone OS. However, there were not substantial improvements for the next 5 years - the product was in fact stillborn. The Windows Phone team was then brought in to bury the corpse, and start afresh, which is what they did. It wasn't their fault that the predecessor has died several year…

Microsoft invented their own troubles in this market. How many parallel mobility teams can one company reasonably sustain - a) Windows phone 6.5 b) Windows phone 7.x c) Windows phone 8.x d) Project Pink / Kin e) Danger f) Windows 8 RT g) Courier

To be fair, those teams were not parallel. 6.5 died with 7, which died with 8. Danger was a subsidiary, and they made Project Pink, so they're the same. Windows on ARM, yes, was a team, but not associated with Mobility. They're a Windows 8 team, not a Windows Phone team, so they're not actually competing with WP nor are they working on mobility-specific platforms. They simply deal with Windows on ARM processors. And finally, we don't know where the Courier team fit into the whole plan, since it was an incubation project.

Therefore, we get:

- Windows Phone

- Windows on ARM

- Danger/Pink

And then some Courier Team, probably a MS Research team (so not part of an actual commercial team) which I wouldn't count as a team.

Then, Danger was folded into Windows Phone, and Courier was killed off, leaving:

- Windows Phone

- Windows on ARM

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#27

Post by bunderbunder »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #17
taligent wrote: post #4

It seems pretty clear that Microsoft's problem isn't with their ability to innovate. It's in their complete inability to get to market quickly, take risks and work together. And that is directly related to their HR policies in particular their ranking system.

I partially agree. I think it's a combination of 2 things (the second being more or less the same as what you are saying): 1) Their brand reputation became toxic over time. Windows ME was seen as a bad product. XP prior to service pack 1 was seen as a bad product. Normal people knew what the blue screen of death with. Normal people made jokes about the quality of Windows. Correct or not, their market dominance (seen…

> Their brand reputation became toxic over time.

This. Combined with their failure to realize this. I strongly suspect that Windows Phone would have been more successful if they hadn't given it a name that evokes innumerable products with which everyone has a love-hate relationship at best.

> They are just an old company.

They're 362 days older than Apple.

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#28

Post by edderly »

macspoofing wrote: post #18
martinced wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was working in the mobile business before the iPhone came and owned everybody (waiting then for Android) and I recall things totally differently than you. The smartphone market was owned by Nokia and their Sxx series. That and the BlackBerries. We were working on mostly Nokia (either native or Java), Qualcomm BREW (C++) and, granted, we had some demand for Windows Mobile but they were pretty much a nobody in that p…

>There has been no "transition" because MS never was anywhere that mattered with their phones ... That's not really true because there was the PDA market, which was dominated by Palm and Microsoft. So you had RIM and Nokia in one corner, and Palm and Microsoft in the other. Any one of them could have created the iPhone but none of them really got it, and they are where they are.

This is fairly illusory as a comparison. I don't believe the PDA market ever amounted to more than 12 million devices a year. Whilst by the year 2000 the entire mobile phone market was around 700 million.

Plus it didn't help that MS were trying to charge unrealistic prices for the OS, in 1999 they were asking for $80 per unit....

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#29

Post by MatthewPhillips »

bunderbunder wrote: post #27
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partially agree. I think it's a combination of 2 things (the second being more or less the same as what you are saying): 1) Their brand reputation became toxic over time. Windows ME was seen as a bad product. XP prior to service pack 1 was seen as a bad product. Normal people knew what the blue screen of death with. Normal people made jokes about the quality of Windows. Correct or not, their market dominance (seen…

> Their brand reputation became toxic over time. This. Combined with their failure to realize this. I strongly suspect that Windows Phone would have been more successful if they hadn't given it a name that evokes innumerable products with which everyone has a love-hate relationship at best. > They are just an old company. They're 362 days older than Apple.

> They're 362 days older than Apple.

This Apple is really NeXT.

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#30

Post by Nelson69 »

DenisM wrote: post #16
potatolicious wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you were downvoted. Upvoted even though I don't particularly agree. Having lived in Seattle for a couple of years, and knowing many Microsoft employees during that time, my outsider's view is that MS's consumer-side failures are largely geographical and cultural. Redmond, or even Bellevue, is extremely isolated from Seattle, which in and of itself is not exactly deeply intertwined with the cultural cente…

Having worked there for 11 years I also got the impression that company management is inadvertently trying to stay culturally isolated. For example, when the iPhone came out, the management called AT&T and asked them to exclude the iPhone from the previously negotiated Microsoft Employee Discount program. MS phone is Ok, Blackberry is Ok, iPhone not Ok. The effect was, obviously, even less awareness of the best produ…

Re: 'trying to kill MS..'

I've never worked there. I did work at IBM while MS was beating the hell out of OS/2 and Lotus though. During those years, MS did use phrases like "cut off the air supply" and "embrace, extend and extinguish." "Killing the opposition" seems like it's a very deep part of their corporate ethos, at least that's what a lot of their competition thinks and FWIW, their golder years seemed to be when they were more vocally that way. I'm not sure that's the healthiest approach to take. From there, every thing starts to look like defense, are they making a given play because they have something to contribute and a vision of how search, mobile, gaming, etc.. should be that's different than the market? Or are they making the play because they want to shore up their defenses?

I'm not sure I'll ever fully trust them, maybe if they had a complete outsider running the show.

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