181–190 of 242 posts
"Microsoft's choice of codename for the console project – Midway – was a deliberate statement, one that may seem problematic in a more enlightened age, referring as it does to the World War II battle in which US forces defeated the Japanese. " Hard to believe someone wrote that non-ironically...
'He tells us: "Eventually somebody would come back to you with your idea – they would say, 'Hey, you know, this doesn't need Windows at all'. And you have to control your urge to fucking kill them, because you've been telling them that for two years and now they finally come up with it like it's their idea. But that's the Jedi mind trick." ' OMG. I learned this a few years ago working in a corp environment with stubb…
If your goal is to change the world--incepting some politician to change their position or some businessperson to alter their product--that makes a lot of sense... if you are working for some company extracting value from you, why would you ever do this? I can't imagine it would help your career any... shouldn't you be spending all of that effort finding a less toxic place to work?
People are far more willing to promote an idea they played a role in creating than one which they are just a passive party to. In large organizations, getting buy-in is critical to moving anything forward, so you need to have higher-ups going to bat for your ideas.
One way to use this approach to your career advantage is to make sure you are a few steps ahead once the idea takes hold. This makes it clear that you also had the idea, and you were smart enough to consider the consequences of it.
"Microsoft's choice of codename for the console project – Midway – was a deliberate statement, one that may seem problematic in a more enlightened age, referring as it does to the World War II battle in which US forces defeated the Japanese. " Hard to believe someone wrote that non-ironically...
Wikipedia tells me 3,000 Japanese soldiers died in the Battle of Midway. [1]
If I gloss over the fact that they were soldiers and not civilians, and ignore the injuries, in terms of one-day death toll, it's the same as 9/11. Sure, the Japanese military was the aggressor in WWII, but it seems rude to mention 3,000 human deaths for a cheap "take that!"
I mean, the Confederates sure don't like it when we remind them that they lost the American Civil war. They were in the wrong, but they're still real sensitive about losing. In polite company I wouldn't mention it. [2]
As an optional fun fact, Midway Games was probably using the same allegory when they picked their name. [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_midway
[2] The Internet, of course, not being polite.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When he started Microsoft had the most popular OS, web browser and mobile OS. A decade later they lost all three and their market cap barely moved.
I'm sorry, but their market cap is like 10x in the past decade. Their revenue streams are different now, yes, but they recognized they'd lost the platform with the SaaSification of most things and they wisely moved into other areas. Yes, they could have tried something else that kept them as the winners of the OS game, but vertical integration wasn't really in their bloodstream. Platforming and services were.
> their market cap is like 10x in the past decade
Steve Ballmer left 6 years ago. Pick your source regarding Microsoft's market cap while Ballmer was leading:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your goal is to change the world--incepting some politician to change their position or some businessperson to alter their product--that makes a lot of sense... if you are working for some company extracting value from you, why would you ever do this? I can't imagine it would help your career any... shouldn't you be spending all of that effort finding a less toxic place to work?
It's not toxicity though - it's human psychology. The classic book "How To Win Friends And Influence People" even mentions this strategy when discussing winning people over to your ideas. People are far more willing to promote an idea they played a role in creating than one which they are just a passive party to. In large organizations, getting buy-in is critical to moving anything forward, so you need to have higher…
"This book had a profound effect on me, however, of the negative variety. It did give me pointers on how to actually break out of my shell and "win friends" but in the long term, it did way more harm than good. Not the book per se, but my choice to follow the advice given there. The book basically tells you to be agreeable to everybody, find something to honestly like about them and compliment them on it, talk about their interests only and, practically, act like a people pleaser all the time.
It might sound like a harmless, or even attractive idea in theory, but choosing to apply it in your every day life can lead to dangerous results. Case in point: after being a smiley happy person with loads of friends for about a year, the unpleasant realization began to creep in, that by being so agreeable to everybody else, I rarely ever got my way. I also sustained friendships with people who were self-centered, so talking about their interests was all we got to do together, which drained me of my energy. The worst thing still, is that by trying to find something to like about every person, I completely disregarded their glaring faults. It didn't matter that those people did have redeeming qualities - they weren't redeeming enough! I ended up with a bunch of friends I didn't really want and, because I was so preoccupied with "winning" those friendships I missed out on the chance to form relationships with good people.
I suppose, for somebody who is a better judge of character, the principles outlined in this book could be of some value. But that's really just me trying to find something positive (using the "principles") in a book that I am still trying to UN learn.
If you want to win friends, you have to do it the hard way, by being yourself and risking rejection (and daring to do some rejection of your own, as well). And if you want to influence people the only fair way to do it is through honesty. All the rest is manipulation and pretending. Do not read this book, you'll only learn how to manipulate yourself & others. Do not read it out of fear of rejection & low self-esteem, there are better ways to gain some courage in approaching people. This will harm you in the long run.
Thank you for reading this review." — Caroline [1]
I'm sharing this review because trying Carnegie's strategies had the exact same effect on me.
> "You'd have to sit in a meeting with Bill, and he's frighteningly brilliant. People throw around the word 'genius' all the time, and the way people say 'genius' is not accurate if you've met somebody who is a genius – somebody who, when you meet them, it seems like aliens are whispering in their ear because there's no way they could know these things otherwise. This is a different kind of a thing, and Bill's like t…
In a different universe, I think Microsoft [..] builds “AWS” and “Chrome” around the IIS/IE combination. With reason to abandon the Wintel cash cow, IE may not have been so distastefully bad. Instead, we would have TCP/IP replaced my Microsoft QUIC(tm), accompanied by a 40,000-page specification riddled with "just to what IIS does" explanations, thereby ensuring no other browser could ever emerge.
From what I heard, by 1999 they knew they had mispredicted their internet strategy, but everyone was too fearful of the US government to make drastic changes. One friend said they couldn’t mention competitors by name in their org. So they stuck to their guns and doubled down on enterprise servers and OSes. I don’t recall when MsSQL started, but it was another step in that direction.
"Microsoft's choice of codename for the console project – Midway – was a deliberate statement, one that may seem problematic in a more enlightened age, referring as it does to the World War II battle in which US forces defeated the Japanese. " Hard to believe someone wrote that non-ironically...
Actually it's super-easy to believe, barely an inconvenience. Wikipedia tells me 3,000 Japanese soldiers died in the Battle of Midway. [1] If I gloss over the fact that they were soldiers and not civilians, and ignore the injuries, in terms of one-day death toll, it's the same as 9/11. Sure, the Japanese military was the aggressor in WWII, but it seems rude to mention 3,000 human deaths for a cheap "take that!" I mea…
Really? I always thought this was because they were founded in Chicago, near Midway airport. (The airport itself was named after the battle though). Midway games got started in video games licensing games from japanese companies Taito and Namco, so I never thought about an adversarial explaination of the name.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not toxicity though - it's human psychology. The classic book "How To Win Friends And Influence People" even mentions this strategy when discussing winning people over to your ideas. People are far more willing to promote an idea they played a role in creating than one which they are just a passive party to. In large organizations, getting buy-in is critical to moving anything forward, so you need to have higher…
> "How To Win Friends And Influence People" "This book had a profound effect on me, however, of the negative variety. It did give me pointers on how to actually break out of my shell and "win friends" but in the long term, it did way more harm than good. Not the book per se, but my choice to follow the advice given there. The book basically tells you to be agreeable to everybody, find something to honestly like about…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also that comment about midway being problematic. It compares the "battle" between Sony and Microsoft to an actual war in which a lot of people died. It also sets up the XBox as some sort of patriotic push to defeat the agressors that attacked us without warning. I'd be offended if I was working for the PS2 division at Sony at the time, I think. I also think I'd be offended if I was working on games for the XBox -…
> I'd be offended if I was working for the PS2 division at Sony at the time These are companies that trivialize violence with games in the first place. I doubt you would be working for them if a war analogy offended you.
"Microsoft's choice of codename for the console project – Midway – was a deliberate statement, one that may seem problematic in a more enlightened age, referring as it does to the World War II battle in which US forces defeated the Japanese. " Hard to believe someone wrote that non-ironically...
Actually it's super-easy to believe, barely an inconvenience. Wikipedia tells me 3,000 Japanese soldiers died in the Battle of Midway. [1] If I gloss over the fact that they were soldiers and not civilians, and ignore the injuries, in terms of one-day death toll, it's the same as 9/11. Sure, the Japanese military was the aggressor in WWII, but it seems rude to mention 3,000 human deaths for a cheap "take that!" I mea…
Edit: specifically the line "referring as it does to the World War II battle in which US forces defeated the Japanese."