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Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

blog.seattlepi.com

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Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#31

Post by city41 »

Tichy wrote: post #26
city41 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia, Apple has 34k employees. Microsoft has over 100k. Maybe at that scale, 34k and 100k aren't very different, or maybe that's like night and day.

34K still seems a lot, but how many are really involved in developing the core products? A lot of them would probably be sales people etc? Maybe MS would do better with 34K than 100K people...

A lot of people have that opinion. Such as the Mini-Microsoft blog: http://minimsft.blogspot.com/, which is supposedly ran by an MS employee.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#33

Post by vlad »

tmsh wrote: post #4

Can you think of a project, a product or a company that succeeded with a somewhat negative-sounding name (even if meant somewhat ironically or as sort of a renegade mentality)? I'm drawing a blank.... It's odd that I can't think of a single one though. Even among game studios, etc.

Gimp

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#35

Post by kalid »

Tichy wrote: post #26
city41 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia, Apple has 34k employees. Microsoft has over 100k. Maybe at that scale, 34k and 100k aren't very different, or maybe that's like night and day.

34K still seems a lot, but how many are really involved in developing the core products? A lot of them would probably be sales people etc? Maybe MS would do better with 34K than 100K people...

Yes, and how many work in their retail stores (not sure if that's included). Every Apple store I've been to seems to have a 1:1 customer to employee ratio.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#36

Post by evilduck »

kenjackson wrote: post #29
rbanffy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they would be better off giving up on owning the mobile platform They can't afford that. Their strength comes from the lack of viable options - each of their product lines reinforces the dependency on other product lines. If you use Exchange, you probably won't be able to use anything other than Outlook, which runs on Windows and is part of Office, which makes using Sharepoint more or less painless, which runs only…

Or the other more sensible response that mobile devices are one of the major growth segment in the industry. Why would you give up on that? But conspiracy theories work too.

What conspiracy theory? The vendor lock-in behavior of MS is practically advertised as a platform feature. To up and reverse their product lock-in policy would cast doubt on many (most?) of their other claims.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#37

Post by tmsh »

tmsh wrote: post #32
Tichy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doom

Ah nice, that's what I was looking for.

I can't seem to reply to the comment below me in response. But basically re:

Danger, one of the sample words you mentioned, is the name of a company that Microsoft bought.

That's why I asked the question. My thought is that there is a psychological excuse to have low expectations for a project, product, or company if it has negative connotations (and not 'making fun of' or 'humorous' connotations).

I've seen projects fail with clever negative titles (mostly via acronyms). Not because the developers were bad -- but because, I think, it might give the management or business side an excuse to look for failure. Or it may create other headaches psychologically for the people involved.

That's the only reason I asked the question. I admire people who take those risks. But it may be worth thinking it through. Or maybe not..

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#38

Post by timr »

Anechoic wrote: post #8
lanstein wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/ did happen in the past (Apple)

Sure, and it's arguably happening right now to some of the companies I mentioned (Dell, Yahoo) but if/when they recover it will likely happen again. Apple will likely face bad times at some point in the future.

Don't tell anyone, but I think it's happening to Google right now. It's just early stages (like MS in 1995), and Google still has more good products than bad, so it isn't exceptionally noticeable.

But the recent, high-profile launch disasters, the clutter that's slowly creeping into the result pages, and stuff like the search page background goofiness...they sure feel like early MS-style mistakes.....

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#39

Post by nostrademons »

rbanffy wrote: post #15
thought_alarm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but most companies can't rely on the revenue from two gigantic monopolies to keep the zombie alive. It will take a lot more than the failure of the Kin (which it appears was set up to fail all along) to change the corporate and engineering culture at MS.

Which means it will bleed more and longer than any previous tech giant. I'll grab my popcorn and enjoy it thoroughly.

IBM has been bleeding for a long time and they still haven't died yet.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#40

Post by MartinCron »

rbanffy wrote: post #18
robryan wrote: post #13

You'd have to think they would be better off giving up on owning the mobile platform, given that they are up against Android and iOS/iPhone I don't think they could possibly come up with something compelling enough to get mobile companies to pay for a license over the free Android OS which iterate much faster. Possibly they could form a partnership with the aim of bringing other products to a platform. They could sup…

> they would be better off giving up on owning the mobile platform They can't afford that. Their strength comes from the lack of viable options - each of their product lines reinforces the dependency on other product lines. If you use Exchange, you probably won't be able to use anything other than Outlook, which runs on Windows and is part of Office, which makes using Sharepoint more or less painless, which runs only…

I agree with everything but your comment about Sharepoint. Nothing can ever make that painless.
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