BS: Microsoft's Downfall...

Subject: BS: Microsoft's Downfall...
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 19 Jul 12 - 10:21 PM

Fascinating article... and has the ring of truth: Microsoft's Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant

Key excerpts:
...a management system known as "stack ranking"—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft's ability to innovate. "Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees," Eichenwald writes. "If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review," says a former software developer. "It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies."

........

...Microsoft had a prototype e-reader ready to go in 1998, but when the technology group presented it to Bill Gates he promptly gave it a thumbs-down, saying it wasn't right for Microsoft. "He didn't like the user interface, because it didn't look like Windows," a programmer involved in the project recalls.

........

When one of the young developers of MSN Messenger noticed college kids giving status updates on AOL's AIM, he saw what Microsoft's product lacked. "That was the beginning of the trend toward Facebook, people having somewhere to put their thoughts, a continuous stream of consciousness," he tells Eichenwald. "The main purpose of AIM wasn't to chat, but to give you the chance to log in at any time and check out what your friends were doing." When he pointed out to his boss that Messenger lacked a short-message feature, the older man dismissed his concerns; he couldn't see why young people would care about putting up a few words. "He didn't get it," the developer says. "And because he didn't know or didn't believe how young people were using messenger programs, we didn't do anything."

........

"They used to point their finger at IBM and laugh," said Bill Hill, a former Microsoft manager. "Now they've become the thing they despised."

A lesson for us all...

BTW, I read this article after reading the Vanity Fair article posted by Jack the Sailor in the "Tax avioder in chief?" thread (which I highly recommend!), and it struck me that there are real similarities between what happened at Microsoft (and so many other places) and what's happened to cause the banking crisis, i.e., a shift from focusing on substance/product/reality to a preoccupation with image/money/illusion.

An all-too-familiar story that you'd think/hope we'd have learned from, by now...

Subject: RE: BS: Microsoft's Downfall...
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 12:46 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VroXT51r_2Y&feature=fvsr

Subject: RE: BS: Microsoft's Downfall...
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 07:25 AM

While there's a little bit of truth, of course, in the opinions expressed in the article, my experience working with Microsoft (hesitating to say for them) and separately using Microsoft products over nearly four decades would point to other causes for poor performance in recent years/decades. It's unlikely that any single cause (of the ones known) could have caused their decline, but too many "contributing causes" accumulated.

Employee rankings are never popular anywhere, but there is a need for some systematic tracking of employee performance.

Claiming "one cause" that happens to be the thing you're pissed about is nearly always too simplistic - and nearly always (as, IMO, in this case) just simply wrong.

There's a lot more to the story than is in this story.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Microsoft's Downfall...
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 10:17 AM

Agreed, JiK. I've been a sysad (some would say "sysodd"), a boss and a thinking person for at least two weeks and I've noticed that there are ALWAYS multiple causes for things...and that means complex solutions are needed.

There is not single bad guy and no magic pill or silver bullet, no matter what we'd like to believe.

Subject: RE: BS: Microsoft's Downfall...
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 10:34 AM

I accord with JohninKansas, I think the term "downfall" may be a bit overblown. If I had a dollar for every time I read about IBM's demise, I could buy a nice new Lenovo laptop.   I could buy an ipod with Apple demise stories, Microsoft, is not even in "Streets and Trips" territory (about $25.00)

Subject: RE: BS: Microsoft's Downfall...
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 12:30 PM

Jack, Rap & John, I agree with you; it's easy to oversimplify and forget about gray areas and complex, multiple causes. And "downfall" prolly isn't the best word to use (although it prolly gets more readers...).

John, while I wouldn't deny the need for some way to evaluate employee performance, such a rigid, unforgiving system is clearly unproductive (not to mention likely to be highly inaccurate; just for starters, it has no way to allow for the possibility of a team of people who are all brilliant, or all rubbish -- which does happen now & then...)

Anyway, I don't think the article itself is saying that there was just one cause. And I still think that there's a connection in the shift from concern about substance (what will be useful/of interest to our customers) to the concern about image (how do we make sure we look like we're productive). (Even though I'm sure John is right when he says "There's a lot more to the story than is in this story.")

Subject: RE: BS: Microsoft's Downfall...
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 12:34 PM

BTW, "Guest's" link above is to some guy singing in Italian, and is spam, IMO.

Subject: RE: BS: Microsoft's Downfall...
From: GUEST,999
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 03:49 PM

That was me. I posted to the wrong thread, Yorkshire. My apologies.

Subject: RE: BS: Microsoft's Downfall...
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 20 Jul 12 - 06:45 PM

Fair enough... thanks for letting us know.