4 ms·

I wish I could ask Steve Ballmer the following: You just said you missed a generation in the phone market. You also missed a generation in the browser, web serv

I wish I could ask Steve Ballmer the following: You just said you missed a generation in the phone market. You also missed a generation in the browser, web services, MP3 player and operating system* markets. How does this keep happening to you guys? I find it impossible to believe that with so many talented engineers no one wants to push the envelope; engineers live to push the envelope. So what exactly is the hangup? Am I wrong that your engineers are hungry? Is your management so unwieldy that no one can get anything done? Did you make innovative things that just didn't catch on? When asked what your plan was for the tablet market (which you haven't missed a generation on yet, but the clock is ticking) you responded simply: "It's called Windows" and laughed. What exactly is the joke here? The absurdity of the idea that Windows could ever fail to dominate a market? Wake the fuck up. Recently you had a QA on reddit regarding your new browser. Your response to almost every question of the form "Why didn't you include feature X?" was "Our market research shows people don't want feature X, we make what people want." Again you're only lying to yourselves and insulting us along the way. We are your users (at least we could be) and we're telling you what we want. What those answers mean to us is that your product is just never going to do what we want it to. Why do the QA with these people when all you're going to do is marginalize the concerns they express. I think I know why you keep slipping up here Steve. You're somehow under the mass delusion that things are still going well. This one less so than the others Vista wasn't a missed generation so much as just not up to snuff. *To be fair this this QA was done in 2 parts first with marketing people then with programmers the prior having much more of this type of response than the latter.

Lewisham 16y ago
Everything I've ever read about Microsoft's problems always point the finger at crippling management problems. Each department is out for themselves, not for the good of the company as a whole (see the Kin/WP7 debacle), and yet many departments have says and vetos on those of another (there's a good piece about the Windows Start Menu shutdown behavior somewhere... it indicated all sorts of problems with the kernel team telling the UI team what to do). As soon as the inmates aren't running the asylum, Microsoft does much better. The Entertainment and Devices division and MS has pretty much full autonomy, and they come up with a very popular console line and a unique motion gesture system within two generations, they take a chance on the Zune (particularly the second generation UI... although the Zune didn't sell in the end, they put up a good effort). Microsoft Research does great stuff, and is also completely autonomous. Ray Ozzie was supposed to move Microsoft away from monolithic development, but it requires a full rebuild of Microsoft's structure, which I can only assume Ballmer is stalling.
- jfb 16y ago
  From friends on the inside, it sounds like a nightmarish political situation, with powerful, long-established, and hugely profitable nearly-autonomous fiefdoms at continual war with one another. There are excellent people there, and excellent technologies, and a cripplingly awful corporate culture.
  - jdoliner 16y ago
    So do they just figure they'll ride the gravy train until it completely breaks down? Do they acknowledge this is a problem or do they just think it's fine?
    - jfb 16y ago
      Probably depends on where in management you happen to be. If you're in charge of, say, Office, and the huge profits that that makes, why change what you're doing? Why exert the effort to integrate your product better, or take a short term hit to profitability in the interest of a larger goal? It reads from the outside like a real incentive mismatch problem. At the level of the people who do the work, I think there's great awareness of the fuckedupedness, but that's matched by their total lack of ability to change things. Honestly, I don't really know, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft incapable of stopping their slide into irrelevance.
      - Lewisham 16y ago
        That's the sort of managerial problems that can only be solved from the top down. Shake-ups, reshufflings, and some good old fashioned ass-kicking can begin turning the ship around. A lot of Apple enthusiasts like to say "Apple's excellence isn't just Steve Jobs," but I think in the case of Microsoft, one can reasonably say "Microsoft's brokenness is just Steve Ballmer." I think he's almost completely blind to pretty much everything that's happening in his company, and the tech world at large. I'm not really sure what value the board think he adds. I guess something to do with sales and marketing, given his background, but it's not like Microsoft's image is doing all that well either. One other MS subdivision I forgot to mention that are doing well is Bing. They're doing some great work. I'm not sure who they report to, and what their level of autonomy is.
jonursenbach 16y ago
I'm Jon Ursenbach and Windows 8 didn't have my idea.

Lewisham 16y ago

Everything I've ever read about Microsoft's problems always point the finger at crippling management problems. Each department is out for themselves, not for the good of the company as a whole (see the Kin/WP7 debacle), and yet many departments have says and vetos on those of another (there's a good piece about the Windows Start Menu shutdown behavior somewhere... it indicated all sorts of problems with the kernel team telling the UI team what to do). As soon as the inmates aren't running the asylum, Microsoft does much better. The Entertainment and Devices division and MS has pretty much full autonomy, and they come up with a very popular console line and a unique motion gesture system within two generations, they take a chance on the Zune (particularly the second generation UI... although the Zune didn't sell in the end, they put up a good effort). Microsoft Research does great stuff, and is also completely autonomous. Ray Ozzie was supposed to move Microsoft away from monolithic development, but it requires a full rebuild of Microsoft's structure, which I can only assume Ballmer is stalling.

jfb 16y ago
From friends on the inside, it sounds like a nightmarish political situation, with powerful, long-established, and hugely profitable nearly-autonomous fiefdoms at continual war with one another. There are excellent people there, and excellent technologies, and a cripplingly awful corporate culture.
- jdoliner 16y ago
  So do they just figure they'll ride the gravy train until it completely breaks down? Do they acknowledge this is a problem or do they just think it's fine?
  - jfb 16y ago
    Probably depends on where in management you happen to be. If you're in charge of, say, Office, and the huge profits that that makes, why change what you're doing? Why exert the effort to integrate your product better, or take a short term hit to profitability in the interest of a larger goal? It reads from the outside like a real incentive mismatch problem. At the level of the people who do the work, I think there's great awareness of the fuckedupedness, but that's matched by their total lack of ability to change things. Honestly, I don't really know, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft incapable of stopping their slide into irrelevance.
    - Lewisham 16y ago
      That's the sort of managerial problems that can only be solved from the top down. Shake-ups, reshufflings, and some good old fashioned ass-kicking can begin turning the ship around. A lot of Apple enthusiasts like to say "Apple's excellence isn't just Steve Jobs," but I think in the case of Microsoft, one can reasonably say "Microsoft's brokenness is just Steve Ballmer." I think he's almost completely blind to pretty much everything that's happening in his company, and the tech world at large. I'm not really sure what value the board think he adds. I guess something to do with sales and marketing, given his background, but it's not like Microsoft's image is doing all that well either. One other MS subdivision I forgot to mention that are doing well is Bing. They're doing some great work. I'm not sure who they report to, and what their level of autonomy is.

jonursenbach 16y ago

I'm Jon Ursenbach and Windows 8 didn't have my idea.