5 ms·

Pretty much the entire leadership from that era has cycled out. Ship of Theseus. Is Microsoft still a 800lbs gorilla that does 800lbs gorilla things? Yes. But

Pretty much the entire leadership from that era has cycled out. Ship of Theseus. Is Microsoft still a 800lbs gorilla that does 800lbs gorilla things? Yes. But let's not pretend they employ the same strategies today that made them the bad guys at the turn of the millennium.

hinkley 6y ago
They were monsters for at least 20 years. It has been 6 since Ballmer left, and it takes a few years for an organization to start rebound from the personality of the previous boss. 6 years and a single CEO does not constitute a rebirth. When the next CEO is still doing the same thing, you can talk about what Microsoft is.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  While you're stuck with your notions for the next 6 years or however long until you feel they need to behave, other people, including your competitors, get to enjoy the fruits of evaluating Microsoft for what it is now, not what it was. Reminds me of when Visual Studio Code came out and some people denied themselves of what would end up being one of the best editors to come out in a while just because they refused to use something with such a Microsoft-ey name...
  - hinkley 6y ago
    We are in a world where there are so many options there aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with them all. Do you know why we're in this world? We are in this world because Microsoft stumbled. They aren't just a large company that people have an old grudge against. They're very specifically the people who kept us from having the option to not consider a particular company and still have any reasonable options at all.
    - BoorishBears 6y ago
      I'm not even going to bother pointing out the dramatization here... Because this is all tangential to the fact that in a world that now moves one financial quarter at a time, six years is a lifetime. MS's direction has been consistent and it's been good. If you're waiting for another six years to let MS prove themselves, it's on you, but again, plenty of other people will reap the benefits of not doing so
- tomnipotent 6y ago
  > They were monsters for at least 20 years Microsoft is a company run by people, and those people have changed (the "they" you mentioned). Gates & Balmer are now nothing more than shareholders (Gates stepped down from the board in March this year). Believe it or not, it's people that determine how a company is run and the people running Microsoft today are not the people that were running it in the 80s & 90s. Large business units with billions in revenue take years to change direction, and we've seen that clearly happen under Nadella.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    I read MiniMSFT while they were active in the 00's. The nastiness we saw continued layers down the chain of command. It wasn't just a despot at the wheel, everyone in the bus was singing road trip songs. I will admit that it says something that Satya was able to survive inside of Microsoft during the worst parts of this, but I don't know if that says more about how amazing Satya is, or that the internal toxicity is over-reported. We all know multiple people who have reported horrible things about Amazon too, and yet there are still people who enjoy working there. Everyone has their own version of the truth, but once bitten twice shy, and I've lost count of the bite marks. Have your truth, just keep it outside of arm's reach of my nose, thank you.
    - tomnipotent 6y ago
      > I read MiniMSFT And I'm sure it had zero benefit from exaggerating stories to increase readership. I've worked at companies that have been the ire of the press, and know first hand it's many degrees separated from reality. > It wasn't just a despot at the wheel Except it was. We've seen this consistently in leadership, including just recently WeWork, Uber and the U.S. government. When a nasty person is at top, it legitimizes nasty people everywhere else. > We all know multiple people who have reported horrible things about Amazon too, No, we don't actually know them. We read some news stories specifically centered around warehousing and distribution as Amazon grew from 34,000 employees in 2010 to over 1,000,000 in 2020.
      - halter73 6y ago
jacquesm 6y ago
The people that are the leaders there today chose to work for exactly that company. That says a lot about their ethics.
- tomnipotent 6y ago
  > That says a lot about their ethics This is rhetoric. Microsoft wasn't committing genocide, it just abused capitalism.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    I think you need to brush up on what ethics means. It goes a lot further than whether or not you're committing genocide, though, obviously if and when you do you are ethically and morally utterly bankrupt. But this is not a binary affair.
    - tomnipotent 6y ago
      Taking jabs at people that took jobs at Microsoft because you have a grudge says more about you than them. Microsoft never did anything so horrible that someone should have their ethics called into question for working there. Such poor taste.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        With all your comments in this thread I think you're protesting a bit much.
mr_toad 6y ago
> But let's not pretend they employ the same strategies today that made them the bad guys at the turn of the millennium. Yeah, but did they decide to stop shooting, or did they just run out of ammunition?
- signal11 6y ago
  They chose a different gun, I think. If you told me in 2000 that, 20 years on, Microsoft would be the world #2 in cloud (or utility computing, a concept Sun really tried to popularize in the 90s) computing and IBM would be an also-ran, I’d have laughed at you. (I guess the news that a bookseller was the world #1 in cloud computing would be even more of a shock.)

hinkley 6y ago

They were monsters for at least 20 years. It has been 6 since Ballmer left, and it takes a few years for an organization to start rebound from the personality of the previous boss. 6 years and a single CEO does not constitute a rebirth. When the next CEO is still doing the same thing, you can talk about what Microsoft is.

BoorishBears 6y ago
While you're stuck with your notions for the next 6 years or however long until you feel they need to behave, other people, including your competitors, get to enjoy the fruits of evaluating Microsoft for what it is now, not what it was. Reminds me of when Visual Studio Code came out and some people denied themselves of what would end up being one of the best editors to come out in a while just because they refused to use something with such a Microsoft-ey name...
- hinkley 6y ago
  We are in a world where there are so many options there aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with them all. Do you know why we're in this world? We are in this world because Microsoft stumbled. They aren't just a large company that people have an old grudge against. They're very specifically the people who kept us from having the option to not consider a particular company and still have any reasonable options at all.
  - BoorishBears 6y ago
    I'm not even going to bother pointing out the dramatization here... Because this is all tangential to the fact that in a world that now moves one financial quarter at a time, six years is a lifetime. MS's direction has been consistent and it's been good. If you're waiting for another six years to let MS prove themselves, it's on you, but again, plenty of other people will reap the benefits of not doing so
tomnipotent 6y ago
> They were monsters for at least 20 years Microsoft is a company run by people, and those people have changed (the "they" you mentioned). Gates & Balmer are now nothing more than shareholders (Gates stepped down from the board in March this year). Believe it or not, it's people that determine how a company is run and the people running Microsoft today are not the people that were running it in the 80s & 90s. Large business units with billions in revenue take years to change direction, and we've seen that clearly happen under Nadella.
- hinkley 6y ago
  I read MiniMSFT while they were active in the 00's. The nastiness we saw continued layers down the chain of command. It wasn't just a despot at the wheel, everyone in the bus was singing road trip songs. I will admit that it says something that Satya was able to survive inside of Microsoft during the worst parts of this, but I don't know if that says more about how amazing Satya is, or that the internal toxicity is over-reported. We all know multiple people who have reported horrible things about Amazon too, and yet there are still people who enjoy working there. Everyone has their own version of the truth, but once bitten twice shy, and I've lost count of the bite marks. Have your truth, just keep it outside of arm's reach of my nose, thank you.
  - tomnipotent 6y ago
    > I read MiniMSFT And I'm sure it had zero benefit from exaggerating stories to increase readership. I've worked at companies that have been the ire of the press, and know first hand it's many degrees separated from reality. > It wasn't just a despot at the wheel Except it was. We've seen this consistently in leadership, including just recently WeWork, Uber and the U.S. government. When a nasty person is at top, it legitimizes nasty people everywhere else. > We all know multiple people who have reported horrible things about Amazon too, No, we don't actually know them. We read some news stories specifically centered around warehousing and distribution as Amazon grew from 34,000 employees in 2010 to over 1,000,000 in 2020.
    - halter73 6y ago

jacquesm 6y ago

The people that are the leaders there today chose to work for exactly that company. That says a lot about their ethics.

tomnipotent 6y ago
> That says a lot about their ethics This is rhetoric. Microsoft wasn't committing genocide, it just abused capitalism.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  I think you need to brush up on what ethics means. It goes a lot further than whether or not you're committing genocide, though, obviously if and when you do you are ethically and morally utterly bankrupt. But this is not a binary affair.
  - tomnipotent 6y ago
    Taking jabs at people that took jobs at Microsoft because you have a grudge says more about you than them. Microsoft never did anything so horrible that someone should have their ethics called into question for working there. Such poor taste.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      With all your comments in this thread I think you're protesting a bit much.

mr_toad 6y ago

> But let's not pretend they employ the same strategies today that made them the bad guys at the turn of the millennium. Yeah, but did they decide to stop shooting, or did they just run out of ammunition?

signal11 6y ago
They chose a different gun, I think. If you told me in 2000 that, 20 years on, Microsoft would be the world #2 in cloud (or utility computing, a concept Sun really tried to popularize in the 90s) computing and IBM would be an also-ran, I’d have laughed at you. (I guess the news that a bookseller was the world #1 in cloud computing would be even more of a shock.)