4 ms·

I think Gates was losing sleep because he had come to expect to win everywhere all the time. Myrhvold’s reply (in a lower tweet) is a gentle way of saying that

I think Gates was losing sleep because he had come to expect to win everywhere all the time. Myrhvold’s reply (in a lower tweet) is a gentle way of saying that Microsoft doesn’t have to, to succeed as a company. I think as a company finds continuous, outsized success, there is a risk for a leader’s mindset to get warped and resistant to anything but outsized success. Anything less than domination looks like a problem, an anomaly that must be found and destroyed. I think it might explain some otherwise indefensible behavior, like HP spying on their board, or all the shady stuff that Uber was doing, or even MS’s own anti-competitive behavior. I think leaders have to get shocked out of this mindset or just removed. Gates was shocked by MS’s conviction and stepped down. Ballmer and Kalanick were pressured to resign by investors. Both MS and Uber have benefited from new leadership that lowered the temperature and refocused the company. I also think it explains why Facebook is the way it is now. There doesn’t seem to be such pressure points available for Zuckerberg though.

nyanpasu64 5y ago
Microsoft's new leadership may have "lowered the temperature and refocused the company" to open-source software, but now they're more than ever anticompetitively promoting Edge and Videos and etc., progressively making it harder to switch browsers or make Start/F1 search open a different browser, manipulating users who use Edge search for Chrome, making Edge run in the background for fast start (I suspect to make it appear faster to start than Chrome), baking telemetry into Windows and VS Code and PowerShell and vcpkg, releasing proprietary extensions for proprietary VS Code which won't run on open-source VSCodium, performing hostile takeovers of .NET Foundation projects, etc.
wanderingmind 5y ago
>"Both MS and Uber have benefited from new leadership that lowered the temperature and refocused the company." This is the same Uber that has given up on any future tech leadership and sold its autonomous driving group away right?
- Rastonbury 5y ago
  Choice between bleeding money and haemorrhaging it
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Uber made the smart choice. They can always buy back into autonomous vehicles when a company comes up with an autonomous vehicle the works well in all weather conditions. All they have to do is buy them and add them to their fleet and combine with their current app infrastructure.
  - belter 5y ago
    I was told autonomous vehicles in all weather was a solved problem...
    - Tostino 5y ago
      It seems like 4 years ago we were sooooooo close to self driving, if you listened to the rhetoric.
asveikau 5y ago
One of the weird things about this is that Microsoft had compiler and programming language stuff as their bread and butter for a time. So Myrhvold's reply does include "embrace and extend" and that they'll do J++, but I'm not sure why that point wasn't emphasized more. A programming language ecosystem was their wheelhouse. They of course got in trouble trying to out-Java Java, and still calling it Java. They did C# and while it did not "kill Java", it was hugely successful for them. It'd be a somewhat reasonable and simple answer, and an honest one, to Gates's concern: "well, let's be a kickass platform to run Java on."
risyachka 5y ago
It's not just the mindset of leaders. Tech companies don't have a choice but to grow fast all the time. As soon as the growth stops even a little, they lose investor interest and their stock will crash unless they find the way to keep going.

nyanpasu64 5y ago

Microsoft's new leadership may have "lowered the temperature and refocused the company" to open-source software, but now they're more than ever anticompetitively promoting Edge and Videos and etc., progressively making it harder to switch browsers or make Start/F1 search open a different browser, manipulating users who use Edge search for Chrome, making Edge run in the background for fast start (I suspect to make it appear faster to start than Chrome), baking telemetry into Windows and VS Code and PowerShell and vcpkg, releasing proprietary extensions for proprietary VS Code which won't run on open-source VSCodium, performing hostile takeovers of .NET Foundation projects, etc.

wanderingmind 5y ago

>"Both MS and Uber have benefited from new leadership that lowered the temperature and refocused the company." This is the same Uber that has given up on any future tech leadership and sold its autonomous driving group away right?

Rastonbury 5y ago
Choice between bleeding money and haemorrhaging it
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Uber made the smart choice. They can always buy back into autonomous vehicles when a company comes up with an autonomous vehicle the works well in all weather conditions. All they have to do is buy them and add them to their fleet and combine with their current app infrastructure.
- belter 5y ago
  I was told autonomous vehicles in all weather was a solved problem...
  - Tostino 5y ago
    It seems like 4 years ago we were sooooooo close to self driving, if you listened to the rhetoric.

asveikau 5y ago

One of the weird things about this is that Microsoft had compiler and programming language stuff as their bread and butter for a time. So Myrhvold's reply does include "embrace and extend" and that they'll do J++, but I'm not sure why that point wasn't emphasized more. A programming language ecosystem was their wheelhouse. They of course got in trouble trying to out-Java Java, and still calling it Java. They did C# and while it did not "kill Java", it was hugely successful for them. It'd be a somewhat reasonable and simple answer, and an honest one, to Gates's concern: "well, let's be a kickass platform to run Java on."

risyachka 5y ago

It's not just the mindset of leaders. Tech companies don't have a choice but to grow fast all the time. As soon as the growth stops even a little, they lose investor interest and their stock will crash unless they find the way to keep going.