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Steven Sinofsky to Leave Microsoft
- tiles 14y agoI always thought that Sinofsky was a driving force behind some of the changes that preceded Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. This comes as a great surprise to me and I hesitate to think who would be in a good position to follow him (and ultimately who would fill Ballmer's shoes in the company).
- ekianjo 14y agoIs this related to some reactions regarding Windows 8? Or simply some internal issues between Sinofsky and other execs?
- alpb 14y agoBallmer sent out an internal email about that but the company employees don't know why either.
- wsc981 14y agoOne of the comments in the linked article suggests that this could mean that the surface is selling much worse as expected. There might be some truth in this. As Steve Jobs has said: “Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.”
- barista 14y agoOr selling too well and causing the Microsoft partners to make some noise.
- msie 14y agoI predict the Start button will make a return.
- mkup 14y agoI guess consumer pressure on Microsoft tech support after Win8 release is above any limits. Lack of Start button, no easy way to shutdown PC, full-screen interface with no way of knowning which app is active and without easy way to switch them - all of these ones combined make up a perfect techsupport disaster. I wonder how large is average return rate of Windows 8 devices?
- alpb 14y agoI am not sure what that means at the moment but he was a strong man in the company so that he even prevented Xbox and Windows Phone divisions to develop an OS other than Windows. He was also being called as the next CEO of the company. I am not sure if that has anything to do with Win8. He was working at the company since 1989. (I was born in that year)
- aristidb 14y agoI soo wish the firms would give out more than boilerplate in such cases. If only we knew the actual reason... Now we're forced to speculate.
- curiousDog 14y agoThis is really really sad. Everyone must be very disappointed (Especially mini-microsoft). And the new head is a PM..heading windows engineering. More on Julie from Mary Jo: [1]"Larson-Green applied to Microsoft right after she got her business management degree from Western Washington University, only to be told no. But she did land a job at desktop-publishing-software maker Aldus working on the product support call lines. Microsoft "discovered" Larson-Green after a few Softies attended a talk she gave comparing Microsoft compilers to Borland compilers and asked her to run a Visual C++ focus group for the company. In 1993, she ended up landing a job on the Visual C++ team, where focused on the integrated development environment. She moved to the Internet Explorer team (where she worked on the user experience for IE 3.0 and 4.0) and then, in 1997, to the Office team to work on FrontPage, where she got her first group program manager job. She also did a stint on the SharePoint Team Services team, back when SharePoint was known as "Office.Net."" [1]http://www.zdnet.com/who-is-julie-larson-green-meet-the-new-head-of-windows-7000007292/ http://www.zdnet.com/who-is-julie-larson-green-meet-the-new-... Looks like the beginning of the end to me. On a conspiracy note, is Ballmer kicking out all his potential competitors?
- xibernetik 14y agoThe PM role is not at all about finance or marketing. PMs at Microsoft are expected to be technically competent and depending where they're stationed, may regularly contribute code. Julie Larson-Green is noted for her expertise in UI/UX. If anything, this exemplifies a shift to focusing on the end-user.
- curiousDog 14y agoSorry, confused Julie's bio with Tammy Reller's. She has an MBA and has indeed been leading the UI/UX efforts. Nonetheless, I still stand by point. I was an SDE at msft in OSD, so I know very well how technically competent PMs are and how much code they write.
- ryanmolden 14y agoSo your experience in OSD translates across a company of 90k+ people? Seems legit. I have met some PMs that probably couldn't write a line of shipping code too, I have also met some highly competent ones. I guess, like all things involving large numbers, there is a distribution, not all fall in the tail.
- general_failure 14y agoAm I the only one who has never heard of this guy?
- jacalata 14y agoNot at all, I expect my parents have never heard of him either.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- snprbob86 14y agoOuch. I never worked in one of Sinofski's orgs, but I know quite a few people who did. I got the impression that a lot of old timers and under-performers disliked him. Most of the people that I really respected liked him. From my perspective, that's the best kind of "divisive figure" to have. Maybe he pushed too hard...
- randomfool 14y agoMy understanding is that Sinofsky was just purging many partner-level folks. I'd be curious if that created a chorus of dissatisfaction, but I'd never heard of anything that would have caused his ouster.
- snprbob86 14y agoThat was my understanding as well. There are an absurd number of incompetent partner-level folks. It seemed that MAXIMIZE(TIME + BROWN_NOSING - CAREER_LIMITING_GAFFES) was an extremely successful strategy for getting promoted.
- codewright 14y agogaffe
- asveikau 14y agoI did work in a Sinofsky org. I was an individual contributor and didn't have a flashy title. What I saw was a man that maintained a sizable gap between reputation/rhetoric and reality. The man who supposedly cleaned up Windows did so largely by taking credit for the work of COSD, which he didn't run. For all he would amusedly repeat the phrase "don't ship the org chart", we pretty much ... shipped the org chart. During the big re-org he seemed very precise about getting a fixed number of reports on each team and having a constant tree height in all parts of the org chart, but during the (overly long) planning phase and during development he never seems to have asked the right questions of the folks doing the Modern UI or WinRT, such as "dude, what the fuck are you building?", or "does this shit make sense?" He empowered what is in the end a very dopey PM organization. He and his people would also veto stuff if it depended on non-Sinofsky divisions. He was also a staunch advocate of not doing things right the first time, and letting it become someone else's problem in a future release. I also recall he wrote in a blog post that it should be expected that people in their early 20s work unreasonably long hours and have no social life, and that expectation was clear if you looked at the rank and file of many important teams: lots of kids right out of college doing the work that you'd expect someone more experienced to have some role in, or at least mentor; I saw a fair number of regressions and crappy features result from this approach. Years ago some commenter on the "Mini Microsoft" blog called him "The George W. Bush of Microsoft". I tend to agree.
- randomfool 14y agoGood riddance. I left the company because I didn't want to deal with his idea of an ideal organization. I figured he was a shoe-in for CEO and it was just time until everyone was under him. Unfortunately I think he leaves a large trail behind him- too many lower-level people saw no chance to escape his way of doing things other than to leave the company.
- magamiako 14y agoCould you describe some of these things? You don't have to be detailed, obviously; but is there anything that sticks out? Development processes were off? Requirements too crazy?
- benihana 14y agoWhat was his idea of an ideal organization?
- snprbob86 14y agoI can't be positive what the parent post was referring to, but it's likely it has something to do with re-balancing the dev/test/pm/manager roles. Microsoft had started to get top heavy, so Sinofski had a lot of managers demoted to individual contributors and invented this odd "triad" system of dev/test/pm to try to keep things more balanced. It struck me as a passive aggressive and politically correct way to force some under-performers out. It had the positive side effect of preventing runaway PM orgs, but had the negative side effect of encumbering some well balanced teams. I assumed that it was an interrum strategy to get a handle on organizational complexity. However, other orgs around the company started being "Sinofski-ized" without any real understanding of what that meant.
- randomfool 14y agoPrecisely. From what I experienced, everything became decision by committee with the triads. I much prefer the single BOTL (Butt on the line), with every meeting having a single decision maker.
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- NZ_Matt 14y agoCNET did an excellent write up on Sinofsky just last month http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57536905-75/steven-sinofsky-microsofts-controversial-mr-windows-8/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57536905-75/steven-sinofsk...
- mikecane 14y agoSurface RT selling modestly due to limited distribution and poor reviews for RT itself. The hardware seems solid (I finally tried one tonight with both covers), but popping into the Desktop ruins the experience for people who only want Metro. (Me, I want full Win 8, so it matters a bit less to me... but breaking the Metro experience is still jarring.) OTOH, although I've heard of Metro app numbers increasing, there's clearly a lonnnng way yet to go for it. If all this is being pinned on Sinofsky, it's very short-sighted on Ballmer's part. With the legacy restrictions he had to deal with, I think Sinfosky did a very good job for a 1.0 product and the promise is there.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoFrom what I understand, Surface RT has been completely sold out for a week or two now at all the Microsoft stores. Not sure what that means though...
- kineticflow 14y ago>Surface RT selling modestly due to limited distribution [citation needed]
- sek 14y agohttp://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-next-ceo-of-microsoft-steven-sinofsky-is-the-heir-apparent-2012-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-next-ceo-of-microsof... Sinofsky was just too popular? Ballmer's CEO position is not sacrosanct. Some internal guy being a prominent public figure is the biggest risk for him i guess.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- sek 14y agoA few guys from minimsft suggested that Ballmer picked someone else for CEO and that's why Sinfosky left.
- j_baker 14y agoSinofsky, though seen as highly talented, was viewed at the top levels as not the kind of team player that the company was looking for. Dear lord. This sounds like something from Office Space. What exactly is the kind of "team player" the company is looking for?
- GuiA 14y agoSounds like a PC way of saying that he was not a team player.
- MBCook 14y agoI wonder what "team player" means here. Now I know absolutely nothing about internal MS politics. My immediate suspicion, based on how MS seems to operate, is that's code for "won't bow down to Windows/Office". I really hope that's not the reason. There have been so many times Microsoft seems to be unable to get out of its own way because they have integrate Windows/Office into something somehow. Maybe he was part of that problem, but the fact us was involved in Windows 8 makes me doubt it since they were willing to make radical changes (good or bad). If I had to guess, I'd put money on the lukewarm Surface reception being a final straw. The timing seems too perfect.
- dthunt 14y agoTeam Player in this sense probably means something along the lines of, 'plays well with others'. The article is suggesting that Sinofsky is the kind of person who did not, and that a less contentious person could have done an equally good job without alienating other senior leadership.
- MBCook 14y agoAn article at The Verge[1] suggests your right. In fact, that article suggests that he may have been fired earlier if things hadn't gone as well as they had during the Windows 8 and Surface launches. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/12/3638340/microsoft-steven-sinofsky-departure-personality http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/12/3638340/microsoft-steven-...
- benihana 14y agoSo I've always wondered what happens to you as a human when you're effectively fired from a high level, high visibility position. How does Sinofsky feel right now, emotionally? How does he feel professionally? Is this something someone shakes off as differences between opinionated guys in an organization? Or is this something that rocks him to his core? Does he go for another job right away? Or does he write a book and retire? I have absolutely no perspective on this issue and often wonder what it's like.
- w1ntermute 14y agoYeah, I wondered the same thing when the Petraeus scandal started. I know people that have been fired, but they've just left it out of their resume and moved on to another job. That doesn't work so well when you're in such a prominent position that your firing is all over the internet.
- jemeshsu 14y agoYou can read Steve Jobs' biography.
- thematt 14y agoWhat makes you think he was fired? He may not see Ballmer retiring anytime soon and decided to move on to something bigger and better.
- notJim 14y agoThe article suggests that he was "fired" in some way: > Sources have said the move came amid growing > tension between Sinofsky and other top executives. > Sinofsky, though seen as highly talented, was > viewed at the top levels as not the kind of team > player that the company was looking for... and > In a press release, Ballmer praised Steven’s work, > but also talked about a need for “more integrated > and rapid development cycles for our offerings.” Further, I think your parents' question still fits with a little bit of wrangling even if he wasn't fired. It would be interesting to know what it feels like to reach a very high rank at a company and then to step down.
- 14y ago
- glhaynes 14y ago"Andy Rubin is sweating right now." — @llsethj
- RDeckard 14y agoI don't really get the joke. Care to explain? :)
- glhaynes 14y agoLots of people see a similarity between Sinofsky leaving and Forstall's recent exit from Apple (and a similarity between their positions and that of Rubin). Just a silly joke, though.
- fortes 14y agoForstall and Sinofsky were both running the OS for Apple and MSFT, respectively. Andy Rubin runs Android at Google.
- Evbn 14y agoSounds like Rubin is in a very good position to renegotiate his contract.
- emehrkay 14y agoThey should team up and do something great
- jimeister 14y agoThis is quite a surprise. As someone who worked on Windows for five years after undergrad and catching the tail end of Vista, people were thrilled when he was brought on board for Windows 7. As a low level peon, I respected how he could get the org to ship on time. I think he'll be missed.
- volandovengo 14y agoI worked for Microsoft for 4 years - this is a HUGE surprise to me. Most of the people I know who worked in his orgs were proud to work under his direction. I thought he would replace Balmer eventually.
- sriramk 14y agoThis is a stunning development and most of MSFT is probably in shock right now. It's hard to overstate the scope and influence Sinofsky had at MSFT. This was a man widely expected to be the next CEO and he had impact way outside his organization (the 'Sinofsky-ization of teams'). Also, his stock was rising inside MSFT (when you stay inside the company long enough, you can sense which executives are in trouble and which ones are going up). This is a unexpected move which is going to change Microsoft at a deep level.
- Wistar 14y ago"This is a unexpected move which is going to change Microsoft at a deep level." Agreed, although not to the level of Sinofsky, Larsen-Green is pretty darn awesome in her own right. At least that is my opinion.
- psychotik 14y agoHe was always polarizing and that his stock was rising is equally contentious, IMO. Windows 8 was late, Surface seems to be underwhelming and his inability to be a real team player are all likely factors here, as is his rumored disagreement with Ballmer (though I had Ballmer on the losing end of that one). You're right that this will change Microsoft at a deep level, but I think odds are good that it's a change for the better. Personally, Sinofsky was one of the biggest reasons I left Microsoft. He was willing to ditch potentially game-changing products/features spanning multiple industries because it didn't align with his idea of software engineering, which was more suited for boxed software like Office than for rapidly deploying services. He didn't/doesn't get services - he's a boxed software guy at his core. All the Office Live stuff happened after he left Office - arguably he should have seen it coming and been ahead of the game while he was running Office.
- darrenkopp 14y agoI hope this means that they start doing more .NET again, instead of going back to COM.
- undergroundhero 14y agoI hope so as well, the WinRT API is stripped bare. I was shocked to see how much of .NET's functionality they didn't port over to WinRT.
- asveikau 14y agoI'll agree that WinRT is not complete, but that's hardly COM's fault. The real story is that they thought they could replace decades of development platform evolution in a 3 year development cycle. And even in that 3 years, they didn't think things through very well, or make many attempts to learn from history. With that I would disagree that it's a good/bad, .NET/COM axis. Many programmers are productive with Win32 and COM in ways that they are not with WinRT.
- erikpukinskis 14y agoInteresting. Sinofsky was, along with J Allard, supposed to be one of the product visionaries capable of filling the gap Gates left. When Allard left, and Microsoft put its weight behind the "unified Windows" approach instead of the Courier concept, it was thought that Sinofsky "won". Now it appears they both lost.
- HarshaThota 14y agoI know the reaction for Windows 8 and the Surface has been trepid but I would've thought he would have been safe given his pedigree within Microsoft.
- philcoders 14y agoAnyone think Microsoft will be announcing Scott Forstall joining the company next? Sort of like the Marissa Meyer announcement for Yahoo?
- camus 14y agowould be great !
- outside1234 14y agoits so sad. it's clear that nobody can save Microsoft from Ballmer now that the ONE guy that can actually execute is gone.
- volandovengo 14y agoReading between the lines here - for him to be fired, it must indicate that signs are pointing that Win 8 will be a dud release, similar to Vista. Sigh.
- Evbn 14y agoAnd the honcho who got fired over the Vista catastrophe waltzed into a SVP job at Amazon.
- mikevm 14y agoVista wasn't a dud. It was mostly seen as a failure because a lot of incompatible software (mainly POORLY written software, but MS is probably partly to blame for that), and a few UX changes that forced to people to be a little more responsible (UAC).
- DonnyV 14y agoScott Guthrie for CEO!!!!
- programminggeek 14y agoWait, Apple fired their top software guy and MSFT's top software guy leaves. Why does this sound like Sinofsky is heading to Apple?
- keithnoizu 14y agobecause that would be the end of apple?
- iamrohitbanga 14y agoI doubt if he will go to apple. He must be bound by non-compete agreements.
- Evbn 14y agoThat just means a six month vacation. Plenty of folks bounce around between the big cos.
- iamrohitbanga 14y agocould yahoo be on the cards? marissa meyer made the move recently.
- BarkMore 14y agoThe Microsoft employment contract has a one year non-compete clause. Microsoft has shown that it is willing to enforce non-competes and it is easy to do so under Washington State law.
- cookingrobot 14y agoThat's why you file in California.
- moron 14y agoBecause "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." Apple shits on Windows every chance they get, and now they're gonna hire the guy who was in charge of it? Come on.
- mtgx 14y agoIf this means less or no more Metro in Windows 9, that seems like great news to me.
- CamperBob2 14y agoI can't believe Sinofsky was behind Metro. I expect more "Metro" now, not less.
- yllus 14y agoI can't help but wonder if Forstall (Apple) and Sinofsky (MS) are two men who would have been strong, maybe even visionary leaders had they been allowed to reach the position of CEO at either company. I tend to feel that Jobs only made CEO because he had also been founder and ex-CEO, and had a certain cachet from that.
- wilfra 14y agoPretty difficult to be the CEO of a tech company without founding it.
- cesar 14y agoI guess Windows 8 is not selling that well. And it hasn't received very good reviews either.
- ilaksh 14y agoI hate Microsoft. I hate politics. I hate Microsoft politics twice as much.
- NZ_Matt 14y agoHere's Sinofsky's letter to employees on his departure http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-leadership-changes-part-2 http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-leadership-changes... He states that it was a personal decision to leave now, disputing the rumors that he was fired. Although offcourse that doesn't mean he wasn't being pushed.
- camus 14y agocome on , that's always personal ... that's called PR ! dont you think he has a contract that forces him to keep his mouth shut ?
- malkia 14y agoBallmer reminds of Stalin - remove the smart guys around you, so he does not feel threatened. Okay, that's quite an overstatement, but it feels that way to me.
- camus 14y agoit only means one thing : Surface / WindowsRT / Windows8 = "big failure". Not so long ago , he was seen as the next Microsoft boss , but firing him wont solve Microsoft problems , Ballmer is the problem.
- alanspower 14y agoEXACTLY.. i called this some months ago when i saw him trying to convince developers of APPs that Windows 8 in desktop PCs are just like any other tablet consumer and will buy apps. Which is not true.. Good he's out.. Now Ballmer has top leave as well. Surface should be launched all around the world in all stores to developers see any penny coming from the Store. Instead they did that freaky show in New York with just a few Surfaces while Apple threw a big launch for iPad mini selling over 4 millions in a weekend. Surface could sell that much IF microsoft made it available in all stores. GO Ballmer!
- alanspower 14y agoWithout Tablets the Store will sell NOTHING.
- rocky1138 14y ago"Nobody wants to be dubbed the future king while the current king is still on the throne. It’s the quickest way to the dungeon." Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-next-ceo-of-microsoft-steven-sinofsky-is-the-heir-apparent-2012-2#ixzz2C4fOqBTv http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-next-ceo-of-microsof...
- chj 14y agoIf Sinofsky turns out to be in Cupertino tomorrow, then it would complete the recent drama.
- itg 14y agoIf Forstall was let go for not getting along with others then I doubt Sinofsky will be spotted in Cupertino.
- yread 14y agoI was expecting Ballmer to be fired (for his last statement on Surface sales being modest) rather than Sinofsky. Maybe the sales are actually modest and Sinofsky is somehow responsible?
- cubicle67 14y agoit's enough to extract one final post from minimsft http://minimsft.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/a-microsoft-without-sinofsky.html http://minimsft.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/a-microsoft-without-...
- gadders 14y agoI think the message here from Forstall and Sinofsky is no matter how talented you are, if you're a dick it will come back and bite you. Being smart and nice will get you further than just being smart.
- markmm 14y agoObviously the results of the Windows 8/Surface launch are being classed as another epic failure for MS. They spent billions on advertising and probably got very little in return. This is the start of the end of MS as we knew it. SS is just the one of many high profile rats jumping a sinking ship.
- AdamN 14y agoCanonical should grab him for Ubuntu. Even if he was only there for a year, it would be a great transition for him. If things didn't work out, he could always just say the company wasn't ready for him. However, if it worked, Ubuntu could take over Windows for the enterprise in only a few years. Now is the time to strike while the iron is hot. Of course, they couldn't pay him all that much but the upside is tremendous.
- podperson 14y agoAlong with the departure of Ray Ozzie (thank goodness!), this actually makes Cringely's suggestion -- http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/28/steve-ballmers-dilemma/ http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/28/steve-ballmers-dilemma/ tl;dr that Microsoft simply milk its cash cow for as long as it can and then turn into an investment fund -- seem like it may actually happen.
- Overclock 14y agoThat would be a very good option for the ppl holding MS shares, but can do insane amount of damage to the IT industry - monetizing all those patents without fear of losing reputation among developers, students, etc. and without having to worry about new products being affected by other people patents. Team up with the super-corrupted music/movie/TV industry to make non-DRM devices and OSes illegal by bribing politicians.
- podperson 14y agoI'm not clear how this would do any damage that MS won't do as part of pursuing some other course. Does anyone doubt that they're going to milk their cash cows while pursuing (say) the mobile market?
- Overclock 14y agoPatents have bad reputation with the tech community, which means that if now MS presses hard Linux and other products it will have trouble hiring good devs later. But if they just support and milk their existing products they don't need good devs so much.