4 ms·

So 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 n

So 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 ago
Yeah, 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 ago
You can read Steve Jobs' biography.
thematt 14y ago
What 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 ago
  The 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.
sliverstorm 14y ago
is this something that rocks him to his core I would guess most of the time, the answer is "no". Forget the circumstances, human beings have a tendency to look for failings in others to explain their own misfortune. It can be difficult to look past your own hubris to recognize what are in truth your own failings. So, it's really going to come down to the individual- but I would default to "no".
- notJim 14y ago
  Hmm, I'm not sure about that. It seems like successful people would be able to recognize their faults and mistakes. That whole maxim we sometimes talk about here where if you aren't failing a lot, you're not trying hard enough doesn't really work if you're not able to learn from your mistakes. Now, I've never heard of this guy until now, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume he's unable to evaluate himself.
  - ryanmolden 14y ago
    >It seems like successful people would be able to recognize their faults and mistakes. Based on what evidence do you say this? Not trolling, really curious. I seem to recall (but don't have references on hand, so fell free to discard this) that people tend to be WORSE at honest self-evaluation the greater their success. They tend to get wrapped up in their own 'press' and surrounded by people constantly telling them how awesome they are, how much smarter than everyone else, etc..
    - notJim 14y ago
      Frankly, I'm just going on intuition. I don't see how you can actually achieve anything in life if you're constantly blaming everyone else for your problems and shortcomings. Note that I'm not just talking about material success, but rather about having skills or achievements that others recognize you for. I'm also not saying I expect high-achieving people to be particularly humble or admit their failings very publicly. I think successful people can become skilled about expressing their failings or shortcomings in terms of the opportunities available. Compare: "Product A was terrible and we are embarrassed to have released it" vs "Product A was a good start and proved that there's a market, and we've learned a lot that's going to get you really excited for Product B." One last thing that I'm adding after posting this is that I also don't think this means successful people don't succumb to feelings of anger, hurt pride, revenge fantansies and all the other normal human stuff. Just that eventually you get past that and learn from it.
jorts 14y ago
My current CEO was fired as the CEO of prominent multi-billion dollar company. I don't think that it phased his ego at all. He just moved on to being the head of another large organization and was still just as outgoing, friendly and creative as ever. I think he just used the experience as something to learn from. This is all of course from my outside perspective and 10 or so years of working closely with him. I'm sure there was some feelings of betrayal and remorse for him, but that's a side that I've never seen come out.
humbyvaldes 14y ago
You dont get to this level without thick skin and a constant desire to climb the next mountain.
andralex 14y ago
I'm nowhere near that level but extrapolating from my experience and that of people I know: such abrupt departures are never amiable and are the tip of quite complex political junctures. As a human being, someone like Sinofsky is no longer hurt by lost income, but that's a blessing in disguise because his motivations were for a long time not of financial nature, which means he is hurting in other dimensions. Feelings such as hurt pride, poetic justice/revenge (they're worse off without me), rejection, are not uncommon. Given the abrupt departure, a general loss of meaning and occupation is quite likely (from the mornings of a busy executive to the long silence of the mornings to follow). (As an aside, the reciprocal "good job" messaging is irrelevant - quitting in style is professional courtesy, costs nothing, and leaves bridges in place and doors open.) In particular at Microsoft (drawing from discussions with friends), one common theme I gathered is "complex". Life at Microsoft is complex, rich in context, structured, full of details that employees consider important but find it very difficult to explain to the uninitiated. Even the vocabulary has additions and some words have unusually stronger semantics. I have friends who have been enormously stressed, lost sleep, literally developed clinical cases of depression - on stakes that, when explained to an outsider, appear as immensely petty. This is twice as bizarre in an industry that has a high inflation of jobs, which makes it very easy to leave Microsoft. But that's difficult because the nature of these conflicts and challenges makes the employees who are part of them feel they're losing self worth if they quit. So I could speculate that leaving Microsoft has Sinofsky experience the most complex of emotions. However, it's likely he'll rebound and be off to other conquests soon.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Some of the items you list are visible in cult victims too.
- jkimmel 14y ago
  As an aside, I've noticed many of the factors and symptoms you note in members of any sufficiently large corporation. Perhaps in a microcosm of society, the frictions necessary to create psychological tension are amplified with respect to the size of the corporation and the degree of isolation. In the case of Microsoft, this phenomena may be more pronounced. Software engineers/developers exist in a smaller subset of society than many other professions, and the compounded relative geographic isolation in Washington may make it difficult to see the forest through the trees during times of professional conflict. This is not to say that Seattle is by any means isolated, but the tech community there is indeed smaller than that of Silicon Valley, magnifying the overall degree of professional isolation.
rdl 14y ago
Assuming it wasn't for something genuinely disgraceful (Sandusky), a lot of people who are fired from high-profile competitive jobs at the apex of their career, if they don't go to a competitor, end up going into non-profits, government/academic advisory roles, or other less competitive positions. I'm personally curious where General David Petraeus ends up.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Scott McNealy would occasionally send a note of congratulations on a promotion, typically he would say "One step up, one step closer to the door." That was of course figuratively true, and in the case of building 4 at Sun also literally true since the executive offices were right next to an employee entrance :-) As others have noted departures at this level are always much more nuanced than simply "this was bad" or "this was good." None of the departures where I was pretty close to the departee and the situation were 'unexpected' in the sense that their course had a way point which usually pointed 'up' or 'out'. So think about your own career, think about what you want to do, what mark you want to make on the world, what things are you passionate about. Sometimes a company changes direction, from market forces or personnel changes and the company and the individual become less aligned. Its always possible to see if you can bring the company back toward alignment, it's also possible to see the cost or probability of that happening. In my own experience I was a VP level technical contributor at a company during the dot.com boom. I arrived as part of an acquisition which was pushed by the CTO of that company who had a vision for a richer services oriented IP connectivity solution for multi-tenant buildings. A series of missteps, some poor 'chemistry' between the executive team, and a general collapse of the DSL market, made it clear that even though I had an employment contract with these folks, the place they were going (back to their 'roots' as a wiring solution) wasn't a place I would find very interesting. I talked with the CEO, we looked at all the options, and both agreed that the 'right' answer was going to be for me to leave. That didn't particularly bother me, because the parting wasn't really a reflection on my ability or non-ability, things had changed I had a choice, I chose not to follow that change. Contrasting that for when I left Sun (certainly not as senior level as that) where I had poured a lot of energy into the product that would become Java with visions of building really strong capability based systems and light weight task specific operating systems, only to realize that Sun 'corporate' had decided that Java was the battering ram to try and deflect the Microsoft Juggernaut of Windows/NT and a growing Enterprise presence. I was really pissed off. I talked to Scott about it, Eric Schmidt (CTO at the time), and James Gosling. To their credit everyone was very supportive of my passion but in the end the company gets to decide what they are going to do with your work product, and I could not get Sun Labs to sponsor my secure version of Java and while I felt e-commerce was going to define the killer App, realistically in 1995 I was about 7 years too early to that particular party. So, just about 3 months shy of getting my 10 year pin/clock/whatever I stormed out. Emotionally I felt pretty liberated, feeling like Sun was too clueless trying to protect their enterprise accounts to see the low hanging fruit right above them. The only place I have felt truly bad about leaving was Google, not because I was leaving, it was clear to me that Google and I had incompatible goals, but because I felt like I had failed the folks who were fighting the good fight and I left them there to suffer. The path to success there was pretty clearly laid out for those who looked for it, but the cost for me was high, too high.
mathattack 14y ago
Getting fired always sucks, but at that level it's not a career ender. He's beyond financially independent, has a broad view of the industry, and a lot of contacts. Each of these are viable: - Run a medium sized software firm. - Run a large division of a major tech firm. (For example: Software at HP) - Start up something that would have been impossible in Microsoft's hierarchy. No need for outside angels. - Become a hands on VC. - Teach computer science and business. - Run around the world for a year while figuring things out. It has to be tough emotionally, but there are many options for talents like this.

w1ntermute 14y ago

Yeah, 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 ago

You can read Steve Jobs' biography.

thematt 14y ago

What 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 ago
The 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.

sliverstorm 14y ago

is this something that rocks him to his core I would guess most of the time, the answer is "no". Forget the circumstances, human beings have a tendency to look for failings in others to explain their own misfortune. It can be difficult to look past your own hubris to recognize what are in truth your own failings. So, it's really going to come down to the individual- but I would default to "no".

notJim 14y ago
Hmm, I'm not sure about that. It seems like successful people would be able to recognize their faults and mistakes. That whole maxim we sometimes talk about here where if you aren't failing a lot, you're not trying hard enough doesn't really work if you're not able to learn from your mistakes. Now, I've never heard of this guy until now, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume he's unable to evaluate himself.
- ryanmolden 14y ago
  >It seems like successful people would be able to recognize their faults and mistakes. Based on what evidence do you say this? Not trolling, really curious. I seem to recall (but don't have references on hand, so fell free to discard this) that people tend to be WORSE at honest self-evaluation the greater their success. They tend to get wrapped up in their own 'press' and surrounded by people constantly telling them how awesome they are, how much smarter than everyone else, etc..
  - notJim 14y ago
    Frankly, I'm just going on intuition. I don't see how you can actually achieve anything in life if you're constantly blaming everyone else for your problems and shortcomings. Note that I'm not just talking about material success, but rather about having skills or achievements that others recognize you for. I'm also not saying I expect high-achieving people to be particularly humble or admit their failings very publicly. I think successful people can become skilled about expressing their failings or shortcomings in terms of the opportunities available. Compare: "Product A was terrible and we are embarrassed to have released it" vs "Product A was a good start and proved that there's a market, and we've learned a lot that's going to get you really excited for Product B." One last thing that I'm adding after posting this is that I also don't think this means successful people don't succumb to feelings of anger, hurt pride, revenge fantansies and all the other normal human stuff. Just that eventually you get past that and learn from it.

jorts 14y ago

My current CEO was fired as the CEO of prominent multi-billion dollar company. I don't think that it phased his ego at all. He just moved on to being the head of another large organization and was still just as outgoing, friendly and creative as ever. I think he just used the experience as something to learn from. This is all of course from my outside perspective and 10 or so years of working closely with him. I'm sure there was some feelings of betrayal and remorse for him, but that's a side that I've never seen come out.

humbyvaldes 14y ago

You dont get to this level without thick skin and a constant desire to climb the next mountain.

andralex 14y ago

I'm nowhere near that level but extrapolating from my experience and that of people I know: such abrupt departures are never amiable and are the tip of quite complex political junctures. As a human being, someone like Sinofsky is no longer hurt by lost income, but that's a blessing in disguise because his motivations were for a long time not of financial nature, which means he is hurting in other dimensions. Feelings such as hurt pride, poetic justice/revenge (they're worse off without me), rejection, are not uncommon. Given the abrupt departure, a general loss of meaning and occupation is quite likely (from the mornings of a busy executive to the long silence of the mornings to follow). (As an aside, the reciprocal "good job" messaging is irrelevant - quitting in style is professional courtesy, costs nothing, and leaves bridges in place and doors open.) In particular at Microsoft (drawing from discussions with friends), one common theme I gathered is "complex". Life at Microsoft is complex, rich in context, structured, full of details that employees consider important but find it very difficult to explain to the uninitiated. Even the vocabulary has additions and some words have unusually stronger semantics. I have friends who have been enormously stressed, lost sleep, literally developed clinical cases of depression - on stakes that, when explained to an outsider, appear as immensely petty. This is twice as bizarre in an industry that has a high inflation of jobs, which makes it very easy to leave Microsoft. But that's difficult because the nature of these conflicts and challenges makes the employees who are part of them feel they're losing self worth if they quit. So I could speculate that leaving Microsoft has Sinofsky experience the most complex of emotions. However, it's likely he'll rebound and be off to other conquests soon.

jacquesm 14y ago
Some of the items you list are visible in cult victims too.
jkimmel 14y ago
As an aside, I've noticed many of the factors and symptoms you note in members of any sufficiently large corporation. Perhaps in a microcosm of society, the frictions necessary to create psychological tension are amplified with respect to the size of the corporation and the degree of isolation. In the case of Microsoft, this phenomena may be more pronounced. Software engineers/developers exist in a smaller subset of society than many other professions, and the compounded relative geographic isolation in Washington may make it difficult to see the forest through the trees during times of professional conflict. This is not to say that Seattle is by any means isolated, but the tech community there is indeed smaller than that of Silicon Valley, magnifying the overall degree of professional isolation.

rdl 14y ago

Assuming it wasn't for something genuinely disgraceful (Sandusky), a lot of people who are fired from high-profile competitive jobs at the apex of their career, if they don't go to a competitor, end up going into non-profits, government/academic advisory roles, or other less competitive positions. I'm personally curious where General David Petraeus ends up.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Scott McNealy would occasionally send a note of congratulations on a promotion, typically he would say "One step up, one step closer to the door." That was of course figuratively true, and in the case of building 4 at Sun also literally true since the executive offices were right next to an employee entrance :-) As others have noted departures at this level are always much more nuanced than simply "this was bad" or "this was good." None of the departures where I was pretty close to the departee and the situation were 'unexpected' in the sense that their course had a way point which usually pointed 'up' or 'out'. So think about your own career, think about what you want to do, what mark you want to make on the world, what things are you passionate about. Sometimes a company changes direction, from market forces or personnel changes and the company and the individual become less aligned. Its always possible to see if you can bring the company back toward alignment, it's also possible to see the cost or probability of that happening. In my own experience I was a VP level technical contributor at a company during the dot.com boom. I arrived as part of an acquisition which was pushed by the CTO of that company who had a vision for a richer services oriented IP connectivity solution for multi-tenant buildings. A series of missteps, some poor 'chemistry' between the executive team, and a general collapse of the DSL market, made it clear that even though I had an employment contract with these folks, the place they were going (back to their 'roots' as a wiring solution) wasn't a place I would find very interesting. I talked with the CEO, we looked at all the options, and both agreed that the 'right' answer was going to be for me to leave. That didn't particularly bother me, because the parting wasn't really a reflection on my ability or non-ability, things had changed I had a choice, I chose not to follow that change. Contrasting that for when I left Sun (certainly not as senior level as that) where I had poured a lot of energy into the product that would become Java with visions of building really strong capability based systems and light weight task specific operating systems, only to realize that Sun 'corporate' had decided that Java was the battering ram to try and deflect the Microsoft Juggernaut of Windows/NT and a growing Enterprise presence. I was really pissed off. I talked to Scott about it, Eric Schmidt (CTO at the time), and James Gosling. To their credit everyone was very supportive of my passion but in the end the company gets to decide what they are going to do with your work product, and I could not get Sun Labs to sponsor my secure version of Java and while I felt e-commerce was going to define the killer App, realistically in 1995 I was about 7 years too early to that particular party. So, just about 3 months shy of getting my 10 year pin/clock/whatever I stormed out. Emotionally I felt pretty liberated, feeling like Sun was too clueless trying to protect their enterprise accounts to see the low hanging fruit right above them. The only place I have felt truly bad about leaving was Google, not because I was leaving, it was clear to me that Google and I had incompatible goals, but because I felt like I had failed the folks who were fighting the good fight and I left them there to suffer. The path to success there was pretty clearly laid out for those who looked for it, but the cost for me was high, too high.

mathattack 14y ago

Getting fired always sucks, but at that level it's not a career ender. He's beyond financially independent, has a broad view of the industry, and a lot of contacts. Each of these are viable: - Run a medium sized software firm. - Run a large division of a major tech firm. (For example: Software at HP) - Start up something that would have been impossible in Microsoft's hierarchy. No need for outside angels. - Become a hands on VC. - Teach computer science and business. - Run around the world for a year while figuring things out. It has to be tough emotionally, but there are many options for talents like this.