7 ms·
Is there a reason CEOs cannot use normal English but have to dilute the language so much? For me the TL:DR after struggling to read it was - full steam ahead t
by venomsnake 13y ago
Is there a reason CEOs cannot use normal English but have to dilute the language so much?
For me the TL:DR after struggling to read it was - full steam ahead to the biggest walled garden on earth. We are still the Borg. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
- bornhuetter 13y agoI don't understand how anyone in their right minds can consider Windows to be the "biggest walled garden on earth". There is plenty to criticize about Microsoft, but when you descend into completely nonsensical arguments you lose all credibility.
- sbierwagen 13y agoHe's talking more about Windows Phone, the Windows 8 apps, and Xbox.
- bornhuetter 13y agoIs Windows Phone more of a walled garden than than iOS? Is the Xbox more of a walled garden than the Wii U? The argument is still complete hyperbole.
- iaskwhy 13y agoTogether they are.
- bornhuetter 13y agoI'm not sure I understand your point - can you please elaborate?
- AndrewDucker 13y agoWindows Phone is more of a walled garden than Android.
- bornhuetter 13y ago"bigger walled garden than Android" I would agree with.
- jabits 13y agoUm, what was the question?
- ams6110 13y agoMost phone users want walled gardens: it's hard to get lost in one.
- podperson 13y agoThose may be walled gardens, but they're not very big.
- venomsnake 13y agoXBOX commands sizable chunk of a very lucrative market. If we have luck the console industry will implode soon because the current model is unsustainable, but at the moment XBOX is not not very big.
- bryanlarsen 13y agoI don't think the OP was arguing that Windows is currently a walled garden, but is arguing that Windows is moving in that direction.
- bornhuetter 13y agoIf OP had said criticized Microsoft for moving toward being more closed, I would have completely agreed with him (to the extent that it is relevant to the link, which it isn't really). But he said "full steam ahead to the biggest walled garden on earth. We are still the Borg", and so his comment loses all credibility.
- venomsnake 13y agoNumber of time desktop/workstation is used in the memo - 0, number of times PC - 4 , 3 of them about the past. Number of times devices is used 20+, experience - 10+ - microsoft from today officialy desires to be looked as a device/experience company when dealing with end users. That is full steam ahead to appleland for me. And it will be closed and walled future. WP8 and W8 demonstrated the MS attitude good enough. The borg came from the one goal, one vision, one direction etc.
- bornhuetter 13y agoI'm not disagreeing with your general point, I'm just saying that if you cut out the hyperbole and bring your criticism down to a more rational level it would carry a lot more force. "Microsoft is becoming more closed, and that is a bad thing for x,y,z reasons" carries a lot more weight to me than "Microsoft are the worst company in the world, and are literally the Borg". This is not just directed at you, it seems to be a common thing with criticism of Microsoft - so over the top that rational discussion of what they are doing right and wrong gets thrown out the window.
- marcosdumay 13y ago"full steam ahead to the biggest walled garden on earth." Ok, English is not my first language, and that "to" seems a bit ambiguous to me... But in context that was pretty clearly a move toward a walled garden, not a move done by a walled garden.
- venomsnake 13y agoThey are moving in that direction since the W8 store was revealed and they are doubling down right now. All parts of the company will share and contribute to the success of core offerings, like Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, Office 365 and our EA offer, Bing, Skype, Dynamics, Azure and our servers. All parts of the company will contribute to activating high-value experiences for our customers. High value experience is euphemism for gatekeeper from what I have seen.
- bornhuetter 13y agoI agree with you that Microsoft is becoming more closed, and that that is a bad thing. However, when you say "full steam ahead to the biggest walled garden on earth. We are still the Borg" it is so over the top that I can't take your comment seriously. Similarly to how I pretty much write off any comment that uses the terms M$ or "Cupertino idiot tax" unless used ironically.
- criley2 13y agoIf people want Microsoft to be "less closed", then they should stop avoiding Microsoft for platforms like Google and Apple, who are whooping Microsoft's ass by being far more closed. Between the anti-open Google+/Play/Hangouts universe and the anti-open iOS iGarden, I'm surprised that it has taken Microsoft this long to catch up to their anti-open competitors.
- venomsnake 13y agoOpenness has nothing to do with abandonment of microsoft. It has all to do with the fact that they could not deliver good mobile device. And still can't. They made errors on every step of the game - allowed carrirs to have saying on the devices, abandoned all lessons learned from PCs and building ecosystems and threw an inferior iOS me too (the UI was better though, the ideology the same)
- criley2 13y agoI trialed a Nokia Lumia 920 with WP8 for a month before settling on a Note II, and I must say that I strongly disagree with your analysis of WP8. It seems very biased and it seems to be ignorant -- as in I don't believe you've actually used the platform as a daily driver for any period of time. No offense, but calling it a "me too" iOS competitor is about as nuanced as calling Android a "me too" iOS competitor -- technically, Android is a "me too" product, just more mature, but it don't serve any useful end to point that out.
- hdra 13y agobecause its cool to hate Microsoft. 'nuff said.
- GravityWell 13y agoI think it falls into the category of "Marketing speak" which is a sub heading here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_jargon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_jargon It's not surprising coming from the salesman/CEO who thinks that a loud voice and throwing chairs makes sense. While CEO's with real vision innovate, Ballmer thinks rearranging the furniture is the answer.
- prawks 13y agoPlaying the devil's advocate: Shareholders want reasoning behind such large changes. It's really nothing more than describing where MSoft has been and what its strengths are We will do this by leveraging our strengths. We have powered devices for many years through Windows PCs and Xbox. We have delivered high-value experiences through Office and other apps. And, we have enabled enterprise value through products like Windows Server and Exchange. The form of delivery shifts to a broader set of devices and services versus packaged software. The frontier of high-value scenarios we enable will march outward, but we have strengths and proven capabilities on which we will draw. and what it recognizes as it's weaknesses It is also clear to me and our leadership that we must do an extraordinary job to succeed in this modern world. We have delivered many great products and had much success in market, but we all want more. That means better execution from product conceptualization and innovation right through to marketing and sales. It also means operational excellence in cloud services, datacenter operations, and manufacturing and supply chain that are essential in a devices and services world. To advance our strategy and execute more quickly, more efficiently, and with greater excellence we need to transform how we organize, how we plan and how we work. It then proposes the solution: the reorg. It gives benefits as to what it sees are possible with such a realignment. Vagueness is related to the wide-reaching scope of the business, and high-level, long-term goals that they don't want to give metrics for, because they'll be held to them. It's also the description of the vision people see in the future when they think of MSoft (and in turn, how valuable shares will be). I get that there's a lot of negative feelings towards corporations around the startup scene, but if they just said "Hey guys, we're completely restructuring so our teams can focus more", people (people important to Microsoft, i.e. shareholders) would want to know why the decision was made, how they see it playing out, when it will happen, and what the potential impacts could be in the future. TL; DR: It's a press release, not a white paper.
- kyllo 13y agoNo, the TL;DR is that they are currently organized into (almost) self-sufficient business units by product category, but now they are going to switch to being organized into interdependent departments by job function category. This is a huge shift for MS.
- kenferry 13y agoThis is very interesting to me, and I'd like to know more about what didn't work in the previous structure. I worked at Apple for a long time, and if I could have changed one thing organizationally it would have been to go _from_ the functional decomposition _to_ the product decomposition.
- kyllo 13y agoI agree that, at least for a large company, product/vertical structure is better than functional/horizontal structure, and I think that Microsoft is just too big to be one company at all anymore, and that they should have split off into separate subsidiary companies of a holding company, each with a clear product category and mission, somewhat like GE. Then they can even sell the money-losing ones if the board wishes.
- clauretano 13y agoIt could be a bit awkward at Microsoft, the way things were in the before time. You had things like a SaaS suite where one component was run by a service operations team under the Office org, but another component in the same suite being in the Server & Tools org. Oh, and then you'd have MSIT running those same services on their own data center infrastructure, with their own team of service engineers. You'd also have a "dedicated" version of that Saas offering, sold to huge corporations, where it was basically the same thing but on dedicated hardware and run by yet another team. There was nothing unified about it. On top of that, you'd have one or two competing products (usually via acquisitions, or one product would be positioned more toward consumers than enterprise), a legacy product, etc all with their own teams. The internal competitors were the enemy.
- jt2190 13y ago> Is there a reason CEOs cannot use normal English but > have to dilute the language so much? Just look at this message board to see how much people will (naively or willfully) twist the meaning of what they read. pg has written about this as well [1] ... How he finds himself being extra careful about what he writes, trying to anticipate the ways that people will misunderstand what he's trying to say. [1] Can't find the citation right now... Perhaps someone can provide the link in a reply.
- mark-r 13y agoDon't know about pg, but Scott Adams has mentioned it a few times. One example: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/author_by_relocation/ http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/author_by_relocation/