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I'm not sure when you were at MSFT, but my time there was in the mid-90s. "It's simply unimaginable that this loss of talent hasn't had a huge impact on the co

by reeses 13y ago

I'm not sure when you were at MSFT, but my time there was in the mid-90s. "It's simply unimaginable that this loss of talent hasn't had a huge impact on the company." I think it would have done if the rank-and-yank/up-or-out happened when we were a 6,000-ish person company. They had just opened RedWest while I was there and were working on the new buildings across from the main campus. I think they were talking about the Issaquah campus right around the time I left as well. It was clear that the company was growing and things were changing. There was even talk about not granting stock to new hires anymore, which has obviously been reversed. However, this was heresy at the time. (Mind you, most of us were thinking we were past the guaranteed "millionaire" stage and thinking that a stock grant would cash out for a down payment on a nice house.) Now it's most definitely a "big" company, and you don't need that many people who would earn 1s in their reviews and get promoted every year. A company like that needs a lot of consistent contributors. If you let some good people fall through the cracks, even if it's 10%, the company can continue for years.

InclinedPlane 13y ago
> If you let some good people fall through the cracks, even if it's 10%, the company can continue for years. Continue, sure. Microsoft isn't going to go away for many years, no matter how much they fuck up. They have too many established customers that will find it hard to switch away from them and they have too much cash on hand. Nevertheless, the degree to which Microsoft will be relevant to the industry at large and their revenue levels in the time frame of a decade to two decades from now are currently open questions. And not by a small amount either, by orders of magnitude. And the difference between being able to execute on projects that will keep the company relevant and highly profitable and not being able to do so will largely come down to the collective capabilities, passions, experience, and talent of the folks who are still at the company. And that pool of skills and capabilities has been substantially decapitated bit by bit over the past several years.

by reeses 13y ago

InclinedPlane 13y ago

> If you let some good people fall through the cracks, even if it's 10%, the company can continue for years. Continue, sure. Microsoft isn't going to go away for many years, no matter how much they fuck up. They have too many established customers that will find it hard to switch away from them and they have too much cash on hand. Nevertheless, the degree to which Microsoft will be relevant to the industry at large and their revenue levels in the time frame of a decade to two decades from now are currently open questions. And not by a small amount either, by orders of magnitude. And the difference between being able to execute on projects that will keep the company relevant and highly profitable and not being able to do so will largely come down to the collective capabilities, passions, experience, and talent of the folks who are still at the company. And that pool of skills and capabilities has been substantially decapitated bit by bit over the past several years.