I too was a blue badge during that time, but I think there were three changes that happened when Gates slowly faded out of the company. The company lost focus

I too was a blue badge during that time, but I think there were three changes that happened when Gates slowly faded out of the company. The company lost focus on Windows desktop applications, the culture pivoted towards business strategy instead of engineering strategy, and quality of both the people and the products declined. As to losing focus, part of this is because the re-orgs and company policy changes accelerated. At least every two years in the last decade there has been a major shift in branding or focus. This is something decided by the management team, and Ballmer was directly responsible for these constant shifts in direction. Second, the role of SDE and senior SDE was even more marginalized. I am sure this had been going on, but for a data point note that BillG reviews were run by PMs. The engineering culture was gone and replaced by a business culture. PMs and MBAs ruled every org; they talked about their resources and looked at the SDE-L and SDE-M as line managers whose were there to make their designs reality. This served to push out the more motivated engineers. And speaking of BillG reviews, these were real and helpful. After a review, we would talk about it for days. Products would be re-aligned, schedules would change, and we would be focused on shipping a great product. When these were gone, Ballmer's business strategy approach failed to motivate or align the teams and that had a drastic affect on quality.