8 ms·

The Coming Microsoft Cultural Revolution

55 points by rfreytag 12y ago

kvb 12y ago
Given the content, I can't tell if the allusion to the disastrous Chinese Cultural Revolution is intended or not. It seems more like Cringely's actually talking about changing Microsoft's culture, which makes the title quite poor.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  That was the intention of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, too. It failed in the long term, but from the perspective of its architects, most of what we call its disasters were actually its successes.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Mass starvation? Technological stagnation? Which success are you referring to?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - leoc 12y ago
      > Which success are you referring to? Keeping Mao in power would be the major success, again very much from the perspective of the architect...
    - diego_moita 12y ago
      His (valid) point is not that the Chinese Cultural Revolution was a success but rather that, in their twisted minds, its architects perceived it as a success. They probably aimed at establishing ideological "purity" and authoritarian rule, they probably never thought of your valid concerns as being relevant. True believers have awful perceptions of what success means.
    - cstross 12y ago
      Presumably breaking forever the grip of the Confucian design pattern (left behind by the former imperial bureaucracy) on the imaginations of the low-level functionaries, without who no top-down empire can operate. An example uppermost in Mao's mind must have been that, despite Lenin's putsch of 1917, by 1927 the USSR ran along lines that would have been instantly recognizable to a Tsarist-era bureaucrat from 1907. The structure of governance of the vast Russian empire re-asserted itself under the guise of Actually Existing Socialism, once the Vanguard Party had replaced the top and middle tiers of the Imperial nobility and bureaucracy with nominally-loyal functionaries. The same sorts of person are attracted to power whatever the ideology of the regime, and aside from joining a party and paying lip service to the party's ideology, they make the same set of assumptions about how power is to be exercised. True revolutionaries are discredited, expelled, or purged: see the fates of Trotsky and Zinoviev, for example. Mao and his inner cadre saw the Chinese people, a generation after the revolution (itself largely pushed through by force of Russian arms, in the shape of the Manchurian campaign of 1945 that kicked the Japanese army off the Asian mainland), reverting to the social and political patterns of the Confucian bureaucracy that had run the empire they supplanted. True, the new bureaucrats paid lip service to communism as a guiding eschatology. But they weren't communists, much less revolutionaries. This was repugnant to Mao, so he fired up the whole social revolution that cost so many lives precisely to break that design pattern. It sort of worked. In the short term, it caused chaos and starvation and massive deaths: but in the long term, it laid the foundations for a technocracy. Today's Chinese party politburo are primarily engineers and scientists who grew up during the cultural revolution, not the spiritual heirs to the earlier system. Although I think the direction they've taken China in probably has Mao spinning in his grave so fast they could hook him up to a dynamo and power their national grid ...
      - cyorir 12y ago
        I would agree with most of this except for the establishment of the technocracy. I do not think Mao or the gang of four wanted to establish a technocracy. That is a bit different from the aim of the cultural revolution, which was hostile towards the academic class and the Western style of academia (Bach was targeted just as Confucious and Mengzi). A side product of the revolution and the departure of the Gang of Four, together with Mao's death, led to a power vacuum. This was filled a few years later when Deng Xiaoping and his supporters gained prominence. Deng Xiaoping was the true technocrat, and his reaction against the cultural revolution is what paved the way for today's technocracy. Now the question of whether Deng Xiaoping is spinning faster in his grave than Mao is open for debate.
    - acornax 12y ago
      Mass starvation wasn't part of the cultural revolution. It happened as a result of the great leap forward which happened about 15 years before.
- corprew 12y ago
  I think you can assume that was his goal (an indirect reference to the cultural revolution that works in the way you say.)
leo_mck 12y ago
I just read the comments on posts with "Microsoft" on the title so I can laugh at the people who says "I do not care about microsoft" (but I am here commenting on a topic about it anyway).
craigching 12y ago
In the comments there is a link to a critique that I think hits the nail on the head: http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/07/13/microsofts-new-ceo-needs-an-editor/ http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/07/13/microsofts-new-ceo-need...
chiph 12y ago
> Mobile-First, Cloud-First I dunno. I see this as "devices and services" rephrased.
- sp332 12y ago
  Services maybe, but I took "mobile" to mean mobile apps and not so much hardware.
- Zigurd 12y ago
  You put your finger right on the danger there. It could mean anything from "We're, selling off all the hardware, replacing Windows Phone with an AOSP-based system, like Amazon's, and implementing all our mobile apps for iOS and Android, and doubling the resources on our Azure/Bing ecosystem" to "We're keeping everything, laying off a few people to get another bump-up from Wall St., and muddling through."
- sz4kerto 12y ago
  I don't think so, especially because Nadella specifically mentioned that D&S is not the governing principle (well, he didn't say that exactly, but almost). What Mobile-First means to me is that mobile is _the_ platform, and being present on portable devices is the key to survival for Microsoft (and don't forget, almost every end-user device is portable, including dockable mobile workstations). That means that MS cannot afford risking not being present on dominant mobile operating systems, for example -- it would be stupid to risk the survival of the company and only push stuff on Windows Phone, for example. Other than that, I disagree with the article on a many points. > Microsoft’s tradition of innovation is hard to even detect, much less celebrate or revive. The tradition of innovation is there -- see Microsoft Research, one of the best funded institutes. The tradition of polish is not there. Microsoft has produced tablet PCs, smartphones, voice and handwriting recognition, mapping, and so on. It has a bad record of taking stuff out from R&D departments and delivering them to end users in a neat and easy-to-use way. > I don’t mean to be a pedant but which is it — mobile first or cloud first? Only one thing can be first. I think the opposite: the two goes together hand in hand, and cannot really live without each other. That's the big problem of Apple: they are not that good in cloud services, and a phone (or a tablet) increasingly relies on cloud services. Google is mostly winning the mobile war because it's cloud services. It's the cloud services why Google can release Android for free, it's them why many iOS users slowly gravitate towards Android ('because Google stuff works better'), it's them why many people don't want Windows Phone ('I don't use too many apps but I need Google Maps and GMail').
gtaylor 12y ago
This article is so bitter and dismissive of Microsoft that I have a hard time even taking it seriously. "Nadella begins at the altar of innovation, a word that at Microsoft has traditionally meant stealing technology. Of course he is the company cheerleader to some extent but Microsoft’s tradition of innovation is hard to even detect, much less celebrate or revive. This is revisionist history. Can he really believe it’s true?" Seriously? We're going to poopoo them stealing tech and completely dismiss everything they've ever done? I guess Apple/Google/IBM/HP get a pass... I'm a Linux fanboy first and foremost, so I don't exactly view MS with rose colored glasses. With that said, regardless of how they did it, MS has left a mark on the world. Show me a huge tech company that doesn't "steal tech" or engage in anti-competitive practices. That doesn't make it OK, but completely dismissing MS's history seems silly. If the author missed the mark this bad on what Microsoft is and has done, I have a hard time taking him seriously when talking about the future.
- dsschnau 12y ago
  Agreed. This writer is just being a dick to stir up controversy. Microsoft has a lot of potential and what looks like good leadership from their new CEO. I think and hope things will go well for them.
  - sheetjs 12y ago
    > This writer is just being a dick to stir up controversy You clicked, ad shown (Ghostery claims there are Amazon ads), mission accomplished
- icantthinkofone 12y ago
  What Microsoft has done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...
  - gtaylor 12y ago
    Nobody here is denying that they've done bad things, but name a public tech giant that hasn't done stupid/bad things. They all suck. They answer to profit, first and foremost. They're going to bend rules and push the limits in the name of making a few pennies for their shareholders. Apple does it, Google does it, IBM does it, Amazon does it, they all do skeezy things in the name of profit. MS isn't special in this regard.
venomsnake 12y ago
Decent windows on unlocked devices with root and sideloading to the users. Still a winning idea.
- ape4 12y ago
  It would nice if they don't follow Android and iOS by having everything totally locked down. (Unless you root or jail break). They can see Microsoft give you flexibility, freedom.
keithwarren 12y ago
I almost gave up when he said "I don’t mean to be a pedant but which is it — mobile first or cloud first? Only one thing can be first." If you don't recognize that those are two different areas then you are either dense, or being intentionally contrarian. Given the earlier statements he made it is clear the latter is certainly true and quite possibly the former as well.
- rimantas 12y ago
  It has nothing to do with the areas being different or similar. The point is that only one thing can be the first.
  - jbigelow76 12y ago
    They are two sides of the same coin. What use (aside from the incredibly useful feature of making actual phone calls) is a smartphone if there aren't services in the cloud that account for the "smart" part?
    - rayiner 12y ago
      Lots of use, unless we're lumping the internet and e-mail into "the cloud." I'm quite happy to have my photos stored locally, my e-mails and documents handled by my company's exchange server, etc.
      - jbigelow76 12y ago
        I think unless you or your company is managing their own email servers then yes, email is now "cloud".
        rayiner 12y ago
        Don't most large companies still manage their own e-mail servers?
        12y ago
motters 12y ago
I don't really care what Microsoft is doing. I don't use any of their products. I don't intend to in future either. It took me years to fully extricate myself from the disaster zone which was Microsoft Windows, and having done that I have no desire to return.
- pistle 12y ago
  Amen! I didn't read the post either! Take that WINDOZE!
- CmonDev 12y ago
  Typical *nix closed-box thinking.
vfclists 12y ago
The only thing that will keep Microsoft and Apple going in the consumer markets over the next few years are patents and binary blobs. Once chips become fast enough and non-free drivers become irrelevant their days will be over. Already a $150 smartphone contains as much CPU power as a desktop of 5 years ago. Add a keyboard and attach it to big screen, presto you have a desktop. Their days are over and they are living on sales hype and clever apps. Once developer lock in ends, thats it for them.
- CmonDev 12y ago
  Already a $150 smartphone contains as much CPU power as a desktop of 5 years ago. Add a keyboard and attach it to big screen, presto you have a desktop. Microsoft is working on unifying their OS versions. Please catch up.

55 points by rfreytag 12y ago

kvb 12y ago

Given the content, I can't tell if the allusion to the disastrous Chinese Cultural Revolution is intended or not. It seems more like Cringely's actually talking about changing Microsoft's culture, which makes the title quite poor.

pessimizer 12y ago
That was the intention of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, too. It failed in the long term, but from the perspective of its architects, most of what we call its disasters were actually its successes.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Mass starvation? Technological stagnation? Which success are you referring to?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - leoc 12y ago
    > Which success are you referring to? Keeping Mao in power would be the major success, again very much from the perspective of the architect...
  - diego_moita 12y ago
    His (valid) point is not that the Chinese Cultural Revolution was a success but rather that, in their twisted minds, its architects perceived it as a success. They probably aimed at establishing ideological "purity" and authoritarian rule, they probably never thought of your valid concerns as being relevant. True believers have awful perceptions of what success means.
  - cstross 12y ago
    Presumably breaking forever the grip of the Confucian design pattern (left behind by the former imperial bureaucracy) on the imaginations of the low-level functionaries, without who no top-down empire can operate. An example uppermost in Mao's mind must have been that, despite Lenin's putsch of 1917, by 1927 the USSR ran along lines that would have been instantly recognizable to a Tsarist-era bureaucrat from 1907. The structure of governance of the vast Russian empire re-asserted itself under the guise of Actually Existing Socialism, once the Vanguard Party had replaced the top and middle tiers of the Imperial nobility and bureaucracy with nominally-loyal functionaries. The same sorts of person are attracted to power whatever the ideology of the regime, and aside from joining a party and paying lip service to the party's ideology, they make the same set of assumptions about how power is to be exercised. True revolutionaries are discredited, expelled, or purged: see the fates of Trotsky and Zinoviev, for example. Mao and his inner cadre saw the Chinese people, a generation after the revolution (itself largely pushed through by force of Russian arms, in the shape of the Manchurian campaign of 1945 that kicked the Japanese army off the Asian mainland), reverting to the social and political patterns of the Confucian bureaucracy that had run the empire they supplanted. True, the new bureaucrats paid lip service to communism as a guiding eschatology. But they weren't communists, much less revolutionaries. This was repugnant to Mao, so he fired up the whole social revolution that cost so many lives precisely to break that design pattern. It sort of worked. In the short term, it caused chaos and starvation and massive deaths: but in the long term, it laid the foundations for a technocracy. Today's Chinese party politburo are primarily engineers and scientists who grew up during the cultural revolution, not the spiritual heirs to the earlier system. Although I think the direction they've taken China in probably has Mao spinning in his grave so fast they could hook him up to a dynamo and power their national grid ...
    - cyorir 12y ago
      I would agree with most of this except for the establishment of the technocracy. I do not think Mao or the gang of four wanted to establish a technocracy. That is a bit different from the aim of the cultural revolution, which was hostile towards the academic class and the Western style of academia (Bach was targeted just as Confucious and Mengzi). A side product of the revolution and the departure of the Gang of Four, together with Mao's death, led to a power vacuum. This was filled a few years later when Deng Xiaoping and his supporters gained prominence. Deng Xiaoping was the true technocrat, and his reaction against the cultural revolution is what paved the way for today's technocracy. Now the question of whether Deng Xiaoping is spinning faster in his grave than Mao is open for debate.
  - acornax 12y ago
    Mass starvation wasn't part of the cultural revolution. It happened as a result of the great leap forward which happened about 15 years before.
corprew 12y ago
I think you can assume that was his goal (an indirect reference to the cultural revolution that works in the way you say.)

leo_mck 12y ago

I just read the comments on posts with "Microsoft" on the title so I can laugh at the people who says "I do not care about microsoft" (but I am here commenting on a topic about it anyway).

craigching 12y ago

In the comments there is a link to a critique that I think hits the nail on the head: http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/07/13/microsofts-new-ceo-needs-an-editor/ http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/07/13/microsofts-new-ceo-need...

chiph 12y ago

> Mobile-First, Cloud-First I dunno. I see this as "devices and services" rephrased.

sp332 12y ago
Services maybe, but I took "mobile" to mean mobile apps and not so much hardware.
Zigurd 12y ago
You put your finger right on the danger there. It could mean anything from "We're, selling off all the hardware, replacing Windows Phone with an AOSP-based system, like Amazon's, and implementing all our mobile apps for iOS and Android, and doubling the resources on our Azure/Bing ecosystem" to "We're keeping everything, laying off a few people to get another bump-up from Wall St., and muddling through."
sz4kerto 12y ago
I don't think so, especially because Nadella specifically mentioned that D&S is not the governing principle (well, he didn't say that exactly, but almost). What Mobile-First means to me is that mobile is _the_ platform, and being present on portable devices is the key to survival for Microsoft (and don't forget, almost every end-user device is portable, including dockable mobile workstations). That means that MS cannot afford risking not being present on dominant mobile operating systems, for example -- it would be stupid to risk the survival of the company and only push stuff on Windows Phone, for example. Other than that, I disagree with the article on a many points. > Microsoft’s tradition of innovation is hard to even detect, much less celebrate or revive. The tradition of innovation is there -- see Microsoft Research, one of the best funded institutes. The tradition of polish is not there. Microsoft has produced tablet PCs, smartphones, voice and handwriting recognition, mapping, and so on. It has a bad record of taking stuff out from R&D departments and delivering them to end users in a neat and easy-to-use way. > I don’t mean to be a pedant but which is it — mobile first or cloud first? Only one thing can be first. I think the opposite: the two goes together hand in hand, and cannot really live without each other. That's the big problem of Apple: they are not that good in cloud services, and a phone (or a tablet) increasingly relies on cloud services. Google is mostly winning the mobile war because it's cloud services. It's the cloud services why Google can release Android for free, it's them why many iOS users slowly gravitate towards Android ('because Google stuff works better'), it's them why many people don't want Windows Phone ('I don't use too many apps but I need Google Maps and GMail').

gtaylor 12y ago

This article is so bitter and dismissive of Microsoft that I have a hard time even taking it seriously. "Nadella begins at the altar of innovation, a word that at Microsoft has traditionally meant stealing technology. Of course he is the company cheerleader to some extent but Microsoft’s tradition of innovation is hard to even detect, much less celebrate or revive. This is revisionist history. Can he really believe it’s true?" Seriously? We're going to poopoo them stealing tech and completely dismiss everything they've ever done? I guess Apple/Google/IBM/HP get a pass... I'm a Linux fanboy first and foremost, so I don't exactly view MS with rose colored glasses. With that said, regardless of how they did it, MS has left a mark on the world. Show me a huge tech company that doesn't "steal tech" or engage in anti-competitive practices. That doesn't make it OK, but completely dismissing MS's history seems silly. If the author missed the mark this bad on what Microsoft is and has done, I have a hard time taking him seriously when talking about the future.

dsschnau 12y ago
Agreed. This writer is just being a dick to stir up controversy. Microsoft has a lot of potential and what looks like good leadership from their new CEO. I think and hope things will go well for them.
- sheetjs 12y ago
  > This writer is just being a dick to stir up controversy You clicked, ad shown (Ghostery claims there are Amazon ads), mission accomplished
icantthinkofone 12y ago
What Microsoft has done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...
- gtaylor 12y ago
  Nobody here is denying that they've done bad things, but name a public tech giant that hasn't done stupid/bad things. They all suck. They answer to profit, first and foremost. They're going to bend rules and push the limits in the name of making a few pennies for their shareholders. Apple does it, Google does it, IBM does it, Amazon does it, they all do skeezy things in the name of profit. MS isn't special in this regard.

venomsnake 12y ago

Decent windows on unlocked devices with root and sideloading to the users. Still a winning idea.

ape4 12y ago
It would nice if they don't follow Android and iOS by having everything totally locked down. (Unless you root or jail break). They can see Microsoft give you flexibility, freedom.

keithwarren 12y ago

I almost gave up when he said "I don’t mean to be a pedant but which is it — mobile first or cloud first? Only one thing can be first." If you don't recognize that those are two different areas then you are either dense, or being intentionally contrarian. Given the earlier statements he made it is clear the latter is certainly true and quite possibly the former as well.

rimantas 12y ago
It has nothing to do with the areas being different or similar. The point is that only one thing can be the first.
- jbigelow76 12y ago
  They are two sides of the same coin. What use (aside from the incredibly useful feature of making actual phone calls) is a smartphone if there aren't services in the cloud that account for the "smart" part?
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Lots of use, unless we're lumping the internet and e-mail into "the cloud." I'm quite happy to have my photos stored locally, my e-mails and documents handled by my company's exchange server, etc.
    - jbigelow76 12y ago
      I think unless you or your company is managing their own email servers then yes, email is now "cloud".
      - rayiner 12y ago
        Don't most large companies still manage their own e-mail servers?
        12y ago

motters 12y ago

I don't really care what Microsoft is doing. I don't use any of their products. I don't intend to in future either. It took me years to fully extricate myself from the disaster zone which was Microsoft Windows, and having done that I have no desire to return.

pistle 12y ago
Amen! I didn't read the post either! Take that WINDOZE!
CmonDev 12y ago
Typical *nix closed-box thinking.

vfclists 12y ago

The only thing that will keep Microsoft and Apple going in the consumer markets over the next few years are patents and binary blobs. Once chips become fast enough and non-free drivers become irrelevant their days will be over. Already a $150 smartphone contains as much CPU power as a desktop of 5 years ago. Add a keyboard and attach it to big screen, presto you have a desktop. Their days are over and they are living on sales hype and clever apps. Once developer lock in ends, thats it for them.

CmonDev 12y ago
Already a $150 smartphone contains as much CPU power as a desktop of 5 years ago. Add a keyboard and attach it to big screen, presto you have a desktop. Microsoft is working on unifying their OS versions. Please catch up.