6 ms·

This was written almost 10 years ago by someone who was pretty polarizing inside the company (and ultimately left after spearheading the original vision for Win

by tdicola 12y ago

This was written almost 10 years ago by someone who was pretty polarizing inside the company (and ultimately left after spearheading the original vision for Windows 8), so take it with a grain of salt. Many of the recent MS layoffs have been in the PM organizations because the company is redefining the role.

alelefant 12y ago
Good point, the title of the article should be modified to include the year. Recent events make it sound like the story is changing.
antics 12y ago
Sinofsky was brought in as President of the Windows division after the failure of Vista, during which he spearheaded (among other things) Windows 7 and IE8, both to extraordinarily great praise. Yes. He was divisive. Yes. He had failures. But really what you should do is take this for what it is: a successful person talking about success. The real trap is not that he is divisive or wrong about the future, it's that he almost certainly suffers survivor's bias.
- randomfool 12y ago
  Windows 7 was a quick iterative release. He did a decent job, but there was little where things could go wrong. I firmly believe that IE8 was the worst IE release- no tabbed browsing, horrible accelerators feature and a bogus 'perceived performance' mantra. Sinofsky's triad model is the epitome of Microsoft beauracracy- I left the company to escape it (I'd have put money on Sinofsky becoming CEO)
  - joe_the_user 12y ago
    Having used Win8 just long enough to blank the machine and install Linux, I found the beast just horrifying. I think there was a point where win8 actually cut into MS' sales - and MS has a pretty tight monopoly on the low-end PC market. And Win8 is where the things Sinofsky talks about - being aware of how ordinary users actually get thing done - were palpably tossed out the window. In the discussion of what lead to Win8, the perceived virtues of the Mac were monomaniacally pursued. Static design - having an impressive, beautiful look - was everything. Doing tasks was nothing. And I think earlier MS for all its other evil, had a pretty good record of producing good, usable programs (buggy too but they were careful at finding the features people needed and wanted).
  - yuhong 12y ago
    IE8 did have tabbed browsing.
  - onli 12y ago
    Windows 7 took an unusable performance monster and morphed it into something decently useable. That was no small feat, and many thing could've gone wrong with the wrong focus. Just look at Windows 8.
- girvo 12y ago
  IE8 was praised? God I hate that browser. The lack of anything remotely close to ECMAScript 5 makes me cry every day.
tosh 12y ago
I'd love to learn more about how the role is evolving at Microsoft. Anyone has pointers/stuff to read about this?
Encosia 12y ago
He had a couple high profile successes before Windows 8 too though (Office 2007/10 and Win7).
harryh 12y ago
This wasn't written by just "someone." It was written by Sinofsky who many thought would be CEO someday.

by tdicola 12y ago

alelefant 12y ago

Good point, the title of the article should be modified to include the year. Recent events make it sound like the story is changing.

antics 12y ago

Sinofsky was brought in as President of the Windows division after the failure of Vista, during which he spearheaded (among other things) Windows 7 and IE8, both to extraordinarily great praise. Yes. He was divisive. Yes. He had failures. But really what you should do is take this for what it is: a successful person talking about success. The real trap is not that he is divisive or wrong about the future, it's that he almost certainly suffers survivor's bias.

randomfool 12y ago
Windows 7 was a quick iterative release. He did a decent job, but there was little where things could go wrong. I firmly believe that IE8 was the worst IE release- no tabbed browsing, horrible accelerators feature and a bogus 'perceived performance' mantra. Sinofsky's triad model is the epitome of Microsoft beauracracy- I left the company to escape it (I'd have put money on Sinofsky becoming CEO)
- joe_the_user 12y ago
  Having used Win8 just long enough to blank the machine and install Linux, I found the beast just horrifying. I think there was a point where win8 actually cut into MS' sales - and MS has a pretty tight monopoly on the low-end PC market. And Win8 is where the things Sinofsky talks about - being aware of how ordinary users actually get thing done - were palpably tossed out the window. In the discussion of what lead to Win8, the perceived virtues of the Mac were monomaniacally pursued. Static design - having an impressive, beautiful look - was everything. Doing tasks was nothing. And I think earlier MS for all its other evil, had a pretty good record of producing good, usable programs (buggy too but they were careful at finding the features people needed and wanted).
- yuhong 12y ago
  IE8 did have tabbed browsing.
- onli 12y ago
  Windows 7 took an unusable performance monster and morphed it into something decently useable. That was no small feat, and many thing could've gone wrong with the wrong focus. Just look at Windows 8.
girvo 12y ago
IE8 was praised? God I hate that browser. The lack of anything remotely close to ECMAScript 5 makes me cry every day.

tosh 12y ago

I'd love to learn more about how the role is evolving at Microsoft. Anyone has pointers/stuff to read about this?

Encosia 12y ago

He had a couple high profile successes before Windows 8 too though (Office 2007/10 and Win7).

harryh 12y ago

This wasn't written by just "someone." It was written by Sinofsky who many thought would be CEO someday.