4 ms·

> De-Ballmerization and Microsoft is oozing delicious developer love. Kind of ironic, what with Ballmer's "Developers developers developers..." spiel.

scrollaway 12y ago
Indeed. For someone who understood the problem, Ballmer sure missed out on understanding the solution.
- JeremyMorgan 12y ago
  Depends on how you look at it. Microsoft has been good to developers since the Gates area. They always understood the importance of developers for their OS, as long as you pay for the privilege. The biggest difference now is all the stuff they give out for free.
  - klibertp 12y ago
    > The biggest difference now is all the stuff they give out for free. No, it doesn't actually matter, it's not a financial issue. Open sourcing their libs is good because it gives developers access to the sources of libraries which they use daily. This in turn will make debugging much easier and will also help with understanding what is actually happening when you call some function. I left MS-land a decade ago, but when I worked with MS tools I'd have gladly paid serious money for access to the source code (that was in C++, I hear debugging is easier in C#), but that wasn't an option. Now they offer access to the source code, which is the important part, and for free, which is kind of nice but very important.
- brudgers 12y ago
  Ballmer set Microsoft on this course years ago. This is his legacy. Billions in the bank probably make up for lack of credit from the peanut gallery who think radical shifts in direction happen overnight. He laid the foundation before he and Gates started selling their stock. The new Microsoft is beholden to Wall Street. It can't do an Xbox360 or Windows Phone or buy a Nokia. Ten years of Open Source projects at Microsoft are why analysts aren't calling for scalps. Ballmer made the next guys job easier.
rdtsc 12y ago
When it comes to propaganda from large and powerful entities, usually it help to reverse the meaning to really understand the message. "Developers,developers,developer" = Fuck developers,need more profits next quarter. "We brought peace and democracy to country <X>" = We seriously fucked it up for years to come, and installed a brutal puppet dictator. "We are not evil like those other mean companies. We will do good in the world" = The main products are the users, who's information it sells it its real users. Have colaborated and been in bed with corrupt governments all across the world. The list goes on. It is a rather fun heuristic. And once you know about, you'll start seeing it more often.
- stingraycharles 12y ago
  It's not only from organizations and powerful entities, I like to apply this logic in normal day-to-day communications with people too. If someone has a very strong opinion about something and tries to "convert" everyone to it (say, vegetarianism, meditation, emacs, or whatever), it is usually because someone is very insecure about him/herself this trait, and made it part of their identity. It usually has no point discussing this with a person like that.
  - SixSigma 12y ago
    It called "cognitive load". People are pre occupied with the thing that takes them the most mental effort. New mothers, people giving up smoking, people changing diet, people trying to hide things about themselves. "The lady doth protest too much" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady_doth_protest_too_much,_methinks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady_doth_protest_too_much,...
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  Except I don't think this is true of Ballmer when it came to "developers, developers, developers". I doubt Microsoft has willingly done anything to harm developers that use its products, certainly not for "profits next quarter". Sure, they deprecated some technologies (like Silverlight), but that was in response to market realities (like the iPhone and HTML5), and even then they are supported for years. All the various complaints lodged against Microsoft, such as Spolsky's "fire and motion", are more rationally explained by the vagaries of how technologies progress organically in large companies and in the industry in general.
otakucode 12y ago
Unfortunately, Ballmer's managerial approach is what killed it. He might have known that helping developers was the way to go, but he also thought that competition in the organization would lead to better performance. My understanding is that this idea failed in some of the most vicious and destructive ways possible. I hope that the very visible failure of his cut-throat management style and setting up so many disincentives to cooperation in the organization is highly recognized in management-theory circles. It turns out making your company a terrible place to work with everyone at each others throats isn't a good idea. Whodathunkit?
- dragonshed 12y ago
  Indeed. I'm reminded of this org chart comparison... http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/ http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/
  - snambi 12y ago
    very funny.

scrollaway 12y ago

Indeed. For someone who understood the problem, Ballmer sure missed out on understanding the solution.

JeremyMorgan 12y ago
Depends on how you look at it. Microsoft has been good to developers since the Gates area. They always understood the importance of developers for their OS, as long as you pay for the privilege. The biggest difference now is all the stuff they give out for free.
- klibertp 12y ago
  > The biggest difference now is all the stuff they give out for free. No, it doesn't actually matter, it's not a financial issue. Open sourcing their libs is good because it gives developers access to the sources of libraries which they use daily. This in turn will make debugging much easier and will also help with understanding what is actually happening when you call some function. I left MS-land a decade ago, but when I worked with MS tools I'd have gladly paid serious money for access to the source code (that was in C++, I hear debugging is easier in C#), but that wasn't an option. Now they offer access to the source code, which is the important part, and for free, which is kind of nice but very important.
brudgers 12y ago
Ballmer set Microsoft on this course years ago. This is his legacy. Billions in the bank probably make up for lack of credit from the peanut gallery who think radical shifts in direction happen overnight. He laid the foundation before he and Gates started selling their stock. The new Microsoft is beholden to Wall Street. It can't do an Xbox360 or Windows Phone or buy a Nokia. Ten years of Open Source projects at Microsoft are why analysts aren't calling for scalps. Ballmer made the next guys job easier.

rdtsc 12y ago

When it comes to propaganda from large and powerful entities, usually it help to reverse the meaning to really understand the message. "Developers,developers,developer" = Fuck developers,need more profits next quarter. "We brought peace and democracy to country <X>" = We seriously fucked it up for years to come, and installed a brutal puppet dictator. "We are not evil like those other mean companies. We will do good in the world" = The main products are the users, who's information it sells it its real users. Have colaborated and been in bed with corrupt governments all across the world. The list goes on. It is a rather fun heuristic. And once you know about, you'll start seeing it more often.

stingraycharles 12y ago
It's not only from organizations and powerful entities, I like to apply this logic in normal day-to-day communications with people too. If someone has a very strong opinion about something and tries to "convert" everyone to it (say, vegetarianism, meditation, emacs, or whatever), it is usually because someone is very insecure about him/herself this trait, and made it part of their identity. It usually has no point discussing this with a person like that.
- SixSigma 12y ago
  It called "cognitive load". People are pre occupied with the thing that takes them the most mental effort. New mothers, people giving up smoking, people changing diet, people trying to hide things about themselves. "The lady doth protest too much" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady_doth_protest_too_much,_methinks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady_doth_protest_too_much,...
throwawaykf05 12y ago
Except I don't think this is true of Ballmer when it came to "developers, developers, developers". I doubt Microsoft has willingly done anything to harm developers that use its products, certainly not for "profits next quarter". Sure, they deprecated some technologies (like Silverlight), but that was in response to market realities (like the iPhone and HTML5), and even then they are supported for years. All the various complaints lodged against Microsoft, such as Spolsky's "fire and motion", are more rationally explained by the vagaries of how technologies progress organically in large companies and in the industry in general.

otakucode 12y ago

Unfortunately, Ballmer's managerial approach is what killed it. He might have known that helping developers was the way to go, but he also thought that competition in the organization would lead to better performance. My understanding is that this idea failed in some of the most vicious and destructive ways possible. I hope that the very visible failure of his cut-throat management style and setting up so many disincentives to cooperation in the organization is highly recognized in management-theory circles. It turns out making your company a terrible place to work with everyone at each others throats isn't a good idea. Whodathunkit?

dragonshed 12y ago
Indeed. I'm reminded of this org chart comparison... http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/ http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/
- snambi 12y ago
  very funny.