Big Huge Comment Round-up!

I certainly wished that Blogger had a feed for comments because half (or perhaps more) of what happens here is in the comments. The Atom XML feed doesn't even post the URL for the comments for each post.

So, as a short-hand gift for those wanting to find the occasional gem that gives you insight into the dirt under the Microsoft rug, here's a link to each post, starting at the comments, some with commentary about those comments:

(skipping posts that have zero comments)

Blast off for Mini-Microsoft!

Contains what I think is the best of all comments slamming me. Someone (who?) really doing a good job of channeling BillG: Upon reading most of your posts I have these comments. Most of your ideas are unoriginal and obvious, while some are plain stupid. There's a follow-up to this later in Comments on Recent Comments (below).

Robert Scoble on Microsoft and Benefits

Great Time for Microsoft Employees to Find Wonderful New Jobs

Story of someone who left Microsoft.

Microsoft Review Season and Great Chris Anderson Posts

Performance Tuning MSFT.exe (or, How to Save Microsoft $1,000,000,000 Now)

A request for less leaders out of touch with shipping great products.

Under 3.25 Lifetime Average Review Score at Microsoft? It's Time to Re-Interview!

Not all that popular. Ass calling all around.

GAH!!! Microsoft to hire 3,000 in area

Ed Draper takes a big swig of the Kool-aid and puts me in for some deep analysis.

"Fire Me? Oh, hell no! Microsoft should fire YOU!"

Tough story of a 14 year veteran moved on and another observing that the Old School Microsofties have been leaving in greater numbers.

A Microsoft Targeted Layoff that will also Increase Employee Morale: HR

Microsoft and WWGD - What Will Google Do? Time for Pre-Emptive Innovation.

Notes how I'm lobbying for Hailstorm. Now there's concern that Google is making all of Microsoft's failures into reality (smart-tags, Hailstorm). We might see something there yet, and you know if Google does it, we won't be far behind, like a hungry rabid dog chasing a tired bicycler.

Microsoft "Company" Meeting 2004

Microsoft OOF, asking America about Microsoft

I think the one and only Linux-bait I've seen here.

Comments on Recent Comments

Excellent: First, an interesting story about the decline of Charlotte / PSS-East. Then, YES, a follow-up to that new orifice ripper.

Dangerous Transitions

Employee Growth Chart

Let's cut Sales! No Marketing! No UA!

Satan's Process Excellence

Pretty good discussion of process and the role of the PM etc.

Your Review, Your Numbers, Your Choices

Wow and Holy-smokes - lots of long posts here. Just read'em if you haven't already.

Random Mid-September Comments

Microsoft Layoffs, Hiring, and Offshoring

Microsoft Giving Campaign 2004

Riffin with Reifman - Citizen Microsoft

http://career/ and Your Dream Job.

When Microsoft Should Walk Away

Ka-Pow! The Google Desktop.

Goodbye Cans, Hello Dispenser

My paranoia here was misplaced (seems as though this has been that way for a while) but some other changes outside of Redmond are revealed.

Citizen Microsoft Follow-Up

Microsoft Reaching out to Google

Some good general comments around Google and Microsoft. And Scoble provides a visit.

Microsoft's Financial Horizon

One of my favorites, because the charts are still live and working. Info-Porn! And the horizon is still flat.

Is it wrong to want to kiss Joel Spolsky?

My goodness, you mean not everyone loves Joel?

Why Microsoft is in Trouble

You're Fired

Cut-backs, offshoring, and PSS

Interesting story regarding Bangalore coming up to speed on customer support.

The November Clip Show

Yeah, yeah, I love you guys, too. My URL got printed in Seattle Magazine? I'll have to point that out with suave pride the next time I'm puttin' on my moves... yeah.

Does Microsoft care about politically correct speech?

Who is John Galt?

A Light in the Darkness

Back and forth business discussions.

Scoble, firing, and Microsoft as "Brand Cool"

The first time I noticed Scoble wanting to trim the Microsoft workforce (MSN-found received that focus, as of late).

s/Marcia/Google/g

Innovation is hard in a big, slow Microsoft w/ Gates / Ballmer / Raikes slowing things down.

Geeks Over Troubled Water

Lots of discussions over demos and how this particular foul-up was due to IR interference.

Whoa, Maxi-Microsoft?!?

Anti-Maxi comments.

Apple Crashing the Party

More demo discussions and whether Microsoft is held to a higher standard.

62 Testers

Interesting discussions - especially about the level of extra visibility testers will have into fellow-testers level (and soon Dev and PM?)

Proudly Serving up Microsoft Goodness

Harsh reviews and BS being called on some Pollyanna-isms.

Something is Rotten in the Town of Redmond

Wow, good reading here ranging all over the scale. I especially like the call for The Return of Gates.

Let's Fire all the Middle Managers

Well I guess I got a lot of non-managers behind this. We don't suck as much as Novell, though?

Ex-Microsoftie Spotting

I think we need a trendy name for the new game of finding the latest ex-Microsoft veteran, where they are working now, and what their blog might reveal regarding Microsoft vis-à-vis the new job. And just what kind of maintenance are they doing between the bridge from Microsoft to their new job?

Joe Beda moved on a while ago to Google. In his random update post, he notes:

The contrast between Google and Microsoft couldn't be greater (at least from an engineer's point of view). No meetings and few politics means that I spend much more time coding. I've written more code so far at Google than I have in the last year at MS. (That really isn't apples to apples as I spent most of my time in the last year at MS writing specs.) I totally feel like I'm in the loop on my project without having to play political games. I guess that is what happens on smaller teams.

Okay, all you Microsofties, just imagine: next week, you have no meetings to go to. You just have to do your work. And then the next week will be just like that. Creating great features for customers. Pop! That's the dream bubble above your head getting punctured by the Outlook reminder for three different meetings you need to be attending in fifteen minutes (no wonder I always start feeling dread at forty-four minutes after the top of the hour). Yes, anytime my boss wants to scare me into never advancing to his level, he just turns his laptop around to show me his calendar for the week.

No meetings? I'd be so productive I can't even allow myself to think about it for another moment.

A bit ago, there was the whole MarkJen ex-Microsoftie now ex-Googler and now Plaxo-rific. Enough about that.

This previous week, everyone's been a buzzin' about Mark Lucovksy's move to Google and his recently discovered note from February about Shipping Software and how Microsoft can't do it as well anymore. It was a great post especially because he was accumulating super comments, but then Mark decided that wasn't too cool and wiped the commenting out. Boo. Kevin Schofield's response to Mark ended up collecting some good comments, too, especially that whole "to the moon" gaffe. His follow-up post.

Meanwhile, Pat Helland revealed that he's turned in his blue badge to go to work for Amazon. It's a 100% class-act post and he leaves behind nothing but a fortified bridge from his past to his future and goodwill all-around.

Let's Fire all the Middle Managers

"The first thing we do, let's fire all the middle managers."

Good. A recent comment starts: They should start the layoffs with middle managers...

I agree with that. Good point. The comment continues: ...[t]here's this guy who goes by Mini-Microsoft who seems to want out.

Who-da, What'za, Me-za?!? Yeah, well, okay, when you point a finger, three point back at you. I'm currently bored and exporting the GAL via Outlook to Excel to figure out how many manager-of-managers we have compared to all of management and what their average number of reports are (good lord, has Outlook ever profiled this? Can't be a common scenario and I'm squeezing my innards trying to psychically induce Outlook to run a little faster).

My intuition off-hand tells me that we have way too many idle managers, especially managers of managers. Whenever some new person shows up in an important email, I click on them in Outlook and look through their org. I'm constantly disappointed at the high percentage of managers and low percentage of individual contributors in the groups I run across. Smelly.

Maybe it's individual contributor attrition due to the fact that Google and the local start-ups are only hiring the productive people.

I figure that a feature-team manager at the minimum can deal with five reports; seven would be better (+/- 2). And, yo, just focus on the managing. Don't go and spin Alpha-Geek mythology around promoting someone from individual contributor to front-line manager and then require them to both (a) create code and (b) manage. Gee, which do you think their passion is going to direct them towards?

"We promote our best developers to leads," is the mantra instilled when the shades are closed and the candidates considered. I've never quite connected the dots of "Best Developer" and "Great Manager."

Via Dare Obasanjo:

Michael Brundage has an essay entitled Working at Microsoft  where he provides some of his opinions on the good, the bad, and the in-between of working at Microsoft. One key insight is that Microsoft tends to have good upper management and poor middle management.

And in  Working at Microsoft  you have some choice bits, especially regarding the whole idea of promoting our best developers away from the code and throwing them into the throngs of management. One bit:

Of these managers, I'd work for (or with) only two of them again. Two were so awful that if they were hired into my current organization (even on another team), I'd quit on the spot. I'd love to think this is some kind of fluke, but many other employees have shared similar sentiments with me.

Back to Dare on the cost of poor management:

Rest assured it is very true and the effects on the company have cost it millions, if not billions of dollars.

My humble suggestion: flatten the Microsoft product team management chain.

• Not allowed: a lead with one or two reports, or a manager of managers with a sparse organizational tree. You're considered minimally loaded at five reports, and in need of internal balancing if it gets below that.
• Do a people review of middle management. Move on the dead wood and the Rest & Vest.
• Give front-line managers the opportunity to return to individual contributor status. You know, let our best developers get back to doing what they are best at.
• If the remaining managers are indeed great managers, let them take on a full load; otherwise, forcefully transition them to individual contributor and require them to excel against their peers.

If all this process is paying off, I think we can get by with a lot less management and a lot more personal Engineering Excellence.

Something is Rotten in the Town of Redmond

Michael Malone is pulling a Marcellus here in his editorial R.I.P. Microsoft? (via Slashdot - also bouncing around in blogs).

Okay, take a moment to go to that article and contemplate Malone's business intuition. Is your Microsoft group fresh or is it rotting?

Is something rotten in Redmond? Yes! It's the rotting, fleshy mass of way too many misdirected, underutilized, and unneeded Microsofties. You would think if we were actually focused on customer problems and issues, we wouldn't have to go on buying sprees to fill in the gaps with anti-spyware and virus defense. We could grab some of these researchers and Black Hole groups and give them a product to develop that there was a real, tangible, headline-grabbing need for.

If we're the best software development house on Earth, what in earth does it mean that we can't ramp up to write great software to protect our own OS when it's under constant assault? Sure, there's some amount of fiscal responsibility in whipping out the acquisition, but didn't anyone see this slow train-wreck in progress and posit, "Hmm, perhaps we should go and write some of our own protective software?"

(If I wanted to be, ahem, cynical, I'd imagine that anyone suggesting that development idea to up-on-high were told, "We'd get higher quality results going outside - we don't want another SP2 schedule impact.")

Our focus is wildly mismatched with customer needs. Well, assuming that customers actually really need us anymore. We've accomplished our goal with Windows XP and Office 97 and have provided a fine foundation for everyone's day-to-day needs. Why do I need Longhorn to load up my iPod? And in reality, the esoteric features we pile on beyond XP and Office 97 are simply an echo-chamber of geeks' delight. And a source of rot.

I think of what my friends in various groups tell me what they're working on. If just about everyone one of those had to explain their feature to someone waiting in line at Starbucks, they'd receive a polite, "I'm sorry, I just don't understand." (subtext: "I have no idea what you're talking about nor how I'd ever use it, let alone pay good money for it; please stop talking to me.").

Chops to Scoble for running Channel 9 and getting informative blogs streaming out of Microsoft. But I don't believe that's the antithesis to Malone's commentary. Perhaps it just provides more clarity. While Alex Barnett has a Baloney post to the R.I.P. piece, do take time to scan through the comments. Simon St. Laurent adds his insights, too: Microsoft high points... dwindling?

As you wander through the upcoming MSR Tech Fest, sniff the air. Which would you prefer Microsoft to direct its corporate spending towards: half-cooked research software subsidized by Windows and Office profits or products actually focused on contemporary customer needs? Maybe I'll be surprised and find a demo of an adaptive antibody system for Windows, but somehow I think I'll just be watching this year's equivalent to an edge-detected cartoon of a kid swinging on the monkey bars. (And in my mind, as I wander around watching so many hawkers in their grown-up Science Fair booths, I'll just be repeating, "We pay you? We actually pay you?")

When it comes to being able to think ourselves out of a problem (stagnant stock, rot being sniffed by business writers), we need less Edison perspiration and more Tesla IQ. We've currently got breadth coverage of a variety of researchy areas, like monkeys typing in hopes to find the next patented tungsten killer-app. Keep that shtuff in the colleges. Let those people go and trim back into a variety of agile small teams that delight the end-user with their features. Actually end up have Office users clamoring the IT departments to upgrade to the new version of Office because of the oh-I-got-to-get-me-some-of-that features. What would that take?

It would smell good. Like the fresh-off-the-presses, crisp cash.

(Updated: updated the URL of the ABC article to its new location.)

Admin - Delays in Posts, Quiet ahead

I'm getting major delays via the posting mechanism I send to this blog (I much prefer sending posts via email vs. web interfaces). Given that the Blogger Mail2Blogger gateway is pretty much a bit-bucket right now, things have been slow to show up here. So I'm going to post the two in the queue now, hoping that after a week's worth of guru meditation they don't magically appear through the gateway, too. If they do: oops, my apologies. We all seem to get what we pay for. Until the Mail2Blogger gateway starts behaiving, things will be quiet here.

Proudly Serving up Microsoft Goodness

When you have a chance, drop by Adam Barr's Proudly Serving site ( http://www.proudlyserving.com/) and visit. I stumbled across the site the year before last and I was quite delighted (the old version I discovered is at http://www.proudlyserving.com/old.html ). I especially enjoyed the story about the "Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters" button.

Adam's book was certainly a motivating factor for me to put some time aside to throw some words together into the occasional post.

A recent Proudly Serving post I especially enjoyed reading: Microsoft Goodness.

One of my beliefs that is teetering a bit is the belief in Microsoft's fundamental goodness as a company. I'm not concerned so much about the intentions of everyday employees; rather I wonder if Microsoft executives, in their heart of hearts, are really concerned about doing the right thing.

I'd say more concerned about looking like they are doing the right thing.

Five years ago Ballmer took point in leading Microsoft. Soon we became Jack Welch'd and our simple hard-working software development and selling became infused with company values and E/S/N's and career development videos with acronyms bandied about courtesy Harvard School of Business. All kind of like The Flood from Halo.

For all of this great effort to enforce values and goals, I feel empty sometimes - like all I've become is an assimilated asset trotted before shareholders within soap box emblazoned with "Your Passion Inspires Me to Create Software to Help You Reach it!" and an ingredient list of my company values (that's right ladies, Passion!).

The more we poke and prod and bucket what it takes to be a successful Microsoftie the more we miss than recognize. I would dance with glee and never post another missive here if we could just go back to the old review document (with nary a mention of commitments nor values - not because I'm value free but because they are so empty and vague).

The old-school Microsoft Competencies is a great set of resources. They've been kneed a bit in the midst of all the other people-research projects we've endured. Let's get back to basics and focus there. Streamline it to focus on the competencies that matter most to your job and product and let the rest fall into place.

We are inherently good people. But instilled values are stale and limiting. It's not working out (like a lot of things that have happened in the last five years) and we should rewind the clock here a bit.

62 Testers

Microsoft has put 62 testers on notice (links: Microsoft Watch, Seattle Times, Seattle-PI, Beta-News, ...)

First of all, if you are a Microsoft tester and not at least a 59 SDE/T:

• Do not assume large debts.
• Update your resume and brush up your skills.
• Save up some money.
• If you really really want to stay at Microsoft, do whatever it takes to be a 59 SDE/T.
  • But before you do that, consider all your great options elsewhere...

Best of luck to those targeted for layoffs in finding new jobs outside of Microsoft. I believe that software development in general has to realize that for all the capital X's you slap into fad code development practices, you still need a person disassociated from authoring the code to test features and track down bugs that the code's author has a psychological blind-spot to.

I'm tangentially affected by all this and while I certainly wasn't involved in the culling, I knew about the process being used and had plenty of enthusiastic hallway conversations about it. Was this a heavy-weight process simply to move on dead-wood in testing? Perhaps. But in the end, it's provided a lot of transparency and visibility into the testing ranks here. And I think it's a success that should quickly spread and be implemented through-out the company.

For Test. Dev. and PM. (Oh, and the rest of you all.)

So even if you're not a tester and you've sort of plateaued in your Microsoft career, take a moment to read some of those bullet points above.

All managers should re-sync about their reports' core competencies and, for the competencies where the reports are lacking, what is their potential to actually achieve what's expected of them? If they have maxed out then move them on.

Apple Crashing the Party

Proving that demo crashes / problems are not just a Microsoft-thang, Jobs crashed during his demo today at MacWorld. Per the entry over at Engadget:

9:21am - Spotlight just instantly searched 250,000 files, can sort by people. 9:22am - Spotlight offers searching within Corbis images. 9:23am - Steve just crashed Spotlight photo viewer! "Well, that’s why we have backup systems here." Force quit and recovered.

One of the more recent comments here:

The problem isn't the failure per se but MSFT's reputation for being buggy which such failures reinforce. Had it been Apple or someone else, many folks would have given them a pass.

And that seems to be coming to, ah, pass. I found a few entries noting the crash but zero amount of relishing in Apple software tanking so publicly. Interesting. However, of all the people in the world, I trust Steve Jobs to be with at least one less employee tomorrow thanks to today's crash.

Whoa, Maxi-Microsoft?!?

Is it ego-surfing when your ego is being soundly bashed? Anyway, John Gossman put up two interesting posts on Sunday, the first one being anti-everything I post for (!).

• Maxi-Microsoft
• Silicon-Valley in a Box

Lies, damn lies, and statistics (my pot calling his kettle quite black). Looks like John's first in line to drive the bulldozer through the ball fields to make room for the new buildings to host the legions of qualified Microsoft hires we're so likely to find.

Administrivia for Jan 11th 2005

Apologies upfront: there's some posting weirdness right now with Google's Blogger / BlogSpot so some duplicate and test posts might appear while I work around this. Sorry. I'll clean up the duplicates / tests as soon as possible.

Geeks Over Troubled Water

Gates as CES. Microsoft software tanking during his presentation. My ample forehead still is red from the "D'oh!" slapping it got as I watched each embarrassing screw-up. My inner William Shatner is just crying out in anguish...

What. Does it take. To have a. Demo. That actually works AND. Doesn't. crash?

Oy. Where's Microsoft's Montgomery Scott when you truly need him?

I don't know if I'm more embarrassed by the crashes and hangs and crap-outs or over the "yuk-yuk. eh." non-surprised reactions to yet another Microsoft low-quality bit-parade. Are we doing this on purpose to help increase Apple's share?

How about a new quality standard: if your feature crashes during a Microsoft demo, you're fired. Dev. PM. And Test. You are stripped, shaved, have an "L" emblazed on your forehead, and shoved down a gauntlet of angry shareholder-employees who soundly spank you right into Lake Bill to swim across where you can dry off with the provided moth-eaten scratchy wool blankets.

Without consequences for failure, Microsoft product development see crap accepted as the very public norm and continue creating product that meet those expectations. How is it for all this Engineering Excellence that's been inflicted upon us we still achieve this mere modicum of mediocrity?

I'd expect BillG (or any embarrassed executive) to storm back to Redmond riding a roiling swirl of fire and brimstone and start firing such underperformers. And just when such just firings are revealed, you'd bet some folks will pull their fingers back from the keyboard and whisper "Holy Shit!" And rather than checking in their code to let testing find the bugs that round out the feature, they'll decide it's time to do a bit more of their own testing and write a few more automation and unit tests. And to dogfood a bit more intensely.

If pride is absent, I'll take fear.