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Major Microsoft Re-Organization
Robert Scoble writes "Microsoft is unveiling a major reorganization today to help get Vista out the door. Some of the major changes include the appointing of three new officers to the three major divisions. The Microsoft Platform Products & Services Division will be led by Kevin Johnson and Jim Allchin as co-presidents; Jeff Raikes has been named president of the Microsoft Business Division; and Robbie Bach has been named as president of Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division. In addition, the company said Ray Ozzie will expand his role as chief technical officer by assuming responsibility for helping drive its software-based services strategy and execution across all three divisions."
- Johnson
- Allchin
- Raikes
- Bach
- Ozzie
Take the first letter of each name and you get Jarbo. I think they were going for Jar-Jar,but couldn't quite pull it off without ESRA reshuffle just prior to rolling out a major product launch. I think this bodes poorly. The Street may think this is very proactive and a good move, but I've seen these things from the backend often enough I think it'll only be a matter of time before they're circled like wagons with a bin lid over each's arse end.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Typical corporate reaction to a Death March Project: "This is taking too long! I know, we'll throw more managers at the problem - that'll fix it!" MS is following in the footsteps of most big tech companies. When it started, it grew rapidly and pushed out a lot of code (really! MS used to write code!) because most of the staff, including the management were working on projects. As companies "mature", and more layers of mostly useless management come in, the actual percentage of staff producing paying work diminishes and growth slows.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Linus Torvalds, ESR, and RMS were all appointed as heads of the Window's product group.
the appointing of three new officers
Adding more bureaucracy doesnt help anything, especially in an organization already totally overbloated.
This move must be an emergency restructuring to stop what many MSers are realizing is another inevitable slippage in Vista.
In "Unrelated" News:
Microsoft announces major reorganization to open-source on their Windows Vista Product. Source's inside of Microsoft hint at a new CEO to replace the sometimes over-zealous Ballmer. Sources indicate the man's name may be Stallman, or Torvalds... No one would comment on the new CEO. However in a brief statement from a laid off programmer, "I think they let all of us programmers go because of the shift to open source. Because lets face it, everyone can make a better product with those viral and pesty open standards."
More at 11...
A bullet sounds the same in every language. So stick a fucking sock in it...
It's never a good sign when big companies try to reorg in order to be more nible. Too hard to overcome their own momentum.
And wikipedia reported it before MS put it on the wire service.
So I guess this means this Ray Ozzie character is the new "Head of Monopolistic Practices"?
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic? Might be like the day or two before the actual sinking, but still just moving stuff around before the sink.
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
So do Johnson and Allchin have 'president' and 'co-president' nametags then? Whose is whose?
Or at least MS funding Xbox hardware. It will probably live on with MS trying to license out the IP to hardware vendors - if they can find someone willing. Burning through wads of cash just isn't the hip thing these days at MS.
Things have been going badly for the new 360 machine, so it will probably be no big loss for MS.
..... If this will stop the chair throwing?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
The best way to push a new product out is with loosely coordinated small engines (team leaders) with appropriate small gears (coordinators) interleaving in between the cogs.
Easy and fast to build up... Need more function? just add another wheel. Losing steam? Add another small engine.
What MSFT is doing is adding a gigantic, humonguous, caveman-styled stone wheels (CxOs) that plunders and thunders the country hillsides as it rolls, smothering and trampling all other wheels and cogs in name of progress!
Apparently, they haven't tried eXtreme Programming for the Business Manager (yet).
This reminds me of a Dilbert Cartoon
--
Wally to PHB: I don't understand how the new reorganization will help us "focus on our core business." Did our core business change? Or are you saying that *every* reorg prior to this was a misdirected failure?
PHB: Wally, when a car gets a flat tire, what do you do?
Wally: Well, if I'm you, I rotate the tires and drive home.
--
I think that pretty much says it all.
That made my sides hurt!
A bullet sounds the same in every language. So stick a fucking sock in it...
Vista (n) -"A distant view or prospect, especially one seen through an opening, as between rows of buildings or trees"
How apt, because I'm struggling to see through the Microsoft PR to see what Vista really is. We had this problem about five years ago when the marketing team got hold of .NET. .NET was mentioned everywhere from in the server family, to Office, to
development tools. When PR gave way to reality, .NET was a only a development tool and was really just Microsoft's (good) answer to Java. Nothing
like the revolution the PR machine would have you believe.
They question is whether Windows Vista going to solve a problem for me? The one thing that made XP a solution to my family was the welcome screen. Once they could select their username from a list that made it possible to give each family member an individual and run them in low privileged accounts. This has turned the family computer maintainence problem from a daily hastle to a once in a year activity.
What is Vista going to give me to make my job any easier? The only thing I would have bought Vista for is IE7 because of its nice anti-phishing features but this is going to be available in XP too. Even if this was ever a reason to upgrade, Firefox will likely have these features too in the next couple of months negating the need for Vista.
Feature after feature has been culled from Vista. We've got all these security "enhancements" in it but I can achieve the same in XP by following the NSA's Hardening Guide. Okay, this same level of hardening may be easier for the laymen to achieve in Vista but the layman doesn't care about security. When his PC fucks up due to a huge malware problem he just buys a new computer.
The man off the street does not need vista. In fact the man on the street doesn't even need XP. There are plenty of people still using Windows 98 and having a good time. Lord knows how they keep malware off their machine but they do it.
And what about business. WinFS might have been useful, but it was cut. Monad might have been useful, but it was cut too. They've wasted time with Maestro when the open, widely deployed PDF format already exists.
A reorganisation of Microsoft will not help these problems and I suspect the PR team will not save them from interia this time..
Simon
To truly understand the changes here, you must learn what the titles were before they were announced:
CELarry,
CECurly,
and CEMoe.
Umm.. OK, that sounded funnier in my head.
The Exceptions and Crash Dumps Division had a couple thousand people working for it.
For a moment I hoped they were doing a major code reorganization to finally rid their code base of all the design/security flaws.
But hey, whatever floats their boat...
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
They could release MacOS X instead of Vista.
:-)
It wouldn't cost them that much, and it would be the first really good product Microsoftt has ever shipped
They could put in compatibility box to run Win32 apps natively on OS X, kill Apple's hardware business, and ship OS X on standard PC boxes.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Because we *all* want our savior, Windows Vista, so badly.
-Sam
Bill's instructions to MS HR: "Make sure they can monkey dance!"
Major Microsoft Re-Organization
...and I don't know why I should care about it.
I'm sure MTV changes the VJ's sometimes.
I start missing the delightful interesting SCO articles.
Many small start up companies succeed because they do nothing but what they do best. That was why MS succeeded at first, (among other things).
But they lose that when they add management. Some people think that its inevitable that such a thing happens to large companies, but I give you a counter example: Pixar.
Pixar has become the number one name in computer animated movies, and have had at least half a dozen box office toppers. But they continue to produce quality and quantity quickly because they have relatively few mangement positions which do their jobs well, and there are fewer seperations between ideas and implementations.
That is the problem that needs to be addressed, not only in MS, but in other companies like Yahoo and even some non-profit projects.
FanFictionRecs.net
Chair-man.
Tip your waitresses! I'll be here all week!
Indulge my conspiracy theory for a sec:
"The promotion of Ozzie, who will report directly to Chairman Bill Gates..."
"Rudder will take on a new role focusing on the company's overall technical strategy. He'll report directly to Gates..."
The others report to the CEO (Ballmer). Sounds to me as though the next CEO will be Rudder or Ozzie, but I'm on the record suggesting Ballmer was never the right person for the CEO spot in the first place. Maybe the Vista delays were the final straw for the board, so the directors are setting up for the inevitable succession.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
-1 Possibly Retarded?
M$ is officially reorganizing but really they are ossifying. With Allchin being superseded by a marketing/sales guy, it's suddenly become a lot less likely that Windows will ever evolve into the kind of system software that is needed in the future. Most of the world, to this day, uses the Windows NTFS and its fragmentable master file table to store their data on ever-larger disk drives. Probably now we'll just see 'better and better' defragmenters as the innovation of the future. The Windows user interface will further solidify as a 2D 'click on the icon on the desktop' and the Windows computer will further 'evolve' into an appliance that plays multimedia, reads web pages, email and AIM, and plays games. Windows ossification. The only slightly interesting thing will be how Microsoft will get users to pay bigger license fees than they are paying now for the new Windows.
stockholders like to see things shaken up when they know things aren't going to plan. It's better to at least attempt to do something about it instead of sit back and watch the train wreck itself.
MS has thousands of open positions.
Either their HR department is stupid and toss all the good resumes away, or good people don't want to work there anymore.
I suspect that it is the latter.
Oh well, what the hell...
Anyone who's been following Mini-MSFT's blog (highly recommended read, especially the comments from anonymous Microsoft employees!) is aware of the dire need for some reorganization in this company and the plague of overmanagement that has taken root since Ballmer took over as CEO. Of course, it remains to be seen if they'll actually make the necessary changes or if this is just more shifting around to put on a show for the shareholders (the stock's been flat since '98). But Vista has been, to put it nicely, a debacle.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Do I detect another press release to keep those shares stable? Read the article, it is fun how they all keep *group-hugging* and stuff. Imagine this: Allchin: "Aww, I love you guys because you're so cool. GROUP HUG!" (Allchin, Bach, Johnson, Ozzie, Raikes & Rudder all hug and then take a step back admiring each others manfulness.) Ballmer: "I think I'm speaking for everyone on the team if I were to say that you guy's are fantastic! GROUP HUG!" (The team look at Ballmer with contempt, Ozzie shudders at the thought of being near him).
Funny, I seem to recall the states wanting something similar to this years ago. Granted, this is a reorg not splitting the company, but it sounds somewhat similar to the idea proposed back then. OS/Platform division, business software division, and consumer devices/mobile devices divison. Also, while it is somewhat to speed up Vista development, it is supposed to make the company more agile as a whole at getting any/all products to market. Also, from reading an article on WSJ.com about this they placed Ray Ozzie where they did "to oversee each of three new divisions' shift to more network-based methods of distribution." This could be a good thing.
So when Mcrowsoft needs to get something done it hires new officers, executives, presidents, and managers. When Infosys needs to get something done it hires engineers, builds cube farms and buys equipment. Not that Mcrowsoft is bad but aren't the bankruptcies, trade deficits, and declining profits telling u.s. companies something about their strategy?
Suggested reading for Microsoft Management:
1 835959/103-6695899-7729413?v=glance
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Fred Brooks. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/020
You've got a project at risk, scheduling and production issues, so the fix is to re-organize and add executive and middle-management incentives, as in:
If they meet incentive goals, the 120 or so vice-presidents will receive an eye-popping $1 million in salary a year, and general managers, the next level down, will get $350,000 to $550,000, according to a high-ranking source. But the rest of the staff is paid at market rates. -- Business Week
Granted, this upcoming train wreck will provide a certain amount of entertainment, but it will be pretty unpleasant to work through. Over a year of Death March time so your boss can get the Big Bucks. Eccch.
There's someone named Allchin? I wonder if there's any weird relation to Jay Leno.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, go into business for themselves.
And here I thought that they were going to make the Napoleon Dynamite thing official...
-b "Those that stand for nothing, fall for anything" ~ Alexander Hamilton
10 print "Re-Organization!" 20 goto 10
The secret to avoiding MalWare on Windows platforms is to use a version of windows so old that it doesn't have enough functionality for the virii to exploit! If you're running 98, you're pretty safe - most things in the wild that hurt 98 have died off due to XP (and ME and 2000 and NT). What's left is a pretty small threat. All the great new virii running around? 98 can't run 'em. Too old. Doesn't meet the requirements.
:) I'm quite happy with my 300 mhz machine - I can still play Dungeon Keeper II and browse the web.
Pretty nifty, actually
--LWM
I've always found that when I'm working on a ginormous software project that's literally years and years behind schedule despite drastic pruning of scope, the _exact_ trick to speed things up is to reorganize the whole company and add a few more officers.
I experience unshakeable confidence that the one and only thing the visthorn development effort was lacking was enough officers.
... Mental wounds not healing. html/
Who and what's to blame
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/o/ozzy-osbourne/103982
Hey, it's Robert Scoble, the Microsoft blogger. Looks like Slashdot is playing right into Microsoft's blog publicity campaign to repair their image after the damaging BusinessWeek fiasco. :)
"Sufferin' succotash."
If you receive Business Week, read the cover story. MSFT is experiencing a brain drain (Kai-Fu Lee being but one example) due to its stifling bureaucracy.
While software development has become a fairly mature industry, its near-instantaneous economies of scale demand that any organization be fast enough to tackle the Next Big Thing. This is why very large software companies are doomed to lose at least a few battles, and why there will always be room in the marketplace for start-ups.. as well as for refugees from the mothership to staff them.
IBM couldn't be all things to all people, Oracle won't be (no matter who they acquire), and now we're finding that Microsoft is tripping over itself.
Large organizations have inertia. Is this really news?
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Microsoft is unveiling a major reorganization today to help get Vista out the door
That can't be good for QA. I'd say wait for SP1 before taking on this puppy.
Very Intelligent Surveillance & Target Acquisition Acronym finder... thought this was an appropriate one given M$'s *heavy* DRM incorporation into the upcoming product...
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
don't forget that MS could fail to turn a profit for two or three years and continue to make its payroll in full. There's some level of security when you have $20bil+ in the bank.
World Changing - News for Humans, Stuff about our planet
They can re-org to get their products out the door! A clear sign of the efficiency, productivity, and qualtiy that can only be achieved in a hierarchical, proprietary shop.
No wonder Windows is so much better than Linux. You don't see Linus doing that kind of organizational work, now do you? :P Wouldn't it be great if he could? Too bad he can't cause it's Open Source. (Damned hippie commies!) Maybe if he could, then Linux could keep pace with the Windows release cycle...!
I guess that means we'll be seeing Vista any day now.
...That's right! Annnny day now.....
If this reorg. helps Ray Ozzie get control over the technical direction, that might make a big difference. Ray Ozzie (the technical mind behind Lotus Notes and Groove) is a true visionary. Probably no one knows more about the potential for SOA-based applications running over client/server and peer-to-peer networks.
...
Things could get interesting
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
they should quit being namby pamby managers and start cracking the damn whip over there.
lots of yelling and screaming, that always works.
maybe toss a chair. threaten some air supplies and such
that will get them over the hump
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?
I actually own some MS stock, so I hope it works. They've been pretty much sucking recently.
What the DOJ was proposing -- apps separate from OS division (though not to the degree that was being proposed, of course). What a great idea.
This part is scary:
""Microsoft is maturing, and they really need marketing and sales people at the top, but I am not sure employees want to hear (that)," Helm said. Johnson, heir to Allchin's throne as Windows chief, is not a geek, but has a sales background."
*Cough* Marketing and sales people at the top. Yeah, that'll fix things. Or, more likely, they'll do an excellent job of making it *look* superficially like things are fixed, when they actually aren't at all.
We go from 3 flavors of Windows XP to 7 of Vista.
And then we go from 7 MS divisions down to 3.
strange
The main response I'm left with is that this will make it somewhat more difficult for an interested company outsider to determine exactly how much money the XBox is losing. Before, this was easy, since the Home and Entertainment division was pretty much the "XBox and everything related" division. Now they are combining divisions, so as the XBox 360 is released the financial numbers for the XBox venture are going to be combined with other stuff and thus somewhat obscured.
What exactly goes into "entertainment and devices"?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I hate to say it, but it's the right choice. Microsoft succeeds when it gives people what they want. As competition stiffens, its only edge is in providing a better user experience. You don't go about doing this by putting developers in charge.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
As much as I hate to admit its true. proprietary shops have a lot more motivation.
I wonder how many programmers Linux has vs windows, if the number of linux programmers is vastly higher your claims may be correct, as even with more programmers working for free just doesnt get things moving.
New Office group Vice President: Clippy
I personally think that managers in tech firms are ideally like programatic glue for holding components together. They are indepsensible, but adding too much makes things unmanageable. So management needs to be minimalistic and focused on interfacing productivity groups rather than controlling them per se.
I think that this is a *really* bad sign regarding Microsoft's possibilities going forward.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
when Microsoft releases a product you always wait until versin 3..or SP 3 these days.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Go ahead, mod me down for trollishness... but humor is the intent here.
...just like the new exploits for Vista.
Ballmer:
"We are focused on creating exciting user experiences..."
Because no one ever said that getting BSOD at a critical work time didn't get your heartrate up.
"The platform groups have great expertise in creating a software platform and user experience that touches millions of people..."
"By bringing together the software experience and the service experience..."
Sounds like they are forecasting a crapload of service calls... that can't be good.
Allchin:
"While I will call it a day at the end of next year after Windows Vista ships"
...if he announces his resignation now, he can't be scape-goated.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Sounds very familiar not just in corporations. My mother used to cook in a hospital kitchen, and bit by bit the resources given to the cooks were reduced. fewer hours were made available to work, less time to prepare food properly, a kitchen remodelling that reduced space available in order to boost the look of a cafeteria that only staff used. Two kitchen staff were laid off, and working to any kind of sane deadlines (read: just being able to feed patients) was impossible.
So when the crunch point came and the whole hospital was complaining about the delays in feeding patients, the hospital appointed THREE new managers and one consultant to figure out what was going wrong.
Could have just listened to the people who were trying to do the job.
They bought a bunch of "Learning to code" Boardgames, so they found out who actually coded and who was there only to clean the keyboards, but pressed the keys in a certain order that produced code ;)
The summary for this news post states the reorg is to "help get Vista out the door". This isn't anywhere in the press release from MS and doesn't even make sense. You don't reorg a company to ship a single product (even if it's the company's single most important product). This reorg appears to be laying a foundation for the next several years, and has nothing to do with getting Vista shipped.
Many of the posts here are very anti-MS, which is to be expected, but most of them just don't make sense when you think about them for a moment. For example, many posts see this reorg as adding bureauacracy. It does nothing of the sort. If anything it seems to be reducing organizational bureauacracy, by taking the 7 core business divisions and bringing them under the 3 new divisions. High-level decisions will now be made by fewer people, not more.
Anyway, I don't expect most Slashdot readers to agree with this, but that's my take on it.
Can you smell it? It's the smell of fear wafting in from Washington state. Either that or Ballmer is "fired up" again. Maybe both. Regardless, let's embrace this as an opportunity:
There may never have been a better time to dethrone Microsoft. If a large portion of the open source community dedicated themselves to a few extra hours a week towards the cause of "cutting off Microsoft's air supply," this would be a great time to unseat them.
We could give the meme/project a label. Since Microsoft has called thier project "Vista", perhaps we could call it "Hasta La Vista". (I'm sure there are more original suggestions out there, as I see that phrase tossed around by pundits.)
What can you do? If you develop software, dedicate yourself to some amount of extra hours a week towards key open source projects confronting Microsoft in its cash cows: Operating Systems and Office software.
If you are a non-programming techie, get involved in a non-programming way. Write documentation. Contribute to a forum. Make suggestions on new features. Test useability. Just make the pledge to donate a certain amount of "extra time" during Microsoft's crunch to crunch them.
If you don't work in tech, vow to break your Windows/Office dependence. Dedicate time each week to make sure that when Vista ships, you won't "need" it. Look at what features are stopping you from making the switch, and let the open source projects know they matter to you.
Everyone can make a difference. Help it happen.
If we roll up our sleeves, band together (if only in spirit), and get fired up about it, perhaps Microsoft will finally get what is due to them.
Microsoft is going to pressure its engineers to put in extra effort to get this polished turd out the door, so let's put in some extra effort to do what the US DOJ couldn't.
M$ has much to lose - after ME and XP will they fumble again?
I doubt it. Somehow they've managed to survive the previous 17 reorgs.
This is major how?
All of the programmers I know are far more motivated to work on their pet projects than they are to work on company projects, so my intuition and anecdotal evidence would seem to disagree with your assertion that corporate programmers have more motivation than OSS programmers.
Have there been any studies on this that anyone knows about?
*sigh* back to work...
Looks like Allchin will be the one without a seat, unless Coach Z learns to say it right.
http://www.homestarrunner.com/cantsayjob.html
Last time I saw mine was on hawaiian shirt day just before the weekend we started playing catch-up.
> You don't see Linus doing that kind of organizational work, now do you?
Sure you have. Up until 2.6, Linus was in charge of the development branch and someone else was responsible for the stable branch of the Linux kernel. The life-time of the unstable branch was about as long as the stable branch. Every year or two, a new stable branch would be created and a new maintainer would take over.
Since 2.6, Linus is in charge of the stable branch and someone else maintains the unstable branch. The life of the unstable branch is relatively short now and it appears that in the forseable future the stable branch will remain.
That's a pretty big re-org of the process and responsibilities of those involved.
GNOME went through a few re-orgs too. Originally, Miguel was the benevolent dictator. Then there was the GNOME Steering Committee. Then the GNOME Board and GNOME Foundation.
Well you can solve the debate for us then. Go check in a mirror -- do dinosaurs have feathers or not!?
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
Unless real leadership steps are taken to control the dynamics involved, this type of thing can happen to any large organization. The guy had a penchant for naming his little observations after himself but this explains what happens pretty well. The path of least resistance to solving large organizational problems is throwing layers of managers and bureauracy at them. In the process, efficient ways of solving the problems are totally foreclosed.
The mentioned book was by the same guy who came up with The Peter Principle. Organizations as a whole can also reach their level of incompentence. You know that this has happened when internal concerns (like the infamous 'TPS reports') outweigh the original purpose for which the organization was founded.
He suggested this years ago. I think they owe him a consulting fee.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Or Chairboy. [ducks] :D
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...is going to be the year of desktop Windows!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
The article references the new structure but does not indicate the old one nor the changes between them. So in fact Jim reported to Steve before this re-org .. and now reports to him after the re-org ? This means what ?
-cl
Larry, Moe, Curly.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
technically its all the same product.
Market wise MS is doing what more than simply repackaging and changing handicaps on the same product to create different in apparance and functionality scope.... packages..
Sorta like how linux comes in many varieties, from Basic Linux, damn small Linux, to small device linux to single user linux to standard multi user distros.
Linus himself worked a chip maker and developed Modori (sp?) embedded linux...
Oh wait, thats more than three.... amazing what happens with freedom...
You clearly haven't read the "CxO" portion of the MAINTAINERS file. Around 2.5.70, half of the patches getting applied were around there. Linux has a huge advantage over Microsoft here, because Sarbanes-Oxley doesn't apply, and Jeff Garzik and Greg Kroah-Hartman can, between them, hold most of the titles.
Is that like synergizing capability aggregations?
Just askin'.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
When you really need to get something accomplished, I've found that there's nothing like a rehash of the organization. All the changes to letterhead and nameplates and email sigs and public address books and subdomains and website data really get the team on the same page and really get a project that last mile.
Idiots.
RP
I find it pathetic that all you need to do is spout an overused joke about throwing chairs or any other such unoriginal microsoft bashing, and you get modded 5.
Just sad.
Yet another management reorg.
The punchline, given by Wally to the PHB, in answer to the PHB's question, "What do you do when your car has a flat tire?" is, "Well, if I'm you, apparently I rotate the tires and drive home."
I really don't think that Microsoft aspires to be the next Apple...or Google...or Linux...COMBINED.
No, perhaps not but I bet they would give anything to see Vista get the same kind of reviews in the computer press as OS.X has gotten. I'm not even going to get into the subject of how likely they are to see Windows work up the same kind of security record, any time sooon, as OS.X and Linux already have. It must be frustrating for a corporation that turns such great profits that they can't buy that kind of publicity. Of course they will still try....
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
for a long time, I've wanted a search engine to find all of the dilberts on a given topic. I'd actually be more than willing to pay a subscription for such a service... just imagine, I could have a dilbert cartoon in any given powerpoint presentation :)
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
120 vice-presidents?
Jesus Fuckpudding Christ, no wonder they're so slow and ineffectual.
Where were you browsing / what crap were you downloading?
If you were using IE, I'm not at all surprised (you have to run Mozilla--there *is* no version of IE I trust on any platform, at any patch level).
That said, I've done exactly the same thing, and through safe browsing habits, the only malicious executables I downloaded were on purpose, just so I could learn how they worked (without infecting myself, of course).
And yes, I did check.
While software development has become a fairly mature industry, its near-instantaneous economies of scale demand that any organization be fast enough to tackle the Next Big Thing. This is why very large software companies are doomed to lose at least a few battles, and why there will always be room in the marketplace for start-ups.. as well as for refugees from the mothership to staff them. IBM couldn't be all things to all people, Oracle won't be (no matter who they acquire), and now we're finding that Microsoft is tripping over itself.
Apple won't be all things to all people... S.J. just says to go fuck yourself, you have no taste and don't understand the market, until he's proven proven wrong. Then he changes course, trying to save as much face as possible.
For years he's been criticized for his stubbornness and his mercurial nature... but look, he's built Apple and Pixar both into large companies that still innovate years after their IPO.
I think the lesson is 1) keep focused on a vision, and don't try to do everything for everyone 2) don't listen to too many ideas from outside... if their ideas are so good, why aren't they starting their own companies? 3) don't be afraid to be an asshole, if someone is truly convinced your wrong treating them like a jerk will give them more motivation to prove you wrong.
Being nice to people, hearing them out, etc, etc... just inevitably leads to an ass-kissing bureaucratic culture where stepping on another's toes is the biggest sin of all... And stuff that falls between the responsibilities of existing divisions just get dropped over and over again until a re-org makes a new division to catch those dropped balls..... and the process repeats until the whole organization is too crufted with bureaucracy to survive.
without noble assholes, there is no hope from death by bureaucracy.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
"We trained hard, but it seemed that everytime we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
Petronius Arbiter (210 B.C.)
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
Just a minor detail: newsprint is acidic, and laminating it will hermetically seal all the chemicals in an airtight container, thus accelerating its turning into brown goo.
You might want to photocopy the original onto acid-free paper, and let the paper breathe.
Slashdot entertains. Windows pays the mortgage.
bill gates will retain his position as chief wielder of massive throbbing implement ofcorporate sodomy: the bill gates monopoly.
Reorganize all you want, you can't obscure the DRM shackles crippling your OS.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Nobody (including Steve) makes a move - still - without clearing it with Bill.
And they're ALL still lying every time they open their mouth.
So who cares what their job titles are?
Or perhaps I should ask: who's been appointed "Minister of Propaganda"?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
EOM
Yes actually, Microsoft CAN buy Apple. With no debt, Apple would be a great leveraged buyout, i.e., buying up the company and issuing debt to pay for the company. By increasing leverage, Microsoft could clearly buy out Apple if it wanted to...
Just in time too, LBO's are coming back in style: Circuit City, Hertz Rental Cars, Toys R Us...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout
So definitely it's not a matter of Price... just whether it makes sense for Microsoft to take on another business. I am sure they consider the financial / legal / perceptual repercussions of buying their competitors all the time.
Sing this to the tune of Super Bowl Shuffle: We are the Windows Shufflin' Crew Shufflin' on down, doin' it to you. We're so bad we know we're good. Blowin' your mind like we knew we would. You know we're just struttin' for fun Struttin' our stuff on everyone. We're not here to start no trouble. We're just here to do the Microsoft Shuffle. Feel free to add to this!
That's Bigboo TAY! TAY!
...that's why when Google obtains a single copy of all the books from a single university, scans and indexes them, and then points to "fair use" when the publishing companies object, it hardly makes the basic rules of business different, does it?
Google's agreement with the university reserves the right to share those digitized copies (which they don't own) to any "research partners" they work with in the future.
Yep, same basic rules, nothing to see here, move along.
When will the Google slashbot fanboys see that Google is already evil?
[ReidNews]
This reorg was laid out a month ago almost exactly as it happened:
If I Were Steve Ballmer
That lady is either very smart, psychic or someone at MS read her article. I'm guessing the later.
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
Windows's strategy is better than Linux's because we can have a nice man trowing chairs!
Don't know whether you have it on that side of the big pond.
Shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic
So, maybe, the pressures for Office and other applications on Linux will start to intensify...?
You know a company is no longer the sharp place it used to be when it starts the indeterminable reorganizations. It looks like Microsoft has now started what all mature companies do - they've lost their way, so they do random reorganizations every few years to try and find the passion and spark of their heyday.
/dev/urandom
Trouble is, random reorganizations are about as effective for doing this to write your software:
while true
do
gcc -o windowsvista
if [ -f windowsvista ]
then
echo "something got built"
exit
fi
done
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
From the blogs I've read from insiders, there is a lot of middle management within the beast since Ballmer took over. Steveb is a cheerleader, and a manager. He is in no way an engineer. BillG isn't one either. Alchin ceded architect to Billg and the software codebase went down the shitter (dependency hell). What do you expect when you break basic software engineering rules and shove everything into one big fat unmaintainable heap? Ignore modularity at your peril! The internal softies bitch about stock being flat for 5+ years, insane paperwork, meeting hell, performance review hell, lots of internal politicks, the Office and Windows divisions being fossilised, the company brass being self congratulatory, while getting cheap and killing what few perks are left. Basically microsoft means micromanagement and too many VP's and PM's The good ones leave, the bad ones stay. One 'softie made one comment recently that was particularly telling "The monopoly camoflages the rot from within. MSFT had their day in the sun, but theive gone too far down the flight path of DEC and now there is no chance for them to pull out." The upper management are all well overpaid and not contributing. The joe-workers are not getting anything but a paycheck, so their stock is sold to buy Google stock. There are big traffic jams at the Redmond campus at 9AM and 5PM. A few divisions have a bit of spirit and energy, but for most it's like this: why kill yourself when you won't be the beneficiary of your hard work or great idea? Basically it boils down to this: uppermanagement: Rah Rah, but no contribution (excpet to their own hubrus). Middle management: not technical people: no contribution. Joe Worker: Most agree that if you have a great idea, leave and develop it so that you get the benefit of your idea, rather than the old war horses. Sure there is a 1 year no-compete clause, but good products take a year to develop anyway. The rest: put in your time. Alchin is leaving, so core innovation (or even not micro-managing and allowing innovation to happen) is leaving with him. Bill and Steve are effectively a waste of time. No innovation, never was any. The rest are shuffling deck chairs. This is a tub that's taking on water. It'll take a while before the main deck is awash, but she's headed down, and there is no stopping it.
In some ways this reminds me of the final death throes of Digital Equipment - the company had lost its way and multiple restructurings and board-level turmoil only made that worse.
On the other hand, when a company is producing products people want to buy, then the only thing management can really screw up is the financials. In the case of Microsoft, I see no sign that Windows or Office sales are going to plummet: the company is not exactly short of either revenue or cash.
What killed DEC was an environmental shift from minicomputers to PCs and betting against TCP/IP. I don't see any similar environmental shift threatening Microsoft in the short to medium term: OSS has pretty well missed the boat on that one and there's nothing similarly threatening on the horizon, yet. There will be of course: it's in the nature of technology companies to have their feet mired in legacy support and consequently to drown when the next wave of innovation eventually floods in.
Ballmer can be in charge of F, obviously. That just leaves U and D, which anyone can do.
Gack. All this talk of "user experience". The user doesn't _want_ an experience, they just want to get their job done.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
They will get Vista working correctly in China or else!
heh, even if they can make it work correctly, the real challenge will be to sell it in China.
nothing to see.
Re-orgs are just resume padding for managers and execs.
xgamer04 "Brooks' Law: 'Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.'"
Here, here! When I first read The Mythical Man-Month, one of the major realizations I took away from it was, "We haven't learned anything in 40 years of software design. We are still making the exact same mistakes we made back then." Here it is in 2005, and the only thing that's changed is that we're on to 50 years now.
Anyone who has anything to do with computer engineering but hasn't read TMMM needs to go do so. Promptly. You'll find incredible insight and perspective.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
120 vice-presidents?
Jesus Fuckpudding Christ, no wonder they're so slow and ineffectual.
Yes, it sort of reminds me of the bank practice of making every branch manager a vice president. Of course, "vice president" at Microsoft is really just a mid-level manager. They also have Group Vice Presidents, Corporate Vice Presidents, and Senior Vice Presidents, who get their own special restrooms.
Some of these Vice Presidents are also considered to be Executive Officers. Others are mere Officers.
no, I do not know of any studies. But I know in my heart that I am right and you are wrong, therefore you are wrong :-p