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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."
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.
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
So do you suppose Steve Ballmer was later heard to say: "Now that that's done, where's the steering wheel on this train?"
I wonder how much faster the Microsoft insider's blogs are going to pick up. Reorg's usually start at the top and move down, ripping people from what they know and replacing them with people who don't. Dust usually takes a while to settle, which you can usually add onto the rollout time, which they mean to reduce. Odd that.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
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."
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
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.
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
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.
I doubt it. Somehow they've managed to survive the previous 17 reorgs.
Reminds me the story of ancient China when the great wall was being constructed and it was proceeding too slowly with 500,000 workers to satisfy the emperor. So the emperor has 300,000 workers put to death and the project moved along faster with the remaining 200,000 workers.
Maybe this has something to do with the 10,000 jobs MS is sending to China. They will get Vista working correctly in China or else!
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
I remember how the HR young lady (kid?) walked me to a storage area and had me drop off my briefcase there. Then she walked me over to the PC station I was to be working at. The desk was empty and devoid of any pens, pencils, rules, paper, etc., etc.; exactly what I had brought with me in my briefcase. To me this will always typify M$ - thank goodness they had all those billions from DOS licensing pouring in......
Exactly. I heard a true story of a construction company that badly underbid an industrial (petrochemical) project. Even though they were highly productive, skilled tradespeople were being let go left and right. At one point, a project foreman quit, and went onto the tools. Frantically they searched for a replacement. A friend of mine was tapped, and initally he was both intered but also suspicious. He asked a few questions, then quickly declined the top job. An unsuspecting tradesman was asked and he accepted. Three days later, he was hauled onto the carpet for gross negligence and incompetence because of the incredible losses, none of which were in any way his fault. He was disgraced, humiliated and fired (before the entire board). He was basically a patsy/fall-guy ..someone to take the blame. I suspect some of that kind of reasoning is going on over at msft. They are at a crossroads: their new product is 30+ months late, with less features and less innovation than they had hoped, their monopoly is crumbling, costs are up, litigation from Europe is looking more expensive all the time, and viruses are really starting to piss people off. As for BillG: "Hera, Athena, Aphrodite...you were right. There is no more room for gods. ..." (sorry, I just had to throw a bit of Star Trek in).