Mini-Microsoft Shakes Things Up

Henry V .009 writes "BusinessWeek calls him Microsoft's Deep Throat. Although Steve Ballmer denies reading the blog, there are plenty at Microsoft who do. Mini-Microsoft says he wants to "slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine." The user comment section of the site is the real gold: thousands of comments from Microsoft employees who tend to have a dim view about the company's recent evolution. And Microsoft may even be responding to all the internal criticism."

Comments

Innuendo

[No Salvation]

Microsoft ... Deep Throat ... customer pleasing
Is this what it has to "come" to for Microsoft?

Re:Innuendo

[Stormwatch]

Then it makes sense that most of their products suck, right?

Re:Innuendo

[Soul-Burn666]

Someone smarter than me has said it already:
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is the day they start making vacuum cleaners.

insane

[seanadams.com]

Wow. This guy is nuts. I'm stunned that anyone could have such a love/hate relationship from the inside of a monster corporation to go to these lengths to fix it.

His employment agreement surely makes him liable for incalculable damages, not to mention inciting other employees to violate their contracts (which is punishable for contracts in general).

Maybe they won't know who it is until they find this guy still bailing out the hull after the last rat has left the sinking ship. I think they'll find him sooner, especially now that he's talking to the press.

Re:insane

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm stunned that anyone could have such a love/hate relationship from the inside of a monster corporation to go to these lengths to fix it.

You've probably never worked in an environment where you know something could be great but everyday you see incompetence and pride as the norm. This drives some of us to the breaking point. Either we give up or we fight for greater things.

The sad thing is this is in every organisation that is sub-par. There are guys and girls who fall by the wayside everyday because fighting a bureaucracy is a form of attrition-style warfare. You have to keep on battering it and battering it and usually the organisation wins and the dissenters go home with their professional careers and private lives in ruin.

I hope this guy stay anonymous. No good can come from him publicly outing himself, no matter how great his ideas. This is the nature of power.

Re:insane

[Anonymous Coward]

No they fired him for posting campus photos which is explicitly against MS policy. The Macs were just a side note.

Re:insane

[uncoveror]

Yes, he and others like him need to stay anonymous, or they are toast, but it shouldn't be that way. It is high time laws were passed to protect such bloggers' free speech rights no matter what the legal mumbo jumbo they had to sign off on to have a job says. No employment contract should be able to take away free speech.

The workings of any publicly traded company ought to be public knowledge. We should have the right to know about companies, and not just their PR spin, before investing or when contemplating whether to sell stock. It is not good for the economy to let publicly traded firms operate in secrecy, and snooker investors

Even if a company is not publicly traded, prospective customers deserve to know what is going on.

Re:insane

[untaken_name]

Yes, he and others like him need to stay anonymous, or they are toast, but it shouldn't be that way. It is high time laws were passed to protect such bloggers' free speech rights no matter what the legal mumbo jumbo they had to sign off on to have a job says. No employment contract should be able to take away free speech.

The workings of any publicly traded company ought to be public knowledge. We should have the right to know about companies, and not just their PR spin, before investing or when contemplating whether to sell stock. It is not good for the economy to let publicly traded firms operate in secrecy, and snooker investors

Even if a company is not publicly traded, prospective customers deserve to know what is going on.

Are you trolling? First, if you don't want to sign an employment contract, uh....don't sign it. People want the government to protect them from having to do hard work like reading legal documents before signing them. I mean, sure, it'd be messed up for a company to put 'must work 12 hour days 5 days a week or be fired' into a contract, and you're stupid enough to sign it, you should either work those 12s or get fired. Bollocks to 'free speech rights'. That applies to the federal government, not to private employers. If you sign a confidentiality agreement, you...agree...to...keep...things...confidential. No right to free speech is being restricted by the government here. If you don't like the agreement's terms...don't sign it. It's really not that difficult. What's next? No employment contract should take away someone's right to carry a gun to work? Seriously, people. The Bill of Rights limits what the FedGov can do, not what you can voluntarily agree to.

Re:insane

[aeoo]

What's insane is that making a criticism of the company is perceived these days as "a liability for incalculable damages".

That's insane.

Why is it that the damages to the company are important anyway? A company is a fictitious entity. Damages to people matter more than damges to companies, and in this case employees are important people, and they are the ones being damaged and not the other way around.

Re:insane

[dado529]

he sad thing is this is in every organisation that is sub-par. There are guys and girls who fall by the wayside everyday because fighting a bureaucracy is a form of attrition-style warfare. Can anyone agree more than me, this is why I no longer work for the tech industry. I now work on all these rich guys boat and take thier money.

Re:insane

[uncoveror]

Nice try but WRONG! BZZZZ!

Network associates, the makers of McAfee Viruscan, put a line in their EULA that essentially said you couldn't publish a review of the software without their permission. It didn't hold up in court because it violated the first amendment. Network Associates are not the government, and could not force anyone to give up their first amendment rights through contract. That provision was unenforceable, and many things in contracts are unenforceable. A lot of the crap in employment agreements is legalese nonsense that it would take a team of lawyers to interpret, and then they wouldn't all agree what it means. No one can give informed consent to something they do not understand. All they really understand is that if you don't sign, you don't have a job so enjoy living under a bridge when you lose your house! That is not far from holding a gun to your head, and saying, "sign this". An agreement under duress is no agreement at all.

Re:insane

[aeoo]

People want the government to protect them from having to do hard work like reading legal documents before signing them.

The fact that reading legal documents is hard work speaks volumes as to the amounts of ill faith inherent in them. If the contract is drawn up in good faith, there is simply no need to make it abstruse (hard to understand). A contract that does not seek to rip a person off in any way should be easy to understand even to someone with just 3 years of school.

It is sad that we have an entire profession devoted to actually understanding correctly what the fsc*k the legal documents say. I say it's high time to say "f u" to the legal language and make it a requirement that all contracts be brief, to the point and in plain language. Maybe then people will take time to read them and sign them in good faith.

As it stands, a person gets a 30 page packet and thinks, "Ah, this is some cr*p I have to sign if I want this job.. How bad can it be? They're not going to rip me off. I trust them and I want this job. I will sign it." It's obvious to me where the abuse is happening.

Re:insane

[Mateito]

You've probably never worked in an environment where you know something could be great but everyday you see incompetence and pride as the norm.

Maybe not, but he obviously spends time on slashdot.

Re:insane

[Shoggoth of Maul]

Indeed, his anonymity is a great part of his power. So long as they can't pin him (or her) down, Microsoft may actually have to move its ass.

As a man, he can be fired, he can be sued for breach of contract. But as a symbol, he can be everlasting.

*cue viscerally resonant cinematic soundtrack*

I smell a montage coming on.

Re:insane

[Graymalkin]

You need to go back and do some fact checking. The Network Associates case was ruled such because the wording of their EULA was deceptive. Their case suggested that Network World Fusion broke the law by violating a clause of the EULA. Under scrutiny the clause proved to be untenable legally and the judge told NA to get lost. That however has nothing in the slightest to do with non-disclosure agreements.

Signing an NDA is binding. If you go and post confidential information to your blog or someone else's blog and the NDA you signed specifically prohibits that, your employer not only has grounds to fire you but also sue you. If your signature is on a document that says "I won't talk about x, y, and z" and then a blog posting or e-mail is presented showing you talked about x, y, or z the judge is likely to rule in your employers favor. If your NDA says you will cut off your right ear if you talk about x, y, or z that clause of the NDA will likely be found unenforceable and you'll be able to keep your ear.

This differs entirely from situations where talking about x, y, or z benefits the public interest. If product X was made out of dolphin skin by child slaves in San Diego there's a public interest in that information. If you were sued by your employer over releasing that information it probably wouldn't be difficult to show that your whistleblowing served the public interest. Whistleblowing is protected when there is a viable public interest in the disclosed information. Clauses in an NDA or any other contract which require you to break the law (manage slave lavorers in San Diego) are unenforceable. Your employment contract can't require you to be a heroin mule for instance.

What you don't seem to understand is the first amendment only applies to government. It does not extend to private organizations or property. The government can't tell you that you can't post specs on as yet unreleased product Y but a contract can. You don't have a right to any particular job, if an employment contract is required to work there and you're unwilling to sign it you're not going to have that job.

Re:insane

[rtb61]

He just doesn't realise that microsoft has to be the way it is to generate those profit margins. Corporations have do it time and time again. You sell off customer trust to maximise profit and then try to hide the fact with an endless series of marketing lies and of course bail before it all collapses.

That is the nature of modern corporate business. Naturally management feels none of the pain, infact they are well rewarded for it (they are in a position to make sure that happens). Regular staff of course lose everything but they are not on their own as people outside the company see theiar pension funds get wiped out as well.

So the press is now paying attention to a blogger who claims to be from microsoft because they no longer believe anything coming from official channels (the buy our stock even though we are selling it line). The vista is grim indeed, well at least for anything microsoft. For the rest of us, it is going to be a breath of fresh air and a beautifull penguin friendly view going forward.

Re:insane

[DataCannibal]

"But as a symbol, he can be everlasting."

For fucks sake! He's just some guy who works at a corporation. He's not Spartacus or Ghandi or whatever.

Re:insane

[Moraelin]

In addition to what was mentioned, namely that natural language is vague, the problem is that anything that's not clear enough _will_ be abused or mis-construed by someone.

Let me give you an example that borders on absurd theatre: do you know why software is licensed, not sold? You may notice that when you buy a Ford car or book, you just own the car or book, you don't get "a non-tranferrable license to use it". What's different with software?

Because while common sense would say "I bought 1 copy, I own it, I execute that 1 copy I own, same as with a book", technically it's copied to RAM to be executed. So you'd be breaking copyright law if you copied it (even to RAM) without a license to do so. That's the loophole through which the whole "license" thing was wiggled through. And which in turn opened the door to having whatever restrictions imposed upon you that the copyright owner wishes to impose.

"Copying" in the sense that you intentionally produce a duplicate of a book or record, was extended to something which is more of a side-effect of how computers work than wilfully duplicating someone else's work. And also taken from a context where you could actually sell or distribute the copy in direct competition with the copyright holder, to something where... let's just say it's just stupid to think that you'd pull your RAM sticks out and give them to someone as a copy of Doom 3. So it misses the whole spirit and intention of copyright law (whether you aggree or disaggree with it.)

That's the problem with things that aren't clearly defined. If it's possible to get an advantage via a verbal fallacy or mis-construing something, some interested party _will_ do it.

E.g., let's say we signed a brief contract that just says "Moraelin aggrees to sell his old 22" colour monitor to aeoo for one hundred dollars." Simple, clear and to the point, right?

Well, at what date? I didn't say anywhere I'd give it to you right now, or for that matter even this year.

Does it have to work when you receive it, or can I just give you the pieces of one that I dropped while moving? If we put in the contract that it should work, by what definition of "work"? What's your recourse if it doesn't?

Is that US dollars, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, or board-game dollars? Where should the money be delivered? (I'll probably want them deposited in my bank, and not, say, requiring me to go withdraw them personally from Elbonia's only bank;)

And are you sure what kind of monitor you're getting? Now you may be thinking "bah, even if it's an old CRT, a 22 inch never was too bad". I might however point you at the dictionary and the fact that a monitor was also a kind of military ship. So by that contract I could send you a painted toy ship.

And so on and so forth. And the whole legalese and those 30 page contracts are there just to leave as little room as possible for such creative interpretations.

Re:insane

[f()rK()_Bomb]

For fucks sake! He's just some guy who works at a corporation. He's not Spartacus or Ghandi or whatever.

Yes. But wasnt Spartacus or Ghandi also just some guy? They became symbols through their actions

Re:insane

[Digital Vomit]

He's not Spartacus...

That's right, because I'm Spartacus.

Does anyone else here thing they could be shilling

[bergeron76]

This is clearly an inside tale, but I can't help but wonder if it's some new form of marketing.

Pretend you're a badguy insider, develop a following, and then you can mitigate rumours/leaked info/etc.

Blog is down..

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the Google cache

Posted AC to avoid accusations of karma whoring..

Re:Blog is down..

[lawpoop]

Karma whore! You're a dirty, smelly, pirate karma whore! Why don't you go back to your home on pirate karma whore island?!

Disillusioned or delusional?

[thirdrock]

Most of the guy's complaints could come straight from a Dilbert cartoon. Seems to me like someone hasn't worked for a large bureaucratic organisation before.

On the other hand, the computer business is not an environment in which bureaucracies survive for very long. At least, not without radical change.

Perhaps this is the chink in MS armour that it's competitors have been waiting for.

mini-microsoft

[eclectro]

Steve Balmer will wear a frickin' laser on his forehead now. I'd watch out if I was you.

Boil it down, M$ is just too bloated

[infonography]

They have fallen into the that old joke of Lily Tomlin, Included for perspective and for those of you who thought (rightly) that SNL was not worth watching. (once they were worth watching)

The Phone Company

Ernestine.....Lily Tomlin

Ernestine: We handle eighty-four billion calls a year. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth. We realize that every so often you can't get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order, or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make.

We don't care.

Watch this.. [ she hits buttons maniacally ] ..just lost Peoria.

You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can't handle it. But that's your problem, isn't it? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string?

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.

--

At the end of it all they want to make it all work, it's just they are fumbling in the dark. Get too big and your quality goes to hell.

Balmer's health is at stake !

[timeToy]

That blog is hosted by Google's Blogger, that's why Balmer do not read it, his host file redirect all Google-related site to the loopback address, his doctor order that, in order to avoid a high blood pressure accident !

The plan:

[failure-man]

1) Get your thorn's blog posted on slashdot.

2) Have them annihilate one of blogspot's servers.

3) Hope blogspot cancels his account out of frustration.

4) ???

5) Profit!

Re:Does anyone else here thing they could be shill

[RLiegh]

It would be a new twist on the old idea of selective leaks. It certainly would be an effective way to convince the public (and the market?) that microsoft is sensitive to and accomadating of internel disagreements. This might also be just the "rallying cry" that Gates and Ballmer need to cut loose thousands of employees too.

It should be interesting.

[jd]

If you see any new concrete bridges going up near the Redmond campus, a discontinued blog and a mysterious cavity showing up when using GPR, we will know how seriously Microsoft takes criticism.

Re:Where's the proof?

[dedazo]

He is an MSFT employee. He knows way too many things only insiders would be familiar with - not even an ex-employee. But he's very careful not to reveal internals that would get him in trouble. Very clever. He's also an above-average writer, FWIW.

It's been theorized he's (yes, he) is a mid-level guy in PSS. A few of his posts bear this out, but a few others don't. Like I said, he's very careful with what he gives away.

Having said that... yes, this is another opportunity for the slashbots to come out of the woodwork to post their ever-hilarious "M$ is teh suxx" jokes.

Anyway... must get some sleep.

Re:Where's the proof?

[ergo98]

Where's the proof this guy is a Microsoft employee?

How many Microsoft employees have disputed it? Mini has stated a lot of inside information that real employees of Microsoft could easily confirm or deny, and I have never heard a viable claim that Mini isn't real. It's pretty much considered a given that Mini is real, and their comments have been validated by known insiders quite a few times.

would they make similar comments if they worked at some other large corporation?

Most large corporations suck, and that is precisely what Mini has been trying to say all along. Saying that HP is even more sucky says nothing, and pretty much entirely misses the whole point. In Vietnam people work in sweat shops from 6am to 11pm every day for pennies, but I'm not going to use that to validate poor working conditions here.

I've worked at several corporations, and while a couple were pretty good, there were some terrible corporations that are nothing but endless shuffles of executives building empires and covering their asses (and absolutely RAPING the financials of the company for themselves), building a world of executives, and a completely separate world of plebs. Mini's various comments makes it sound like Microsoft is evolving to this, and given Microsoft's storied past that is quite simply sad.

Shut that guy up!

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

My worst nightmare -- that someone sane starts fixing the problems at MicroSoft. How would there be any room left to compete?

Joke.

The only way to really fix Microsoft is to split it into two corporations each for every product line, and open all APIs with no anti-GPL license restrictions. And use the ill-gotten gains Gates, Balmer, et. al. have accumulated to fund start-ups to company with the baby-Softs. And open the evolution of the APIs under the control of a joint committee of the EFF and representatives of the several Linux and BSD distributions.

It ain't gonna happen.

Re:Where's the proof?

[bladesjester]

It says explicitly in the article "Mini, who does indeed have a Microsoft blue badge, the type given to full-time staff."

There's your proof. He's got a blue badge and the reporter saw it.

Easy to ID this guy

[Anonymous Cowdog]

It's amazing how otherwise well-informed people didn't pick up years ago on the fact that it is easy to identify a writer based on the statistical properties of their writing. This guy is providing plenty of material for the analysis. Do a cross check against the email for all employees, and game over.

Also very few people actually print out corporate memos like the Ballmer memo he mentions (yes, strikingly many do, but as a percentage, it's small). So that narrows down the field right there, and I haven't even got beyond the top post on the blog. Sure, he could have printed it at home, but did he? Naaahhhh.

If he hasn't been fired by now, it's not because they can't find out who he is. They are just waiting for the right moment.

They don't get it.

[lheal]

The "perfect or perish" mentality just doesn't work. It doesn't work for factory workers, athletes, students, or politicians. When applied, all you get are a whole new crop of PhD's in CYA, each pointing the finger of blame at the next Doctor of Posterior Osculation.

The MM blogger seems very down on paying attention to "process", which tells me that A) the PHBs at Microsoft are all into process and B) this guy is a frustrated, unpromoted newbie, probably hired after XP was released.

Firing all the dead wood sounds nice, until you realize that means firing the people who wrote the cash cow.

The It they don't get is that Open Source Software is the future. They don't want to give up the golden dream, which means hiding their source, which means using a hierarchical development model, which means bureaucracy and inferior products.

Oh well, caveat regnum.

they already know who it is

[toby]

In one of the articles on the blog, Minimsft says quite plainly:

As for my boss firing me, he's cool as long as I add a disclaimer (done - yes, I had a mini-coming-out party Friday) and while I can write about policy violation if I go and manifest that into reality then I will find myself badge-less in Redmond.

We don't have to wait for Woodward or Bernstein to die, or anything.

Re:Does anyone else here thing they could be shill

[asb]

Cripes... how paranoid can you get?

You have the common "default believe" attitude which makes astroturfing and guerilla marketing work so well. If you had the "default distrust" attitude this article would have bells ringing all over your head.

Consider what he is writing, what kind of NDAs he must have signed when being hired and how easy it would be to track him down (anonymity in internet really does not exist).