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Exit Interview with Scoble
capt turnpike writes "It's no secret that Windows technology evangelist Robert Scoble (of Scobelizer blogging fame) is leaving Microsoft for a startup, but Microsoft Watch's Mary Jo Foley has the first exit interview with Scoble. Topics range from what Microsoft could have done to keep him spreading the word and building out MS's Channel 9 community site, where he sees MS going and more. From the article: 'There were times when I knew I was taking risks. I didn't know what would happen when I told Steve Ballmer that his leadership on the gay rights bill wasn't good.'"
I can predict what to expect: 50% chance of a dock in pay, with showers of chairs continuing until mid-evening.
Scoble The Exit Interview
By Mary Jo Foley
Microsoft tech evangelist and alpha blogger Robert Scoble talks about everything from his tensest moments at Microsoft, to what Microsoft could have done to keep him, as he prepares to leave the Redmond software maker and join startup PodTech.Net.
The Scobleizer hasn't yet left the building. But he will be doing so soon.
On June 10, word began to leak across the blogosphere that Robert Scoble, Windows technology evangelist and well-known Microsoft blogger, had decided to leave the Microsoft mothership and join startup PodTech.Net.
Scoble "swallowed the Red Pill" joined Microsoft in 2003. Scoble already was blogging before becoming a Softie. But he rose to prominence because of the blogging he did once he got to Redmond. Scoble was instrumental in helping Microsoft build out its Channel 9 community site. Earlier this year, Scoble and co-author Shel Israel published Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Business Talk with Customers.
We had a chance to ask Scoble five final questions via e-mail. (We threw in a sixth bonus question, for good measure.) Here is the transcript of our last convo with Scoble as a Microsoft employee.
Q: What was your biggest surprise about working at Microsoft?
A: That they'd really just let me walk around with a camcorder without having a PR person or a lawyer along. Even after quitting I have the entire run of the place. That's not typical even in the technology world. At Apple my brother-in-law's badge only works in his building.
Another surprise? That every bad decision that I thought was bad had a logical explanation behind it. I didn't always agree with the decisions but there was always a decent thought process behind every decision and, most of the time, after hearing the circumstances behind a decision I usually came to the same conclusion that they did. It's not easy building software that hundreds of millions of people use.
Q: Did you ever think you'd be fired? What was the closest you came to it? (I was betting, myself, you'd be fired before you'd quit.)
A: There were times when I knew I was taking risks. I didn't know what would happen when I told Steve Ballmer that his leadership on the gay rights bill wasn't good. When he changed his mind within a week that impressed me a lot. Since then I've learned that great leaders listen more than they talk. It's a skill you rarely think about or talk about in the press.
Actually, I broke a few rules. I wasn't supposed to talk to reporters and I always did anyway. But I was scared about that in the first year.
Q: Do you think Microsoft is leading/following/holding steady in terms of adopting Web 2.0 technologies, like RSS, podcasting, videoblogging?
A: The market isn't going to let them go back and because the business opportunities are simply too large now. Translation: competitors are going to add those features and if Microsoft doesn't jump on board with new technologies faster they'll just be left off of the growth and PR trains.
Q: Who was the most interesting person you interviewed on Channel 9 and why?
A: I'd have to say Bill Hill (guy who runs the reading technology/font teams) He was a huge amount of luck cause he was the first interview Charles and I did but he was hilarious and had great insights. His personality is great, too.
Q: What would have kept you at Microsoft? Money? Relocation? More Channel9 cameras/staff? Free HDTVs?
A: Actually they offered almost all of that stuff (they didn't try the HDTV's) and it still didn't work cause I wanted to do something completely different than what I was doing here. I also wanted to see if I could build something from scratch. Yeah, money and being close to my son played into it too, but when I looked around I didn't see something that would keep me excited.
Now, if they had offered to fly around with (Chairman) Bill Gates or (Chief Technology Officer) Ray Ozzie for a year with a camera and personally document th
Proof that Microsoft have also been violating some of SCO's intellectual property.
ROBert SCOble
Darl has already seen straight through that obviously made up Microsoft project name.
FTA: "...but I want to do the startup life for a few years while I have the ability to take on a good amount of risk."
So in other words, this guy is rich and he can afford to work on a startup and that work is probably more exciting the working for Microsoft.
Nice to see that he still has good things to say about Microsoft and it's management.
I love to deploy my packages
Is this Slashdot or the Daily Koz?
SlashKoz - News for liberals, tempests in teapots.
I didn't know what would happen when I told Steve Ballmer that his leadership on the gay rights bill wasn't good.'"
Wow, it takes on a whole new meaning when you add some punctuation and capitalize Bill:
I didn't know what would happen when I told Steve Ballmer that his leadership on the gay rights: Bill, wasn't good.'
It's interesting because it's the only specific case he mentions in the intervew where he actually told the MS leadership that he thought that they were wrong.
"Topics range from what Microsoft could have done to keep him spreading the word.."
Should actually read something like:
"Topics range from what Microsoft could have done to keep him, to spreading the word.."
It takes on another meaning without the punctuation. At first I thought they were trying to suppress him from spreading the word about the channel 9 site or something. editors?
I.O.U One Sig.
Isn't this guy only famous because he was hired by Microsoft to blog?
Now he is just a nobody again, right?
FTA:
Another surprise? That every bad decision that I thought was bad had a logical explanation behind it. I didn't always agree with the decisions but there was always a decent thought process behind every decision and, most of the time, after hearing the circumstances behind a decision I usually came to the same conclusion that they did. It's not easy building software that hundreds of millions of people use.
Someone put too much XAML in his Cool-Aid...
FTA:
Q: What was your biggest surprise about being A Borg?
A: That they'd really just let me walk around with a camcorder without having a PR person or a lawyer along. Even after quitting I have the entire run of the place.
blogosphere drama, how fascinating.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
He was a sort of newspaper ombudsman as well as their connection to the blogosphere. Someone who could take heat from the public without stonewalling it, who could act as a cheerleader for company products without coming across as too much of a shill. He built credibility by praising competitor's hit products early and often. Likeable enough to get lots of people inside and outside the company to talk. Interesting enough that readers came back the next day. Ambitious, but not so high and mighty that he would leave in a huff.
They must have figured out early on that he was only going to stay with them 2-3 years, and are relieved that he didn't move on to Google. I wonder if they'll replace him with another high profile type, or opt for the safer blog-by-committee.
Oh, I see he wrote the Windows Vista kernel. No ? MS Office ? Again no ? C#? No, no and no ??? WTF did he code then ?
Oh, I see he was a an MS evangelist and he wrote blogs! Impressive.
Would you prefer that, or the pre-packaged news stories that the Bush administration has been spewing out?
Is that you, Moulitsas?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The exit interview wasn't nearly as "dishy" as I expected it to be.
Don't let the chair hit you up the butt on your way out of Ballmer's office.
If Scoble is looking for something to keep him excited, I have the pefect recipe: be a Windows Evangelist on /.
Damn you! Now I want kool-aid! And I have none.
...just that all the other times, they ignored him, and he didn't wanna sound like someone who got ignored all the time :-p
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
FTA:
Q: What was your biggest surprise about working at Microsoft?
A: That they'd really just let me walk around with a camcorder without having a PR person or a lawyer along. Even after quitting I have the entire run of the place. That's not typical even in the technology world. At Apple my brother-in-law's badge only works in his building.
Sooo... they're taking the same lax attitude about computing security and applying it to physical security as well?
Not everyone should have admin, and not everyone should have all-building access.
I look at it as more of a non-statement. I've never seen a business decision that didn't have some reasoning behind it. If anything it tells me that the article was more of a fluff piece that anything else.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
Come on Mods, this is +5 funny, even if it is a lame AC.
I can say this because I work for PodTech.net. We're all incredibly excited to have him on board. I had been following him long before I started working at PodTech.net and consider myself a fan. I gotta say that it's been rather funny hearing all of the speculation regarding what we're about. I can't speak for why he left Microsoft, but I can only imagine that just as I left one great company that I still have high regard for, there were many reasons for *joining PodTech* for him as well.
These are incredible times and not just for PodTech.net, and not just for podcasting or the whole Web 2.0 thing, but how the world is changing right here, right now. This wave is much bigger than what happened in the 90s.
The closest definition I could find for 'shill' on Google said, "In some cases, the members of an organization or the employees of a company may monitor and/or participate in public discussions and groups. Such people are not shills, since they don't attempt to mislead others."
As far as I can tell, Scoble did no misleading. He made no attempts to hide the fact that he worked for MS, and he did nothing that made his blogs or videos appear untrustworthy. For example, it is painfully obvious that his videos have no PR person directing them or even editing them. He just walked into peoples' offices with a video camera, hit REC, and started talking.
He may have put a human face on MS by letting us all see inside the belly of the beast, but I don't understand what's wrong with that. What's wrong with giving some insight into how things work and why certain decisions were made? Transparency is supposed to be one of the great things about Open Source, so what's wrong when it applies to MS?
dom
That's pretty much what I thought when I read the article.
Every business decision has a reason. Always. The reason might not be obvious for someone outside the company, but it exists.
Sometimes, the reason is not even clear to the people inside the company. That usually indicates there is some personal conflict at work. Or it means that someone tries to advance a personal goal, not necessary in the interest of the whole company.
WWTTD?
>>Who was the most interesting person you interviewed on Channel 9 and why?
;-)
>>I'd have to say Bill Hill (guy who runs the reading technology/font teams) He was a huge amount of luck cause he was the first interview Charles and I did but he was hilarious and had great insights. His personality is great, too.
Check this out, the guy is great. (Don't know why but he just reminds me of Billy Connaly.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
And with all of the supposedly interesting tidbits you could have chosen to comment on, you chose to bitch about the blurb Slashdot picked.
The corrolary being that it doesn't have to be a _good_ reason, nor be ther best way to act upon that reason. It also doesn't have to be the publically stated one: people are very good at starting with what they personally want ("but I really want a pony!!!") and working from there to find some bogus rationale they can tell others ("our poll (on exactly one person) indicated that the company's productivity and morale would increase if the CEO had a pony.")
Frankly, I've seen lots of decisions that technically had a reason, but not the kind of reason you'd expect in that kind of a job or decision.
E.g., I've worked for someone who was a yes-man in _both_ directions. I can understand that he had a reason there: to just not rock the boat, not annoy anyone, and not risk taking a decision that later could be used against him. Is it the kind of reason that's expected of someone in a management position? Nope. Is the result good for the company? Nope.
E.g., take the chain of events that lead to the Boston molasses disaster. Did that beancounter have a reason to skip testing the tank, or to paint it brown (so it wouldn't be obvious that it leaks) instead of repairing it? Yes, he did: saving costs. I'm sure he probably got a big bonus for building it cheaper than what some real engineer had offered to build it for. Was it the right kind of decision? Nope, nevertheless, it was an idiotic decision that costed human lives and destruction of property.
Yes, I know you're seeing the same problem, but I felt someone should just spell it out by now, before the circular backpatting PHB squad starts the "see, we told you we always had a reason, even if you peons don't understand it" chorus.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Scorchio!
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It might have been more interesting with some background. What specific Gay Rights? Why was it good that Bullmer changed his mind?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Let me tell you about another group to which your words can be applied verbatim. In Soviet Russia they had newspapers, radio, and TV, and reporters who:
1) interviewed many high high and middle level party officials
2) had a job involving walking the halls of various official institutions to try to figure out what was going on
3) challenged their audience daily with their findings
4) thought daily about politics and the Soviet Union's role in the future
5) publically spoke out against (mild and pre-approved) various shortcomings.
And yet we already know that they published lies and propaganda anyway, and put an artifficial kind face on something that was a failure both economically and as human rights go. The party officially recognized that one little bit of truth makes people more eager to swallow the big lie, so, yes, number 5 happened pretty routinely too. So, yes, it's nothing new that a propaganda shill would "dare" "bravely" confront Ballmer about such utterly irrelevant issues as his opinions of gay rights, which frankly bear no relevance to MS's products or monopolistic stance... to seem independent enough so you'll swallow the bigger lies that do bear relevance.
But, anyway, let's resume mis-using your words in that context. You don't believe them? It seems to me you're implying that
1) A journalist from Pravda was stupid,
2) He was a liar,
3) His employment was one big consipiracy where 49999 Soviet citizens put on an act every time he was in the room and he was the one person who was not in on the big joke
And, blimey, yes, you'd be right. It was number 2. He who pays the orchestra gets to choose the music, and he who pays your salary to write about the company gets to choose what positive spin he wants you to put on it. And, yes, a bit of number 3 too: people are good at putting on an act when the CEO's PR lackey comes asking questions.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
No, that's a fair assessment I think. Microsoft doesn't make all that many bad decisions. But when they do screw something up, they screw things up big time. My short list of things Microsoft did wrong.
1. The Registry. They really should have known that a huge, undocumentable data base with sloppy security was going to cause untold mischief. If they had called me in 1993 and asked, I'd have told them pretty much what was going to happen. I'm far from the brightest guy around, so I think they really should have been able to figure it out for themselves.
2. Failing to anticipate the importance of the Internet for way too long.
3. Trying to build a desktop OS with a server architecture and maintain backward compatibility with old applications. What they ended up with was a stable desktop that is not a very satisfactory place for users and has horrible security problems. I think they would have done better to try to design a great single user OS with backward compatiblity. (And yes, Linux has the same architecture. Is has much the same problems although no one seems to want to think seriously about that)
4. Trying to protect their Intellectual Property at the expense of user convenience. Hardly anyone remembers, but two decades ago, Microsoft was the consumer's friend. They sold decent, if undistinguished, products at reasonable prices and didn't copy protect things. IMHO, they could have continued along that route, been just as rich as they are today, and been a hell of a lot more popular. To a significant extent, the OSS movement is fueled by folks who are really, really fed up with Microsoft. Microsoft could have avoided that I think.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
As opposed to you, who just post the above bullshit about anyone who dares think different than you do? Is that your point, little fanboy? That surely only those who are on your side of the story are open minded, and everyone even exercising some minimal skepticism is covering their eyes before The Truth(TM)?
Did you even bother checking that I'm actually fairly pro-MS before writing that idiocy? Nah, you just assumed that anyone who even dares be skeptical about one particular PR voice _must_ be some sworn enemy of MS. Every good citizen should, of course, put their faith 100% in paid PR shills and religiously believe every word they say. Heh.
How about the minimal skepticism of preferring to take my news and facts from a more impartial source? _Both_ MS _and_ the OSS zealots might, shall we say, be less than unbiased in their coverage of MS. So how about I'll trust _neither_ the paid PR guy filming it through rose-coloured glasses _nor_ the sworn enemies painting it all black with a broad brush. I'll do my own research and ask someone who _doesn't_ have a vested interest in slanting the story in their favourite direction, thank you very much.
Yes, so one company's paid PR guy finds that company a wonderful place to work at, wonderfully open and democratic, and led by wonderful managers who appreciate criticism and always have only the most sound reasons for all decisions, ever. Now, that's a big surprise. Same as, say, any other company's PR guy presents their employer? Lemme see, perchance the same as:
- big pharma's PR guys finds big pharma to be wonderful humanitarian-minded companies, and only doing The Right Thing? (Animal testing is, obviously, The Right Thing.)
- tobacco companies' PR guys finding those same tobacco companies to be wonderful and caring companies, and find smoking to be a wonderful and harmless thing that's never had any side-effects
- EA's PR guy finds their 20'th football game to be absolutely original and innovative
- Sony's PR guys find Sony to be a wonderful company and the PS3 to be a bargain
Etc.
No, really, it's such a big surprise that a PR guy bravely puts a rose tint on the company's image. It's so unexpected and brave that it _must_ be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we must all do our duty of believing every word unconditionally. That was sarcasm, if you can't tell.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Read this slashdot article and then read this one.
OK. I went back and looked at some of your writings and there is evidence that you're not a zealot. I'm sorry for calling you that.
Sorry about the (nearly) duplicate posts. My first response appeared to end up in the Slashdot bitbucket so I had to rewrite and repost it. Then the first showed up after all.
The registry is a scary thing. I think text files were just considered uncool at MS at one point. INI files were complicated enough, perhaps. But that's nothing, really.
I've witnessed the use of the registry as an IPC mechanism, if you can believe that. That really creeped me out. But later, I worked with MS RPC (which actually used invisible windows to communicate), the use of shared DLL memory without OS mutex primitives, ATL - and learned to suspend the gag reflex.
There are things you wish you could un-see and un-learn...