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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.
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.
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.
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."
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 /.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
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
>>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.
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.