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Another Microsoft Exec Steps Down
Arcanimus writes "On Tuesday, the corporate vice president of Windows Live and MSN marketing, Martin Taylor, announced that he is leaving Microsoft.
Just three months ago, Taylor was appointed to his new position to manage the marketing of Windows Live. In his 13 years with the company, Taylor even worked directly with CEO Steve Ballmer."
As evil as Microsoft is, I've never been able to decide whether or not Bill Gates himself is evil. My suspect, even, that Microsoft's evil behavior is an emergent property of their corporate culture. No one individual person in Microsoft (well, actually, I think Balmer is a nutball) is truly evil. It's like how one termite is insignificant, but a colony of them can destroy an entire neighborhood. :)
Still, a lot of corporate culture comes down from the top. Gates' ambition to have "microsoft products on every computer in every home" turns into overly aggressive business behavior. With him and others going, are things going to improve for the rest of us? Or have any of these guys been keeping others in check, and they're about to get worse?
I suspect that this is not really a big deal. Ray Ozzie likely want to have a chance to set up his own exec staff and this guy does not figure in that plan. I won't be surprised if other folks leave over the next couple of years as the company transitions from Gates to Ozzie.
But I'd speculate it could have something to do with Gates' moderating influence on Ballmer disappearing over the next two years...
Also note that MS execs hold a crapload of stock, and if they dump it while employed by the company, they could be investigated for insider trading violations. I wouldn't be surprised if when MS stock nosedives after the Vista release, it begins by the dumping of stock by ex-MS execs.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
FTFA...
That doesn't sound like he resigned to go elsewhere, but more like "There's the door, someone grab his badge and escort him out."
We'll probably never know why, but this is Slashdot, so speculation is almost as good as fact.
"no comment departures" are a result of the HR department giving you a nice sevrance package and, in return, making you sign a document that says you won't comment.
I wonder what his career options in the industry are, since he essentially represents the "anti-Linux", and outside of Microsoft, there are now very few companies that aren't involved in Linux somehow. He would have to claim to convert and "see the light", or go somewhere else that has a low interest in Linux succeeding...Sun perhaps? Apple?
um, I doubt this would make much sense. There's really no reason to spin-off their core products. By doing this, they would lose the cash-cows they need to incubate new products
IMO, all the products you mentioned above fit well into Microsoft's core-competency, and make good business sense under the MS umbrella. Also, none of them are too risky, so there is no major threat to shareholder value by keeping them.
Other tech companies need to take advantage of this before it's too late ... with the MSFT shake-ups, resignations, and whatever else ... Google, Apple, Linux, FireFox, Opera, Open Office, and everybody else needs to immediately step-up their product pitches ... get some non-tech people to notice the issues MSFT is facing, and the fact that there are alternatives. These companies need to jump at the bit now ... grab some shares ... and introduce the world to a computer that doesn't depend solely on MSFT.
At the same time, further spinouts wouldn't happen nearly as much, because the central funding from windows would no longer reach other potential departments. Your plan may work short-term, but cripples the ability of a large company to move bulk quantities of cash in interesting directions.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
That's an interesting idea. The spin-off companies would have a fair amount of indirect competition among themselves in regard to reputation, quality, work environment, growth, profit, and so forth. That competition could lead to many good things - and many unexpected things, I'm sure.
why would they all be leaving prior to Vista's launch?
Same reason so many people bailed out of Apple once the scope of the Copland disaster was realized. This was before Apple started talking to NeXT or Be, and it was pretty clear that having Apple on your resume would Not Be a Good Thing once it all hit the fan.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Or in this case fired. Monday morning being quoted in press releases, scheduled to be in a press briefing ion the afternoon. Monday afternoon escorted from the building. A senior exec with 13 years service. Must have been a very sudden decision, Friday is the traditional day for premeditated firing.
I fear for my children's future when I read that "head blogger" is an important role anywhere, let alone a company of Microsoft's size.
I'm not saying that is isn't, just that I fear...
I tremble...
these people truly think they are doing the right thing. They are not inherently evil, even if their actions end up seeming that way. In the end it is a skewed view of the individual, not someone being actively evil.
At the risk of calling out the Godwin Nazis, Hitler and Sadaam also truly thought they were doing the right thing for their respective countries and were honestly not trying to be evil, but were trying to be a savior for their respective peoples. Anyone who knew them personally knows that.
It is amazing how many people don't understand this basic thing, that no successful leader considers himself evil, but sincerely considers his opponents evil, i.e. the caricatures of the Jews in the case of Hitler, etc., as the source of all evil. And there is some logic that can be used to justify any such demonization. It is spin leading to polarization, which is what makes the world go around and often becomes the excuse for ignoring one's own supposed ethics and morals.
One of Gate's villified enemies (I can name a series of others) was so-called software piracy, which he more than anyone else has made into a crime more than it ever was before. As much credit as the uninformed give him for progress in computers, this has destroyed growth and freedom that would have come otherwise. Could Unix have emerged under the current copyright regime? Operating systems would have been built for commodotized hardware one way or the other, but it was one more degree of freedom lost that is now hard to recover from under his shadow.
The appropriate cliche is "rats leaving a sinking ship"
In this case, it is well in advance of Vista shipping, so maybe it is more like a game of catch by the three stooges tossing around a hand granade. Somebody gets left holding on to the booby prize when it the spam hits the wall, so to speak.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It would make tremendous sense for Microsoft to split into a number of companies
Except that MS doesn't see it that way - or they wouldn't have spent $$$ appealing the court ruling that told them to do just that.
Securing the web server is one thing securing the applications that run on it is quite another. I am not saying that their platform has not improved because it has but right now the only way it is gaining market share is by buying it with good ole fashion cash. Nobody that is running linux/unix based web servers are likely to give them up without a fight, the unix/linux platform is 100 times more flexible, more secure, easier to remotely administer than windows ever will be. Add to this the fact that the os and apache and databases behind it are free and you have little chance of gaining
ground.
Got Code?
I know it seems like Cringely is an unremitting idiot, but if you compare him to Dvorak, he comes out looking like another Einstein. Seriously though, Cringely is correct about half the time, which is what you'd expect if someone is just pulling things out of their ass. Dvorak is right approximately none of the time - certainly, his hit rate is statistically insignificant - so who KNOWS where he's getting his material from... Anyway I find Cringely to be occasionally entertaining and infrequently insightful, whereas I just mentally mark all Dvorak-related anything as a troll and skip it. YMMV.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The VP who left the company was in charge of one of their most important divisions. The VP who left the company was the guy who was leading the anti-Linux campaign. When a company loses an executive who is on the front lines of positioning the company to deal with the two largest trends in the software world, it is news.
To frame the example in the context of your little no name company, it would be the equivilant of the President and Head of R&D leaving. People would start to wonder what they know that you don't. Investors would start to worry about the long term outlook of the company.
On that train of thought I'm sure that there are at least a couple of analysts on Wall Street right now writing up reports about the loss of executive staff at Microsoft supports the conclusion that it's time to sell their stock short
Big shake-up going on at Microsoft. I wonder if this is related to Limbo Longhorn, or if something else is in the works. Change in direction, maybe?
It's not even a small shakeup. Microsoft's upper management people are simply getting to the age where they want to retire. Techies tend to retire at a lot younger age, as soon as they make their first $million. People who go into management tend to be looking for a bigger fortune and stick around longer, but even they quit eventually. There are likely to be a number of high-tech big-shots retiring in this decade. It's a non-event.
No one outside of marketing has ever used that word with a straight face. If you're going to astroturf, at least do it well.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It's just a name for what used to be called a PR drone. It's the guy putting a believable face on whatever message wants to send to the sheep. It can involve manufacturing some "news", manufacturing some "impartial studies", faking a grassroots movement, or lately... pretending to be a hip and independent blogger just like you, so you're inclined to trust him. Enter the "head blogger" role.
What I'm saying is: it's nothing new. It's the same old corporate scam under a shiny new name.
And when I say that just the name is new, I really mean it. Even the "hip, young and honest guy that you can connect to" image isn't invented there. Read a bit about the music producers and you'll find out that the music industry has been using people fitting precisely that image to wine and dine the artists and promise them the moon if they just sign this contract. (Incidentally the contract doesn't mention the moon, but this guy is _so_ just like you and looks so sincere, that you're sure he really means it that you'll get the moon.) Turns out to work waay better than having some corporate fatcat talk to them, not even speak the same language, and raise all their "this guy wants to shaft me so hard that I'll walk funny for _years_" red flags.
So now MS has done the same thing. Instead of letting Steve "Uncle Fester" Balmer do the talking to the world at large, they got someone who'll spend half the time establishing a bogus image as a hip, irreverent and _totally_ independent blogger. (MS just gave a guy a camera and a security pass and will pay his salary no matter what he writes, even if it were anti-MS, you know? If you believe that, can I interest you in a lumber mill in Sahara?) And the other half the time taking the idyllic bits of info out of context and painting them as the whole image about MS.
Or to put it otherwise, it's never been that MS is stupid enough to take "blogger" for an important job. It's that their PR department figured that that particular title has enough "street cred" that they can rape and use for their own purposes. And when that "street cred" is used up, they'll find some other thing they can exploit instead.
So, I don't know... would you feel less threatened about your kid's future if that job title just said "PR"?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
-- Alastair
Actually, this is no longer considered Best Practice (TM). Firing someone on Friday gives them the whole weekend to sit around feeling sorry for themselves and growing more and more resentful of their former employer. At least in academia, the general opinion (as far as I can tell from the several management classes I've taken) is that if you _must_ fire someone, you should do it on a Monday. Furthermore, you should schedule a meeting with a career counselor for Tuesday morning, bright and early. Thus, the (former) employee has a full week to look for a new job and, hopefully, won't find themselves pursuing a career of binge drinking and intravenous drug use. I think (some) people have finally discovered that pissing people off and making enemies is not the best business model.
That being said, your point is valid. I think this was a sudden decision.
Visualize the world of wine
After reading all of the various blogs and press over the last few hours, I can piece everything together except for the exact reason. Martin was terminated for cause. If an exec is leaving, it takes several months to coordinate. This was very sudden and abrupt. If Martin left on his own, there would not have been anything scheduled for him. Instead, he just didn't show up to a press event. So, why would Microsoft just fire someone and walk them to the door? There are, according to Microsoft HR, two reasons one can be walked out without due cause or process. The first is having child porn on your computer. The second is physical violence. I know this because I had to fire someone for getting into a fight with his girlfriend in the Microsoft parking lot. He pushed her to the ground, it was all caught on camera and she filed a complaint. Two days later he was on a plane back to his home country (he was here on a visa). I, as his GM, was given no choice, no recourse, no room to wiggle and this is when the HR policy was spelled out to me. Heck, we caught a guy mastrubating in his office and all he got was a warning. Regular porn gets a warning, child porn gets a boot. Martin did not just get mad and quit in a huff, people do not walk away from a $500K/year position in a huff. The only logical explaination is a termination, and the only two reasons for such an abrupt termination is the above. Even Ballmer can't override this particular policy. We can olny hope it was the physical violence, not the child porn.
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.