Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
is it because windows live sucks?
... but it's not new, it still sucks.
they were supposed to launch some 'new' (gmail competing) hotmail -
they ask you if you want to try hotmail live beta, and you agree
how do you think hotmail would be faring had should they still be running qmail and solaris?
they still would've had to inovate in UI, features and disk space.
Either there's simply more focus on MS this year, or something is up -- why would they all be leaving prior to Vista's launch? Especially all of these "no comment" departures. Gates' reduction in responsibility makes sense, but these other guys seem to be in rather important roles ("head blogger," "exec responsible for Google competition," etc) and are bailing out. I could understand if they had people lined up for these positions, but it seems like they're just leaving.
Is it just me or does it seem like a lot of people are jumping ship now? Has Microsoft finally spread themselves too thin? Have they become so huge now that they don't even know what to do with themselves under the multiple multiple layers of complexity? Anyone else forsee a large implosion in the foreseeable future? Maybe those that are smart enough realize that they are fighting a losing battle against Google, Linux, and OSS. Then again, they may just to enjoy their million$.
Windows, Inc.
Office, Inc.
MSN, Inc.
Visual Studio, Inc.
XBox, Inc.
The smaller companies would be more nimble and would have to be more competative. They'd be better performers as they wouldn't have the mother organization as a cruch.
boxlight
I just submitted the following story:
Suddenly and unexpected, the corporate vice president of Windows Live and MSN, Martin Taylor has left Microsoft. "We've made the difficult decision to part ways with Martin, but we don't comment on personnel matters," Microsoft said in a statement Tuesday. Taylor, the former Global General Manager of Platform Strategy rose to prominence as the face behind Microsoft's "Get the Facts" anti-Linux campaign. You can read the Slashdot interview with Martin Taylor here.
The evil was from the marketing guy jeff raikes (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/jeff/defa ult.mspx). He was from apple. The marketing people (and to some extent the HR people) were the most evil people I have ever worked for or with in my life. No holes barred get the sale no matter who you have to kill attitude.
Raikes perfected the pre-canned answer to every question that gates and balmer soon adopted. Talking to anyone of them is like pressing buttons on a child's speak and spell toy - there is absolutely no thought behind what they say, just pr department approved pre-canned responses.
Gates was a good guy. Balmer is a hot head that is out of his league but because of his friendship with bill and bill's desire to get out of it, balmer has had the lead for a while.
But again, i reiterate, the evil is from the ruthless marketing leadership. Unfortunately they got the job done.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
Of course he was talking about George Bush, not Bill Gates, but the intent translates.
Yes very true. Of course at the executive level in companies, they are usually given the opportunity to resign with grace rather than get fired, except in extreme cases such as those where criminal accusations are involved. IMHO, I think we're seeing a broad (and probably sorely needed) shakeup as a result of all the recent negative publicity surrounding the Vista delay, often speculated to be caused by culture issues. Corporate culture issues are difficult to fix in any organization, let alone a huge one like Microsoft, and often necessitate changes starting from the top down to even begin to make progress.
Gates was a good guy.
For some definition of "good," perhaps. Everything I've heard and observed about the guy inidicates he hasn't been a good guy since about 7th grade, when the girls made fun of him for being a pussy.
Gates cheated Paul Allen out of 1/6 stake in Microsoft. Later, when Allen was dying of cancer and overwork on MS-DOS, Gates and Ballmer discussed how to get Allen's stock back if he were to die.
Gates gave almost nothing to charity until he married Melinda, and was publicly ridiculed for being selfish with his money.
There are thousands of little examples like this that indicate he is not a "good" guy, and perhaps never was. Jeff Raikes may have been the most evil guy at Microsoft, but the Gates-worship that went on at Microsoft provided an environment in which Raikes' practices were acceptable.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
At one time, IIS 5 looked hopeless. It was completely riddled with security holes and was basically the joke of the industry. People who used it did so with either ignorance or extreme caution.
Microsoft realized they needed to fix this but it took Code Red and various other major worms that took advantage of IIS to really kick the company into gear.
What was the result of this? IIS 6. IIS 6 is an excellent web server and is one of the most secure web servers you can use. It's certainly the most secure application server you can use. It's had a total of 2 vulnerabilities since its release about 4 years ago. (See: http://secunia.com/product/1438/) Add to that the fact that IIS 6 is extremely performant, easily configurable and maintainable, and is very robust, you have to conclude that Microsoft improved. A great deal in fact.
I see the work on Windows Vista and IE 7 being very similar in nature to the work done on IIS. They've completely revamped their development methodologies to focus on security.
IE 7+ (the one that comes with Vista) has a feature that essentially runs the browser as a very low privs user. Any operations that need high privs (such as writing to the user's desktop or other directories) are done by a broker. This broker has only a few thousand lines of code (and is therefore FAR easier to audit for security issues) and runs with the privs of the current user. This is actually fairly innovative and will undoubtedly make it far more difficult to exploit and holes in IE.
Obviously we'll have to wait and see if Microsoft has done with Vista and IE what they did with IIS, but it's hard to deny that Microsoft has proven they can take a product people view as a hopeless security mess and turn it into one of the most secure products on the market.
Just a thought: Why doesn't slashdot now change the Microsoft icon for stories to Balmer throwing a chair instead of Bill Gates/Locutus of Borg? Balmer chair is pretty much the universal symbol of Microsoft today. It cuts across language, culture, geo-political boundaries and IP addresses...
Actually, this has been observed with a lot of different companies in dire straights. Not saying this for sure (as it is only correlation evedence, but you make your own inferences), but when a lot of executives leave, the company is in trouble. Witness Sun Microsystems a few years back when they had tons of executives leaving. The company wasn't on solid footing, and the execs new it, so they began to bail.
If I had to predict, I'd imagine that times will be rough at MS for the next few years, as major image shakedowns and restructurings occur. Hopefully, it'll prove beneficial to the rest of the universe, but I'm not holding my breath. MS is still MS.
just an analog boy living in a digital age.
Scott Draves
Bad use of language. I did an "Al Gore", I am sorry.
I meant to say that, When microsoft started attacking Linux, it helped raise the awareness of Linux across many business. Not as a name, but what it does. For example when Microsoft said in their "get the facts" campaign that "Although Linux is 'free', it has higher TCO.....", A lot of companies didnt even KNOW that Linux is freely obtainable, and it helped achieve some thought put towards it.
At the place where I work, We use Linux for a lot of our servers, switching from NT/Solaris, with full support from Management. Management were only aware of Linux thanks to the Microsoft Get The Facts campaign, which led to further analysis, which prooved to them, that in OUR case, going with Linux/OpenSource results in LOWER TCO.
Have a nice day!
microsoft has some challenges going forward. big challenges that, apparently, keep getting bigger.
however, they brought this on themselves. they were one of the "compensation innovators" that spoiled everyone with stock options and the idea that they, regular old employee, would be a millionaire, too.
people are now realizing that the fast has left msft and it is now time to work for more normal wages.
NOT!
when you suck away employees from other companies with the allure of stock riches... you will end up being suckked dry when your stock doesn't have the same allure as other companies.
time to find greener pastures.
it did sound like msft fired this dude, though. perhaps he got an extra couple hundred thousand in order for msft to "market" (ie, L-I-E) about his leaving the company.
Open source did not come about because Microsoft was big; open source came about because they promoted code as being proprietary. Priot to that, people just gave away code. It wasn't until they started selling languages and promoting code as something that could be sold that that people stopped giving away code.
Open source was a response to proprietary code. So in a sense, open source existed prior to Microsoft. Keep in mind that open source is not a business practice... it is a social movement. That social movement can be incorporated into business practices but you should not confuse one for the other.
And while you put forth that Microsoft inadvertently promoted open source again your logic is flawed. It was not their portests that caused it to become popular because by the time Microsoft STARTED protesting, it had already gotten a decent foothold and had a faster adoption rate than any other company out there. No, it was word of mouth, inaction by tech companies and monopolistic practices that DROVE consumers towards open source. And to this day, it is still the three ingredients that push open source.
Should a company decide to make a decent product that doesn't lock you in and interoperates well, it has been proven that people will still buy it. But once a company thinks that consumers don't have choices, won't make choices or are unaware of choices... thats when the consumer backlash begins.
All open source did was taken advntage of the consumer backlash and give it someplace to go.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
He won't need it. Ken Lay has a chair reserved for him. Sorry, every time I hear about top execs leaving big corrupt organazations I think of Enron. Off topic, but I also wonder which of the two companies has ripped America off more?