A Press Junket To Redmond

christian.einfeldt writes "Our very own Roblimo Miller was invited to an all-expenses-paid tour of the Microsoft campus because he is supposedly 'not friendly' to Microsoft. Writes Roblimo: 'I came away with a sense that Microsoft doesn't currently have a clear sense of what Microsoft should be and where Microsoft should be going... I also think, from what I heard during my visit and what other Microsoft employees and customers have told me at other times, that it has degenerated into a series of disconnected fiefdoms that aren't all moving in the same direction.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Comments

It's true

[theworldisflat]

Having worked for Microsoft's PSS team on-and-off several times, Microsoft truly has no idea where it's going. Even within its own ranks, guys who had been there for 15+ years could barely recognize the company as it is today. Internal wars, endless meetings/bureaucracy and loss of focus are the biggest hindrances. India, of course, is a 4-letter word as far as many are concerned ("It's not about the money...." - Yeah right). People who are truly gifted and could benefit the company are turned away, while politics and buddy-buddy rules bring people in who, honestly, have no clue. It's a downward spiral. I do hope that someday they will regain control of this frenzied beast, and put power back in the hands of the engineers. It's always been a truly education experience working for them, both on a technical and social level...something I wouldn't trade for the world.

Re:glass houses

[radtea]

How is that any different than the state of Open Source Software?

It is different because F/OSS has never had the single-minded goal that MS did in the 80's and 90's. "A computer on every desktop and in every home" has to be one of the best mission statements of any organization anywhere. It is actionable at all levels, from negotiating ubiquitous OEM deals to ensuring user-friendly features.

The problem facing MS now is that they have achieved their mission and have nothing to replace it with. In a decade we've gone from Win3.1's breakout to XP, which is a stable, fully-featured OS that satisfies the vast majority of needs of the vast majority of users. I run Linux (Slackware, which I've run since 0.96 days) on my servers and one laptop, but XP does everything I want on my business laptop and Windows development machine (some customers want Windows apps--go figure.) It's not like I'm a natural MS customer, it's just that their OS actually serves my needs.

MS is like Alexander the Great after his conquest of the East. Far from weeping that there were no more worlds to conquer, he was purportedly thinking about western conquests when he died. But his great mission in life, the conquest of Persia and it's dependencies, was finished. He had to pause and consider what he was going to do next before going on, whereas before that the mission was clear and all that mattered was its execution. (Note to history pendants: yeah, yeah, yeah.)

What we know about MS is: they are sitting on a mountain of cash, and they have a history of flailing around before figuring out what to do next. I expect we'll see a lot of very expensive flailing on the next few years. It'll be an interesting show that we all should enjoy watching.