Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft CIO Stuart Scott Gets Axed
avjt writes "Microsoft has terminated its CIO Stuart Scott for 'violation of company policies'. They won't elaborate. Now what do you think this guy has done?" Ya know, I'm positive someone reading this story knows the answer to the mystery... and they could post it anonymously and be totally fine because there will be a hundred other totally wrong guesses and it would be completely impossible to distinguish the two ;)
Usually, at levels this high, executives who misbehave are quietly asked to resign. The fact that his termination was this public and graceless tells me he did something pretty egregious, because Microsoft apparently wants to not just get rid of him but warn other corporations not to hire him. Misappropriation of corporate funds, in some way, seems the most likely candidate to me.
Please note I'm not informed at all, just speculating.
I know several people who currently work at Microsoft. It's not because he installed linux or owns an ipod or some such silliness, since I know these people have done those things. I would imagine that it's actually something more serious, like an inappropriate work relationship (still thinking it's not something they would fire you for, at the CIO level) or divulging info to a competitor or inappropriate use of company funds.
Few people are ever fired for a breach of a minor rule in any corporation. Supposedly minor rules are usually only invoked if the breach is a cause of a wider problem. For example, an unproductive employee might be fired for visiting personal websites during working hours. The cause of the firing is that the employee isn't worth keeping because they (amongst other things) spend all day browsing the web and not working, not that the websites were not work related.
Remember, it kills morale and makes people want to leave if they're in fear of losing their jobs over something other than performance and/or disruptive behavior. It's also expensive - an employee of any worth takes months, sometimes years, to replace, and crucial information is inevitably lost whenever anyone leaves. While corporations suck at the whole morale thing, it's an exaggeration to assume that most people are fired over something "innocuous". Even if the reason given might appear that way, the fact is the corporation wouldn't be firing the person in the first place if there wasn't a good reason to get rid of them.
That said, the reason in this case could be as simple as Scott isn't worth anything close to waht he was being paid and was easily losable.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The poor guy is unemployed and has seven (that we know about so far) children to support.
... like, say, sell one of their yachts ... but this isn't $JOE_DOWNSIZED_TECH_WORKER we're talking about.
The "poor guy" was a top executive for one of the biggest corporations in the world. I can pretty much guarantee you that he and his litter o' puppies aren't going to be out on the street any time soon. They may have to scale down their lifestyle a bit
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Yeah, because quarter after quarter of record revenues AND profits means your company is crumbling. Not to mention their stock is the highest its been in 5 years.
But, yes crumbling, disaster!!
-David
In the early-to-mid 1980s when the Internet as we know it was evolving out of the ARPANet, Gore was on the floor of Congress yammering on about how this crazy new tech was going to be important, and the U.S. had to be there first. He argued for vastly more funding to the NSF than anyone thought the Internet needed (it's just some computer geeks linking research databases, right?) I remember reading about his efforts on Usenet back in the late 80s and wondering, "I know why this is important, but how they heck does a politician know?!" In the end, of course, it was more important than either the geeks or the politicians could have predicted.
Go read the Congressional Record for his speeches about the Internet. The funding for the development of all of those low-number RFCs like DNS and SMTP came from projects that Gore pushed as if he actually knew why they were important. Did he? I have no clue, but if I don't give props to the one politician to see the value in the Internet from the start, I'll never convince any politician that doing right by technology is going to help their careers. We have enough of the, "the Senator from Disney," types already, and I'd rather not have more.