Ray Ozzie To Step Down From His Role At Microsoft
denobug writes "Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at Microsoft, is stepping down. He is to remain with Microsoft until he retires, focusing his efforts 'in the broader area of entertainment where Microsoft has many ongoing investments,' based on a memo from Steve Ballmer. Also according to Steve's memo, the role of CSA was unique and it will not be filled."
"Software architects" are by far one of the worst things that can happen to a company that develops software products.
Instead of developing useful software products that improve the efficiency of their customers, such companies spins their wheels developing "frameworks" that are rife with "patterns", "inversion of control", "service-oriented architectures", "clouds", and all sorts of other nonsense. Yet somehow these frameworks end up being hugely complex piles of shit. The original software products end up being ignored or remain undeveloped, since so many resources went into developing these cock-awful frameworks.
For anyone who doesn't speak corporate-speak, or the variant they use at Microsoft, this really means the following:
Ray got fired, but at his level they don't fire you. He got fired because Microsoft is a mature business and doesn't really create anything new anymore.
Ballmer refuses to split the company up (tax reasons) so he's been given a grace period of a year to find a replacement for himself.
Here endeth the lesson.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --