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The Microsoft High-Profile Exodus Continues
snydeq writes "Bing principal Scott Prevost is the latest of several high-profile exits from Microsoft in the wake of Bob Muglia's departure, causing some to question the long-term outlook for Redmond, InfoWorld reports. While the departures have spanned the company's business divisions, the concern centers square on the Microsoft core: 'Microsoft's numbers are looking good in the short term, but the future of core products remains unclear, and so far, Redmond's cloud and mobile strategies don't seem to be paying off.'"
Given how Microsoft has faltered in the marketplace, has failed to innovate and continues to misunderstand its customers, perhaps the old guys need to go.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Actually, the future of Redmond is secure. They're strategically letting all these folks go, so that they can all go work for, and eventually destroy, Apple from the inside out. It's like the Cylon infiltration of the human race on Caprica in BSG...
Or Google, or both.
Ich suche die Leidenschaft, die keine Leiden schafft.
Bing principal Scott Prevost...
Considering Slashdot's other Bing story today, I can't say I'm sad to see him go.
This could be a simple case that the departing employees simply have no faith in the direction Ballmer is leading Microsoft. When the ship is headed toward an iceberg and the captain is being stubborn or unaware, the best course of action is often evacuation.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
If you are fully vested in your lucrative stock options and the share price can't go anyplace but down in the future, you'd be crazy not to cash out.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I worked for Bob for a few years and had alot of admiration for the guy. I left about 2 years ago during the mass layoff and it was the best career move I ever made. Microsoft has become (and was becoming when I left) a horrible place to work. Please, if you are considering a professional career in software development, DO NOT work there. Almost anywhere else is better. I currently work for a small software company as a CTO with about $100million in sales last year and the work environment difference is night and day. The reason Microsoft is faltering is because it has moved from a fun, innovative place to work to a serious personal and professional nightmare. You have to go through a political circus to justify you job there (your two reviews per year) where you have little input in the final determination about your job (the politics of Microsoft). I shudder to think about the years I wasted jumping through those hoops instead of working on product and helping customers. Again, avoid working at Microsoft at all costs.
I still don't get why Microsoft feels they need to be a player in every category? Why Bling, smart phones, mp3 players, games, cloud computing, tablets and all the rest? Why not be a focused company with the leading office suite? Or an innovate O/S? Yeah yeah I know the investors must be kept at bay like howling wolves at the corporate door but how many missteps can a company make before they and we realize they are just followers and no longer leaders?
Other than maybe Xbox which isn't a major cash cow when have they released a hit product? The vast majority of their revenues still come from Office and Windows and related products. Take away those core products and there's virtually no company. It's not just innovation they seem to have trouble coming up with new products that a majority of people like. If they did have to start from scratch even with all their cash reserves they'd end up a minor player.
is Balmer.
Why is Snark Required?
Many people first used Windows not by choice, but by mandate -- there was no other option and the Microsoft monopoly made sure it stayed that way. (unless you bought a Mac) My guess is many people have found the MS experience frustrating and a general PITA, but there was never any other choice. They had to live with the shoddy time wasting experience Microsoft called computing.
Now given the option of having their "desktop experience" on their "phone" or "pad" I am sure many people are interested in real alternatives. My prediction is no matter how hard Microsoft tries to play the "we are the future of computing because we invented everything" song and dance, most users will chose iOS and Android for exactly that reason. Hi-tech karma at its best.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
It's actually a BSD box, but don't tell anyone.
I have no idea why this made the news. The artcile says he is "a" principle development manger, not "the" principle development manger.
"Principle" is a job title:
Mangers go like this
For several years, I was "a" princpiple development manger in Windows. Im now a principle lead becuase there was a specific team I wanted to be a part of. If I leaft, it would be news.
-foredecker
Jibe!
Given how Microsoft has faltered in the marketplace, has failed to innovate and continues to misunderstand its customers, perhaps the old guys need to go.
Microsoft Reports Record $0.77 Earnings Per Share in Second Quarter
Among the factors driving Microsoft's record revenues and earnings per share was the 55% growth in revenue for the Entertainment & Devices Division, as the success of the Kinect sensor boosted sales of Xbox 360 consoles, Xbox Live subscriptions and Xbox games.
Microsoft Business Division revenue grew 24% year-over-year. Office 2010 is the fastest-selling consumer version of Office in history, with license sales over 50% ahead of Office 2007 over an equivalent period following launch.
Microsoft announced it has now sold over 300 million Windows 7 licenses, and Windows 7 is now running on over 20% of Internet-connected PCs.
The company announced that during the quarter, it bought back $5 billion in stock and declared $1.3 billion in dividends.
Back when "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", they had an exodus of top talent, too -- just before things went south for the company. Luckily, they were in the process of repositioning them self as a service company instead of a hardware company.
Both companies followed the same "fat-cat" syndrome. Small lean company innovates and captures a large part of the market. As company grows, focus shifts to maintaining status quo. Company becomes too large and lazy (fat cat) to respond quickly to changing environment. Somebody else becomes the new lean tiger. Pattern repeats for new comer. Fat cat isn't just for technology companies. It happens in all industries. It's just that change occurs so quickly in technology companies that instead of taking decades to be toppled, it happens in years. Both IBM and Microsoft lasted longer at the top of their game than most technology companies, but the same forces are still at work.
Back when they were trying to bust up Microsoft for being a monopoly (again, same thing happened to IBM), was when they needed to change. Microsoft had the opportunity to get rid of all competition with Office by improving the product. Instead, they chose to change file formats to try and make the competitors incompatible. That is a very short sighted solution, as it also makes your own installed product base incompatible. Next, they re-did the interface, but still didn't really improve upon the functionality. Next they played around with pricing structures and actually started to remove features, accept for the top end product. Again, not a long term growth strategy. A similar scenario played out with the browser and the OS itself.
Meanwhile, others in the tech industry have been chipping away at Microsoft. Nobody is saying that OpenOffice/LibreOffice will topple Microsoft Office. It doesn't have to. Just like Mozilla, Safari and now Chrome, it only has to take a percentage of small percentage of market share to make a big impact on Microsoft's bottom line.
It's like the prevent defense in football (American Football, that is). It may keep the opposing team from making the big play, but gives up a tremendous amount of yardage in the process. Then, one small mistake and the opposing team scores.
Microsoft, like many before it, has become too large and inflexible to adjust to quick change in the modern market and relies on protecting itself with a prevent defense. The problem with that is that in football, you only need to keep the other team from scoring until the clock runs out. In business, there is no clock to signal the end of the game.
Good lord, it's "principal"!
It's 1.5 million sold by MS to operators and retail stores. There's still no publicly available figure for the number of phones sold by those operators and stores to actual users.
1) it was developed and researched outside microsoft - they bought the tech and payed to have it mass produced; the concepts involved are even older.
2) The motion capture craze was created by Nintendo years ago and before that they attempted the idea with the failed power glove because the tech wasn't good enough back then to pull it off. (Although I saw a university VR lab put that glove to use as a 6degree motion controller)
3) Kinect is not that innovative, its an improvement to an existing idea of Nintendo's. Arguably, its not even an improvement because for many Wii games you only need the acceleration motions to play just fine and after the 1st hours of swinging around like an idiot I discovered I could do just as well sitting down using much smaller motions. I'm not just talking about the simple applications where the motion is really simple. Its more flexible to different styles of input. The kinect is a literal minded approach to somebody who doesn't quite "get it" which is typical Microsoft thinking. Take the motion thing and throw money at it and buy everything that lets you technically do the thing as well or better at an initially HUGE expense. They miss the concept of your natural inclination to move the controller about while STILL holding a controller and go 150% for capturing my body's motion. Its great for dance and stuff but its targeting an even SMALLER niche than nintendo's technically limited approach. If Nintendo did kinect, it would be done better because they are the true creative thinkers.
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URL Fix: Microsoft Reports Record $0.77 Earnings Per Share in Second Quarter
Here is another look at Microsoft's second quarter.
Microsoft may be a big, sprawling company, but it's hardly acting like a deer in the headlights facing a speeding Steve Jobs at the wheel. Given the decades-old and often bitter rivalry between Apple and Microsoft, that narrative is tempting. But a deeper look into Microsoft's report reveals a company that's surprisingly nimble for its size.
First of all, the idea that Microsoft can't create a phenomenon like the iPad anymore simply isn't true. The iPad sold 2 million units in its first 60 days. The Kinect sold four times as many, tapping mainstream interest much sooner.
What's especially interesting is that the Kinect sold so well despite the lack of buzz in the tech media. Comparing Google search and news trends for the word "Kinect" with that of "iPad," and you'll find that the iPad attracted much more of the public conversation. And yet the Kinect's 8 million sales in November and December surpassed the 7.3 million iPads that Apple sold in the entire fourth quarter.
Factoring out the effect of the Windows launch, Microsoft estimated growth around 3%, "in line with PC market growth." Again, 3% growth isn't terrific, but it's nowhere near as bad as the headline figure suggests.
Even if Microsoft's Windows revenue does start to slide in coming years, the company can weather the blow. Sure, Windows revenue makes up a quarter of Microsoft's total sales. But its business-software division -- including Office, as well as SharePoint and Exchange -- contributes 30% of its revenue, and that division expanded its profit by 35% last quarter.
Other divisions are seeing similarly strong profit growth. Microsoft's server and tools division, which makes up another 22% of revenue, saw its profit rise by 21%. And the entertainment group, which makes Xbox and Kinect and accounts for 19% of revenue, posted profit growth of a whopping 86%.
The threat of tablets to Microsoft is real and shouldn't be trivialized. But neither should Microsoft's ability to keep sales and profits growing in other areas of its broad-based businesses.
No, the iPad Is Not Killing Microsoft's Business
In the first six weeks, 1.5 million shipped to retailers. That was in December. Then MS announces last week that 2 million have been shipped since it launched. That means in the busiest consumer month of the year (December), MS was only able to move 500,000 phones. Even LG has noted that WP7 sales were less than expected. I'd hardly call that a smashing success.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.