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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
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!
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.
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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