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Elop and Others Leaving Microsoft, Myerson Taking Bigger Role
jones_supa writes: Former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and "Scroogled" mastermind Mark Penn are leaving Microsoft as part of a fresh company reorganization. "We are aligning our engineering efforts and capabilities to deliver on our strategy and, in particular, our three core ambitions," says CEO Satya Nadella in an e-mail to employees today. Alongside Elop and Penn, Microsoft executives Kirill Tatarinov and Eric Rudder will also leave as part of a transition period. Tatarinov used to head up Microsoft's business solutions group, and Ruder was responsible for the company's advanced strategy. The reorganization will see Windows chief Terry Myerson take on more responsibility. Myerson will take over a new team called Windows and Devices Group. He will be focused on Microsoft devices and the engineering of Windows.
...and then I left. Like a lot of people, I thought working at Microsoft would be great. A chance to work for the mothership, as it were. I duly applied, made it through my three interviews, was hired and began work. Almost immediately, I noticed how fractured the company was internally. They had no real mobile strategy and still don't. I noticed the backbiting and political shenanigans that plague most businesses were present as well. Internally, Microsoft is very poltical, much more so than I imagined. So much so, in fact, I felt awkward from day one until I left.
The company is a good place to work if you like high structure and a very real and very apparent hierarchy. I neither want "high" structure or a political leadership environment. There are some very talented people there. To me, it all felt as if they were grasping at straws because they know the Office/OS gravy train is coming to an end sooner or later and no one really has any concrete ideas. Everything coming out of Microsoft in the last several years makes them appear to be an also-ran.
When he ran Symantec...
And he is now running us into the ground like he did them. Symantec's products are terrible, and he has decided to make our products horrible to. That is Thompson's game. He fires all of the good people and replaces them with morons that work cheap and are picked because they're a minority. AA has destroyed my department. Over the past year, I think I've interviewed about 150 developers. Only one was competent. This month, we're only hiring women. So, now I have five female developers on my team that will never be able to contribute. Thompson has destroyed another good company.
In hindsight, I am actually starting to feel that the Microsoft move was the right one exactly so that Nokia could make their handsets a takeover target. Devices were quickly becoming commoditized; Nokia had not managed to create a content ecosystem; and as yet another Android manufacturer they could not have brought much more to the table than companies like Samsung.
Of course WP hasn't taken off, but that Nokia managed to offload its handset business to MS in time was genuinely a positive thing for for company. Most importantly the patents were kept in the company, and the networks business seems to actually have more future growth potential for a strong engineering company than rectangles any Chinese firm can churn out at massive quantities.
I'm a happy shareholder since 2012.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.