Microsoft's Longtime Windows Boss Terry Myerson To Leave the Company Amid a Huge Executive Reorganization (businessinsider.com)

Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive vice president of Windows and a long-time leader at Microsoft, is leaving the company, the company said today. The news comes as part of a big reshuffling of the company's executive leadership. From a report: "His strong contributions to Microsoft over 21 years from leading Exchange to leading Windows 10 leave a real legacy. I want to thank Terry for his leadership on my team and across Microsoft," wrote Nadella in an e-mail to employees announcing the changes. As part of the reorganization, Rajesh Jha, the executive VP of Microsoft Office products, will be expanding his responsibilities to encompass Myerson's role when he leaves in "the coming months." Jha will become the leader of a group called "Experiences & Devices," bringing Windows and Office under a single banner. "The purpose of this team is to instill a unifying product ethos across our end-user experiences and devices," writes Nadella. "Computing experiences are evolving to include multiple senses and are no longer bound to one device at a time but increasingly spanning many as we move from home to work and on the go."

Comments

Unifying product ethos

[iampiti]

"The purpose of this team is to instill a unifying product ethos across our end-user experiences and devices,", translation: We'll fuck up the Windows 10 UI even more.

Re:Unifying product ethos

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a hard time seeing that. They fucked office good and hard about a decade back when they introduced that god damned ribbon interface. It's only stubbornness and institutional inertia that allows it to still be on there.

For mouse users, it increases the distance you have to drag the mouse in order to get options. For those that use hotkeys it makes it far, far harder to locate things to find the hotkey for. It's a really great example of how not to create a working interface.

The worst thing though is that it caught on with other developers. So, they didn't just ruin their products, by the transitive property, they've now ruined other perfectly serviceable software.

Re:All The Best, Terry

[cayenne8]

Sounds like a move to make all MS leadership Indian as much as anything else....?

Wonder what this is truely about

[ilsaloving]

Seeing the usual canned non-responses always makes me wonder what the real story is. Is Terry responsible for the idiotic strategy that made Windows 10 the most hated version of windows ever?

Re:Wonder what this is truely about

[Junta]

Well, also Windows 8/8.1.

For Windows 10, the telemetry is unacceptable. Apart from that, it acts ok (I of course prefer other desktop environments).

The update situation is ugly, however. It's all 'Windows 10', but are you on 1507? 1803? LSTB? CBB? A device that was supported for Windows 10 (1507) might not work with Windows 10 (1803). You may still get updates to Windows 10 1507, but it won't act the same as windows 10 1803 and if you try to reinstall it you might fail because your windows 10 media isn't the same windows 10 as you need.

This is pretty much a branding failure more than a technical failure, but there are technical implications of pretending things are simpler than they are.

Re:Wonder what this is truely about

[afidel]

This is about having one group responsible for Windows and Office so that as revenue moves from perpetual license to subscription services the Windows division chief doesn't get gutted for falling revenue. Apparently one of the biggest problems at MS is the fiefdoms of various product lines. By making larger groups all report up to one management chain you can stop some of the infighting that has been slowing down progress for a long time. MS senior leadership has seen the writing on the wall and PC sales growth is done for, the future is the next billion users and more mobile and cloud, reorganizing the company to allow that transition to happen more smoothly is a smart forward looking move.

Re:Wonder what this is truely about

[Anonymous Coward]

>However, the disdain for Windows 10 isn't because people dislike it. Rather they disliked the various methods that MS employed to force Windows 10 onto people.

I Disagree. I dislike the way they've split system settings between two different sets of menus, one very similar to the older Win7 settings and a new set in a new set of windows with new names and that "flat" look. The older, more useful settings are sometimes only accessible through the newer windows, which makes no sense and requires extra clicks to get where I want.

This wouldn't be so bad if the search system worked, but Win10's Start menu search is garbage. Sometimes it feels like you have to type the full, exact name of what you want when previously the first half a word would bring up the desired option. Sometimes you can type the exact name of a program and Win10 search can't find it.

Speaking of the Start Menu, why has MS insisted on putting an enormous amount of crap into it? Some of that stuff is removable, but many of the Windows features are locked in there and cannot be removed. In addition to that the insistence on an alphabetised layout with large breaks between sections just takes up unneccesary space, unlike the old system which could arrange them but had no gaps.

So yes, their forcing Win10 on people is objectionable, but Win10 itself isn't perfect either. And before someone says "get this third party extension which fixes it", that simply reinforces the fact that they broke something which was perfectly fine to the point that there are now third party extensions which return it to the way it was.

Re:Wonder what this is truely about

[Ol Olsoc]

The update situation is ugly, however. It's all 'Windows 10', but are you on 1507? 1803? LSTB? CBB? A device that was supported for Windows 10 (1507) might not work with Windows 10 (1803)

You have a gift for understatement. While I can delay updates for my W10 Pro laptop, I have another inexpensive laptop running W10 Home. I use it at morning breakfast. That's the only place I use it. So last week I went to shut it down in preparation for leaving, and it installed an update. It had been downloading updates over a insecure wifi connection! This is as unnaceptable as screwing a horse. Unless you're another horse of course.

But some how or another, that kind of crap has to stop.

Re:Wonder what this is truely about

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

To be fair, what I get if I buy a standard Windows PC today will be a worse experience than what I got 6 years ago if I bought a new PC with Windows 7, regardless of any new hardware changes. I would welcome a machine that can cope with bigger and higher-resolution screens, larger and faster disks, a faster CPU with more cores, faster and more reliable networking, and so on. Maybe not everyone needs those things, but I would find all of them useful. But if the price is putting up with an unreliable, untrustworthy OS from a developer who is actively working against me, it's just not worth it.

The PC market in my office would pick up tomorrow to the tune of several new machines, if I could buy them with an updated version of Windows 7 with support for the new hardware and (real) security fixes.

Another Microsoft reorganization

[93 Escort Wagon]

It must be Thursday.

Whoa! Let me get my reorg boots.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-10-30

Re:All The Best, Terry

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about Microsoft but around here when one area gets an Indian manager suddenly all the people reporting to him are Indian and all the former non-Indian people are shuffled off to other departments. Just something I've observed time and time again where I work.

Re:All The Best, Terry

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a move to make all MS leadership Indian as much as anything else....?

All of Microsoft will soon be doing the needful.

Was A Technical Leader

[EndlessNameless]

Myerson was a solid dev leader. He was "acquired" when Microsoft bought his analytics startup. Now he is being replaced by an established app/cloud guy. I do not see this as a positive indication, but it is consistent with Nadella's overall direction for the company.

I have no idea what it was like to work with him personally, so maybe it's something like that. But if decision reflects the corporate direction, then the telemetry/data issues with Windows 10 will probably grow.

Re:All The Best, Terry

[cayenne8]

I don't know about Microsoft but around here when one area gets an Indian manager suddenly all the people reporting to him are Indian and all the former non-Indian people are shuffled off to other departments. Just something I've observed time and time again where I work.

Yep, that's the reason I commented....this is not uncommon to see happen.

Re:All The Best, Terry

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess everyone wants their own people working for them. When White people do it it's called racist (and rightfully so), but when Indians do it no one seems to care.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is NOT competent, IMO.

[Futurepower(R)]

"As part of the reorganization, Rajesh Jha, the executive VP of Microsoft Office products, will be expanding his responsibilities to encompass Myerson's role..."

Apparently Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wants people who are as lacking in social, managerial, and technical ability as he is. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is NOT competent. The entire board of directors and top management of Microsoft should be replaced, in my opinion.

One area of extreme incompetence: Somehow, shockingly, managers at Microsoft decided that it is okay to spy on Windows OS computer users in the same way that Google spies on cell phone users using the Android operating system. (One of the many stories about Google spying: Google collects Android users' locations even when location services are disabled.)

Microsoft and Windows cannot be trusted. Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made.

Desktop computers users often have a HUGE need for COMPLETE privacy. Microsoft has damaged its already very poor reputation.

One of the MANY articles about Microsoft's EXTREME ABUSE: 7 ways Windows 10 pushes ads at you... (You may be able to stop the ads until Microsoft finds other ways to control your computers.) The effect: Microsoft wants companies to pay for Microsoft distracting employees with ads.

Re:All The Best, Terry

[e_pluribus_funk]

He's not wrong. It happens at a lot of companies when an Indian takes over the top spot.