I admit to not liking Ballmer from what I've seen, but how much can one person really control a company? Would Ballmer walking out tomorrow really change enough? If products really are uninspiring enough to employees, etc. then that has to be the fault of a more general group of people: at least spanning several executives, managers of product teams, and the behavior of many employees. To some extent many of Microsoft's senior employees are now reaping what they have sown in recent years. Ballmer will surely be blamed, and isn't blameless, but a lot more would have to change to make a difference.
I wouldn't say Ballmer isn't to blame, it's probably a half-and-half situation. There's so many stories of back-stabbing and politics taking precedence over great products that it's no surprise the company has completely stagnated. On the Ballmer front it is telling that the stock price hasn't grown since Gates stepped down, but it's impossible to prove if that's correlation or causation.
what you say is probably true, but setting the tone of a company starts at the top. If a certain culture has filtered its way through the company then of course that will not change overnight with a new boss, but that's where it would start.
"...how much can one person really control a company?"
Swap "control" with "lead", and you've got a valid question. Leadership is job #1 for a CEO. You must have the confidence of your employees if you want to lead. I can't understand how anyone could have confidence in Ballmer at this point. He's called it so incredibly wrong in so many cases.
I'm not saying that Microsoft should adjust their business strategy to match that of their competitors, but Ballmer just so completely misunderstands his competitor's successes that I can't see how he can be expected to formulate a counter-strategy. Not only was he wrong, but he was utterly confident in his assessment. How does a guy like that lead anyone who has a clue?
" She rolled out cuts to our bennies last year just after the company meeting, what’s next???"
If that's true, I'm not surprised that nobody is happy at this meeting. The company has set an expectation of pain, marked by the date of this meeting. Why would anyone be happy about it?
I realize that I may be being overly critical of a site called 'winrumors.com', but this is thin gruel by anyone's standards. Because I work at MS, I don't want to flag it, but please, someone without a conflict should flag this.
Did you read it? I ask because it's all rumour. The best they can get is that they 'fact checked' with two (two!) employees who were there and they refused to confirm that people were leaving in droves (and if you're familiar with how reporters work, I'd guess that the employees said something like 'What? No, people weren't leaving in droves'. )
Then there's the fact that the article is thin wrapper around a PI article about anonymous comments made on an anonymous (purportedly) MS employee's blog.
The only value that this article could possibly bring is to discuss Steve Balmer in general, and for that a self-post like "Hey, do you guys like the job Balmer is doing" would do a better job, and it would almost certainly sink like a stone. I'm actually embarrassed for this community that this made it to #1. Must be a slow news day.
The summary is that according to 2 individuals who claim to be employees who were actually at the meeting, the meeting ran as usual, and the people who left early did so to traffic. I wonder when the tech reporting industry will tire of reporting Microsoft's death?
I am moderately amused that my post of a counter article, summary, and musings got down-voted. With that in mind, in my experiences, a good chuck of the information at company meetings is information the employees already know through their communications with each other. It's more than feasible that an employee would stay for the 1% that is new and/or truly interests him, and then leave for the stuff he or she was already aware of.
Your use of the generic 'MSFT employees' is misleading. Your statement suggests that MSFT employees in general consider traffic more important that the CEO laying out the companies future. That statement is essentially false. Some tiny number left early. Just like the year before, and the year before.
This submission should be flagged. Its source are random blog comments on a random blog.
But I'll take this opportunity for an Ballmer rant. I don't like Ballmer, but I can't tell if his leadership style is hands-off or impotent?
The company is raking in money. Certain product groups are doing fantastic, but others are floundering (and sometimes climb back from the grave, eg. Windows Phone). The various groups inside Microsoft are notorious for lack of communication and cooperation.
Maybe I have my answer. I'd certainly like to see a new leadership that killed the "embrace and extend" mentality and forced an emphasis on adopting open standards (which currently attempts to come up from the bottom (engineers)). If the shenanigans stopped, things could really take off. They have solid products, it just seems like the mentality and corporate/marketing actions of Microsoft sabotage it all.
Note: I'm not a MS basher by any means, take a look at my comment history.
While I do agree that the Ballmer's leadership style leaves much to be desired, another aspect is that the company marketing department is terrible.
The company highlights it's flagship products (Windows, Office, XBox, Devenv), but leaves all the little products by the wayside. I don't know how many people outside of enthusiasts are aware of, for example, SkyDrive and Windows Live Mesh. I'd think the company would do more to highlight the whole experience it offers as a counter to either Apple's or Google's offerings. Let the consumer know that Microsoft does more than just Windows and Office.
I have a good friend that worked at Microsoft in the R&D labs for years (he was one of the leads on Synth and all that photo-rendering fanciness that eventually found its way into mobile Win and had a extremely popular iOS app for a while) and he gave us the low-down of how Microsoft works from the inside recently.
* Balmer doesn't lead, he believes in "survival of the fittest" in the more jungle sense of the word. While he doesn't actively pit the product teams against one another, he encourages them to battle with each other and only come to him with the result, never with the conflict or questions about who should do what.
* As a result of this, the teams HATE each other. The Dev Tools team hates the Windows team. The Windows team hates the Xbox team. The Xbox team hates the MSN team and so on. There is a particularly odd level of animosity between the devtools and windows teams.
The Xbox doesn't even run a special version of Windows, it is a custom OS built with some of the core kernel, but very little else. This created a lot of conflict between those two teams as well.
Every team feels like they are 6 months away from being cut and as a result try and block any effort any other team makes at impeding on their turf.
* The company has shed most of the strong/independent/curious lead devs by now a many found it impossibly pointless to work there.
Discovered a new way to make NTFS faster? Too bad, it's not going in the mainline. Found a new way to make DX render faster on modern hardware in low-powered systems? Great, now go sit at your desk and shut up.
There was no nurturing of new ideas because of this "protect your turf at all costs!" culture that Balmer created.
My buddy talked for about an hour... it was fascinatingly horrible to listen to, but it seems while BillG was the benevolent dictator type much like Jobs was, Balmer is the polar opposite in every wrong way.
More like a absentee father that loves watch you fight with your brothers, but otherwise doesn't really care what you do.
22 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 48.4 ms ] threadIf he isn't in control, then who is?
Swap "control" with "lead", and you've got a valid question. Leadership is job #1 for a CEO. You must have the confidence of your employees if you want to lead. I can't understand how anyone could have confidence in Ballmer at this point. He's called it so incredibly wrong in so many cases.
I'm not saying that Microsoft should adjust their business strategy to match that of their competitors, but Ballmer just so completely misunderstands his competitor's successes that I can't see how he can be expected to formulate a counter-strategy. Not only was he wrong, but he was utterly confident in his assessment. How does a guy like that lead anyone who has a clue?
If that's true, I'm not surprised that nobody is happy at this meeting. The company has set an expectation of pain, marked by the date of this meeting. Why would anyone be happy about it?
Then there's the fact that the article is thin wrapper around a PI article about anonymous comments made on an anonymous (purportedly) MS employee's blog.
The only value that this article could possibly bring is to discuss Steve Balmer in general, and for that a self-post like "Hey, do you guys like the job Balmer is doing" would do a better job, and it would almost certainly sink like a stone. I'm actually embarrassed for this community that this made it to #1. Must be a slow news day.
The summary is that according to 2 individuals who claim to be employees who were actually at the meeting, the meeting ran as usual, and the people who left early did so to traffic. I wonder when the tech reporting industry will tire of reporting Microsoft's death?
But I'll take this opportunity for an Ballmer rant. I don't like Ballmer, but I can't tell if his leadership style is hands-off or impotent?
The company is raking in money. Certain product groups are doing fantastic, but others are floundering (and sometimes climb back from the grave, eg. Windows Phone). The various groups inside Microsoft are notorious for lack of communication and cooperation.
Maybe I have my answer. I'd certainly like to see a new leadership that killed the "embrace and extend" mentality and forced an emphasis on adopting open standards (which currently attempts to come up from the bottom (engineers)). If the shenanigans stopped, things could really take off. They have solid products, it just seems like the mentality and corporate/marketing actions of Microsoft sabotage it all.
Note: I'm not a MS basher by any means, take a look at my comment history.
The company highlights it's flagship products (Windows, Office, XBox, Devenv), but leaves all the little products by the wayside. I don't know how many people outside of enthusiasts are aware of, for example, SkyDrive and Windows Live Mesh. I'd think the company would do more to highlight the whole experience it offers as a counter to either Apple's or Google's offerings. Let the consumer know that Microsoft does more than just Windows and Office.
* Balmer doesn't lead, he believes in "survival of the fittest" in the more jungle sense of the word. While he doesn't actively pit the product teams against one another, he encourages them to battle with each other and only come to him with the result, never with the conflict or questions about who should do what.
* As a result of this, the teams HATE each other. The Dev Tools team hates the Windows team. The Windows team hates the Xbox team. The Xbox team hates the MSN team and so on. There is a particularly odd level of animosity between the devtools and windows teams.
The Xbox doesn't even run a special version of Windows, it is a custom OS built with some of the core kernel, but very little else. This created a lot of conflict between those two teams as well.
Every team feels like they are 6 months away from being cut and as a result try and block any effort any other team makes at impeding on their turf.
* The company has shed most of the strong/independent/curious lead devs by now a many found it impossibly pointless to work there.
Discovered a new way to make NTFS faster? Too bad, it's not going in the mainline. Found a new way to make DX render faster on modern hardware in low-powered systems? Great, now go sit at your desk and shut up.
There was no nurturing of new ideas because of this "protect your turf at all costs!" culture that Balmer created.
My buddy talked for about an hour... it was fascinatingly horrible to listen to, but it seems while BillG was the benevolent dictator type much like Jobs was, Balmer is the polar opposite in every wrong way.
More like a absentee father that loves watch you fight with your brothers, but otherwise doesn't really care what you do.