Life and death of Microsoft Kin: the inside story | Hacker News Reader

Life and death of Microsoft Kin: the inside story

engadget.com

57 pointsdieterrams19 comments

This is great reading for any young engineer graduating from school and considering where to place his talents.

I would draw such attention to the 'death march' that occurred - where people knew the project was a failure but the company continued to build and ship because of a contractual obligation. This is the stuff of big enterprise, where the costs of shipping a failed product are less than the cost of missing an obligation.

Even if you have decided you don't want to work at a startup, there are big companies (SME's) and and there are BIG companies (massive corporations). Microsoft is obviously one of the latter, and so you gotta ask yourself whether this is a situation you would want to risk finding yourself in.

It's fine if you are a middle-aged "9-5 career programer" who doesn't really care what he is building and just wants to earn money to give his family a comfortable life, pay for his golf habit... but it is not an environment any young aspiring engineer should end up in.

Sadly many do and I fear this very eventuality for friends who tell me how excited they are to be applying to Microsoft... :(

I would like to point out that being attractive to a "9-5 career programmer" just makes it totally unattractive to a bright young programmer wanting to change the world.

It's tragic, really, because a company like this can turn a young bright programmer into a 9-5 zombie.

That's what public school is for, isn't it?

Microsoft is a very different company depending on what division you're in and what you're working on. Sure, there are parts of the company that are less exciting for your typical just-out-of-college hire, but as someone who joined a little over a year ago in a similar situation, I can say I'm quite happy with what I do and with my experience so far. Don't paint the entire company with a single broad brush.

Which division do you work in? Would you care to talk a little more on methodologies, decision making, release schedules, etc are handled in your department?

I imagine that's exactly what the folks on the Pink team were saying right up until Lees pulled his coup and wrested control away from Allard. Mobile was moribund and Pink was a fresh break from the past. They must have been exciting, heady days full of optimism and fighting spirit.

Then suddenly it all changed, and that's the problem with companies run as warring city states. You're at the mercy of a change of weather.

Don't confuse age with enthusiasm for work. I've seen many young 9-5'ers, and plenty of older programmers who work long hours in fun startups because that's what we love to do :-)

While it's hard to argue that Kin is an awful product, the saddest part of the story is that many of the people responsible for it knew it was -- they were largely victims of political circumstance, forced to release a phone that was practically raw in the middle.

Oh god, how much infighting could Microsoft chuck if Microsoft could chuck products? A lot apparently.

I think the saddest part in all of this is that the people who say 'no' are always vindicated. Could the Kin have been a hit? Who knows. But by cutting impassioned people from the project and gutting backing, it was doomed to fail.

And the skeptics get to say, "Look how much I saved by not investing any more in this product! God, imagine if we spent ten thousand more hours working on this, how much more we would have lost!"

I read an interview with Dean Kamen a while back where he said the hardest thing about inventing things is knowing when to quit.

No it's easy to know when to quit - when a competing but more senior VP gets hold of your project.

The problem here is not just when they quit but how they quit. I think MS is going to take a hit in their reputation over this and it is going to carry over into soured trust from crucial carrier partners (and really any other business partner) going forward.

Had they gone to Verizon and said "hey, I know we had a deal, but our business plans have changed and here is something that will be much better for both of us" then they could have killed it cleanly. It might have cost them some amount in terms of a dollar figure but it would have cost them a lot less in terms of reputation. Deliberately sabotaging something that you are doing in collaboration with a partner so that it fails on launch is a real trust breaker. How much faith would you put in Microsoft for the launch of WP7 now if you were Verizon? You certainly wouldn't be putting your business on the line.

My sense is that good products come out of groups where individuals are personally attached to them. Maybe in a large enough group of people it's impossible that a critical mass or at least the critical people are attached to the product.

Even without the Kin debacle, if I were being paid $1,000 an hour to advise partners about their relationship with Microsoft, I would suggest they look at PlaysForSure. It is NOT news that Microsoft will screw its partners, and they know it when they go into business with Ballmer.

Your father did business with Hyman Roth, he respected Hyman Roth... but he never trusted Hyman Roth!

"'You made a mistake, you trusted us,' said 3Com founder Bob Metcalfe, quoting an unnamed Microsoft executive." (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2002/pulpit_20020620_0007...)

There is a difference between quitting due to politics and design decisions. Some designs simply aren't feasible for the real world, and smart people know when they see one.

I doubt that mr. Kamen was talking about VCs on power trips.

It got at least a few good reviews. There are certainly some interesting ideas there that everybody could learn from if they look at it with an open mind.

I'm an Apple / Android guy. I think the Kin would have absolutely rocked if MS had done what they originally intended.

* Kept the sidekick name

* physical keyboard + social network integration. Kids of 20 have a disturbing amount of blackberries simply because they're good at this stuff

* cheap price. enough said.

These really, really could have been hit devices for teenagers. All the stuff you get with an iphone, but better typing, more social, and cheaper.

Keeping the Sidekick name wasn't an option unless they continued to partner with T-Mobile, the owner of that trademark. Their first action WRT to T-Mobile was to cancel all future Sidekick development, only to be forced by Danger's contract to develop one more phone. After that show of bad faith it's hard to imagine fruitful future collaboration and any possibility of that was probably lost when they put the Sidekick backend on life support (while no doubt getting paid for the old level of service) and then screwed it up so badly.

Your general point is well made, but when the project became nothing more than a check box for a turf obsessed manager it's hard to see how it could succeed in any market. Steve Ballmer presumably have cared about its success, but that hardly matters when he allows the people below them to play these games without fear of retribution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com