Steve Ballmer fired Sinofsky, clearing the way for faster progress in mobile
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
This mindset has completely stymied any sort of innovation at Microsoft because they are playing with one arm tied behind their backs in the midst of trying to compete against the likes of Google, Facebook, etc. In Steve Ballmer's eyes, everything must lead back to the sale of a license of Windows/Office, and that no longer works in their environment.
If Microsoft engineers had free rein to make the best search engine, or the best phone, or the best tablet, without worries about how will it lead to maintaining their revenue streams of Windows and more importantly Office, then I think their offerings would be on an order of magnitude better and more creative.
The six phases of a project:
1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Rewards for the uninvolved
This is the way it seems to have played out (and the way project/startup failure almost always seems to play out).
1) Assemble non-experts, non-stakeholders
2) Misidentify problem
3) Establish quorum
4) Do not communicate decisions
5) Everyone runs off in separate directions
6) Assign blame
7) Repeat.
Given the challenges of organizational psychology (aka herding kittens), where trying harder won't change outcomes, I support the strategy of multiple competing teams, as detailed in the book Design Rules: The Power of Modularity.
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Rules-Vol-Power-Modularity/dp/0...
Microsoft's overall profit numbers still look pretty strong to me, and their product portfolio is as diverse as ever. They've got 6 different products in their server and tools division alone that generate more than a billion dollars each year! [1] That's not to mention Office, Windows, Xbox, etc.
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-server-and-tools-unit-now-in...
What, if anything, has Ballmer done to make a difference in those areas?
RIM was singing the same song. Profits/etc. are basically the waves behind the ship. By the time those start going down you're not dying, your decomposing.
I don't want MS success and another long monopoly.
You're looking in the wrong place, 30 years late. The 2012 Microsoft is more like 1984 IBM and that's not likely to change. The duopoly of Apple and Google has more ability to dictate our technology today, if that's what you're worried about. At least we have a choice though.
So given that Microsoft seems to be in some exciting times right now, I'd feel comfortable guessing that this is more or less the strategy that got laid out once Ballmer gained full control of the company.
Then again maybe I'm completely wrong. Either way, we'll never really know I guess.
I would love to just catch a quick glimpse of the Universe in which this is NOT 100% Ballmer's fault. It must truly be full of fascinating things to see.
Saying "no" to tablet support was, in light of Microsoft's experience with tablets, the right thing to do.
Xbox managed to ship a non-Windows-based product because they were nearly completely isolated during the product's inception. (Yes, the Xbox kernel is largely Win2000, but with a LOT of stuff ripped out).
I don't know how WinCE succeeded at all. Microsoft would have been better off if it hadn't, and something better had come along. Lordy, what a pile...
In summary: At MS, you are either (a) Windows, and shipping something probably inappropriate for your users, or (b) playing a political game where users come second, or (c) isolating yourself from the rest of the company, if you can swing it.
MS needs to fix it's "Windows everywhere" mindset.
The point is that the failure of MS to bring a viable tablet to market cannot be painted as any single exec's fault over Ballmer. I was responding to the article's accusation of Ballmer's frustration at being told no (fair or not, I can't say). The bottom line is that the buck stopped with Ballmer, and if he was frustrated at being told "no", then even if "no" was the correct business decision at the time, the reason it was is the fault of Ballmer.
It seems like Ballmer, Sinofsky, and Gates pushed out people building products along those lines - J. Allard and co. only to pick up their vision later with Metro UI and Windows 8. (J. Allard and his team were behind Xbox, Zune, and Courier which basically gave a roadmap to Metro UI, Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. J Allard also wrote a famous memo about internet connected apps back in 1994.)
Sinofsky and Ballmer also pushed out Ray Ozzie who was trying to make cloud computing a meaningful part of Microsoft's future.
Now that all the big vision is gone, where is Microsoft going to go? Continue to be a fast follower of Apple and Google?
Microsoft is a company without vision because it already achieved what it set out to - a computer on every desk. They won that battle. In the meantime, people's desks already have computers on them and are putting computers in their pockets, purses, and appliances. Microsoft was too busy with traditional computers to have a vision for mobile computing.
Maybe Microsoft should change their company goal to a computer in every pocket. Or a Microsoft app on every home screen. Or every computer to be powered by Windows. Or maybe a computer on every surface.
Without a big goal, Microsoft is going to be just another big tech company like IBM. It won't change the world again. It already did. Now it's just following everybody else.
Copy pasting from one of my previous comments.
I'm tired of these kinds of statements. The golden rule is that companies' employee publicly have to put down their competitors' new strategies. Imagine if Balmer said the iPad is great it's going to kill us, or if Jobs said 7" tablets are good but we'll make only in two years, so wait for us to make it. Or even Andy Rubin saying that Android UI is laggy compared to iOS, fix coming in 18 months. All of them(except maybe Jobs) would be summarily fired or atleast will be forced to recant their statements immediately on threat of being fired. It's almost part of their job to publicly mock their competitors, or their shareholders will dump the stock.
Privately they could be pissing in their pants about their competition, but you almost never hear about that except after maybe 5 years from unnamed sources. Care to think for a moment why?
The more puzzling thing to me is, why do so many otherwise smart people actually think that these people publicly say what they really believe and really believe what they publicly say?
As in, if I believe that Steve Ballmer is lying about the iPhone being an overpriced product that won't sell, why should I believe him when he says that Windows Phone will sell millions of devices and that it's worth developing for?
I realize that nobody wants to admit that their competitors are making a good or better product than you, but I don't see why they wouldn't be willing to tell the truth.
Maybe it's a midwest thing, but if we assume that Jobs, Ballmer, and Rubin are all lying through their teeth, why would we ever buy their products? That is even dumber than believing they are telling the truth. The only thing dumber than trusting someone is buying from someone you don't trust.
What about buying a car or used car from a car dealer? Your salesman is 99.9999999% a liar.
>why should I believe him when he says that Windows Phone will sell millions of devices and that it's worth developing for
Why are someone's words or opinions enough to sway you? Can't you do your own research on the company's track record, the public demos, the public sales data etc. to make a (semi)informed decision? Ballmer could be telling the truth but he might be wrong in retrospect since he's heavily involved in the decisions on Windows Phone and would've changed course if he thinks it wouldn't succeed.
Also, the politically correct word is 'spin', not lying. There are entire professions where you need to spin your way through. PR, Law, selling cars etc. come to mind. Perhaps take a poll on HN about how many people lied or hid the truth in an interview. I think you might find yourself leaving HN after seeing the results if you're so fixated on absolute honesty.
Because the merits of a product have little or nothing to do with the public statements of their makers.
Did you see Eric Schmidt or Larry Page laughing about Apple's devices?
No, instead they were busy with building Android, as they could see the writing on the wall - namely that the future belongs to tightly controlled mobile devices, and they can be left out of the equation, unless they provide an alternative.
Steve Ballmer is a sales guy at heart, and it's why he's been able to survive a decade of middling stock performance and strategic missteps: He must have close connections to Microsoft's largest enterprise customers, and were he to be fired, it would be an invitation for those customers to reevaluate their commitment to Microsoft's platforms.
When he walks into a big customer's boardroom, he must be furious every time he sees some C-level using an iOS or Android device. He knows that if he can't sell "Windows everywhere" to these users, he's doomed to keep reading headlines about 5,000-user iPad-based IT projects and the "post-PC era".
He didn't need to wait to see how the market would respond to Windows 8 and devices like the Surface. These users could tell him immediately, perhaps even before the product launched, and I would guess that their feedback was discouraging. If at the same time their IT departments were making noise about sticking with XP or 7, that would have been the last nail in Sinofsky's coffin.
Ballmer has a close connection with Microsoft's largest shareholder, some fellow named "Gates."
He has even closer ties to the second largest shareholder, himself.
Indeed! I still enjoy his classic Windows 1.0 sales video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk
It's a total self-parody, and you can tell he had a ball doing it.
How can I dislike this woman so strongly when I've never met her?
I wasn't a fan of the Ribbon on first sight, but when reading how they came up with it, it's clear this wasn't just some arbitrary cosmetic adjustment. Contrast that to the Office 2013 design, with it's random all-caps on items in no apparent pattern.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story...
There are conventions to any interface. In Windows, Help -> About will tell you what version of a piece of software you're using most of the time, but for some reason Outlook feels that I need to go to File -> Help -> Additional Version and Copyright Information.
Disregarding decades of convention because a handful of wankers with a whiteboard say so is a recipe for failure. I find LibreOffice far easier to use than newer versions of Microsoft Office precisely because their navigation isn't a convoluted wad of deuce.
There is a reason that Visual Studio, Visio, and Project don't have the ribbon interface - it's not better for anyone who actually knows how to use a computer. The ribbon interface was designed for a mythical group of people that hadn't ever used Windows-style context menus in 2005. Maybe as an emergent, intuitive interface for people who've never sent an email, the ribbon is great, but it's different than any other piece of software out there, and I've never met anyone who actually prefers it.
I'm unsure if, after reading the information how you could dismiss it as a "handful of wankers with a whiteboard" just "saying so".
P.S. Clicking the help icon opens a window with "Outlook 2010" in the first line of content. Searching for "what version" also provides an article explaining how to find this. My guess would be that "checking the version number" didn't show up as a commonly used feature, enough to warrant higher visibility or reworking the help system.
Drop-down and context menues worked fine. In fact even current ribbon works like drop down menu with pictograms instead of text (Mac Word's Home tab has 19 drop-downs out of 35 items).
The sexism upon which this statement is partially premised aside...
I have an entirely different take on this promotion. Microsoft has been run by a pair of consuls, Ballmer and Gates, for a long time. One focused primarily on the business side, the other upon the technology.
At this point it is only prudent for them to look at leadership succession. Larson-Greene has real technical chops and has worked on compilers, Office, UX, and Windows. Teller went from receptionist to CFO at Great Plains, leading them through both an IPO and Microsoft's acquisition.
It is clear that the future leaders will be from the post IPO generation of Softies. It may be clear now that the tradional pointed elbows approach to the throne is frowned upon.
What?
Sinofsky was reporting directly to Ballmer before his resignation. If he was fired, of course Ballmer fired him himself. Sinofsky was his direct report.
People only report directly to the CEO because they are seen as capable of acting largely with autonomy. It's a sign of trust, not incompetence.
The conclusion that Ballmer would micromanage Larson-Greene is absurd. He doesn't have the technical chops. The suggestion that he would do so with Reller, ignores her demonstrated professional competence.
The most likely case is that Sinofsky is gone so that they could be promoted. This probably wasn't a crisis, but something brewing for a long time. The issues with Office under Windows 8 RT were due to structural issues with Sinofsky's management approach.
It's the "Clearly" that makes it sexist.
Point out the sexism.
CEO is female and product heads are male, point out the sexism CEO is male and product heads are male, point out the sexism.
CEO is male, product heads are female. Without any more information then that, you saw sexism. Point out the issue. You are making huge leaps to conclusions that are just not supported by the information given.
It only implies removal of a layer of management if one doesn't see Reller and Larson-Greene as having been promoted.
The appearance of Larson-Green and Reller on Microsoft's Senior Leadership Page supports my thesis.
Had to mouse-over to figure that out.
I keep thinking back to the mid-90's when Gates sent out his famous internet tidal-wave email; that was how he reacted to a threat to MS's longterm survival - a huge pivot away from multimedia, cds/dvds (remember Encarta?) to focusing everything on the Internet.
Ballmer in 2005 facing a similar tidal-wave does what? Laughs and mocks the iPhone then the iPad. Had he reacted as Gates had and pivoted the entire company then instead of 6+ years later with Window 8/Surface, who knows where they'd be right now.
I'm not sure if firing someone creates faster progress in an area vs. just shipping more products.
Bolting Metro onto Windows 7 is likely to please very few, least of all corporate customers.
If Sinofsky is as bad as painted, could he really have turned around the Longhorn mess, salvaged Vista, then reshaped the organization to do a fantastic job with Windows 7?