[sf-lug] For John S. What is happening inside Microsoft...

[jim]

(my response to the linked article) 
    I worked in a place that had similar "stack ranking" 
policies. There it didn't seem to affect morale, which 
was notably good. 
    As a contrast,, the former CEO of Costco remarked 
that culture is not the most important thing, it's the 
only thing. This refers to the zeitgeist of the community 
of employees. 
    In short, I think the criticism is better directed at 
upper management's policies that neglect to nurture each 
engineer and to work to match each to an appropriate task 
area. 




On Wed, 2012-08-08 at 11:23 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> At a recent meeting John Strazzarino asked a question about that ugly 
> company and this is where
> I got the information to reply to him.
> It was originally a post on my Team Amiga Mailing List.
> 
> Analyzing one of American corporate history’s greatest mysteries—the 
> lost decade of Microsoft—two-time George Polk Award winner (and V.F.’s 
> newest contributing editor) Kurt Eichenwald traces the “astonishingly 
> foolish management decisions” at the company that “could serve as a 
> business-school case study on the pitfalls of success.” Relying on 
> dozens of interviews and internal corporate records—including e-mails 
> between executives at the company’s highest ranks—Eichenwald offers an 
> unprecedented view of life inside Microsoft during the reign of its 
> current chief executive, Steve Ballmer, in the August issue. Today, a 
> single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of 
> Microsoft’s wares combined.
> 
> http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer 
> 
> 
> 
> I know this is a Linux mailing list but I think keeping up with the big 
> ugly company
> is a healthy thing to do. By the way on the new Windows 8 they have made 
> using
> the ugly blocky interface mandatory rather than letting it be bypassed 
> by the user.
> <http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-said-to-block-ability-to-boot-straight-to-desktop-in-windows-8-7000002219/ 
>  >
> 
> 
> Reading up on the specs such as they are for the Surface I learned that 
> they have the regular
> model with multicore ARM. This means that secure boot cannot be 
> bypassed. That stricture on
> ARM appliances using Microsoft was already announced.
> 
> The Surface Pro comes with much more RAM and a 4-core i5 processor so I 
> guess it might
> be more susceptible to alternative FOSS operating systems. I have to 
> wonder what sort of
> battery life that might afford. But so far no specs for the display or 
> the battery life on any model.
> 
> What they are showing about the Surface might as well be computer 
> generated images.
> 
> Bobbie Sellers
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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