tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3554166144204741789.post1986098247390762508..comments2023-12-31T02:16:32.747-08:00Comments on 1-800-MAGIC: Microsoft MiniSergey Solyanikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03811112928687191837noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3554166144204741789.post-41147480753570443172010-07-19T10:30:05.413-07:002010-07-19T10:30:05.413-07:00For intra-team politics, we have an easy fix on ou...For intra-team politics, we have an easy fix on our team which I brought from Google - we use peer reviews, where majority of the review grade comes from peer comments, rather than the manager.<br /><br />In this environment people who are hard to work with, who are not helpful, who snipe at their peers quickly feel how not smart their approach is.<br /><br /><br />WRT accountability for failed products - fair. We need more of this. In fairness though, for example the leadership of Windows Mobile went through at least 2 large purges, and it didn't seem to matter one bit. Perhaps accountability should go all the way down to the engineers?Sergey Solyanikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03811112928687191837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3554166144204741789.post-51495252389674734422010-07-18T23:01:34.265-07:002010-07-18T23:01:34.265-07:00Ok, you don't see inter-team politics. The th...Ok, you don't see inter-team politics. The thing that I found most crippling was the intra-team politics. I think that people working on the same product are willing to snipe at each other because nobody's review actually depends on the product's success in the market. If Microsoft punished people for shit products, there would be a lot more cooperation on building good products.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3554166144204741789.post-84600560519455005712010-07-18T12:37:02.556-07:002010-07-18T12:37:02.556-07:00Eric,
Trust the insider, you're wrong about t...Eric,<br /><br />Trust the insider, you're wrong about the turf wars :-). I am sure there are plenty at Microsoft - as there are in any large company.<br /><br />But.<br /><br />I have worked here for 12 years, and most of the time in the areas that should be the worst - in terms of the turf wars - because they were always the areas where the effort was the most duplicative.<br /><br />Windows CE where I've spent my formative years at Microsoft always "competed" with Windows Embedded. Then I went to a team that "competed" with both Windows CE AND Windows Embedded. The Windows Home Server, which I am sure have cannibalized a little bit of SBS. Now I am working in an area shared with at least 3 other teams (and one "strategic direction").<br /><br />Throughout my history at Microsoft I've seen many failures and successes. The common causes of these failures? Slow pace of innovation - check. Misunderstanding of marketplace - check. Occasionally some bad engineering - check. But turf wars? Never observed one case where that you could track them to a product failure.<br /><br />The reality is at its roots Microsoft is not one large company, but a big, unwieldy collection of small teams. It's in the company's history. At every point in time, for every team there are probably 2-3 other teams at Microsoft that play (try to) in roughly the same market. This may look wasteful, but in the end it's the best product ships. So the environment is expensive, but stable.<br /><br />As a result, Microsoft is extremely good at leaving teams alone. So most of the successes and failures are really because of the internal, rather than external factors.<br /><br />Now, of course there is going to be a lot of people who will disagree with me. The above is just my personal observations of what I've seen in my career, not exhaustive statistical research. MAYBE there are teams that were excellent, built fantastic products, and have been killed because of politics. I have never seen this, though.<br /><br />I have seen a lot of cases where people were blaming their own failures on others. For example, I've talked to many devs from the Vista cycle and asked them whether they were proud of their work. Almost universally they said one thing - our team did fantastic job, and the rest of the teams screwed up badly. I think this is just human nature.<br /><br />:-)Sergey Solyanikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03811112928687191837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3554166144204741789.post-47367570239464746842010-07-16T00:14:49.269-07:002010-07-16T00:14:49.269-07:00I know people who work at Google. I know people wh...I know people who work at Google. I know people who work at Microsoft. My jaundiced view of both places is that both are dysfunctional, but in different ways. I do believe that Bill Gates leaving Microsoft did hurt the company, because Ballmer doesn't have any overall product philosophy and the product line as a result seems to be adrift with no rhyme or reason, stuck in turf wars that Ballmer has no understanding of and thus no ability to end. Bill could look at the new-fangled Internet thingy and say "We are behind, but we are going to be a major player in the Internet" and instantly re-shuffle the company's priorities to center everything around the Internet, instantly re-orienting each team's goals towards making the company a major player on the Internet. Ballmer simply doesn't have that ability to understand technology trends and mobilize the company that way.<br /><br />The result is a company that seems to have lost its ability to respond to changing conditions in the market -- see Microsoft's abject failures in tablet computing, where turf wars basically destroyed Microsoft's ability to make the iPad obsolete before the iPad's release, or in the cell phone market, where the clearly superior technology of Windows Mobile was hampered by turf wars to the point where Blackberry could sweep the business market away from Microsoft by offering features that Microsoft should have offered years before -- and could have, if not for the turf wars. The end result is a company that can continue to achieve and even excel in its current market niches, but is essentially an also-ran everywhere else. In the short-term that's worrying but not fatal, Microsoft's strengths in Office and Windows and associated business server side software such as Exchange are huge. In the long term... well, DEC had a commanding lead in the market for minicomputers and minicomputer operating systems too. And we all know what happened to them -- the world moved on, they didn't, and they went the way of the dinosaurs.Eric Lee Greenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12350104299041375832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3554166144204741789.post-80135830754027202322010-07-13T21:37:31.931-07:002010-07-13T21:37:31.931-07:00LIES all LIES!LIES all LIES!Steve Ballmerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03700148299332589776noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3554166144204741789.post-62877875238379949122010-07-10T22:23:43.771-07:002010-07-10T22:23:43.771-07:00Sergey, feel free to delete this comment, but just...Sergey, feel free to delete this comment, but just wanted to give a heads-up: You put your last name on your second comment in the middle of the post. You might want to get that that comment deleted. (I don't know how)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3554166144204741789.post-49879072515522818382010-07-08T12:14:17.680-07:002010-07-08T12:14:17.680-07:00My viewpoint is unique because I am. Just like eve...My viewpoint is unique because I am. Just like everyone else :-).<br /><br />http://despair.com/individuality.html<br /><br />But it actually isn't. If you came from Mini MSFT, you have to realize that most Mini MSFT readers/commenters are probably not devs. MSFT (Google, Amazon, ...) is a dev company, so life of a dev here is more fun, just as simple as that. There is less to be pessimistic about, because, unlike Marketing, for example, we are actually in control :-).<br /><br />If you read my "Back to Microsoft" post and the commentary for it, you will find that a lot of my viewpoints are shared by many Googlers. I can also say that they are not that unique at Microsoft either...Sergey Solyanikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03811112928687191837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3554166144204741789.post-54853097915757817582010-07-08T07:02:11.194-07:002010-07-08T07:02:11.194-07:00Your views of Microsoft and Google are very differ...Your views of Microsoft and Google are very different from everybody else who has worked at both companies. <br /><br />Perhaps you can comment on why you have this unique viewpoint in a future blog post.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com