Who is John Galt?

Recap - Microsoft homework:

Question #1: What is your 30 second
elevator speech about the product you're working on?

Question #2:
(new) When is it going to ship?

A link and then a link to that
link:

Paul Vick

href="http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2004/12/01/2598.aspx">Black
Hole projects - read the comments, too.

Dare Obasanjo

href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=499a10cc-6e84-45
5a-bdef-a84206517cec">White Elephants and Ivory Towers at Microsoft -
links to the above and adds some commentary.

What's one White
Elephant in the room people are ignoring in your group?

I just flipped
through yet another new MSDN Magazine. I was so excited at first because one
of the articles was titled: C++ Rules. Damn straight it does, Sparky!
I flipped to page 58 as fast as I could only to see... what the... MSIL?
JIT? Interop and #pragma unmanaged - oh, crap. They duped me. I flipped back
and forth some more and it was CLR this and managed that. I've really got to
cancel my subscription here. What magazine best channels the spirit of href="http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/">Raymond Chen?

I write
software for the end-user's machine, and it's going to be a pretty fudged-up
day in Hell before I *ship* managed code that gets installed on a user's
machine. It doesn't make sense. Oh, I might write a lot of high-quality
performant memory eating managed code for the foreseeable future. But is it
ever going to ship? Let me grab that Magic 8-ball for second...

Some
of the Ivory Towers had to move to a new lane (off of Longhorn Boulevard)
when actual customer quality standards were set for Longhorn shipping in
2006 (well, plus that 2006 date).

Anyway. So you take your
Waste-o-Meter around Microsoft and find a Black Hole (how many points out of
14?), a White Elephant, or an Ivory Tower. Baby, you're staring at the
problem of us having too many people on the payroll without reasonable
accountability for their results. Trim them all now and at least let them
find another company to work for where they'll have the pleasure of
releasing software that makes a difference in the world.

Why do you
want to work on something that will never, ever, Release To Manufacturing?
Why? Well, why-else besides that mortgage payment?

Gates is no dummy
yet it's a mystery to me the obfuscated end-game he's concocted to let these
people type up a bunch of BS that will never see instantiation outside of
Microsoft. Is he just playing href="http://www.working-minds.com/galtmini.htm">John Galt without the
rest of us being in on the brain harvest he's pulled together (ah-ha-ha,
they work for me producing nothing that will ever compete with Microsoft and
then I emasculate them when the project is cancelled - ah-ha-ha -
excellent!)?)?

Accomplishment: lots of books and magazine articles
written. Shareholder value: nil. Stock price: flat.

Does Microsoft care about politically correct speech?

Just a quicky: here's a link back to href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/4912417">lushootseed's comments
about Microsoft and it's view of customers: href="http://lushootseed.blogspot.com/2004/12/does-microsft-really-care-abou
t-you.html">Does Microsft really care about you? Another Microsoftie! It
starts off with:

I have been watching Microsoft's moves in
the last couple of years and nothing that I see tells me we are heading in
the right direction. Does that mean it is going down? Not anytime soon. It
is going through what IBM went through in the last couple of decades with
and it would take a good few years before a major re-structuring happens
like in IBM. Here is why...

Part of this echoes with what
is bopping about in my little head right now: we are lavishing so much of
our efforts on pleasing the IT departments of the Fortune 500 that Microsoft
is fading more and more in the mind of everyday consumers. Our brand is
losing vibrancy. Not recognition. Just vibrancy.

Homework: what's your
30 second elevator speech regarding what you work on?

Another post by
lushootseed that brings a wry grin to my face: href="http://lushootseed.blogspot.com/2004/10/ashcroft-working-for-microsoft
.html">Ashcroft working for Microsoft? Sometime in the past half year
politically correct speak has trickled its way down through management and
it's quite the fun show: "Hey, did you know
you're in Bug Hell-I-mean-Jail?" Or, color="#000080">"Could you please send me your status for this week's
War Team-I-mean-Team Status Meeting?"

There's this great
little wince at the "I-mean" part and
you can almost visualize the ^H's issuing out from their mind.

But
then my grin fades and I realize someone on the payroll is actually putting
time and effort into correcting terms that have been since long before I
joined Microsoft. Most of the people I used to work with would have quickly
called BS on this and went merrily about using the traditional terms. What's
scary is that we were told to use the new terms and *bang* everyone did.
What the hell?

The November Clip Show

Oh cry in the dark of night:

Jesus , update your
blog for crying out loud

My apologies. Work has been
incredibly jammed as we try to make progress ignoring the fact that the
holidays are stealing precious work days from us and that key people are
just gone. And there was the small matter of Halo 2. And Half-Life
2.

Well, if a clip show works for the Simpsons then I might as well
give it a small try. Let's see what's been going on over the past few
weeks...

---

So href="http://natslies.blogspot.com/">http://natslies.blogspot.com/ only
has one post (as of today) but it's an interesting read. Ski4Burgers
has made a few comments here at Mini-Microsoft. One issue Ski4Burgers has
with Nat is that the href="http://www.nat.org/2004/october/#18-October-2004">http://www.nat.org/2
004/october/#18-October-2004 refers to my blog in a critical assessment
of Microsoft. Ski4Burgers thinks it's pretty bogus to use a single source as
a reference point:

I'm not sure who this guy at minimsft
is (although I know he is a former employee of Microsoft), but to cite one
blogger's opinion as a definitive source seems pretty dubious.

It is dubious, but you can't exclude the comments. A
good bit of the comments here are very well written and informative
(especially compared to their associated source material). As for
the, ah, former employee bit: as of today my badge still worked. Everyday is
a blessing.

But then again, on the internet, no one knows you're a
dog...

---

The Giving Campaign is over. While we exceeded the monetary
goal (Yay!) we were pretty lousy on the percentage of participation (boo).
The malaise is still here. Snippet of a comment:

Really,
does it have to be so painful and guilt-ridden? I thought we were supposed
to feel good about being philanthropists - not having it shoved down our
throat.

But for all the full-time employees out there who
are just turned off by the giving campaign: just remember that you can give
out-of-band anytime the spirit hits you and Microsoft makes it very easy for
a matching donation to be sent.

So as we mourn the passing of
delivered Micronews, fresh towels, and readily available office supplies and
drinking cups, take solace in The Man still kicking in some bucks for
whatever qualifying agency you damn well please to lay some money
on.

---

De-Redmondization of Microsoft: interesting comment regarding
how PSS is going in href="http://microsoftok.blogspot.com/2004/11/cut-backs-offshoring-and-pss.html
">http://microsoftok.blogspot.com/2004/11/cut-backs-offshoring-and-pss.html
- it starts off with:

This will be the downfall of
Microsoft. I used to work in PSS and I don't mind sharing my experiences
with the greater public. When Microsoft started up their Bangalore
operation, they wanted to test the process from an outside
source.

And it goes downhill from there. Recently Ballmer
himself was on-hand for the expanding Microsoft India campus. So I could do
funny math and say, well, 200 new jobs there are representative of 100 new
jobs here and therefore a saving of 100 employees... but no. I work with
folks who'd be much happier, family- and geographically-wise, to work in
India. I would hope that it makes it easier for folks here to transition
back there (and then, you know, leave to start your own money making
business). I figure this also allows us to deal with H1-B visa issues by
just hiring more overseas.

But I don't see consistent quality software
coming out of India. At least not quality world-class software. I'd be a
hell of a lot more interested in them developing regional solutions for
growing markets.

---

The charts of href="http://microsoftok.blogspot.com/2004/10/microsofts-financial-horizon.html
">http://microsoftok.blogspot.com/2004/10/microsofts-financial-horizon.html
are still live. Google's taken a hit over the recent days. Microsoft's dip
is because of the dividend. Apple is still taking off. And a $100 target for
Apple? Dang.

---

And next-to-last: the grammar checker needs to help
me out when it comes to "losing" and "loosing." Seems as
though misuse there annoys people.

---

And finally: the typical blog
dilemma: if you can't keep it consistently warm, should you delete it? While
all exhausted and lacing up one evening, I wondered: should I just delete
this blog? I've had my initial say. Longhorn, although delayed, isn't turned
into the managed code mess I feared. I really don't have burning
issues.

And I don't want to turn into a snarky commentary reacting to
each rah-rah "Ooooo, you just wait un see! We's a
gonna innovate us some shareholder value, uh huh!!!" Ballmer
interview.

So, given the crammed nature of work and the holidays,
things will probably be slow here for a while. I don't think I'll blow this
blog away just yet. And, hey, the midpoints are coming up, and that's always
a great time to help managers reflect on the joys of moving people out of
Microsoft and into other rewarding careers elsewhere!

Cut-backs, offshoring, and PSS

Just a quick link: href="http://msmvps.com/lduncan/archive/2004/11/08/18274.aspx">Called PSS
Today?

Again, I'll stand by my desire for a smaller Microsoft by
any means necessary. We're way too big. But on the BrightnessScale
measurin'o-nomoter, this kind of offshoring decision lands the needle dead
in the middle of "dumb-ass" (kind of like canceling all of
those branded href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=8766d395-7dcf-47
b1-bda0-8c7406035ef7">Microsoft drinking cups and not having any
replacements in the queue, leading to the Great Cup Crisis of
'04).

One thing that's supposed to distinguish Microsoft is the
level of product support we provide from live, talented people who know the
products super well. This is one step closer to just relying on Google
searches. And I might as well get me some of that free software if that's
the level of self-sufficient support I need to resort to...

You're Fired

A must read for all with intranet access at Microsoft:

href="http://EEG/EEResources/JobSkills/Development/YoureFired.aspx">You're
Fired by I. M. Wright off of our (yah!) Engineering Excellence web
site.

(Forwarded to me by a colleague who seems to know more than
they should...)

This helps to re-enforce an important mindset for
all managers to have about their low performers. It's your responsibility to
get them back on track or out of the company. But no one likes going down
that hard, muddy path of kicking someone out of the company. An article like
this, at this time, is important for building the foundation of getting
folks out of the company.

The mid-point is coming up at the beginning
of the year. You don't have to wait until the major review to deliver a 2.5.
Do you have someone how needs to hit the road? They just swung strike #3? At
any moment you can talk to HR and and say "Hey, I want this person out
of here. Now. What's my responsibility to ensure this is done
right?"

Perhaps your group does an informal stack rank anyway for
mid-point. Those folks who have been around for a while that are at the
bottom of the ranking? How much are they costing your group? What if you
could have a fired-up talented college-hire instead? Move 'em out!

Why Microsoft is in Trouble

Good read: "Why
Microsoft is in Trouble" (

http://www.baus.net/microsofttrouble.html ).

Interesting snippet:

While the 30 employees in company
I work for can make a living selling software for a few million $'s per
year, Microsoft can't even look at markets our size. Why? Microsoft is
too big. The market isn't significant enough to make a dent in their
revenues. In order to grow, Microsoft can only go after huge, massively
profitable markets, and those are becoming fewer and far between. When
appropriately large markets do arise (internet search and services), they
often compete with their desktop products. These markets threaten to
cannibalize their core business, which forces Microsoft into the loosing
defensive position.

(bold mine.)

Why Microsoft is in Trouble

Good read: "Why
Microsoft is in Trouble" (

http://www.baus.net/microsofttrouble.html ).

Interesting snippet:

While the 30 employees in company
I work for can make a living selling software for a few million $'s per
year, Microsoft can't even look at markets our size. Why? Microsoft is
too big. The market isn't significant enough to make a dent in their
revenues. In order to grow, Microsoft can only go after huge, massively
profitable markets, and those are becoming fewer and far between. When
appropriately large markets do arise (internet search and services), they
often compete with their desktop products. These markets threaten to
cannibalize their core business, which forces Microsoft into the loosing
defensive position.

(bold mine.)