Employee Growth Chart

Just a quickie: Todd Bishop at the Seattle-PI put together an informative
post, href="http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/003373.html?wbfr
om=rss">Deciphering Job Numbers, which graphs out Microsoft's increasing
employment numbers according to broad discipline.

Wow, what do you
think?

Personally, I really don't know why "Sales, Marketing, and
Support" needs to track "Product Research and
Development."  Again, taking up the performance analogy, I'd start
massive trimming there. 

Both of those curves need to start a
downwards trend and need to be the focus of layoffs.  I'd also be
really interested if we have awful products that require a greater amount of
support / effort to sell and market, especially considering what's the
comparable investment of that effort given the products' profits (or lack
there-of).  If the ROI just isn't there for those guys then that's key
data to push forward into deciding which groups to cut back in: if you're
creating a messy-complex product that requires us to hire scads of people to
sell, market, and support it, perhaps we need to get the hell out of here
and cancel what we're doing.

You gotta read the 10-K

Required reading (next in my reading queue): href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312504150689/d10k.
htm">recent Microsoft  Form 10-K filing. Right-click and
Save-As.

So you can read financial analysts and pundits and the
occasional elegant and (ahem) inelegant blogger about Microsoft's
business and future, but the best absolute person to listen to is yourself,
reading through the detailed statement.

How do you feel about where
we are currently?

How do you feel about what we're investing in?

I'll read it and make some comments later. But everyone with an
interest in Microsoft's success has to read and absorb a filing like this in
order to judge and filter the internal and external rhetoric you get every
day.

Dangerous Transitions

Good OOF and back in town catching up on the news: good grief! Big
changes that a lot of us saw inevitable for Longhorn. Furthermore, an
interesting movement to detangle future client development from previous
blind adherence to all things CLR / .NET.

Anyway, Technorati'ing came
up with href="http://www.articulatebabble.org/archives/2004/09/02T085804.php">Danger
ous Thoughts on href="http://www.articulatebabble.org/">articulate.babble.  Super
well written.  An interesting snippet:

Microsoft
should do some big layoffs right away rather than small benefit cuts here
and there.

The reason is about the quality of people who will stay in
the former situation versus the latter. When a company like Microsoft starts
signalling its intention to scale back employee benefits, it is a green
light for its good and great employees to go seek out the new hotness.

Right after I read that, I saw via Dare's href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=5192cf7a-fe03-47
b7-953f-72d61abace97">Transitions post that Joe Beda is leaving
Microsoft for Google.  So totally inline with Dangerous
Thoughts. Joe's post explaining this is appropriately named href="http://www.eightypercent.net/Archive/2004/09/02.html#a210">Microsoft--
; Google++. But realize the real fun is in the comments in most of these
posts - In Joe's
you have the discussion back to Dangerous Thoughts and its strong
direct relevance to what's happening REAL TIME.  Joe posts in Dare's
Transitions href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView.aspx?guid=5192cf7a-fe03-
47b7-953f-72d61abace97">comments and Dare makes some insightful comments
about the folks primed and ready for attrition.

Attrition. There's
Good Attrition. This was "Bad Attrition." I'm holding to my guns
and saying right now I'll take any attrition that leads to a smaller
company.  A lot of Bad Attrition variety eventually leads to "We
had to destroy the village to save it" results for what remains of
Microsoft.  When enough A quality people leave you start starving those
left behind without strong technical leadership and innovation. Then when
products and features are cancelled and folks bring up the internal career
site they discover that the lack of innovation has resulted in: dang,
there's no where to go.  Oh crap, there's no where to go!  Hey,
what's this pink-slip thingie?

This is reaching a smaller company
through a regressive set of results similar to, oh, frost-bite
amputation.  Much damn better right here and now to say: we have some
of the absolute smartest, passionate, talented software people in the
world.  We value them. We value them more than Google or any other
damn company.  This can be an excellent environment for them to
excel in, with changes.  Scale back in mediocre intentions and product
and, most importantly, staff.  Get into 2005 with 10% less
people.  To those in this small Microsoft: tell them, color="#000080">"You are the best.  We're getting out of your way
and letting you rip.  Go make fantastic products that will innovate and
make us all tons of cash."

Comments - process, bias, and rehiring

(You know, we truly do make wonderful software.  To be able to
sit down at a random computer in lovely BFE and be able to check email and
post to the Internet is the stuff of magic.  1990's magic, I
know.  Even in 2004 I'm not jaded in the least.)

Yet another
iteration of comment commenting because when good stuff happens, you should
at least point at it and say, "Oog! Good stuff!"

So three of
the recent href="http://microsoftok.blogspot.com/2004/08/comments-on-recent-comments.html#
comments">comments in the last post are interesting for their own
reasons.

The second notes:

Then, Gates stepped down,
Ballmer stepped up, and the bean counters took the reigns... Instead of
everything in PSS being all about customer satisfaction, it became how many
customers could you fly through in a day without pissing them off... Numbers
became everything, with customer satisfaction taking a back seat.

At that
point, it was far more adventageous to be an ass-kisser than somebody that
actually knew the technology. They started losing some of their best talent
at PSS-East becuase the best & brightest were just waiting for enough stock
options to vest, and they were out of that B.S.

And then, the witch
hunts began... M$ stock started tanking, and they decided to thin out the
head count to help lower their costs... If they laid people off, their stock
would sink even further, so they started coming up with any and every
bullshit reason to get rid of you. Once again, they lost some of their best
and brightest becuase they weren't playing the stupid political games like
the ass-kissers...

I don't think Microsoft product
development and other departments were all that broke, just probably not
engaged in high-risk taking visionary bleeding edge development and
such.  It's true, when Ballmer took over, broad things really started
changing on an increased process level.  Everyone has experienced this
thanks to the ever-changing review form and associated training (which I
think represents the embodiment of meandering leadership vs. streamlined
focusing on what's important to make money - Lord help me if I have to go
through something like that commitments training again [did you hear anyone
saying how super and great that was?]).  Even now you hear him calling
us to achieve "Process Excellence."  Must your quantify that
you don't inherently understand?  I get paid to ship money-making
software, not excel at a process.  I'm open to things that make my
product better which includes more stability, security, market-penetration,
and customer pleasing / money making features.  But if you give me
another freaking process form to fill out or compliance tool to run, I'm
going to start "comp-lie-ing" and focus on what it takes to get
the old-fashioned job done.

(Bad Drone!)

The third
comment duly takes me to task for being overly negative in characterization
and his/her original comments.  My bad, mea culpa - sorta.  Eh,
I'm biased.  Anyway, it's a well-written and thought-out
rebuttal.  Good for Microsoft for having such a person working for it
and for taking the time to share their thoughts.  I just believe that
strategic grass-roots transparency is more important at this
time.

Finally, the first comment has an interesting
bit:

I've seen specific departments conducted layoffs, and
95% of the laid off folks get rehired within 2 months into other
departments. Talk about maintain a good place for the
staff.

I've seen this disconnect, too, between Microsoft
HR's "move them out" talk and then what happens later.  It's
odd to be walking through another building and pass by someone who had
"moved on" and is now in another group (odd moment of
"what-the?" surprise on my face, downward gaze on their's). 
Move them out, keep them out.

Comments on Recent Comments

Off biking in the backwoods, happy to find net access but without a USB drive reader... well, how about a quick review of recent comments and some comments on the comments...

You're dumb and you suck

(aka, "It's funny 'cause it's true!")

From a very Early Post comes this recent comment:

Upon reading most of your posts I have these comments. Most of your ideas are unoriginal and obvious, while some are plain stupid.

Getting rid of underperformers. - Obvious and being done. Focus has been there for several years.

Re-energize the home market. Umm we have a whole division devoted to this. Do you think that you are smarter that all of them? Then go apply for a job there.

Stop hiring - rebalance. You don't think these jobs will be posted internally? Of course they are. If you think we are being undisciplined in creating new jobs, just try to get new headcount approved.

Continue community efforts. We are doing that in a big way. Glad to see we have your approaval [sic].

Back to basics. Dumb. Why not go all the way back to assembler? Frameworks and abstractions help us develop more code better and faster. Yes not everything should run in the CLR. But a lot more can be acheived [sic] in many produts [sic] by using it. Let me guess - you are a Win32 C programmer? Can you say "job security worries"?

Working on IE again. Have you missed the whole web services thing? The whole industry has moved on to new things. Browsers are so 90's

Wow, nice. I'd love to read follow-up constructive ideas on how the company could otherwise improve. But a couple of things I'd like to follow-up on:

Obvious. Just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's dumb. It also doesn't mean it's been actioned on. The obvious stuff doesn't happen because it's too obvious. Do we think ourselves too smart? If it doesn't bring in a billion dollars or it isn't something mind-blowingly creative, walk on by...

CLR and .NET: yeah, I've put off that post and don't look forward to it. When I put that up I might as well soak myself with gasoline and hand out matches. The CLR is great for short, transient execution, like flickering flames. It so much sucks if you start wanting to associate it with something that needs to stay up and running. Have you actually tried to use a .NET app to get your work done while using Office or other Win32 (excuse me, "unmanaged" applications? Unless you have 512MB or 1024MB and a great system, things come to a grinding halt as memory is paged in and out. I love writing in C#. I'm ten times more productive. But my productivity and extreme joy doesn't compensate my poor end-user wondering what the hell is wrong with his computer.

IE and the Web. Well, Joel said it much better than I could. Please read some recent postings from Adam Bosworth. Google is so pulling its foot back to deliver a swift kick. And Microsoft is bent over, dithering in its Avalon / XAML garden.

Oh, and as for underperformers being moved on: I'll believe it when I see it. I'm blessed with a great job (and a super boss!) and get to meet lots of other Microsoft groups. The drop in quality I saw starting four-to-five years ago is still with us, if not worse for the high quality people moving on.

But the company meeting costs money...

So I bemoaned the scaled back company meeting recently.

Wait a minute! This is from the same guy who touts a lean, customer-pleasing, profit making machine? Most of the people on those buses probably deleted the e-mail and are just "following the crowd".

Well, look. It's a cost / benefit sort of thing. I guess I'm shallow, but I find it very energizing to go to the company meeting and blow off petty doubts and get re-centered and excited about what we've done and where we're going. It's like voluntary mind washing. But if they were going to reduce it and save money, they should have just selected Building 33 and web-casted it from there. I think there's a basic cost for having it off-campus and from there it's a smaller increment for each bus-load. So, costs savings not there, lack of motivation and disenchantment there in abundance.

Employees now, trends for the future?

Within my first review:

debated on posting this but I am a v-/a- type that has been in remora mode around Microsoft for about 15 years now. I saw an interesting trend on the upslope of the bubble. Folks whom I knew and respected from Microsoft were all retiring. I would come in for meetings and hear that the leader of the meetings last day was Friday because he was moving to the carribean. His "financial advisor" told him last Monday he had hit his F*ck you number and he was gone. The scary part about this was not that the folks I knew were leaving but the folks that replaced them were nothing burgers. It was as though they were trying to get any butt into the seat. The people just weren't of the same caliber.

More recently, in my Goin' OOF:

Probably becuase thats just about all thats left at the good ole msft ... that and uber backstabbing dot com-ers that were sly enough to get hired on. Those are the people driving a once great company into the ground.

There is life after msft and now-a-days its a bit better than the hanging with the wanna be's in redmond!

I like it: "nothing burgers" and "uber backstabbing dot com-ers." Right, hired during the age of entitlement and most likely the most offended by our scaling back. All I can hope and pray for is that these folks are the ones on the edge of leaving, just waiting for the economy to truly turn around and have a chance to blow out of this soggy burg (which I Love by the way). When things get Spartan and the shrimp gets replaced with weenies, we can only hope the real Weenies walk.

And lastly: do folks out there know how incredibly hard it is to hire qualified Microsofties? Right, first it's hard to get the headcount. I'll acknowledge that. And then when you do? My group hasn't had headcount opened for a while (we rock!) but I help other teams interview. What's scary is that the folks we find to interview can't code / design their way out of a binary tree. Folks start asking (seriously): "Should we lower our bar?" (No!)

But it's not getting better and now the qualified people we want to hire (a dwindling group) are considering Microsoft very low on their potential Great Places to Work list. Why is that?

Microsoft OOF, asking America about Microsoft

I'm biking the backroads for three weeks soon so things will be a bit
quite. I hope to get one more missive out about the Microsoft Financial
Analyst Meeting (FAM) before going OOF (if I don't, it's going to look
really stale by the time I get to it).

I hope to stumble across
some free net access while in the boonies. While out and about, I have a
goal to talk to everyone I can about how they perceive Microsoft. Getting
out of Redmond will hopefully get a more real, grounded perspective of what
folks think and feel (care?) about MSFT.

Microsoft "Company" Meeting 2004

The Microsoft Company Meeting for 2004 was announced Friday in a color="#000080">"save the date" email. But this year's company
meeting is limited to 2,500 folks vs. all in the folks in the Puget Sound
that would like to jump on a bus and attend. This is a big mental shift for
a pinnacle meeting that really helps to energize people for the coming year.
I'm bummed, but perhaps I'm feeling whiny, so let me think about
this.

(a day later)

Okay, now I'm more bothered than
whiny. As I re-read the announcement for the meeting, I realized the wording
was really putting me off and talking down to me. Ooo, Microsoft campuses
around the world will be able to "share the
excitement" via satellite (vs. sleep or a good dinner). A reference
to last year's cold SafeCo experience is given to justify the move indoors
but that seems intangible. Further discussion of how this is going to be a
wonderful global experience serves to sever Redmond even more as the heart
and mind of Microsoft. As I read this (go ahead, read your copy if you
didn't delete it) I feel like I'm being sold soap that I know doesn't
work as well and that isn't a good product.

This small email and
decision represents a further disenchanting disassociation between executive
management and the individual contributors making the products in Redmond
that bring in billions of dollars. Only a select few will go to the new
opera hall to experience the live presentation while the rest of the company
can wander into conference rooms and bring up desktop web casts. Please.
Most people will continue working and whatever bold messages executive
management thinks they are communicating will be no more than muffled echoes
from the few watching the web cast down the hall.

I look forward to
the future when they can pull everyone in the Puget Sound back together. I
guess you truly don't appreciate something until it's gone, and I'm already
missing the Microsoft Company Meeting.