Brummel! Brummel! Brummel!

Wow, just in time to go into next week's Company Meeting with blushingly good PR. Much better than two years ago! From the upcoming BusinessWeek magazine:

(1) How To Make A Microserf Smile - profile on Ms. Brummel with some background about her contributions to HR since being appointed. Interesting snippet:

Nothing got people buzzing more than Brummel's overhaul of the performance review. Employees dreaded Microsoft's ranking system for all the usual reasons: It pitted co-workers against one another at a time when the company needed to be more collaborative; it was unfair; it made frank evaluations less likely.

Here Brummel faced a political third rail. Ballmer was the godfather of the forced curve, believing that differentiation—giving a few people the top grade, most a pass, and laggards failing marks—was the key to Microsoft's we-take-the-hills culture. And when Brummel broached ditching the curve, it was his turn to say "No way." More yelling ensued as they darted in and out of each other's adjacent offices.

(2) ONLINE EXTRA: Playbook: The New HR - I can has rewardzburger?

(3) ONLINE EXTRA: Q&A with Microsoft's Lisa Brummel - I'm sorry, but aren't there supposed to be questions and answers? Anyway, the Microsoft Office of the future (as in, where you're going to be planting your tocks during the day):

So HR chief Lisa Brummel is creating Microsoft's next-generation workspace: the elastic, meet-my-mood office. Here too she is going far beyond what most companies consider: open plan or not? Instead, she's creating a hybrid workplace of sliding doors, movable walls, and urban-loft-like spaces tailored to individual needs.

(4) ONLINE EXTRA: Reshaping Microsoft's HR Agenda - Q&A with Ballmer and Brummel. Lord, I'm still laughing from the below snippet: thumbs up, Mr. Ballmer, for the honesty:

She went on a listening tour to hear from employees. And one of the things she heard was frustration about Microsoft's forced ranking system. Did that resonate for you? Did that seem like something Microsoft needed to remake?

Ballmer: No.

No?

Ballmer: Uh-uh.

It wasn't top of mind for you?

Ballmer: Uh-uh.

But were you averse to changing it?

Ballmer: Uh-huh.

More interesting nuggets in there about how our review system is still pretty much the same from Ballmer's POV, the potential for free-lunches like Google, and the $1,500 you get for buying a hybrid vehicle. And whether Ballmer would ever blog (sorry, secret Steves!).

(5) ONLINE EXTRA: Microsoft's Mini-Me Susses Brummel - interview with some dashingly good-looking loud-mouth blogger.

(6) Graphic: Chief Happiness Officer - well, graphic with interesting text. What, we're going to get a free bus service? With WiFi! OMG!1! P0n13s! I LOVE YOU LIS- ...ahem. That's swell.

What else do you find interesting in the articles that's either in there or not in there?

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Meanwhile, back in RealityVille, Microsoft Extreme Makeover has a new post: Wanted Significant MSFT shareholder with a spine. Rock'em sock'em! The post mulls over the article Of Microsoft, china pigs and hungry bears Mixed Signals by Rupert Goodwins. Talk about a dash of cold water. Perhaps you should read that before diving into the feel-good Brummel articles.

This snippet looks at inflection points in Microsoft future:

This is the weather for a coup, whether by a posse of external shareholders with inside support or a rebel group of managers with help from the investors. The trigger point isn't far away – we're nearing the end of the multi-year transition period that's seeing Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie replace Bill Gates. By now, the changes in Microsoft should be visible – but it's not looking that good. The two big moves – into advertising, and into Net-delivered cloud services – look more like Google-chasing than anything else; neither address the many and extremely deeply ingrained reservations even Microsoft's closest partners have about dealing with Redmond. Neither properly answer the question of revenues in 2017.

Evokes this response:

The "rebel group of managers" willing to back away from the SPSA feeding trough long enough to finally do the right thing for the company and shareholders, sounds like a tall order. A "posse of external shareholders" seems a lot more likely, but right now there's no obvious sheriff - or posse. A third option would be a former MSFT manager with external shareholder backing. Someone like Brad Silverberg, for example, who was right about the web when Gates and Ballmer were wrong and is no longer there because of it. But lately he's been praising them. Or maybe he's just laying the groundwork for an impending return :-)

Hmm. Need to step back into HappyVille? Okay, here's a question: Hey, do you think they'll install Starbucks i-Cup machines in our new commuter busses? And what speed of WiFi do you think they'll provide?

(Oh, and I know I put up a new post in the middle of everyone sharing their review numbers; feel free to keep on adding to this one, along with anything new. Sorry that it all ends up being spread across three posts.)

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Reviewzapalooza!

Let's talk about you: it's Reviewzapalooza time! How do you like the new numbers sheet - does it help with the context of what your awards are? Once again, the charmingly good looking folks who participate in the comments here have started sharing their numbers to help get an idea of how they stand and how it compares across groups in the company. You can see some comments in the Gone Fishin' post, and the template that has evolved into is basically:

Position: Job Title
Level:
Commitment: Exceeded / Achieved / Underperformed
Contribution: 20% / 70% / 10% I or 10% II
Merit: %bump
Bonus: %of bonus
Stock - $USD of grant (% of Target)
Promo: %promo

Plus anything you feel like adding. Healthy approximations are appropriate to fuzz your rewards should you be concerned about consternation from above for sharing. You know, I wish there was a way to do this inside Microsoft (hmm, Inside MS) and especially wish there was a way to do it so that the division / group was obvious. As I've moved about the company over the years, it has become depressingly clear that, yes, career velocity is very different across the company, with some teams shooting their people up the levels on aggressive schedules and other divisions letting their reports languish for long durations before their level bumps (making it a vicious cycle: the folks at the next level up are now really really good just because they've been there for a while, so you're going to be parked here for a while, too).

I will say, as someone participating in the review process, it feels better and I feel better about the rewards distributed through-out the team, though there are always the hard conversations around "Why didn't I at least meet 100% of the target?" Look, there is still a curve and ratios to track for performance ratings and there are still misunderstandings in self-assessments that "Exceeded" is appropriate for soft commitments.

The review tools are a Himalayan blackberry infestation running through my gut. The clumsy workflow hammered in around the tools is just too restrictive and results in me spending more time getting HR IT's help, managing the tools and process and less time giving (hopefully) useful feedback. And when your editing package can't even copy and paste between its own fields without barfing out some kind of new, exotic formatting, well, you should just go back to Word.

Of course, Limited II is still around. It's just called 10% II. New non-offending packaging, same demoralizing message.

Stuff o' Interest: some links I'd like to pass on (some of which I've already posted in my Facebook profile, so apologies mon amis):

Microsoft Extreme Makeover has two excellent posts: (1) Growth play, value play, or just lousy play?, and (2) Home runs, base hits, virtual aspirations and actual failure. An extraction of the facts covered in greater detail in (1):

1. Fact: Microsoft stock has performed abysmally over the past 5 years
2. Fact: Investors have been more than patient
3. Fact: Management's statements are at odds with observable facts and the stock's performance
4. Fact: The leadership team's actual track record of investments is decidedly mixed, if not in fact poor.
5. Fact: Management is arguing with the market and results, and shareholders are paying the freight for that hubris and failure
6. Fact: External shareholder are the majority owners of this company

And there's a corker of a conclusion in there...

Collision Domain on the way out the door? My interpretation on this other anonymous Microsoft blogger is that it's time to discard the Blue Badge and move on: Preparing for Take-Off, Lift-Off, and Orbit. Snippet from Lift-Off:

One tidbit that I did discover this go-through was that the shiny, happy compensation target numbers on hrweb are figments of policy imagination.

Way ahead of you, dude: Already off and into Redfin's orbit is former Microsoftie Jeff Yee: Will work for food: why I left Microsoft for a startup. Snippet:

While I was at Microsoft, many things didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t understand the massive “re-orgs”, which, if you hadn’t heard about ahead of time, it meant nothing material changed for you. I didn’t understand why we’d try to enter dominated markets with an uncompetitive offering. I didn’t understand those little table tents on the cafeteria tables or the giant banners and posters promoting intranet websites. I didn’t understand why site searches on MSDN were abysmal. I wasn’t the only one who was confused. Minimsft would try to speculate about a re-org or an acquisition. And on popular internal aliases like “litebulb”, for instance, there’d be email threads where people would ask why Vista had 6 (ok, 8) SKUs, why Zune wouldn’t work with PlaysForSure, why their product had to be renamed from something cool to something like Windows Communication Framework, or why there were 2 confusing boxes on local.live.com (or so adverse to just calling it “maps.live.com” in the first place). Legitimate questions often got defensive responses. To paraphrase one developer, “Why are these responses always along the lines of, ‘We know what we’re doing’? Personally, I’d welcome the feedback, because that’s how I’ll improve. Why can’t you provide the reasons that led to your decision?” I couldn’t have agreed more.

Who's on First? Mr. Romano at the Seattle Times has a three-fer: Microsoft Microsoft's new leaders prepare for the post-Gates era, Microsoft Craig Mundie Company envoy will keep that role, and Microsoft Ray Ozzie Collaborative leader has coaching style. Who's is next? Well, who should be next?

No-one! Jamie has a new C9Park: Iron Chef.

Company Meeting: I don't think I'll be as vocal about my love for the Company Meeting this year. Yes, I love the Company Meeting, just as much as I love the potential for Microsoft to be the best company ever. The Company Meeting is where I hold out both of my arms and let myself get hooked up into two I.V.s of pressurized, concentrated MSFT-Kool-Aid. It, along with the occasional Town Hall meeting, allows me to become re-enchanted and re-committed to Microsoft.

I like the change of theme this year of celebrating individuals who represent the best of Microsoft (I'm not sure about the moniker Champions of Change because my eyes roll everytime I read it). I mean, first of all, big thumbs up for not doing Microsoft Idol again just because we did it last year. That's a change I could champion. But finding people who truly represent the best of Microsoft and its culture does allow people to get to know them and find out what kind of person our corporate culture touchstone resonates for. Maybe your boss does indeed sucketh in comparison. Or maybe not. Anyway, it's mostly a really really good idea that I wish I had come up with to propose.

It's too bad , though, it looks like our continued celebration of the individual. Do we have a celebration in there for a team or two of distinction? I'm sorry, but we need a change around this lone-wolf achiever culture. Team Gold Stars and Team Achievements that everyone could clap for in wild agreement need to be next.

What would I like to hear about in our Company Meeting? Some things off the top of my head (not too different than last year, just compacted):

• European Union: whoa, Nelly, I think we're about to get kicked really, really hard in our money maker. Can we talk about this?
• The Stock Price: what do we hear from analysts about the stock price? Let's enumerate them so that we have confirmation that we've actually heard advice regarding the stock price: cut expenses, increase the dividend, etc. and then, Beloved Leadership, tell us what you think.
• Windows Live Suite: this actually addresses an analyst's concern, about showing radical growth in rich, connected services. Is it going to do it? What's is about and where is it going? And is Spaces going to do something to out-Facebook Facebook?
• In Between Cows: between now and Windows 7 and Office 14, what's releasing and what does the product stream look like for profit?
• Hiring Slow-Down: please, tell me more about this. And then even some more again. It just doesn't get old.
• HR and Compensation: first of all, before LisaB, did we even hear from HR that much? Anyway, I'm sure we'll hear how great the poll is looking any maybe some other goodies. On my mind:
  • ESPP: Bring back the 15% ESPP: yep, it goes against the cut expenses goal. Suck it up and give back what we once had. I'll even part with my Starbucks kitchen coffee maker machine for it. And that's saying something.
  • Internal Recruiting: we need to aggressively recruit talent within our company and not leave it to the individual to meander through the internal machinery and find a job. Additionally, totally drop permission and intent to interview and just let people interview at will.
  • Mid-year review: yes, bring back the mid-year review. Compensation would be nice, too, but let's make it a full review. We do all the work and create review numbers, so let's just go ahead and share the numbers officially so that it's not an all-or-nothing once-a-year tell-me-if-I'm-doing-a-good-job Hell Mary. This also swings nicely into letting people move around more easily so that folks don't feel locked into their job for an entire year in order to get a fair review vs. moving groups and losing their perceived momentum.

Anything you'd like to hear about and discussed by our leadership?

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

tutorial_Form_Dynalink (a small tutorial on dynalinks)

Today I was asked the following question:

"In dynamics we have a Form Named "Form1" I created a button on it "Button1".
It will manage all the records related to the key in main form. There is dyna link created between the datasources. Only records of the currently selected main Key field will be shown. I need the selected KeyField value on the other form. How can I get it?"


So I wrote a small project to show the different possibilities.
In the project you will find 2 forms, 2 tables and a menuItem connecting the two forms.
3 ways of getting the current dynalink value are shown.

Here is a link to the xpo with the project:
download

Here is a screenshot of the result:



Forgot to give some explanations as well: :)
Basically, all the 3 form methods showing different ways of getting the dynalink value are called from the linkActive method in the second (slave) form.
This method is activated by the system every time a record in the parent form is changed, which allows for dynalinks to work. Great method :)

Gone Fishin'

I'm spending my days singing that Bing Crosby + Louis Armstrong tune "Gone Fishin'" while I enjoy still waters, quiet trails, and generally sunny skies. As I sit on the hill in between family romps and watch the clouds go by (trying not to hear that Madonna launch music), it certainly causes the reflective "and what am I so concerned about?" moments to kick in.

So here's a quick post to keep the pot stirred. I hope you're out there, enjoying life, too.

Town Hall + FAM + Analysts Coffee Talk: damn, what a past week.

Regarding FAM, MSFT Extreme Makeover has the following post: MSFTextrememakeover Like us, or leave us. In the comments, Charles points to the following post off of Seeking Alpha: Microsoft Investment Requires Too Much Patience - Barron's - Seeking Alpha. Snippet:

Some of the issues that worry analysts:

1. It was clear from the presentation that many of the growth prospects will take 5-10 years to bear fruit.
2. The company overspends ("nothing would delight analysts more than a nice big round of cost-cutting.")
3. The businesses MSFT says it's entering (e.g. advertising and consumer electronics) are far more cut-throat than its current mix.
4. Microsoft's focus on building internet infrastructure rather than building sites that bring in users is "backward."
5. Bill Gates's plan to pass control of product development to Ray Ozzie "will not be a smooth one."

Those are certainly all issues to be really concerned about, though #2 reminds me of something Dylan Yolles brought up a couple of times at the coffee talk: control expenses via cost efficiency. Now one grand way to start is to not blow a billion dollars here and there and to avoid any future money losing ventures. Brilliant, I know. Can I have an SPSA grant now?

While Mr. Bach has been appropriately contrite and saying "the billion plus buck loss stops here," the commitment I want is forward looking: we will no longer produce product lines that are sold at a loss. One fine day, the third generation of Xbox will be out there. How about committing to pulling a Nintendo here and making it profitable from day one?

Cost efficiency and controlling spending is a pretty broad area to improve in. I'm glad that head-count growth is so visibly discussed now and that Mr. Liddell is saying that it's not sustainable. Let attrition do its thing for a while. I think the analysts would be thrilled - thrilled I tell you - if we actually shrunk headcount and optimized employee career assignments. Around cost efficiency, I'm concerned that one of our new hires will look over the financial books and, with a twenty-five watt light bulb blazing above his head, say, "Hey, I know, we can save some money cutting back on this luxurious towel service here!"

Around our performance and wondering when our stock price will take off, I just have to ask, "If not now, when?" When will we emerge from the post-growth purgatory Charles DiBona mentions? Can we get a software plus services product line out that that resonates with everyone and makes clear the value of Microsoft rich-client applications plus on-line services?

I hope that the upcoming Windows Live Suite is the beginning of another Office Suite. For free. Hmm, wait a minute... well, anyway, it includes my favorite little application, Windows Live Writer, and given that the Office Suite story turned out so well there's an abundance of opportunity for another suite to emerge. Revenue around this, I can only assume, is built on advertising around the content you generate with the suite. That makes me feel a little dirty, still.

I'm glad that there's more focus on creating products for the consumer. Waaaay back, three years ago, it was part of my reason for launching this little blog. I was tired of all the IT-focused features we were so focused on vs. the forgotten home user. I want the cash and attention of everyone walking along the street. I want knowledge workers demanding to have IT deploy the new Office because it's so friggin' cool and because there are features in there they can't wait to use. I have hope.

Shields up: a while back, Ms. Foley asked if Microsoft can go silent running on features vs. blathering about them years and months before they come out. I hope so. I think everyone of us who has watched a Steve Jobs presentation has always felt envy when he unveils something surprising and new and then says, "And you can buy it at the Apple store this afternoon!"

Well played, sir, well played. Even if it's something I'd never want, my inner geek starts running around screaming OMG OMG OMG!

For anything consumer focused and small, yes, we should be able to do this. Obviously, features that are going to rile up the IT department need a soft landing. But I would prefer to announce the cool stuff right at launch or before launch, to avoid the months and months of discussion and criticism that leads us to, "meh" on launch day.

Other bits:

• Following along keeping quiet, Jamie has a new C9 park about liberating user feedback. It includes me (blush), Fake Steve Jobs, and Fake Steve Ballmer.
• Fake Steve Jobs is actually quite on the roll and has two of my favorite recent posts: It's called zeitgeist, have you heard of it and Freetards in deep denial (oh, man, nice!).
• Mr. Pincus dropped by in the comment stream of the last post and certainly brought some life into the comments. I'm glad that there is so much internal enthusiasm associated with Mr. Pincus (of Prefix and Prefast fame) but what I'd like to hear more of is not so much the journey he is rallying but the destination.

Okay, back to the hill. Ooo, that cloud looks like Ray Ozzie, confused, pondering, 'Dude, what is this bag, and why have you left me holding it?'

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft

Microsoft FY07Q4 Results

Here comes the fourth quarter results for FY07 and some peering into what FY08 has in store. Well, as much as we're willing to reveal. My favorite post analysis sites for the results:

• MSFTExtremeMakeover,
• Mr. Joe Wilcox, and
• Mr. Todd Bishop.

I'll summarize what folks are saying and link to their posts later.

Some articles started showing up earlier in the week forecasting what the results might be and that totally got derailed by Mr. Peter Moore leaving Microsoft for a better, family friendly job location with Electronic Arts in the Bay area. I know a lot of gopher heads popped up questioning, "Accountability? In action? At Microsoft?"

That was quickly put to rest. Of course, even if Mr. Moore was asked to head for the nearest exit, we wouldn't want to piss him off over at EA. So, I'm marking this up as how it was presented, with zero amount of accountability being exhibited. Again. Whatever the SPSA metrics are for this upcoming shower of gold, I'm sure none of the bad news around Xbox will affect the payout.

What do you think will be the interesting parts of the end of FY07 results?

What questions would you ask if you were on the conference call?

Some topics:

Vista: how is deployment? And analysts will probably fish for news on SP1, given that SP1 should increase Vista deployment. To me, the secondary issue is around Vista 3rd party drivers. I still walk into people's office and see some cool device and hear, "Yeah, well, when the Vista drivers are released I'll be able to use it again..."

Oh, and hey Windows Vista: you remember Chris Pirillo? Let me jog your memory: (1) Copying Xerox, Vista Mistakes, and VP and Perspectives (2) There's Ray! Plus: Plenty of Room For More Brains at Microsoft. Don't shrug him off as a whiny complainer nor doubt his ability to get press, because last week the Chris Pirillo focused "6 Months Later, a Report Card on Vista" / "Six Months On, Vista Users Still Griping" / "Little Annoyances Still Big Vista Issue" took its sweet time spreading to about every news site I read.

Acquisitions: probably we should hear a question about aQuantive and how things are looking there. It would be nice to also conjecture about other acquisition targets... I know, we can't. Again, I would enjoy Microsoft acquiring Facebook and then letting only the best people help them build it out (e.g., sorry, no one from Spaces allowed - you had your chance and you'd probably be bitter). Of course, when it comes to acquiring Facebook, Scoble says we ain't good enough.

Duuude. We're well over having the Microsoft network membership pass one-fifth the number of current employees. We're not just dating Facebook here. We're (leaning forward with a knowing glance) involved. Ooo! I'm going to invite Bill Gates to be my friend on Facebook right now... okay, done.

Staffing: last year, Mr. Bishop was the first to gather that Microsoft had an explosive year in employee growth. How bad is it going to be this year? And who the hell are all these people? What parts of the company are growing and what is the demand that the growth is addressing? How the hell can we sustain this growth globally let alone poor little cluster f'd Redmond / Bellevue? It just makes my language go to pot.

Anti-Trust concerns: the elephant in the room. Do we expect any discussion about Europe progress, let alone the US? We yanked Google's anti-trust chain for the DoubleClick acquisition, now they are yanking our anti-trust nipple ring around desktop search.

(Later...)

Follow-up posts to our earnings announcement:

• Seattle-PI: Microsoft quarterly profit, ad revenues rise
• Seattle-PI: Slowing of headcount growth! Microsoft hiring slows from last year's record pace - Mexican Hat Dance time! Yes, I'm one broken blogger, down to celebrating moderate employee growth vs. actually shrinking and mini-fying Microsoft. Perhaps we finally woke up from our hiring bender, uttered, "Holy frickin' Nelly!" and things will start being far more reasonable.
• Mary Jo Foley: New hires, datacenter investments evident in Microsoft earnings - looks at data center growth and employee growth in certain parts of the company (hmm, maybe the field is exploding).
• MSFTextrememakeover Q4-07 Earnings
• Microsoft Watch - Corporate - Microsoft Q4 2007 by the Numbers - Office 2007 outshining Vista?

I was surprised that Liddell shrugged off the importance of Vista SP1. If it was an attempted Jedi Mind Trick, he forgot to wave his hand.

Other goings on:

• Oooo, you wiley Facebook, I'm even more intrigued with your acquisition of Parakey. I've had my eye on Parakey for a while given that they started implementing something that reminds me of a question Dave Winer posed on Scripting News way back in the late 90s. And of course, the wine loving devil on my shoulder is just tickled with the prospect of Microsoft acquiring Facebook while Blake Ross is an employee.
• What do you know, Google stock can actually go the other direction.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft MSFT

Fetching Data experiment (CacheLookup property)

Playing around with certain table properties at work, trying to improve performance, I decided to post some results today.

The original job was taken from the Dynamics AX Development training materials (III and IV), which, taking the opportunity, I would like to recommend for reading. Especially I enjoyed chapters dealing with performance issues (a topic that is very interesting to me :))

Well, they write about measuring caching there, which they, actually, shouldn't do, because the job they provided won't work in DAX 4.0 (the counters will be zero) (I guess it was simply copy-pasted from DAX 3.0 training materials - you should never use copy-paste, especially with code :) - trust me, been there many times)

Anyhow, I modified the job a little bit to make my research a little easier.
Here are the results I have received for SalesTable:

Basically, running the job may help you decide, what is the best CacheLookup property value for a given table. 
But first priority is reading about it in tutorials or the Inside Dynamics AX book (basically, it's almost the same information on this topic)

You can do some R&D yourself by downloading the job: download
Have fun!

Also visit the homepage

Whether Life Here or Life There, Life is Short.

Long time, no blog. I'm lurking indoors today, taking a break from the abundant northwest-summer sun and re-hydrating. Lots and lots has happened over the past couple of weeks. Let's see what we can cover here before the wonderful weather becomes too much of a temptation...

The Long $1,000,000,000 Kiss Goodnight: now come on, how can you have to put aside $1,000,000,000 to cover faulty Xbox 360s and not go and hold President Bach or VP Moore or VP Allard accountable and fire them? Let's go back in time to November 2005 and a comment I made then about what I called the Ring of Fire showing up on the initial 360s:

First, XBox sucked up one billion dollars from our company and broke that division's wallet. Now is 360 going to break our heart, too?

I can only have faith that this is one place where Microsoft will endeavor for quick turn-around to get replacement units out, no questions asked. With a kiss... give the folks having to exchange their XBox a bunch of Live Points. And I hope this is just a small percent of units. One poll had 14% of people responding that they had a 360 brick shortly after playing it for a while. Oy!

Let's see, over nineteen months later we fess up and - although it seems forced - we do the right thing and cover warranties for our customers. In the meantime, a lot of customers with broken boxes have been jerked around (including Microsofties, complaining internally about how awful it is to try to get their 360 repaired). Look, either at ship time we knew about this problem and decided to ship or we didn't know about this problem and kept shipping once it showed up. Either way, it's a screw-up in knowing and going forward or not doing enough to know about the quality of the box. Deming weeps.

And now we're putting aside a billion, bringing up the bitter memory of the billion point five we deferred because Vista was so late to ship that it missed back-to-school and the holidays so we had to cover with Vista upgrade coupons. It is only because of the abundance of cash left over from the successful cash cow days that we're able to screw up like this, dig into our deep pockets, drop the money on the floor, shrug our shoulders and shuffle on. We're lazy and we're lax and no one is being taken to the public woodshed for this, and I would be surprised as hell if anyone on the Board of Directors, or the shareholders meeting, actually spoke up and said, "Hey, um, excuse me, but, this Xbox business thing seems to be a black-hole money pit. Is it wise to continue investing here? How about spinning them off so that they had to survive on their own decision making?"

The only thing I've seen the Xbox business accomplish, besides making a lot of money disappear, is make Sony dash themselves against the rocks with the PS3. Monkey-see, monkey-do even better. In the meantime, the Nintendo little piggy gleefully exclaims, "Wii! Wii! Wii!" all the way to the bank.

Additional new orifice ripping: MSFTextrememakeover What's another $1B among friends. An interesting thought coming out of that is people wondering about Mr. Bach's loving indulgence in selling MSFT stock is his bailing out while he could and if there are any concerns about the SEC investigating here.

Life and Work Changes: some goodbyes I noticed recently:

Josh Ledgard (of the power couple Josh & Gretchen): Today is my last day at Microsoft.

Adam Herscher: Why big company life didn't cut it - snippet:

So, with that, there were only two things I couldn't get at Microsoft (and probably not at any other large corporation) that helped lead to my decision to leave:

1. Any semblance of something like a work hard-play hard culture
2. The ability to take big risks and reap big rewards

[...] allow me to propose one potential solution. I would love to see a large company like Microsoft give employees some sort of equity in the products they work on, in addition to company stock, thereby providing a risk/reward system in which one's work can have a direct impact on their stake in equity.

Adam's comment aligns with my belief that Microsoft needs to be more focused on team rewards and less focused on individual non-team aligned achievements that is coupled with demoralizing bucketing and 10% witch-hunts. My friend from a large technology company showed me some old internal memos that detailed (a) what the group's goals were for the coming year, (b) a progress update on those goals, and (c) what the bonus payout to everyone would be based on achieving those goals. Nice.

Life at Google: Adam's post links to an email circulating inside of Microsoft that reflects on working at Google. Eh, I wanted to read about the review and compensation system and how the Googlers felt about it, fairness-wise. No such luck, but probably right now Life at Google is so much wild fun that the review and compensation system is minor. Everything else in that post sounds like stuff we already knew or suspected. I think we have to live with the fact that Google culture is - and will remain - different than Microsoft culture. We're too big and systematic to go and try to retrofit a Google work-environment across Microsoft, no matter how alluring it might be. I think our only choice would be to break-up into four smaller companies and then reboot and rewire the culture in each to meet the demands and responsibilities for the new company. For instance, an Office culture has to be different (probably quite stodgy) than an online / Windows Live culture. The imposition of a mono-culture right now is slowing us down.

The comments in that post would make for an interesting short essay: Google lovers, Microsofties demanding blood, bemused outsiders, and the occasional interesting insight. Oh, and this one from Andrew Gamache, out hiring the best engineers:

So now it’s clear there’s no career development at Google; and little at Microsoft… If you’re at either one, it’s time to take your future more seriousely than they do. [...] PS- The OS engineer behind XBox, and several of the guys on the original Google Earth Team are happy clients of mine- some makeing over 700K in salary a year– NO options or stock. Cash. Every year. at 28 Years old.

485 comments and trackbacks to this point. Wowza. I can tell you, given the desire to understand how Google works, a Mini-Google blogger would get lots and lots of attention right now. Or an insider could wrap it in a parody with a Fake Sergey / Fake Larry / Fake Eric blog. Those certainly seem to be all the rage nowadays. As evidence, we don't have just one Fake SteveB, we have 2.0!

Life is Short: there's lot more to talk about today, but I've decided to go out and enjoy the rest of the beautiful day, so let me close with the below comment that came in on July 3rd that I'm exceptionally grateful for the commenter taking time to share:

Today is approximately my one year anniversary of leaving MSFT after 11 years. I was a Level 67 woman, banging my head against the wall (or more like glass ceiling) trying to make "partner" and killing myself & my marriage in the process.

I now work for a hard-working start-up in Seattle (30+ people and growing) and couldn't be happier. While not every day is perfect, it's refreshing to read this blog and realize what a different world I am in now:

1. The people I work with are really smart(a number of our employees are of ex-MSFTies with more joining every week), motivated to do their jobs, and treat each other with dignity & respect.
2. Our Executive Management is mentally/emotionally mature, grounded in reality of business, value work-life balance, and treat the employees with honesty and respect. (see a theme here?)
3. Decisions are made quickly and executed rapidly. No grand-standing, land-grabbing, ego-boatsing, political posturing, etc. We're all pulling towards a common goal.
4. We are accountable to our deliverables, our professional behavoir, and each other. I no longer have to tolerate actions and communications from peers who hide their own incompetency behind obnoxious management styles or the protective shield of HR.
5. I recognize that when I work really hard (and I do, every day), it directly contributes to my company's success, and therefore my own.
6. Tomorrow is a holiday. I don't expect there will be much email across the team (except maybe a little from us ex-MSFTies...old habits die hard) that will be waiting for me on Thursday. I don't feel the need to have to spend a day off "catching up."

Net net - if you're spending alot of time reading this blog and have been thinking about leaving, then do it. You don't have to tolerate the working environment you're in, or feel vitimized by the realities & circumstance beyond the majority of your control. There are more feasible alternatives out there. Yes, there is some risk - and less freebies - but life is short and do you want to spend it feeling trapped, frustrated, and ultimately used?

Do what you like. Like what you do. Truly. If you're working in that kind of environment and are looking to hire talented Microsofties ready to grow and shrug off the bureaucratic systems all-around them (ever so much in evidence during this review season... oy, that review tool), a short comment here about why your company is so different and groovy would be welcome.

Because if we Microsofties can't change Microsoft to be that way, then we should at least know where's a good place to move to.

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Mini-Microsoft Microsoft