Looking Back

It's been a couple of months since I left Microsoft and moved on to other things, and the perspective has allowed me to deconstruct a few things that were hard to see when I was so close to things.

Notably, I still feel great about my decision and that it was the right thing to do. I wasn't doing anyone any favors on my team with my frustrations with the place as I kept ramming into walls that just wouldn't tumble down because of little, old me.

So here are my enduring takeaways from my tenure at Microsoft:

* Microsoft has a lot of smart people working for it.
* Most of those smart people are trying to do the right thing for customers.
* The rest of the smart people and the idiots who are doing the most damage to the company think they're doing the right thing.
* Bonus and stock awards are stacked towards people willing to sacrifice external, personal demands to Microsoft's demands.
* Compensation and leveling is highly variable in small groups for people doing the same or similar jobs.
* Most leads that I met should be ICs - they just don't have the training or support to do right to their reports.
* Most managers that I met should be leads - the Peter Principle in action for most.
* Most directors that I met should be GMs - I feel for these people; stuck between Partners/Partner wannabees and the clueless managers they have to continually correct.
* Most GMs that I met should be fired - Partner should be a reward for a job well done, not for an ass well-tongued.
* Most VPs that I met should be fired - if they were more out of touch with the front line and reality, they'd be a part of the Bush administration.
* A culling of all the bad leads, managers, directors, GMs and VPs is unlikely to happen until Microsoft has an unprofitable quarter.
* Find the good leads, managers, directors, GMs and VPs to work for - they're there.
* Many good ideas that would benefit customers are sacrificed on the altars of not invented here, political bullshit and apathy.
* Many of the smartest people I met fell into two camps: those that are burned out and those on the way to burnout.
* Most of the rank-and-file are there to pull a paycheck, while upper management thinks they're there because they want to change the world.
* The rules and polices are getting worse as rules and polices are put in place to reduce the rules and policies.
* A bad manager will screw your career worse than a major fuckup on your part.
* Politics trumps technical chops.
* Never leave good food in the fridge - someone will steal it.
* There are no teams, only loose collections of mercenaries.
* HR and LCA care more about butt-covering than providing cover for disruptive innovation.
* Informationals are the interview.
* You are not important, only the work you do is.
* Ass-kissing with poor work output is rewarded more than being blunt with great work output.
* There is life after Microsoft.

Best wishes,
CD

Orbit

"Though I'm passed one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go,"

- David Bowie

Business plan - check.

Moat in business plan - check.

Fundraising rolodex - check.

Personal cash cusion - check.

All systems go for escape orbit on September 17.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Lift-off

Another review come and gone yesterday.

(Exceeded.)

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

While it is theoretically possible to hit the high end of the range, in actual practice, it doesn't happen. The best way to describe it is that the theoretical high end is the volume of a bucket. Then, the budgeted amount of cash for the year's reviews gets poured into the bucket and the surface of the water is the real high end.

Net result?

Bait and switch.

I'd rather have more realistic numbers to aim for that I know I have a chance of being rewarded with instead of numbers that are impossible to achieve. Now that I know the top end just doesn't exist, what's the point of aiming high?

"It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now. "

Preparing for Take-off

Make sure your whole company feels like one team. Ballmer once joked at a company meeting, “Why do the different groups only clap for themselves?” - http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2007/08/will_work_for_food_why_i_left_microsoft_for_a_startup_.html

Word.

Can We Hire Them to Study Microsoft?

Bad bosses get promoted, not punished?

In [a] study to be presented at a conference on management this weekend, almost two-thirds of the 240 participants in an online survey said the local workplace tyrant was either never censured or was promoted for domineering ways.

"The fact that 64.2 percent of the respondents indicated that either nothing at all or something positive happened to the bad leader is rather remarkable -- remarkably disturbing," wrote the study's authors, Anthony Don Erickson, Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia.

They faulted senior managers for not recognizing the signs of workplace strife wrought by bad bosses. "The leaders above them who did nothing, who rewarded and promoted bad leaders ... represent an additional problem."

Hmmmmmm...........

And in the same vein:

Conformity, flattery, and favors, more than competence, make for influence in world of corporate boards, study finds

But we already intuitively know these things since we work at Microsoft, don't we?

I reiterate my second request of management at Microsoft to thin the management ranks of the non-performers and flatten the organizational hierarchy. I keep hearing how we're a data-driven company but I keep seeing blind mice when when it comes to organizational and management effectiveness data that MS Poll generates.

Orr vs. Scheisskopf while Snowden Dies and I am Dunbar

Microsoft is a study of opposites in constant dynamic tension.

Egalitarianism vs. unrestrained greed.

Transparency vs. misinformation.

Purity of mission vs. muddled deliverables.

And so on and so on and so on.

When I go to work and swipe my badge at the portal, I always get a bit of a thrill when the genuflection doesn't register. In those brief seconds before a second attempt, I am Orr, with my escape plan ready to be executed at the opportunity, never to haunt the halls again.

Then the reality of the world comes crashing back upon me as the beep-click grants my passage back into the corporate womb for more gestation. Settling at my desk and triaging my email, (because some do bleed for my attention,) and I lock back into my Scheisskopf persona, (can I get a marketing scenario card for that please?) pondering the rules I can exploit and the superiors I can impress by doing so.

And Snowden lays dying and in him I see the empty shells we sell to our customers. The only friend I had was Snowden and I didn't know him.

This forces me to take things apart and put them back together again ad nauseam in what increasingly feels like a futile attempt to make things better and extend my life.

The irony?

If our managers and leaders would get rid of the Captain Blacks, Colonel Cathcarts and the ilk like them that infest management, many of the potential Orrs would be happy to be Yossarian and be one of the boys.

Which is the entire fucking problem with this company.

When will Rohan ride to our aid?

One year later and nothing has changed.

This was going to be a different post, but recent events have forced me to wonder out loud why more people aren't contacting these people to express that some other people should be held accountable for their continued efforts to loot the corporate treasury for dollar bills to burn as bonfires to block the dinosaur from entering the living room when the mammal has snuck by to the barn and spoilt our seed stock?

I'd use another example, but I just can't decide which dead or dying horse to beat.

Every time I turn around, I see another bonfire burning to protect another isolated silo in the vast landscape that is Microsoft's corporate strategy to harness your potential for our passion.

Our passion for self-delusion by blowing shareholder's money hand over fist on pipe dream business models, strategies and leaders of average powers.

To wit:

Also in fiscal year 2004, Microsoft instituted the Shared Performance Stock Award (SPSA) program, a long-term incentive program for executives and other senior leaders that makes a significant portion of their stock-based compensation dependent upon the company's growth and customer satisfaction over a three-year period. The size of an employee's SPSA grant depends on competitive long-term compensation data, the person's job, and his or her anticipated contribution to Microsoft's long-term performance. (Source)

And so here we find ourselves again at review season. Any bets on what the SPSA (see note 14) award level will be this year? You should let the MSFT Board Compensation Committee members know what you think it should be.

Note that members of that committee set the SPSA award at their sole discretion.

Is there no one to stop this folly before the dogs of war are let loose in the courtroom?

Does this remind you of Microsoft?

Hey, it's the end of the fiscal year. People are tuning up their resumes and looking for new gigs inside the company.

Here's a cautionary tale to remind you to always look before you leap.

I thought this was pretty funny until I realized that it hit pretty close to home on the transfer issue.

Hello, my name is...

It's review season, and if you're the type who's kept your head down and worked hard and expect to be rewarded appropriately, it's time to take your head out of the sand. You work for Microsoft, where a good review really isn't about what you did but what your manager and your management chain thinks you did.

So what can you do to change the perception battle and maximize your merit, bonus and stock award?

* Do right by the company by doing good work and being customer-focused.
* Ask your manager how you're doing at least quarterly and what you can do to earn a better rating.
* Get in front of your skip-level and above managers in person, via email or at group events and tell them about the wonderful things you're doing and have done.
* Always tell them your name, your role and your manager's name.
* Cultivate internal business partners that can provide positive feedback for you.
* CYA. Document everything that can impact your review - good and bad. Don't let someone else spin your history for lack of evidence on your part.
* Keep at this through July and mid-August as calibration meeting are occurring. You want name recognition when your name appears on a list that your GM/VP has to sign off on for bonus, merit and stock awards.
* If your manager sucks at vouching for you, make sure you have a good relationship with your skip-level.
* Screwed for this year? Sandbag your commitments for next year and work hard on managing management's perception of you.

Good luck, and don't forget to tick all those boxes in the Performance tool.

Town Hall Transparency

It can be difficult to see things right in front of you if they are transparent or designed to show you some other object.

Case in point, yesterday's Microsoft Town Hall with Chris "Let me buy you breakfast to explain why the market isn't giving us a better P/E ratio" Liddel, Steve "Windows Mobile is on a rocket sled of growth and the iPhone is irrelevant" Ballmer and Lisa "Not earning enough? I guess we're not doing a good job of telling you how much you really earn." Brummel.

Watching those performances make it clear that we still have a long row to hoe before things stop getting worse and start getting better on our leadership front.

Come review time, I wish they were my skip-levels.

Bunnies!

That giant sucking sound you're starting to hear whistling past the door seals on Microsoft campus buildings are the hopes of (hundreds? thousands? tens of thousands?) employees being whisked into the void that is rapidly becoming LisaB's internal "I'm listening, but it's not in my commitments to do anything with what you tell me" blog.

The blog appears to have ground down to four camps. 1) People who will bitch about anything and everything, even when presented with positive information. 2) People who think we have some serious problems and propose serious solutions or proposals to fix things. 3) People who think things are mostly OK, and berate those in group 1 and 2 for their negativity and ungratefulness for how good we really have things and encourage people to vote with their feet if they don't like it. (Hi, Mini!). 4) The lurking group that is beginning to tune out as it appears the blog, which began with such great hopes, is a HR ploy to create the illusion that something is being done.

I was neutral on Lisa until her blog launched and it nudged my opinion of her up to positive. Six months on now and the needle has swung to negative based on her condescending comments.

Now, more than ever, it's clear that our executive leadership is completely disconnected from the reality that is working life for the lunch box crowd and that it is past time for change.

Let them eat bunnies, indeed.

Elbow Room

Overcrowding brings on all sorts of socio- and physiological problems. Depression, stress, aggression, increased risk of infectious disease, etc.

Sounds a bit like the cafeterias and bathrooms on campus, no?

It is with mixed emotions that Microsoft's chronic lack of office space issue surfaced again today.

Reading MSW's hard-hitting interview with Chris Owens makes it clear that we've turned the corner and that the future will be so bright in my future office, I'll have to wear shades. Then you read stuff like this and wonder if it will be worthwhile to hang around to luxuriate in all that space.

While it will be nice to ease the overcrowding, how about also thinning out the management ranks to create even more space? Perhaps we could start with clearing out the ones that caused the problem in the first place by authorizing the hiring binge and then not doing the simple math (more hires = need for more space)?

If something so basic as space planning has gotten so fudged up over the past few years, what does that say about other issues and endeavors?

Me? I'm heading down to my local elbow room to ponder who or what team will be the one cut the Gordian Knot that is Microsoft.

Spring Thoughts

Hey, how'd that Daylight Savings time shift work on your Outlook calendar? I pity building receptionists trying to sort out who booked which conference room first in the system before everything shifted an hour. Myself, I've only lost a few hours of standing around in meeting rooms stating, "I've had this conference room booked for months for my standing meeting." Not that the meetings themselves were all that productive when presenters read their slides instead of talking to those assembled.

Is it time for a dictator? At least dictators can get the trains to run on time.

For those "translucent-skinned" (inside MS blog joke) people who work 18 hours a day, get outside now and take a look at the cherry trees blooming. It may be the last beauty you see for a while as our Average Powers Leader starts moving the chess pieces around for FY08 planning.

Machiavelli is alive and well - it's like working on a thesis. You know you'll feel great when you're done, but it's bloody hard to get to some times when a gin and tonic is calling.

Spring weather also more people heading into the hills in the Pacific Northwest. Number two on the ten essential list is a compass. Was it just me, or was the Career Compass our HR overlords gave to us permanently affixed to point to Pain in the Ass? No wonder so many are heading to the hills.

This Just In...

For the record - Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is not responsible for the February 27, 2007 Microsoft stock price drop.

What if...

Jeebus.

I wanted to take some time off from the blog after a horrific winter storm that blew me off my axis a bit and a work environment that was starting to make slave labor sound like a better career option because I felt I was getting a bit too bitter and a bit too off-focus.

Time off was unfortunately spent watching some drivel telly show with Sir Lloyd-Webber and listening to depressing webcasts from Wall Street.

And I was thus sharply reminded why I started this bloody blog in the first place.

Microsoft's management sucks and blows.

Mr. Ballmer's most recent performance has had him pilloried in the public echo chamber because of the net result of his twaddlings, but if we keep the eye on the ball closely, we see that the stock drop is symptomatic, not systemic. Symptomatic of leadership and management's inability to capitalize on the labors and thoughts of tens of thousands of smart employees and billions of dollars of capital.

The regular town criers all have the same thing to say: it's time for Mr. Ballmer to exit.

Since everyone always talks about the weather but doesn't do anything about it, here's my butterfly wing flap: three people who could be Microsoft's next CEO. All battle-scarred turnaround executives, each brings something to the table.

A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble. Look at the quote that is attributed to this guy and what he's been able to effect with a multi-brand company. Just say "Microsoft", "brand" and "customers" in the same sentence to somebody and see how far their eyes roll up into their head. This is the guy to untangle Live and focus the factory back towards software that people want to use.

Anne Mulcahy of Xerox. She's a lifer there, but understands the engineering culture and can obviously hold her own with the misogynistic sub-culture that high-tech can sometimes breed like staph in a Pioneer Square toilet. Her keywords are "communication" and "listening". What if Microsoft had a CEO that not only listened to the employees but also knew how to act with that information?

Steven Reinemund of PepsiCo. At first blush, this comes across as a bit of a John Scully-like choice until you drill down a bit. (Though the synchronicity of this choice might presage Bill G. coming back to Microsoft...) Again, we have a global brands person who has kept a sharp eye on the bottom line.

Taking over the top job at Microsoft would be daunting. It is still profitable, still has a huge market share and still has growth momentum. It's not your ordinary turnaround gig. Might it be that the board has secret thoughts of dumping the current team, but just can't put their finger on anyone that could step up? Are we in a devil you know vs. the devil you don't situation?

Is there anyone else you think might be up to the task?

And in the "Since nobody asked" vein, couldn't you see Lafley as CEO of Platform, Products and Services, Mulcahy as CEO of Business, and Reinemund as CEO of Entertainment and Devices, all spun out as separate operating companies?

A serf can dream.

Stale Bread

Amidst wind and snowstorms,
lurches and launches,
leaders and losers,
I caught myself at times
thinking of the blog.

"I must!",
I thought, but did not.

"Now that's worthy."
I hear, but did not.

So it is time
to rest, to
read some books,
think some thoughts
before scribing yet again.

Bending to the will
is fire
yet the brand
of regret burns hotter.

Anon some morn
will be found
those thoughts
thunk,
writ in their
perpetual
orbits, echoing
across the hazy sea.

=+=+=+=
Collision Domain