After working many corporate jobs over the years, this kind of rhetoric seems trite and overused. "We are stream-lining our processes and going to empower our employees to change the world!!!!". So many corporations that fell behind the trends and are just trying to reinvent themselves to that they can get back on track use the same words. However, in this case, it seems different. Microsoft has over the past few months kinda proved that they mean it. Open sourcing .NET and other technologies, playing nice with many different startups like Xamarin to help empower and push them forward on their stack. It really does feel different and for the sake of the technology world, I hope they do. We need more than 2 giants competing in the consumer market, and we need people willing to dare to move the needle forward, pushing the bar everyday. If there is a company with the means and resources to do it, its Microsoft. I don't work there, but I hope an employee can shed some more light on the internal changes that are taking place.
It may be unfair to Nadella's abilities, but his 3000 word essay reads like typical techno fluff. This can be a red flag because other innovative CEO's write in a much more straightforward manner instead of corporate doublespeak: Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Reed Hastings, Elon Musk.
I read a book[1] about corporate speak and it opened my eyes to the fact that it's actually the lingua franca of middle managers and not visionary CEOs. I'm also convinced that practitioners of corporate-speak are truly not self-aware of how vacuous it sounds.
I wonder if venture capitalists look at corporate-speak from a founder as a red flag signaling mediocrity.
I think that practitioners of corporate-speak are surrounded by so many other people who corporate-speak that they don't realize how idiotic it sounds to everyone else. To them, they're normal words that actually mean real things – because they are normal words that actually mean real things.
I think the real issue it people who use them as buzzwords. They say 'synergize our corporate efficiencies to maximize our value proposition…' in the same way that someone else might say 'make things better': it conveys meaning, but only in the most vague and useless of terms instead of going into specifics.
Why is it so hard for people to boil down their message? Is it fear? Is it ignorance? Is it lying?
It must be some combination of these for if presented with a life and death situation I doubt corporate psycho babble would spew forth.
In general, in the words of the late/great Mr. George Carlin, "People tend to use extra words when they want something to sounds more important than it really is."
I would encourage everyone at M$, and frankly anyone that hasn't seen it, to watch George Carlin's bit about the boarding process of airlines. A couple gems worth note (that could easily be translated to corporate speak):
1. Please look around your immediate seating area
SEAT!
2. Items you may have brought on board.
Well, I may have brought my tiddly-winks collection, but I didn't, so I'm not going to look for it!
If I worked at M$, and could roll into work anytime I wanted, take off early without anyone noticing, two hour lunch breaks, and so on and so forth - I'd be scared. Layoffs are the next step after letters like these, and you're the fat.
To sum it up nicely in a way only George could do:
"More shit from the bogus captain!"
"Today I want to synthesize the strategic direction and massive opportunity I've been discussing for the last few months".
I feel jargon like this is particularly unfortunate when used in a rousing team-building speech. Maybe these words capture some nuance which could not be expressed as concisely without them, but language is also used to separate in-groups from out-groups. To me, this use of "synthesize" gives off a strong visceral sense that "this man is not one of us, he spends all his times in insular CEO-only circles". He could at least have had someone else proof-read his speech and point out things like this.
There is a lot of corporate speak. That said, he is an insider that knows what needs to be done, and is willing to make changes. I hope that he's able to pull it off.
It was way too long, but I thought this could be Microsoft's rallying cry going forward:
"We help people get stuff done."
I actually believe this could distinguish Microsoft from the likes of Google, Apple and Amazon. Google helps you find the information you're looking for. Apple gives the individual user a great computing experience. Amazon lets you buy anything at a low price.
But Microsoft is more strongly associated with work than any other software company in my mind. They should embrace this, and re-envision what it means in a post-Windows world.
Indeed. When microsoft invented Office, productivity and LOB was their plus point ever since. Then they push the productivity everywhere with Office365 to web and mobile.
He, Satya, was only helping the company to remember it's core business line and it's vision.
>I actually believe this could distinguish Microsoft from the likes of Google, Apple and Amazon.
I like how they distinguish themselves from others.
On July 22, we'll announce our earnings
results for the past quarter and I'll
say more then on what we are doing in
FY15 to focus on our core.
Ten bucks says there'll be big layoffs. On the plus side of things, I'm looking at buying a property in Seattle and this should make things just a bit easier[1].
[1] The incredible influx of new hires at Amazon has made renting generally more expensive than buying in my neighborhood. Of course, buying sucks too, as many properties are going for 10+% over list, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $1700 for a 350 square foot studio (http://www.urbnlivn.com/2014/07/06/sunset-electric-taps-into...).
Not Really. I work at Microsoft. MS has mountains of cash and they're hiring like crazy.
I agree Microsoft might not have the sexiest product that make everyone drool, but they have some products that make a ton of money and not sexy at all. e.g SQL Server
I spent four years working on Visual Studio. Your product's management UI is one of the key things I worked on. You're going to be fine. Your peers in Bing, MSN or Nokia are not likely to be so lucky.
Also: I bet you ten bucks (USD) that major layoffs are announced by the end of the month.
I'm hearing numbers ranging from 5-15% of the company. I'd say that a major layoff is anything as big or bigger than the 2009 layoffs that cut 5,000 people. 5% is about 6,000 people. 15% is about 19,000 people.
Oh wow, after the first few screens you get an "if I repeat it enough maybe it will be true?!" feeling :-(
Also, this: On July 22, we'll announce our earnings results for the past quarter and I'll say more then on what we are doing in FY15 to focus on our core. <screen after screen of corporatespeak>
I wish I cared enough to place a bet that those reports aren't positive...
If everything is cloud and mobile, I hope they don't forget people who want to user a PC without that. It would be horrible to be required to have a cloud account to login to my computer.
It's not required, but Windows 8.1 pushes you very strongly to log into your Microsoft account, and to create one if you haven't already. If you don't, most of the built-in Metro (er, Modern) apps won't work, including some like Calendar which you'd think shouldn't need it.
Further, if/when you finally break down and sign into your MS account, you have to use it to sign into your computer from then on, instead of using the password you set when you created your local user account. So unfortunately, the scenario you described is pretty much already here for Windows users.
If Microsoft wants to fix something, fix the thinking behind that.
Microsoft has an awful history of trying to "leverage" assets like Windows to try to get people to use things like IE or Bing or whatever. But when Microsoft uses leverage, customers feel forced. I don't want Microsoft to force me to have an online account! I just want to do what I want with my computer, not what Microsoft wants me to do, and I don't want to have to fight Microsoft to do it.
I'm tired of having to fight them for control of my computer for the last 15 years. If they want to change, the best change they can make is to change their attitude about who actually owns my PC.
This time it seems it's the other way around: people are asking for more cloud and mobile, thereby dragging Windows on PC towards that unified cloud ecosystem their two leading competitors already have, possibly at the cost of those not wanting that.
The core of the message is an admission that, while still a massive component of their business due to sheer inertia, Windows on typical PC hardware is not what makes Microsoft relevant anymore. IOW Microsoft clearly aims at not becoming the next IBM.
That's already more or less the case with Windows 8/8.1.
Although there are contrived ways around it, generally speaking you'll need a "Live" account to login and that also hooks up your "OneDrive" and so on.
Having the first user being local is pretty hidden if you do a normal install (straightforward if you know how, but it is very obscurely described in the UI).
But if you install when offline it's the default alternative :-)
They've been trying for the last few years to copy apple's walled garden model when realistically their greatest strength was the fact that they weren't an overly restricted platform.
I'm not talking about Windows. Xbox is different. Xbox has always been a walled garden. The difference is that Xbox is a lot more exclusive than the app stores that everyone is now fond of.
My take is that Nadella's Microsoft will push more products that work with already existing products in a continuing effort to create/enforce a closed ecosystem. This might be a shift in emphasis for MS, from revenue to user-experience, but the underlying instinct seems the same as it always was: lock-in the customers.
And this has proven to be a great money-making strategy in the past. But for it to work it seems you have to control the dominant platform, and/or have a few really-great products, and/or have a killer brand. And MS has some of these: the desktop platform, workplace tools, a pretty-good brand.
But the dominant platform has shifted, the brand is waning, and MS is losing its lock-in. A truly radical MS strategy would be to build products that communicate using standard protocols. To build tools that are part of an open ecosystem. That really would be customer focused.
But it's not gonna happen. It's not a business model MS grew up with. It's not in their DNA.
Here's the thing: To get to the point where they could start trying to lock people in, Microsoft first had to build the platform that everybody wanted to be on. That was 30 years ago, but they knew how to do that, once upon a time.
That's where they need to go now. Not back to locking people in, but back to building stuff that's so good, everyone wants to use it.
Nobody's put more good software into more people's hands than Microsoft. But since the early 2000's, I feel like they've lost their hardcore productivity edge. Their software has become this endless march of shiny things and fads. I rely less and less on their products every day.
The old microsoft that didn't mind being hated was a good thing. They relished being the target and they drove competition whenever they didn't succeed in outright squashing it. I can't see how Microsoft can get back to being the big bad enemy again. Maybe they still are that for folks, I dunno, as a software guy, I don't feel them in my life and I haven't for years.
Productivity is a bit of an odd duck for Microsoft to focus on. Not that it's not a worthwhile thing, but there are contradictory demands in that regard with respect to the expertise of your user. A system that a novice might find intuitive an expert might find incredibly irksome.
I wanted to submit the original memo, but unfortunately it's a the same URL [1] that was used to announce Nadella's appointment as CEO, so already showed up in another HN story [2]
I bet that not every customer of MS wants the mobile-first and cloud-first experiences. In order to push forward, they have to slam down a lot of existing models and platforms, e.g., the Windows before 8 and Office before 365, and doing these does not feel painless to MS, IMHO. They must be facing difficult choices in the years to come.
I see they're moving in the direction of Amazon regarding company culture, 'First, we will obsess over our customers.'. I wonder if this is due to companies sharing so many employees over the years.
No, fuck you. We don't want you, and the worst nightmare of all for you, we don't need you, at all.
The world is a better place without microsoft.
Shills can downvote me into oblivion all they want but that doesn't change the fact that when monopolies don't exist, we vote with our wallets, and both Apple and Samsung are getting all my money nowadays, Google gets my eyeballs, Ubuntu gets my love.
