This article sums up my feelings almost…
This article sums up my feelings almost exactly. Microsoft is not successful today because people love its products, because most… [T & G Blog]
Troy links to this article, written by a former ‘Sotftie who has, in his words, “rebooted Windows one too many times.”
Part of his problem is that he no longer works there: I doubt the apostasy he describes could exist if he were still a Windows product manager. But he points out some other interesting tidbits.
* How does a company that isn’t interested in any market smaller that a billion dollars find new challenges? The iPod’s $46 million boost to Apple is not quite as insignificant as a rounding error, but it doesn’t get anyone’s attention.
* How can the head of the OS division not understand his customers’ pain when they have to upgrade to a new PC? Does he not know how his company makes a lot of its money?
What’s struck me since this whole weblogging business started is how the folks who write weblogs with MSFT seem reasonable and bright, at odds with the corporate facade of an impenetrable monolith. So on the one hand, there are humans in there. But on the other, one doesn’t get a sense they’re really in tune with the wider world. True, they’re focused on their projects and no one expects the whole company to be consumed with angst over the constant threat of the blue screen of death.
I don’t know how you get jazzed up about going to work in a place where your customers (the majority who aren’t gamers/fanboys) tolerate your products, but only just. I know someone who went over there recently to work on their new search project (This just in: MSFT sees a new business opportunity, once someone else has a headstart on it and has had their name transformed into a verb) and he seems to like it. I guess there’s a certain amount of abstraction you have to buy into, where you try not to see the big picture.
I could never do that. The big picture matters to me.