Recently I found out that we no longer had office supplies on the floor of the building I work in. Now if you need to grab a pen or get a marker after your last one runs out in the middle of a meeting you need to go upstairs. Folks have given me the impression that this is due to the recent cost cutting drive across the company. At first, I couldn't figure out why disrupting people by making them go to another floor for office supplies would cut costs.

Then it hit me. When faced with having to go to another floor to find office supplies the average geek desk jockey will probably say "forget it" and do without. The immediate saving is less office supplies used. But I suspect this is only phase one of the plan. Most people at MSFT believe that on average 50% - 75% of projects and features an employee works on in his career in the b0rg cube never ship. This is all just wasted cash. The best way to nip this is in the bud by preventing people from being able to write down their ideas or whiteboard different ideas with coworkers thus spreading the meme about new projects or features. The amount of money saved by not investing in new money losing ventures like *** and **** would be immense. It all makes a weird kind of sense now.

Seriously though. I've been reading blog posts like Dangerous Transitions and Dangerous Thoughts which call for Microsoft to start performing targetted layoffs instead of cost cutting with skepticism. When I think of the ways Microsoft spends immense amounts of cash for little return I don't worry about John Doe the tester who files on average less bugs than the other members of his team or Jane Doe the developer who writes buggier code than the rest of her team. I think about things like MSN, XBox, the uncertainty around MBF after purchasing Great Plains for billions, embarking on overambitious attempts to rewrite most of the APIs in Windows in an effort that spans 3 product units, spending years working on ObjectSpaces then canning it because there was potential overlap with WinFS and various other white elephant projects.  

All of the above cost from millions to billions of dollars and they are the result of decisions by folks in middle and upper management. I'm glad that Microsoft has decided not to punish rank and file employees for what are basically missteps by upper management in contravention to the typical way corporate America does business.

Ideally, we'd see our upper management address how they plan to avoid missteps like this in future instead of looking for minor bumps in the stock price and our paychecks by sacrificing some low level employees and coworkers.


 

Monday, September 6, 2004 8:17:06 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Dell did a "reduction in force" back in early 2001 - canned around 5% of the workforce (mostly in the US) and put the survivors on furlough for a week.

I would say that was the wake up call for many employees. The company morale hit an all time low and didn't recover for 18 months. But worse than that, folks stopped working on anything risky for fear of being on the list if the ax fell again.

Dell got lucky with the timing too. Back in 2001 the job market was in the toilet, so even the good people had few opportunities. Now would be a bad time because companies are hiring again (as witnessed by the cold calls I get and the 5x increase in jobs appearing in my weekly Monster.com agent search)

If MS wanted to do the same, they should have done it after XP and .NET launched, before folks started kicking over to Longhorn related stuff - remove the chaff, keep the best folks, and motivate them with the vision of how they're about to change the world (again).

On a related note, I'm *soooo* glad I didn't move to MS last year. After they messed me about so much interviewing me for totally inappropriate positions for 2 months, I've got to say I could see a lot of your problems coming... After two months you'd think they'd have a pretty good idea what I do, yet no... more positions that weren't what I do. It wasted my time, and it wasted the time of a lot of folks at MS.

If the company over all works as a macro version of what I had to deal with, I'm sorry, but Google deserves to eat you alive.
XPathNavigator For President
Tuesday, September 7, 2004 4:12:59 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Good post, I agree that the high-order bit should be the decision-making and planning processes. The opportunities for improvements are truly staggering.

It's true that poor decision-making and planning tend to be problems at most large companies. But I don't think that's a good excuse. These skills can be taught, and the hiring and management practices can be tweaked to develop good planners and decision-makers.
Tuesday, September 7, 2004 6:44:31 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Great post.

Microsoft is successful because they take risks (such as the Great Plains acquisition, etc.). If they weren't taking risks and growing, they would not be as successful in the long term, even though they would appear more successful in the short term. They are trying to beat the innovator's dilemma.

But I do agree that they shouldn't layoff people to cut costs. And it seems that Microsoft is avoiding doing that so far.
Thursday, September 9, 2004 11:32:12 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Darrell's comments apply only to the highest levels. Sure, execs like Bill and Steve approach things like MBF and Longhorn as long-term bets. But down in the trenches is where the money is wasted. There's too little accountability and oversight of middle and lower management.

The public never even finds out about half the crap that M$ tries out but throws away. The stuff we do find out about -- X#, ObjectSpaces, etc. -- alone amount to tens of millions of wasted dollars.

M$ gets away with this only because they have so much money. Smaller companies are just as dependent on long-term bets, but they have to be smarter about how they go about making these long-term gambles. This is M$'s biggest weakness: That it can so easily afford to make mistakes.

Or as Joshua put it - the opportunities M$ has for improvements are staggering.
Me 1, M$ 0
Thursday, September 9, 2004 11:32:21 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Darrell's comments apply only to the highest levels. Sure, execs like Bill and Steve approach things like MBF and Longhorn as long-term bets. But down in the trenches is where the money is wasted. There's too little accountability and oversight of middle and lower management.

The public never even finds out about half the crap that M$ tries out but throws away. The stuff we do find out about -- X#, ObjectSpaces, etc. -- alone amount to tens of millions of wasted dollars.

M$ gets away with this only because they have so much money. Smaller companies are just as dependent on long-term bets, but they have to be smarter about how they go about making these long-term gambles. This is M$'s biggest weakness: That it can so easily afford to make mistakes.

Or as Joshua put it - the opportunities M$ has for improvements are staggering.
Me 1, M$ 0
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