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Some Microsoft workers call for heads to roll
EETimes ^ | 3/24/2006 | Gregg Keizer

Posted on 03/26/2006 4:49:30 AM PST by twntaipan

TechWeb.com (03/24/2006 3:04 PM EST)

Microsoft employees writing to an anonymous blog are calling for the heads of high-level company executives -- including Steve Ballmer and Jim Allchin -- after the double delay debacle this week when the Redmond, Wash. developer shoved its two most profitable products into 2007.

On the Mini-Microsoft blog, which is maintained by someone who identifies himself as a Microsoft employee and goes by the nickname "Who da'Punk," an entry tagged "Vista 2007. Fire the leadership now!" has accumulated over 325 comments from in- and outsiders.

The blog was a response to the Tuesday announcement that Windows Vista would not ship in new PCs until January 2007. Thursday, Microsoft added Office 2007 to the delay train.

"Who da'Punk" got things rolling Tuesday with this entry:

"After Allchin's email went out I imagined all the L68+ partners from the Windows division gathered together and told, 'You are our leadership. When we succeed, it is directly because of how you lead and manage your teams. When we fail, it is directly because of how you lead and manage your teams. We've had enough of failure and we've had enough of you. Drop off your badge on the way out. Your personal belongings will be dropped off at your house. Now get out of my sight.'"

Others commenting on the blog quickly took up the cry.

"[steve] ballmer: fired!

[jim] allchin: fired!

[brian] valentine: fired!

we cannot ship our OS. this is not a joke. if we don't take some radical decisions, the company is over."

And:

"Ballmer has presided over the fall of Microsoft. [His] days are numbered."

And:

"Accountability should start at the top. My commitment was to deliver on my component. Allchin's commitment was to release Windows . . . . and he failed to deliver."

But while the Thursday reorganization of Microsoft's Platform & Services Division shuffled several executives -- notably Steve Sinofsky from a position in the Office arm to head the Windows and Windows Live group -- no one was handed their hat.

Or were they?

Jim Allchin, who broke the bad news Tuesday and was set to retire after Vista was delivered, seems to have been put out to pasture months earlier than expected, said a source close to Microsoft. "Read what Johnson said very carefully, " he said.

In a leaked memo sent to some Microsoft employees Thursday, Kevin Johnson, the co-president (with Allchin) of the Platforms & Services Division, wrote "As part of the next step of Jim's transition, we discussed when it was appropriate to move his direct reports to me, and decided that this organization change was the right time."

But even as some on the Mini-Microsoft blog wished for Maria Antoinette-style retribution, other employees defended the decision, if not the people who made it.

"Yes, it's painful. Yes, it's embarrassing," wrote Robert Scoble, a company technical evangelist, on his Scobelizer blog. "But I'd rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product."

"I certainly agree that lots of mistakes were made all the way up and down the chain," wrote another anonymous Microsoft worker. "But this is the right thing to do. In the longer view, 2, 3, 5 years from now...this will have been the right call.

"Put it to you this way. At the end of this year, do you want Vista? Or do you want XP SP2 ME? 'Cause it's god****** impossible to deliver Vista by August...but we sure as heck can give ya XP SP2 ME any time."

The internal reaction may grow even hotter if, as some analysts have predicted, Microsoft delays Vista and Office more than once.

"Microsoft's given itself some leeway," said Joe Wilcox, an analyst with JupiterResearch, on Friday. "As far as selling season, January might as well be July."

Thursday, Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, also bet that Vista will be delayed again, and that the second (or third) time, the pain would minimal. "The next delays won't hurt as much," said Cherry.

But by the venom let loose on Mini-Microsoft, that's not a done deal.


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; Technical
KEYWORDS: blog; microsoft; vista
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Trouble in Redmond?
1 posted on 03/26/2006 4:49:34 AM PST by twntaipan
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To: twntaipan
Image hosting by TinyPic

2 posted on 03/26/2006 4:55:23 AM PST by billorites (freepo ergo sum)
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To: twntaipan

Trying to decipher what goes on at Microsoft brings back memories of the old Soviet Union, where people picked through the Pravda articles trying to figure out who was in and who was out. Microsoft fits perfectly with the Soviet-style politics of Washington state.


3 posted on 03/26/2006 4:59:34 AM PST by kittymyrib
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To: twntaipan

Microsoft can't even finalize and ship a product that does little more than put their OS on par with OS X and Linux.

This is pathetic.


4 posted on 03/26/2006 5:02:46 AM PST by Terpfen (72-25: The Democrats mounted a failibuster!)
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To: twntaipan

I think the MS employees have done their job and the company heads are screwing them by delaying the release of Vista.


5 posted on 03/26/2006 5:07:45 AM PST by Paul C. Jesup
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To: Terpfen
Microsoft can't even finalize and ship a product that does little more than put their OS on par with OS X and Linux.

Coming Soon: Windows Vaporware 2007 - Beta Version*

*MS doesn't have bugs. Everything is beta. Not compatible with prior Windows OS.

6 posted on 03/26/2006 5:09:54 AM PST by peyton randolph (As long is it does me no harm, I don't care if one worships Elmer Fudd.)
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To: Terpfen
Remember back in the 60's and 70's when the Big Three were shipping cars that sucked because, with a lock on the market, there wasn't any reason not to?

And then the Japanese cars showed up. Better quality, better gas mileage, lower cost. And Detroit's answer was the Pinto and the Vega?

Microsoft Vega. You think you hate it now, but just wait until you own it!

7 posted on 03/26/2006 5:10:23 AM PST by Knitebane (Happily Microsoft free since 1999.)
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To: Knitebane

As I sit here purring away with Tiger I can only laugh.

Everything I've seen of Vista is playing catch up with the last two interations of the Apple OS.

Apple has taken huge steps, first by going to a Unix based OS then by taking on Intel. They've bitten some painful bullets to update themselves from a competitive standpoint and to make themselves a superior product.

I don't ever expect Apple to be the dominant OS or even gain more than 10-15% market share. However they have set numerous benchmarks that have left MS in the dust.

It's incredibly hard though to steer a megacorporation like MS. If you're replacing the OS for 90% of the world's computers with a decade or more of legacy software you have to have as robust a successor as possible.

My biggest complaint, as a Mac user, about MS is that Office 2004 really kind of screwed us with only having Word, Excel, Power Point and Entourage (Outlook for you Windows users.). We're missing Visio, Front Page, Project, Publisher and some other components.

I still won't go Windows.


8 posted on 03/26/2006 5:35:00 AM PST by PittsburghAfterDark
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Comment #9 Removed by Moderator

To: Terpfen
I dropped in to the blog this article mentions--pretty interesting stuff.

The best comment I read was this:

Quit crying and just get linux!

Fedora Core released version 5 on March 20. It was developed at a cost of...zero. To get it to install on your computer costs...zero.

It just works. It does not, however, do many XP standards, such as BSOD, virus and spyware.

10 posted on 03/26/2006 5:44:00 AM PST by twntaipan (John McCain: Your 15 minutes of fame were up long, long ago.)
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To: twntaipan; Terpfen; All
Just a quick Microsoft question here. I know Brian Valentine was instrumental in a push to Offshore much development work a couple of year ago. As reported in Information Week or E-Week or one of those rags, he was quoted: "Think India ! Two for the price of one!"

How much of Windows Vista Bleak Landscape was developed offshore?

The "Cheap Crap" theory.

11 posted on 03/26/2006 6:11:48 AM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: Herodian
They should get a team together and jsut start fresh, with effecient and security minded code.

They did. It was called Windows NT. We all see how that worked out.

They they promised that Longhorn would be a complete rewrite. That didn't work out so well, and now Microsoft seems to be ready to rewrite 60% of the Longhorn (Vista) code anyway, due to major problems. And they're pulling in programmers from the XBox division and stating that it will be done in 9 months.

Vista is going to be a "Friday" car.

12 posted on 03/26/2006 7:09:43 AM PST by Knitebane (Happily Microsoft free since 1999.)
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To: PittsburghAfterDark
For Visio, try OmniGraffle. It's even included with new pro Macs.

There are a lot of different substitutes for FrontPage. Since I write my HTML by hand, I don't know much about them.

What really hurts us with corporate users is Access. It's a lousy database but people get sent Access databases all the time and are expected to be able to use them.

I thought this was interesting from the article:

"But this is the right thing to do. In the longer view, 2, 3, 5 years from now...this will have been the right call.

When do they expect Vista's replacement to come out? In a decade?

D

13 posted on 03/26/2006 7:24:05 AM PST by daviddennis
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To: twntaipan; All
....looky here........http://www.ajaxwrite.com/....pretty good knife in the side of Microsoft.

Free.

easily down loadable...

LOL
14 posted on 03/26/2006 7:32:25 AM PST by taxed2death (A few billion here, a few trillion there...we're all friends right?)
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To: taxed2death

Bad Link-ola!


15 posted on 03/26/2006 7:35:40 AM PST by Abcdefg
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To: grey_whiskers

Actually, the Indian programmers were all imported to the Microsoft campus at Redmond. Take a look at the IEBlog--one of the posts has a photograph of the IE development team. All Indian.

I wouldn't exactly blame Vista's delays on the nationality of the programmers, though. This is a management issue, pure and simple. Good programmers are easy to come by--good management is not. Jim Alchin is retiring, so it's not as if Microsoft could fire him, but Ballmer at the least really should go.


16 posted on 03/26/2006 7:47:56 AM PST by Terpfen (72-25: The Democrats mounted a failibuster!)
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To: twntaipan

No thanks. Linux still has issues with usability and support. It's certainly far beyond where it was even two years ago, but it's still not enough.

At this point the only true alternative is OS X, and I hesitate to call it an alternative given how far ahead OS X is of everything else.


17 posted on 03/26/2006 7:49:12 AM PST by Terpfen (72-25: The Democrats mounted a failibuster!)
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To: ShadowAce

MS ping...


18 posted on 03/26/2006 7:49:58 AM PST by tubebender (BIG REWARD for my missing tag line. Please advance a security deposit to enter...)
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To: twntaipan

Don't get me started about Fedora.

It just works. It is damn easy to install.

I also have Solaris 10. It is hard as hell to install. It does not work out of the box the way Fedora does.


19 posted on 03/26/2006 7:50:28 AM PST by Sam the Sham (A conservative party tough on illegal immigration could carry California in 2008)
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To: Knitebane

"Friday car".

I like that.


20 posted on 03/26/2006 7:51:26 AM PST by Sam the Sham (A conservative party tough on illegal immigration could carry California in 2008)
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