Puppies, Flowers, Rainbows and Kittens
Sarcasm and vitriol wrapped in a twee bow.
Mary Jo Foley sussed it out from a talk he gave at Wharton.
In the talk he’s asked about screwing over partners, and he basically says, “fuck ’em.” yeah, great idea Steve. What about fucking over your customers who bought music with Plays For Sure DRM or bought devices with it? Yeah, that is gonna encourage people to buy Zunes…
I don’t doubt Mr. Gutmann’s scholarship, nor his motives. The scenario he paints seems extreme. Extremely stupid. Now, I worked on Windows Media many years ago, and I can totally see a document like this coming out of that group. There were many good and smart people on that team, but they didn’t always have the best interests of the users at heart. Not on purpose, of course. They just didn’t understand users; at all.
Anyway, I decided to find Microsoft’s take on this message, and I was blown away by the fact that there wasn’t any. none. I mean, something like this surfaces and a week goes by with no response from Microsoft at all? I mean, a PM should be running around with his hair on fire, giving up his New Year’s Eve, putting together a coherent response for a press release or at least a blog post. The silence is as damning as the original article in my mind.
Dr. Dobb’s | Microsoft Seeks RSS Patents; Blogosphere Worries | December 22, 2006
This isn’t really so surprising actually. I was at the Gnomedex where MS announced the big RSS features in Vista (didn’t really hear to much about them after that). It makes sense that they would file some patents around that stuff. However, the patents seem pretty broad given how late they came to the RSS game.
I h8 you.
Sure, I have a lot more e-mail than most folks, and I understand that performance might be affected by the quantity, and for the most part Entourage still works pretty good with 200,000+ email messages (except where it hangs for 15 minutes at a time while it is doing something once in a while), but when I actually try to do the good thing, and start deleting mailboxes full of messages, it isn’t cool for you to hang there, deleting 40 messages an hour for HOURS. So, now I gotta delete messages in small batches so as not to upset whatever delicate balance there is in your poorly written software.
I guess the Entourage software interview process doesn’t include corner cases, huh?
[Update 2.24.07- Macworld finally provided a fix]
Back in 2000, I was looking at the coming technological convergence centered around the living room.
At the time, you had two players, Sony and Microsoft. (Apple hadn’t really entered the picture yet). There was no question who was going to win, it was Sony. Sony had just released the PS2 and it was impressive. There was talk about how you would be able to add a hard drive and turn it into a tivo-like thing. It was ready for the internet. It was going to replace your PC! The PS2 was a PC, but with an operating system tuned to media.
The XBox was also cool, but it was a game machine, and nothing more. Microsoft had released the XBox in a huge push. They knew that Sony was coming after the PC and they had to retaliate (they already had the MediaPC at this point). It is now six years later, and Microsoft is winning, and it is all Sony’s fault. Sony has followed in the immortal footsteps of Netscape, Real Networks and countless others who lost to Microsoft by throwing away their technological lead (rather than having Microsoft beat them). Sony lost before it really got in the game. XBox Live came out and it was sucky, but it got better. The Sony equivalent came out much later and it never got less sucky. Then the PSP came out, which I love, although most hate. I thought that this could have been an excellent move for Sony, but then they didn’t bother making it work with the PS2 or integrate with anything else in their convergence lineup, in fact they used it as an opportunity to foist yet another media type on the world, UMD. How’d that work out for ya, Sony?
Meanwhile, MS pumped out another console. It was another not-quite-there-but-got-better machine. Everyone said that the headstart the 360 had on the PS3 wasn’t going to matter, because the hardcore would wait. And I think they did, for the most part. And then Sony blew it again: a humongo price tag (you thought that the 360 was expensive?!?), half-done software, a new non-industry-standard media type, a trickle of production units, WTF Sony? To be fair, there are some serious issues with the 360 as well; but, by the time the PS3 had come out, Microsoft had fixed a bunch of them.
This irks me, because I really thought that if someone was going to make this work and seemless, it was going to be Sony. They invented the freaking walkman! They work both sides of the aisle, technology and content. They should have won this market years ago. I’m not ready to call them out yet: they are a huge company, they have a lot of compelling products. If they could finally stitch them together seemlessly, they could win. I don’t think they will though.
Now it is up to you Apple. You’ll win… if you don’t do something really stupid…
(disclaimer: I own Microsoft and Sony stock)
ExtremeTech has this super scary matrix to help you figure out which version of Vista you should buy.
Which Vista Edition is Right for You?: The Vista Editions
Now, there are two ways to look at this diagram. One is Microsoft is Stupid and the other is Microsoft is Evil. Having all these different versions is going to do nothing but confuse customers. How many times has this lesson been proven?
The Microsoft is Stupid argument goes like this: Microsoft is being good intentioned, meaning to let users pick the features they want for the price they want. This gives Microsoft customers a lot of options and options are always good, right? Having worked there for eight years, I know that the ‘soft isn’t as evil as most folks think. More, bumbling and not aware of its own size and influence. Kind of like the St. Bernard that is continually knocking things over. The folks in Vista marketing didn’t quite get the fact that the differences between all the different versions only make sense to a Software Design Engineer with a degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon. Now, when my mom goes to the store to buy her copy of Vista, she’ll just stare at them for an hour and then call me, an Engineering Manager with a degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon. While I understand the differences between the various versions of Vista, I’m gonna hafta figure out how to explain it to her. Good luck on that. “You don’t need disk encryption” “why not?” etc… Maybe this won’t matter ’cause most folks will just get the version of Vista that Dell slaps on their new machines and only the ones who care will upgrade. We’ll see.
Now, The Microsoft is Evil argument will have a lot of traction, especially on Mac fan websites and Slashdot. The argument is this: when faced with such a daunting set of options, most folks will just go for Ultimate, ’cause that must be the good one, right. No need to figure out which has what, just get the one with everything. This plays into American’s love of supersizing and Hummers. Now, when I said that Microsoft wasn’t as evil as most people thought, I should have added as a whole. There are some absolutely evil bastards working there who are just as plotting and evil as most people think. So, I think that the evil argument has some weight as well.
So, was the Vista version model the product of good-natured idiocy or soul sucking evil? Only Steve Ballmer knows.
Either way it is still stupid.
things you should know before you accept the offer
If you’re interviewing at Microsoft for a technical position, there are some things you should know:
1) In general, Microsoft interviews take all day and end with a meeting with the recruiter. If you’re finished before lunch or after a couple of hours and you aren’t doing a second day, you probably aren’t getting the job.
2) If you want a development position and you have experience, be very wary before taking (or even interviewing) for a position in support or testing. A lot of college hires come in through support or testing, but it will take a while to move to actual development from one of these positions. In the meantime, you’ll be killing a lot of time in your career that could be spent actually doing development at another company.
3) Do not take a pay cut. No matter what your potential manager or the recruiter says, it is nearly impossible to “make up the difference” in the short (or even long) term. Microsoft may try and undercut your salary requirements. Given the average raise caps these days, and the cost of living, it is pretty unlikely that you catch up on the 10K or more that Microsoft shorts you at the beginning.
4) Be realistic about your future prospects. Microsoft is a VERY large company now. You will not be the CEO. You will probably never make it to be a VP. If you are lucky, you’ll make it to Director, but you got about 50,000 people who also want that job.
5) Be very, very careful about which group you work for. Your quality of life at Microsoft is 100% dependent on which group you work for. Some groups grind their employees down like wheat. Some groups at strictly in by 9 and out by 5. Think through the questions you ask the people you interview with. Ask for honest opinions about the manager. Ask for honest opinions about schedules and work/life balance. Ask about raises and bonuses and how available they have been.
6) Check out the membership of the team. If you join an established team with many experienced people you are going to be the low man on the totem pole forever. You may learn a lot, but you are going be stuck with the crummy scores on the stack ranking; you will be the first out in the lifeboat drill; and you will be last on the list for promotions.
7) Find out what your level is going to be. Your level determines your salary range. Your level determines which jobs you can take. If you are assigned a level too low it could take years to get to where you are supposed to be. Find out what the responsibilities are for each level. If you’ve been in the industry for a decade, you probably should be at least a 62, and depending on your experience, possibly a 63 or 64. If you are leveled low, you may spend years trying to get to where you should be.
8) You will not be a millionaire. You will not be a multi hundred thousandaire. Microsoft switching from stock options to stock grants will make it hard for you to get much income beyond your salary.
9) If you live outside Seattle, check the relative costs of living between where you are now and Seattle. Seattle has become one of the most expensive cities in the country to live in. Make sure the salary you ask for and the salary you are offered take that into account.
There is my advice for the moment. I’ll add more in the future.
(this was moved over from my old blog: old URL http://www.unitcircle.com/blog/B1636488871/C573624024/E20051012224504/index.html)
