Steve Ballmer on blogging

September 16 2005

I'm sure many a blogger will be linking to the new BusinessWeek story, "Troubling Exits at Microsoft".  It's a fascinating look inside the bureaucracy and employee morale at Microsoft.

What you might miss is the BusinessWeek Online extra, "Steve Ballmer Shrugs Off the Critics".  This is interesting, emphasis mine:

Q: Some of this sentiment comes out in blogs like Mini-Microsoft and others. Do you read those?
A: I do not.

Q: Are you aware of them?
A: I know there is a blog called Mini-Microsoft.

Q: But is information from those blogs getting to you?
I have lots of sources of information about what's going on at the company. I think I have a pretty good pulse on where we are and what people are thinking. I'm not sure blogs are necessarily the best place to get a pulse on anything. People want to blog for a variety of reasons, and that may or may not be representative.
It will be interesting to see what Scoble has to say on this, or the hundreds of other Microsoft bloggers.

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [25]

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  1. 1  William Tell  | 9/16/2005 1:25:17 PM

    MS is turning into a bit of a dinosaur, just like IBM under Thomas J. Watson. A lot of stupid mistakes are being made by MS, just like Watson made. Ballmer is the new Watson:) History does indeed repeat itself!

    p.s.

    Tell IBM that the killer blogger app. is a spell checker (copy what gmail has).

  1. 2  Dan Wieringa  | 9/16/2005 1:59:58 PM

    (parenthesis mine)

    I'm not sure blogs are necessarily the best place to get a pulse on anything. People want to blog for a variety of reasons, and that may or may not be representative (of the image our marketing dept. would like MS to have with the IT community).

  1. 3  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 9/16/2005 2:44:24 PM

    Hilarious.

    And on the week - PDC - where they wanted to fill the airwaves with innovative new technology.

    Such as the much-improved Mr Clippy, or perhaps the new printer drivers in Visa.

    And listening to Steve "The Chair" Balmer try and defend his miserable regime ?

    Oh dear.

    I smell a shareholder uprising.

    Cue 3 years chaos at Microsoft.

    ---* Bill

  1. 4  Bob http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 9/16/2005 3:47:05 PM

    Robert Scoble has responded to these articles:

    { Link }

    I'd echo Robert's sentiments. I've only been at Microsoft for a short time but I *like* working here. I agree with Ballmer that blogs aren't necessarily the best place to get a pulse on anything. It’s certainly not the *only* place to get a pulse. The people I work with and other people I've met here are genuinely happy to be here and passionate about what they do.

    There are plenty of bloggers at Microsoft. Some of them are critical of decisions that are made. And you know what? That's a healthy thing. It's constructive criticism. It would be nice to see more of that coming from IBM bloggers.

  1. 5  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 9/16/2005 5:20:36 PM

    So Bob, you make a very good point. I don't often criticize IBM here -- I have on occasion, but for the most part I don't. Why? Because I don't need a blog to do that. I'm fortunate at my level in the organization to have direct access to the people that matter in decision-making for the part of IBM I work in. I've met with Steve Mills (admittedly, only a couple of times). I had a great relationship with Ambuj Goyal and Al Zollar before him. A lot of the senior managers do read this blog, but I would prefer not to try to reach them here.

    Other IBMers obviously are in different roles and different levels where access isn't as easy. I do often send links to other blogs around to the executives I work with, positive or negative. Some of my colleagues and senior executives read blogs all the time.

    On the morale point, I do like Robert's response. I know that there are happy and unhappy people at every company -- I've been both, variously, both at IBM/Lotus and before I was here. But I think the sheer volume of negative commentary on Microsoft is at a high point -- it feels to me a lot like Lotus did when we were assimilated.

  1. 6  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 9/16/2005 6:31:07 PM

    Bob - I know it'd be difficult to categorse 60,000 people on the basis of Mini-Microsoft, or even Robert Scoble on a bad day.

    However, follow the money. Look at the outputs. Two rotten franchises - OS and Office - desperate for the users to upgrade. Insulting Dinosaur ads slagging off previous versions. Spam, Virii, and security holes on a weekly basis.

    A freeware browser trouncing IE in a matter of months. And still accellerating, showing clear blue water between its rump and the dishelleved, long ignored husk of IE.

    Where's the innovation. Wheres the ever increasing share price ? Becalmed.

    Where's the excitement over Vista ? Over office xxx ? (I note with some amusement that they've neglected outlook again). Vista has been described as XP service pack 3. Innovation or stagnation ?

    MS badly needs new energy - or to steal an Austin Powers phrase - "mojo".

    Google has mojo. Hell, even Novell has mojo after its aquisition of Suse.

    I think the idea of cross-selling and linking every microsoft package in the portfolio with each other has been an amazingly short-sighted mistake.

    So Office relies on Visa, which relies on WinFS, which relies on SQL, etc. And each team (and hell, within each team) there is aggressive competiton.

    Are you a "good 3", or a "bad 3" for instance? How much stock options did you get ?

    Nero fiddled while Rome burnt. Balmer, for all his good, and all his sins, is wrapping his brainpool (and its never been in question that MS hires the smartest people) in red tape. Thrown chairs and death threats dont replace leadership.

    Some of the decisions - such as the one to attempt to scupper and then ignore Java - is incredibly short-sighted. To the uninformed outsider, it smacks of "cutting ones nose off to spite ones face".

    I mean - developing a new "industry standard" language in C# ? Where's the "embracing open standards" in that ?

    Is MS the ultimate "mom+pop shop" awaiting new management ? Are the middle management afraid of change ?

    Even more frustrating than IBM ? God, possibly. Are you living the MS dream ?

    Because lets face it - the smell of rot makes it clear across continental USA, across the Atlantic, even to my sleepy little part of Rural Scotland.

    Its only a matter of time before the sycophantic analysts turn. One more google success perhaps ?

    Time to Vest ?

    Have a good weekend,

    ---* Bill

  1. 7  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 9/16/2005 6:33:25 PM

    Oh. And two phrases to drive a stake through the heart of the most committed Redmond supporter:

    Linux.

    Tiger-On-Intel.

    ---* Bill

  1. 8  Bob http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 9/17/2005 1:05:59 AM

    Gee Bill you have such a sunny outlook. Is it even cloudier in Scotland than here in Seattle? ;-)

    I don't think we've ever met so you may not be aware that up until a couple of months ago I worked for IBM in Westford. Most recently I was the server dev lead for Workplace Designer, before that the server dev lead for Workplace Messaging, dev team lead on the Domino Web Server, etc. Over fourteen years at Lotus, Iris and then IBM.

    I read the press and blogs too. I also talked to a lot of people at Microsoft before deciding to come here. You can choose to believe what you want but I think the future looks pretty darn good for Microsoft. Obviously, I wouldn't have joined if I believed as you do.

    Your knock against Microsoft "cross-selling and linking every microsoft package" is kinda funny when compared to more recent IBM Lotus offerings. Workplace is bound to Websphere Portal which is built on WebSphere. You want Workplace? You get these other things too. Can I use Workplace with a different J2EE app server or a different JSR 168-based portal environment? Nope. The new Domino NSF database support works only with DB2. Why? What if a customer is a SQL Server or Oracle shop? Too bad.

    Just to be clear, I am not faulting IBM for these choices. But let's not kid overselves that Microsoft is somehow unique in making its products work together.

  1. 9  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 9/17/2005 3:01:39 AM

    @8 huge differences there, Bob. I notice interestingly that you neglected to mention that Workplace <b>can</b> work with any database, not just DB2. Why, it's even supported on MS SQL Server! The other piece that's different there is that IBM doesn't require a customer buying Workplace to also buy the underlying plumbing used for it -- whereas a SharePoint customer must buy SQL, Windows, Office Live, etc. So only one vendor is actively cross-SELLING.

    You know yourself the technical difficulties in opening up Notes/Domino to a database other than NSF and why DB2 is the only realistic choice there. Still, Notes/Domino has a 15 year history of integrating with dozens of databases through DECS/LEI and their prior incarnations.

  1. 10  Subhan http://slate.blogspirit.com | 9/17/2005 3:15:43 AM

    Bob, your profile's impressive, I must say the work done on Workplace Designer is too good for such initial releases. From what I see, this baby has the correct foundation to have Lotus designer kind of stuff in coming years.

    What I miss in Sharepoint is a similar stuff. Or are you already working on one???

  1. 11  Subhan http://slate.blogspirit.com | 9/17/2005 3:33:48 AM

    (contd.)

    You dont have to answer dat. I understand you may be in agreement not to blog about your techie works.

  1. 12  Henning Heinz  | 9/17/2005 10:03:02 AM

    If I could choose between mojo or Dollars and market share I would take the money.

    Wasn't it Novell that recently released lower revenues and a 91% profit drop with little more than 40 Mio $ quarterly revenues for their Linux business?

    And even Vista won't change anything. XP already proved that Microsoft can release a no feature release without loosing significant revenues.

    Where are the people laughing about Windows Mobile that were all around not long ago?

    I would really like the Microsoft monopoly being broken but I just do not see that happen anytime soon.

    Microsoft for sure has its challenges but these are problems like Scrooge McDuck running out of space in his money bin.

    If the Microsoft story does not sell at the moment at least this is not bad news if you earn money with IBM software.

  1. 13  tonyo  | 9/17/2005 11:54:46 PM

    ya know, some of this sentiment on this thread reminds me of the articles over the years preaching that Notes is dead, kaput, irrelvant, or how the internet will kill Notes etc etc.. The more negative the press and community was with Notes, the more licenses we sold. IBM used to be the company you loved to hate. Now it seems Microsoft has taken the crown.

    Remember when Lotus was big, egocentric, opinionated and Notes sold for $300-400 per license? I remember talking to Manzi and asking for price changes to allow customers to pay per application deployed. He smiled the way he used to smile and didn't say anything.

    But lets not kid ourselves Ed @ #9 - IBM is not providing access to multiple databases cause someone thinks it's a good idea or will solve world hunger- it's due to customer requests (or demanding) that to run workplace, it needs to fit into their infrastructure - which may be oracle or SQL server. I'm not getting customers asking for Sharepoint to run on DB2 or Oracle.

  1. 14  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 9/18/2005 4:33:17 PM

    Yes - Bob - I knew who you were in IBM.

    And lets clarify the "linking the world together badly" meme. As you are very aware, (as you were part of it), Workplace for example builds upon several other application stacks - portal, workplace, etc, as well as a database.

    But builds upon stacks that are near release. And will be mainsteam release.

    Exchange Kodiak for instance - one of Ed's "MS Collaboriation Tombstones" - linked FUTURE versions. Making the whole dev process rely on vapourware. Vapour upon vapour upon shifting sands (to mangle that metaphor to death)

    Vapourware in this case that finally got killed off, leaving MS exchange customers becalmed with even less features. With an unstable message store.

    Look at that inability to do "big projects". Look at the rot in the MS OS and Office applications. Look at the lack of features. Look at salesforce.com wiping the floor with Redmond.

    Granted, its a company that still prints money today, so its not going to come to an almighty crash anytime soon.

    But what of the future ? What future ? For the first time in a long time, MS is starting to get serious competition on its two core franchises - Linux and Tiger on Intel vs XP and Vista - and Workplace/Openoffice against Office - as well as the markets inertia.

    MS's rep in the marketplace doesnt include the words "Secure", "reliable", "trustworthy", "stable", "open standards". IMHO they include words such as "Evil" (See above), "broken", "late", "assimilate" (remember Java ?).

    And how is Balmer going to solve this ? He's created (it would appear from all the complaining MS-Bloggers) a mountain of red tape, bad internal morale, stupid bonus schemes, and lets not forget the stagnant share price.

    How is Ray Ozzie's legendarily hatred of red-tape going to handle Redmond?

    So - how does MS turn back on the success ?

    I suspect it involves actually hiring a mature management team - one that hasnt learnt as it went along, and one that does humiliate itself by declaring Microsoft "Evil" (Gates, last week rebutting Googles "do no evil" mantra), or by throwing chairs and death threats around (Balmer).

    Sure there's some really smart people there, and some really smart things there. They are the majority. But by god you've got to work "super-super-super hard" to even just get the product out the door.

    I wish you well in Redmond. (No I think it possibly rains even more in Seattle than it does in Rural Scotland).

    But the beers' far better here..

    ---* Bill

  1. 15  Paul Robichaux http://www.e2ksecurity.com | 9/19/2005 5:59:21 AM

    @9: you keep saying this, Ed, but it's still not true. When you buy Windows Server 2003, you get Windows SharePoint Services, free, in the box. You don't need any additional licenses for anything. If you buy SharePoint Portal Server, you don't have to buy anything else. You *can* use SQL Server as a backend, and most people do, but it's not required-- nor is Live Communications Server. (See { Link } for more information on SharePoint licensing, and notice how inexpensive SharePoint is compared to WebSphere Portal-- even at MSRP!)

  1. 16  Ben Poole http://www.benpoole.com | 9/19/2005 7:51:52 AM

    So what other databases can I use as the Sharepoint Portal Server back-end Paul?

    I'm confused, because according to the very link you post, SQL Server 2000 is one of the two *required* pieces of software for SPS (ther other being Windows Server 2003).

    Note that I'm talking about the full SPS product here: if we're going to compare Websphere portal etc., then that's the product we should focus on, not the "lite" Sharepoint services that come with Windows.

  1. 17  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 9/19/2005 8:51:31 AM

    @15 Paul - "and most people do" -- so let's not nitpick. Besides, even getting Windows SharePoint Services "for free" requires Windows CALs, too, not just a Windows Server license.

    Also, how inexpensive is SharePoint Portal compared to WebSphere Portal? There's nothing on that page that explains MS's perspective. And shouldn't it be compared to something more alike in functionality -- like Workplace Services Express?

  1. 18  Bob http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 9/19/2005 1:11:46 PM

    @14 where Bill sez: "And how is Balmer going to solve this ? He's created (it would appear from all the complaining MS-Bloggers) a mountain of red tape, bad internal morale, stupid bonus schemes, and lets not forget the stagnant share price."

    Perception isn't reality. Microsoft bloggers represent a small fraction of the company. As I've said before I think it's a healthy thing that Microsoft bloggers free free to comment on their employer. In contrast, it's not easy to find IBM bloggers who comment on what it's like to work there. Is this because they don't feel free to comment? Or should we assume by the lack of any blog comments that IBM is free of red tape, has excellent internal morale, wonderful bonus schemes, and a rising share price? (Obviously we can check the last item ourselves -- IBM and MSFT share prices look pretty similar in that regard over the past year).

    Now read these two blog posts:

    { Link }

    { Link }

    If these are your only blogging reference points to what it's like to work at IBM, how do they make you feel? Should we assume that all IBMers feel the same way as this blogger does?

    Bill, I don't expect to you to change your opinion of Microsoft based on what I say. Clearly you're not a big fan of the company. Clearly you (and many people reading this) have a vested interest in IBM products prevailing. But that's not the main issue here. Ed started this thread by linking to a Business Week article about Microsoft morale. My main point is that in constrast to that article, the people I work with and other people I've met at Microsoft are genuinely happy to be here and passionate about what they do. That's my perception of morale at Microsoft.

  1. 19  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 9/19/2005 2:32:05 PM

    Though in fairness, I linked to it because i wanted to talk about BALLMER'S PERCEPTION OF THE VALUE OF BLOGGING. Scoble (nor most MS bloggers) hasn't said boo about that.

  1. 20  tonyo  | 9/19/2005 8:07:24 PM

    Funny how a thread takes on a life of it's own eh?

  1. 21  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 9/20/2005 2:57:44 AM

    @18 Bob

    Okay - so from your point of view - morale is great. Thats good news for you.

    What about actual product delivery ? Longshot should have shipped in 2005 - Vista is scheduled for late 2006 or early 2007 depending on how many features get ripped out.

    What about strategy ? The current "Link everything together to ensure MS license sales" is hurting delivery.

    Collaboration ? Where does Groove fit in the new Office releases ? Oh. It doesnt. Tens of millions of bucks just to buy Ray Ozzie then. Apparently MS Word is the new collaborative tool. Outlook - the mail client - is forgotten about again. Poor Charlie K and attempts at actually making that mess secure.

    Exchange server ? Best not talk about that. An ageing supermodel, with increasingly large amounts of lipstick and rouge supporting an increasingly flaky performance.

    Looks very like MS is rudderless, becalmed in a sea of doubt. Linux and Tiger-on-Intel is approaching fast. And the same management wheel at the rudder, throwing chairs at each other.

    You can see why folks are doubting.

    And no - I would never presume to compare MS with IBM, having contracted for the latter for so long. (You thought it was bad working for them ? Try contracting)

    Amusingly enough, I probably hate some parts of IBM more than I *merely dislike* MS, its business practices, its lack of customer focus and its lack of credibility & performance of late.

    But where I do hold IBM up is solid, realiable Product delivery. Products that actually work. Products that havent been architected on a whiteboard on a rainy afternoon - or certainly thats the impression one gets from the outside.

    Its a huge shame for you guys actually doing stuff in the middle of the hive - your working amazingly hard, and yet the management still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

    For what ? The amazing stock options ? Oh. Not anymore.

    ---* Bill

  1. 22  Bob http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 9/20/2005 3:23:59 PM

    @21 Bill, It more than just morale. We're excited about the products that we're going to deliver. It's fine for you to be skeptical.

    Now we should call it a day and let Ed have his comment system back ;-)

  1. 23  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 9/21/2005 9:11:34 AM

    Oddly enough, this just popped up:

    { Link }

    No eMail Strategy ?

    Ouch.

    And as for product delivery.. What products and when ? There seems to be a great disappointment (especially from Gartner) on office 12. Outlook has been ignored. Exchange - nothing happening there.

    Longshot ? 2007 ?

    What happened to the ability to architect and deliver large projects ?

    You can see why people doubt MS's ability to deliver. This latest firestorm (and re-org), the stagnant share price, the obvious competitors...

    Yeah. I think I've made my point.

    The Emperor has no clothes.

    ---* Bill

  1. 24  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 9/21/2005 9:19:03 AM

    Hey - Bob. "Morale is good, excitement is up."

    { Link }

    Or is it ?

    These guys seem pretty specifically pissed off about life in the hive.

    Good luck with those product deliveries..

    --* Bill

  1. 25  Pete Lyons http://www.developingstorm.com | 9/21/2005 12:05:53 PM

    Regarding @18 Bob. (following the referrer links)

    For what it's worth, I worked at IBM from the time Iris was absorbed until April 2005. Over that time I've known 4 people who left IBM to go work for MS. I've spoken directly to 3 of those 4 people and in each case they preferred the MS culture to that of IBM. In each case they have found it less stifling and more productive (albeit not perfect). The fourth person who I've not yet spoke to about this is @18 Bob. I don't know if Bob's been at MS long enough to have an opinion on the topic but given we had many conversation about the mess in Westford, I'm pretty confident what his opinion will be.

    That said, I don't doubt that some MS developers are upset. I'm sure old MS hands miss the good old days. Compared to what they had previously it's probably very hierarchical and bureaucratic, but that doesn't mean it worse than IBM.