AAAAAAAGH

[solarbird]

In ref. Microsoft's "Zune" announcement: AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH HOW DOES A 71,000 PERSON COMPANY NOT HAVE "THE RIGHT TALENT CAPACITY" AT ANY TIME?! I mean, for the love of god!

"Frankly, we took some of the top folks out of the Xbox 360 effort, and right after 360 shipped that became the Zune team," Ballmer said. "I wish we would have done it earlier. We just didn't have the right talent capacity at the time."

Kheeeeee-rhist, what's wrong with those guys? MiniMicrosoft is right, there needs to be a serious bloodletting at that company.

At least they grabbed people from the right group. XBOX is a good platform. XBOX360 has not disappointed. Zune at first glance looks nicely not-screwed-up, tho' I'd need to play with one to really know. But it's a start and the XBOX group is good. But kheeee-rhist what that says about the rest of the company. God.

Comments

[firni.livejournal.com]

They didn't have enough PARTNER-level employees. Or maybe it's that whole "doggonit, we can't abuse contractors for five-ten years at a stretch anymore" bit.

Remember, it used to be that the As managed the Bc and Cs, but the majority of As retired, so now they're being run by... Fs.

[solarbird]

It was almost never As managing Bs and Cs. Management at Microsoft as long been terrible. But some Bs were better than others. But some were much, much worse.

[firni.livejournal.com]

From what I've heard, the "A" stands for "asshole" these days.

Like it's changed any since we were there. The asshole part, I mean.

[waysofseeing.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem is that the company is too damned top-heavy. MiniMSFT has been harping about this for ages, and (s)he's right.

The number of people who actually control the budget and headcount at the company is really quite small for such a large company. Basically we're talking about people at the VP level or higher, and you really need to be a senior VP before you're given a real chance to make serious, strategic changes.

With all the extra layers of management and extra people, it's very hard for those guys to know who the real top talent in the company is. Oh sure, everybody knows Dave, and Raymond, and designers like Jensen, and many other people we could both name...but they have their niches that they've been working in for a long time, and those businesses are, to some extent, played out.

Zune is essentially like XBox was several years ago: a totally new business model that Microsoft doesn't understand at all. That's not necessarily bad - they need to expand into new lines of business to maintain their growth. What *is* bad is that the guys who control the money don't know who to hire, because they don't know who their talent is. They don't even know who they've already got in house, because they don't know enough about the people they have working for them.

So, they pillage the XBox group, because hey, it's an entertainment-device-thing, and they made a new business model work once before, and at least the senior execs know who the hell J Allard is.

Frustrating.

[solarbird]

What *is* bad is that the guys who control the money don't know who to hire, because they don't know who their talent is. They don't even know who they've already got in house, because they don't know enough about the people they have working for them.
Ah! Yes. Okay. Yes. That fits with other things I know about what's going on and makes it make a little more sense - in an "oh, that's not better" sort of way. And Ballmer is apparently so terminally. out. to. lunch.of. touch. that he doesn't even seem to know this is going on - or how bad a line like that sounds in print.

Worse, the "solution" is probably going to be something dumbassed (and empire-building) like, "Let's bring in another 5,000 people! Then we'll have every kind of talent!"

[solarbird]

God, I know. And Microsoft is far too big for that kind of crap now. They have failed to make the transition properly to Large Corporate Entity and sooner or later will certainly pay for it, particularly if Ballmer is so out of touch as he sounds here. (See my reply to waysofseeing below.)