Steve Ballmer fired Sinofsky, clearing the way for faster progress in mobile

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/140733-sinofsky-abrupt-firing-can-microsoft-finally-make-progress-in-mobile

by evo_9 • 14 years ago

39 51 14 years ago

extremetech.com

taskstrike• 14 years ago

Sinofsky was a great tech leader and shipper of products. The people who replaced him seems weak sauce.

I'm not sure if firing someone creates faster progress in an area vs. just shipping more products.

watmough• 14 years ago

Yes, this is a strange article. The reality is that MS were way behind the tablet curve, having plugged the same old tiny buttons, traditional Windows, use a stylus, furrow for years and years.

Bolting Metro onto Windows 7 is likely to please very few, least of all corporate customers.

If Sinofsky is as bad as painted, could he really have turned around the Longhorn mess, salvaged Vista, then reshaped the organization to do a fantastic job with Windows 7?

twoodfin• 14 years ago

My wild speculation:

Steve Ballmer is a sales guy at heart, and it's why he's been able to survive a decade of middling stock performance and strategic missteps: He must have close connections to Microsoft's largest enterprise customers, and were he to be fired, it would be an invitation for those customers to reevaluate their commitment to Microsoft's platforms.

When he walks into a big customer's boardroom, he must be furious every time he sees some C-level using an iOS or Android device. He knows that if he can't sell "Windows everywhere" to these users, he's doomed to keep reading headlines about 5,000-user iPad-based IT projects and the "post-PC era".

He didn't need to wait to see how the market would respond to Windows 8 and devices like the Surface. These users could tell him immediately, perhaps even before the product launched, and I would guess that their feedback was discouraging. If at the same time their IT departments were making noise about sticking with XP or 7, that would have been the last nail in Sinofsky's coffin.

brudgers6• 14 years ago

"He must have close connections to Microsoft's largest enterprise customers"

Ballmer has a close connection with Microsoft's largest shareholder, some fellow named "Gates."

He has even closer ties to the second largest shareholder, himself.

Stratoscope• 14 years ago

> Steve Ballmer is a sales guy at heart

Indeed! I still enjoy his classic Windows 1.0 sales video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk

It's a total self-parody, and you can tell he had a ball doing it.

brudgers6• 14 years ago

"Clearly Ballmer will assume a more direct role in Windows management, with Windows VPs Julie Larson-Green and Tami Reller now reporting directly to him."

The sexism upon which this statement is partially premised aside...

I have an entirely different take on this promotion. Microsoft has been run by a pair of consuls, Ballmer and Gates, for a long time. One focused primarily on the business side, the other upon the technology.

At this point it is only prudent for them to look at leadership succession. Larson-Greene has real technical chops and has worked on compilers, Office, UX, and Windows. Teller went from receptionist to CFO at Great Plains, leading them through both an IPO and Microsoft's acquisition.

It is clear that the future leaders will be from the post IPO generation of Softies. It may be clear now that the tradional pointed elbows approach to the throne is frowned upon.

Permit• 14 years ago

>The sexism upon which this statement is partially premised aside...

What?

brudgers6• 14 years ago

Why does direct reporting indicate Ballmer is taking a more direct role in Windows management rather than indicating that both Larson-Greene and Reller have been given a degree of authority equivalent to that Sinofsky had?

Sinofsky was reporting directly to Ballmer before his resignation. If he was fired, of course Ballmer fired him himself. Sinofsky was his direct report.

People only report directly to the CEO because they are seen as capable of acting largely with autonomy. It's a sign of trust, not incompetence.

The conclusion that Ballmer would micromanage Larson-Greene is absurd. He doesn't have the technical chops. The suggestion that he would do so with Reller, ignores her demonstrated professional competence.

The most likely case is that Sinofsky is gone so that they could be promoted. This probably wasn't a crisis, but something brewing for a long time. The issues with Office under Windows 8 RT were due to structural issues with Sinofsky's management approach.

It's the "Clearly" that makes it sexist.

steve8918• 14 years ago

The real culprit that needs to be fired is Steve Ballmer. He was great from the inception of MSFT until maybe the turn of the century, when their business strategy of making and maintaining a Windows monopoly worked beautifully and extremely profitably. However, he is living in a legacy environment where he believes he needs to protect the Windows/Office monopoly BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, and he and the rest of Microsoft can't keep up with everyone else around them because of innovation.

This mindset has completely stymied any sort of innovation at Microsoft because they are playing with one arm tied behind their backs in the midst of trying to compete against the likes of Google, Facebook, etc. In Steve Ballmer's eyes, everything must lead back to the sale of a license of Windows/Office, and that no longer works in their environment.

If Microsoft engineers had free rein to make the best search engine, or the best phone, or the best tablet, without worries about how will it lead to maintaining their revenue streams of Windows and more importantly Office, then I think their offerings would be on an order of magnitude better and more creative.

j_baker• 14 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_phases_of_a_big_project

The six phases of a project:

1. Enthusiasm

2. Disillusionment

3. Panic

4. Search for the guilty

5. Punishment of the innocent

6. Rewards for the uninvolved

This is the way it seems to have played out (and the way project/startup failure almost always seems to play out).

specialist• 14 years ago

Awesome. Thank you. Very similar to the "process" I've witnessed and documented. From memory:

1) Assemble non-experts, non-stakeholders

2) Misidentify problem

3) Establish quorum

4) Do not communicate decisions

5) Everyone runs off in separate directions

6) Assign blame

7) Repeat.

Given the challenges of organizational psychology (aka herding kittens), where trying harder won't change outcomes, I support the strategy of multiple competing teams, as detailed in the book Design Rules: The Power of Modularity.

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Rules-Vol-Power-Modularity/dp/0...

kvb4• 14 years ago

This doesn't make any sense to me... You think that the problem with Bing is that it's too focused on revenue for Windows? I suspect the problem is that it's really hard to build a better search engine than Google (and that even if it were slightly better, people are resistant to change).

Microsoft's overall profit numbers still look pretty strong to me, and their product portfolio is as diverse as ever. They've got 6 different products in their server and tools division alone that generate more than a billion dollars each year! [1] That's not to mention Office, Windows, Xbox, etc.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-server-and-tools-unit-now-in...

ikono• 14 years ago

Right or wrong, your argument is exactly why Ballmer is still in charge and at the same time the reason many think Microsoft's future is bleak until he's not.

Goronmon• 14 years ago

>Microsoft's overall profit numbers still look pretty strong to me, and their product portfolio is as diverse as ever. They've got 6 different products in their server and tools division alone that generate more than a billion dollars each year! [1] That's not to mention Office, Windows, Xbox, etc.

What, if anything, has Ballmer done to make a difference in those areas?

flyinRyan2• 14 years ago

>Microsoft's overall profit numbers still look pretty strong to me, and their product portfolio is as diverse as ever.

RIM was singing the same song. Profits/etc. are basically the waves behind the ship. By the time those start going down you're not dying, your decomposing.

Shorel• 14 years ago

Good for me and for everyone I guess.

I don't want MS success and another long monopoly.

dmethvin• 14 years ago

Funny, that's just the attitude Steve Jobs had about IBM in the 1980s. He was sure that IBM was the bad guy monopolist that stood in the way of Apple's success. He created the famous "1984" commercial as a result.

You're looking in the wrong place, 30 years late. The 2012 Microsoft is more like 1984 IBM and that's not likely to change. The duopoly of Apple and Google has more ability to dictate our technology today, if that's what you're worried about. At least we have a choice though.

rlu• 14 years ago

I suspect that Ballmer wasn't really able to have full control of the company and decisions until Gates left (so...2007, right?). Then, I'd say that CEOs have to be judged 3-4 years in the future, meaning that if a CEO of a huge company decided something _today_, the successes/failures of that decision would only be evident years down the road.

So given that Microsoft seems to be in some exciting times right now, I'd feel comfortable guessing that this is more or less the strategy that got laid out once Ballmer gained full control of the company.

Then again maybe I'm completely wrong. Either way, we'll never really know I guess.

deveac2• 14 years ago

>Ballmer had been frustrated by Sinofsky before. Microsoft partners apparently had a reference design for tablet hardware ready in time for Windows 7. Sources tell us that Sinofsky refused to add support for it in Windows 7. Whether it would have been successful is hard to gauge, but it would have put Microsoft in the tablet market several years earlier, and possibly around the same time as Apple’s original iPad.

I would love to just catch a quick glimpse of the Universe in which this is NOT 100% Ballmer's fault. It must truly be full of fascinating things to see.

Zigurd• 14 years ago

This is a bit of revisionism. Windows tablets, and tablet support in Windows, have been around since Windows XP. It was unsuccessful every time it was tried.

Saying "no" to tablet support was, in light of Microsoft's experience with tablets, the right thing to do.

programminggeek2• 14 years ago

It's worth noting that Ballmer has publicly laughed in the face of two of the biggest innovations in the last 5 years - the iPhone and the iPad. Now they're racing to catch up.

It seems like Ballmer, Sinofsky, and Gates pushed out people building products along those lines - J. Allard and co. only to pick up their vision later with Metro UI and Windows 8. (J. Allard and his team were behind Xbox, Zune, and Courier which basically gave a roadmap to Metro UI, Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. J Allard also wrote a famous memo about internet connected apps back in 1994.)

Sinofsky and Ballmer also pushed out Ray Ozzie who was trying to make cloud computing a meaningful part of Microsoft's future.

Now that all the big vision is gone, where is Microsoft going to go? Continue to be a fast follower of Apple and Google?

Microsoft is a company without vision because it already achieved what it set out to - a computer on every desk. They won that battle. In the meantime, people's desks already have computers on them and are putting computers in their pockets, purses, and appliances. Microsoft was too busy with traditional computers to have a vision for mobile computing.

Maybe Microsoft should change their company goal to a computer in every pocket. Or a Microsoft app on every home screen. Or every computer to be powered by Windows. Or maybe a computer on every surface.

Without a big goal, Microsoft is going to be just another big tech company like IBM. It won't change the world again. It already did. Now it's just following everybody else.

cooldeal2• 14 years ago

>It's worth noting that Ballmer has publicly laughed in the face of two of the biggest innovations in the last 5 years - the iPhone and the iPad. Now they're racing to catch up.

Copy pasting from one of my previous comments.

I'm tired of these kinds of statements. The golden rule is that companies' employee publicly have to put down their competitors' new strategies. Imagine if Balmer said the iPad is great it's going to kill us, or if Jobs said 7" tablets are good but we'll make only in two years, so wait for us to make it. Or even Andy Rubin saying that Android UI is laggy compared to iOS, fix coming in 18 months. All of them(except maybe Jobs) would be summarily fired or atleast will be forced to recant their statements immediately on threat of being fired. It's almost part of their job to publicly mock their competitors, or their shareholders will dump the stock.

Privately they could be pissing in their pants about their competition, but you almost never hear about that except after maybe 5 years from unnamed sources. Care to think for a moment why?

The more puzzling thing to me is, why do so many otherwise smart people actually think that these people publicly say what they really believe and really believe what they publicly say?

programminggeek2• 14 years ago

Well, maybe it's my personality, but I expect people to be basically honest. I realize people lie constantly, but why should we believe anything that they say if we assume they are lying?

As in, if I believe that Steve Ballmer is lying about the iPhone being an overpriced product that won't sell, why should I believe him when he says that Windows Phone will sell millions of devices and that it's worth developing for?

I realize that nobody wants to admit that their competitors are making a good or better product than you, but I don't see why they wouldn't be willing to tell the truth.

Maybe it's a midwest thing, but if we assume that Jobs, Ballmer, and Rubin are all lying through their teeth, why would we ever buy their products? That is even dumber than believing they are telling the truth. The only thing dumber than trusting someone is buying from someone you don't trust.

bad_user• 14 years ago

Thing is many of us that saw the iPhone knew how full of ridicule Balmer is right when he laughed about it. Nobody expects a CEO to admit that competition will probably destroy them. But actions count more than words and when asked he could have been tactful.

Did you see Eric Schmidt or Larry Page laughing about Apple's devices?

No, instead they were busy with building Android, as they could see the writing on the wall - namely that the future belongs to tightly controlled mobile devices, and they can be left out of the equation, unless they provide an alternative.

debacle4• 14 years ago

> Larson-Green is best known as a driving force behind the new Windows 8 UI and, prior to that, the Office ribbon bar.

How can I dislike this woman so strongly when I've never met her?

MichaelGG2• 14 years ago

You might try watching the "Story of the Ribbon" presentation, or just read the articles on Jensen Harris's blog. The amount of research, data, and care that went into designing the Ribbon is astounding. I'm not sure what other approaches work, when you need to present thousands of commands to end users.

I wasn't a fan of the Ribbon on first sight, but when reading how they came up with it, it's clear this wasn't just some arbitrary cosmetic adjustment. Contrast that to the Office 2013 design, with it's random all-caps on items in no apparent pattern.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story...

debacle4• 14 years ago

This is one area where I side with Jobs. No amount of research can compete with smart designers.

woobar• 14 years ago

> I'm not sure what other approaches work, when you need to present thousands of commands to end users.

Drop-down and context menues worked fine. In fact even current ribbon works like drop down menu with pictograms instead of text (Mac Word's Home tab has 19 drop-downs out of 35 items).

ww520• 14 years ago

Is there a chance Gates would go back to Microsoft? Jobs did go back to Apple to revive it.

evo_9• 14 years ago

I keep wondering the exact same thing and yeah people alway say 'now way' but you have to wonder, as a founder, it's got to be hard to watch your former company struggling so hard at this point.

I keep thinking back to the mid-90's when Gates sent out his famous internet tidal-wave email; that was how he reacted to a threat to MS's longterm survival - a huge pivot away from multimedia, cds/dvds (remember Encarta?) to focusing everything on the Internet.

Ballmer in 2005 facing a similar tidal-wave does what? Laughs and mocks the iPhone then the iPad. Had he reacted as Gates had and pivoted the entire company then instead of 6+ years later with Window 8/Surface, who knows where they'd be right now.

kvb4• 14 years ago

Or maybe he has a different perspective on what would constitute "struggling". The company did post its highest revenues ever this year, right?

brudgers6• 14 years ago

Gates never left. He's the largest shareholder and chairman of the board.

flyinRyan2• 14 years ago

After reading comments from Gates lately, I'd say he's as clueless as Ballmer is about how to break into the tablet/phone market.

raganwald• 14 years ago

This hatchet job reads like Ballmer put it out to make it seem like he's a great manager and did a wonderful thing firing Sinofsky. I smell "The Submarine," the unseen hand of a PR company carefully managing public perception.

waynecochran• 14 years ago

The article shows two women in two different pictures with no sub-titles. Are these just random stock photos or is one of them Sinofsky? If so, who is is the other?

colkassad• 14 years ago

"...Windows VPs Julie Larson-Green and Tami Reller..."

Had to mouse-over to figure that out.

Steve Ballmer fired Sinofsky, clearing the way for faster progress in mobile

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