In my line of work, I do a lot of listening. I look for trends, try to spot things which can prove or disprove various thesis points that I might be working on.
Recently, I’ve been making the rounds with a number of Microsoft Alumni asking a number of questions about post MS life and about things they’ve been doing with the MS training/experience. I’ve done this with IBM former employees as well as a group of folks from AEtna where I worked a very long time ago.
Naturally, I’ve gotten lots of interesting data, some of which I’ll share with you as it might be helpful in your business building exercises. Or it might just be entertaining. No flames, it’s just data.
This is a sample size of 25 people who had an average of 5.5 years with the firm, all but 4 having line management responsibility the remaining, coders with no management responsibilities.
Do you think your MS experience gives you an edge in face to face meetings with your, now former, employer or help you in you new interactions?
60% said no. Personally, I was shocked. I thought it would have been the other way around. In probing it, the best comment I got was this from a 7 year guy with the OS team:
“I never knew just how arrogant, snotty, and rude it is to flip open a laptop and read mail while in a meeting. I feel like I need to find the hundreds of people I dealt with over the years and apologize. It might be this swaggering, hot shot crap, works with internal meetings, but man is it rude.”
Memo to Mini-Microsoft: While you’re busy pounding on management, leave some room to remind your fellow co-workers to put the Smart Phones, WiFi Laptops, and other stuff away when outsiders come -a– calling. It pisses them/us off. For the record, most if not all of senior management at MS, follows Ballmer’s lead as doesn’t do that stuff. He has stated, on more then one occasion, it’s seriously rude.
Memo to you: be nice, you never know.
If you got a call from Steve/Bill/Jeff to come back, would you?
80% said no, with the others saying maybe. None said yes.
The why was more interesting then the numbers. In this case, it boiled down to “the company changed” or “not the same place” or “not what I originally signed up for”. Obvious, maybe, but the lesson for you, the start up, is to remember you will be changing and sometimes the changes will result in one set of people no longer being right for the job or simply feeling right for the job.
I point this out because company growth and keeping people aligned with the where the company is going, needs to go, etc, will be one of your biggest challenges.
In your new/current role are you using a MS based technology solution or “open source”?
75% said Open Source or some non-Microsoft variation.
In probing this, most former employees were not members of the Alumni group and thus not using the MS products discount (essentially a company store allowance) to help get a start up off the ground. Interesting on a number of fronts. Message to you is this. Former employees should be your best friends if they leave on good terms. Giving them comp accounts or discounts, etc, are smart/cheap ways to get additional feet on the street with respect to what you are offering. MS, at least in my view, isn’t using it’s former employee base as much as it could be doing.
How much “Microsoft Way” management do you think you are applying to your current position?
65% said a significant amount with 20% saying a fair amount. 5% said a little and 10% said none at all.
Given that all of the people are in companies that ship stuff, not consulting gigs, this actually makes good sense to me. The folks inside the company know how to ship products, love shipping products, and can certainly bring those skills into other organizations. It was an interesting data point.
Who do you think is making a larger internal contribution to the betterment of Microsoft, Mini-Microsoft or Robert Scoble?
90% Scoble. The biggest reason? As expected, measurable results. Increased blogging across the company resulting in closer customer contact resulting in a great feedback loop and data for actually developers. Virtually everybody thought Robert was setting a good bar for the company when it comes to communications about the company, products, etc.
I did ask the ‘why not mini’ and, also as expected, the anonymity and the true belief that the company, at its core, large or not, bloated or not, encourages and thrives on healthy, loud, at times obnoxious dissenting screams to ensure all voices are heard and the company doesn’t go too far of the deep end on anything. More then one person pointed to J. Allard and his telling the then CTO Nathan Myrvold, yer pretty much wrong and an doofus when it comes to the Internet. Fish story or not, most people (in my survey group) use this as “proof” that passion and being right trumps it all. J. Allard now runs the XBox group, still going, as they say.
Who do you think is making a larger external contribution to the betterment of Microsoft, Mini-Microsoft or Robert Scoble?
80% Scoble. The interesting point here was the Scoble drop. In probing, I got some views that Mini actually helps show the human side or that the company is not a bunch evil minded, borg drones, rather a normal large company with growing pains like everybody else. Interesting perspective.
What’s the single more important technology leap you need to make your new thing wildly successful?
Various answers but the one that stuck out and was repeated the most was “always on/always connected masses of people” or “where being ‘on’ is second nature and completely natural.” This translated into examples such as broadband to car to get music downloads over the air or more computing power on the hip to show richer content in a smaller formats, etc. Richer services, etc. Lots of NDA stuff so I can’t say much.
This data was compiled over the course of the last three months, no bribes paid. It was fun and I hope you find the data interesting.
In deciding Scoble vs. Mini why isn't one considering them as two sets of topics? Then, you count the topics, see how representative are the contributors for each topic, and how well the arguments are being developed. It's only then that you can decide who's better. Non-sense ratings and such don't do justice to either one of them. I'm not even going to look too much at the people you interviewd, since they would not come back if invited by SteveB or BillG...
Cheers, fCh
Posted by: fCh | October 12, 2005 at 22:25
Excellent insight, Rick. I just joined Microsoft after 12 years in the start-up world. My impression of Microsoft people was formed 10 to 15 years ago. At that time Microsofties were young, arrogant, usually smart, but not much real world experience. Their experience was Microsoft, and while interesting, it was a very insular view of the world.
I was at Digital Equipment (DEC) for 11 years. DEC had 130,000 employees at its peak. There are now DEC alumni in just about every technology company. DEC had a certain culture too. It was a meritocracy where only good ideas mattered. Employees at any level could be heard and effect decisions.
Microsoft has built a great, lasting company, over the past 30 years. They have stood the test of time and many technology shifts. Steve and Bill are still passionate and come to work everyday even though they are among the richest people in the world.
It is a great place to work, and a great place to have an impact on the technology world.
Posted by: DonDodge | October 13, 2005 at 04:43
Rick, I'd love to know why the MS alumni you spoke to left the company. Was it because they had some tremendous opportunity outside of MS, or was it because they, or MS, realized that they weren't a good fit? For those that weren't a good fit I'd expect a little bit of negative bias towards MS products/culture.
Posted by: Ian McAllister | October 13, 2005 at 06:46
Thanks for the comments.
For fch: It's really not a matter of ratings, rather this whole notion/study of bloggers and big companies. I'll have more on this because it's a big area of interest for me.
For Don: I agree, fun place, loved it.
For Ian: Excellent question. I can only go on what I know/told by the people. 6 of the folks used to work for me and left to do other stuff. Maybe some burnout, and 'it's different' but not turfed disgruntled employees. Another 8 were people I knew of or worked with. All of them left for other opps, dot com type stuff. The remaing folks were people who have come into my office as former ms pitching new companies. I circled back when I dug into this stuff. I didn't probe the good point you make.
Posted by: Rick Segal | October 13, 2005 at 07:46
I am ex-MSFT and talk to lots of ex-MSFT people in the Redmond area. I have informally discussed these topics with them over the years with almost equal results.
Posted by: Michael Cherry | October 13, 2005 at 16:11
Great post! I was pretty shocked at some of the responses, too. One would think that having Microsoft on your resume would 'give you an edge'.
We sometimes buy into having that 'name' on the resume and think that it would have some cache for the next job. Too often we find out that it's only good for a narrow band of the technolgy industry.
Posted by: Karen | October 16, 2005 at 16:36
I used to hate talking to people who had left MS, while I was still at MS. It was always the same comment "it's so different on the outside, you don't knwo how different". I hated it. Now after 11 years on the inside, and having been MS-Outed since 2001 I have to agree. I go to conferences and rarely see MS people there unless they are the guest speakers. I mention hit products that are non-MS products and get blank stares. "Google has maps????". OK, lets say Scoble and others are the exception.
Posted by: Dave Carter | October 21, 2005 at 10:40