--Brad Silverberg, Microsoft
Year after year, I began to voice my concerns about the meaninglessness of it all. Why write up dozens of monthly scorecards when nobody ever reads them? Worse yet, why join follow up conference calls? Why schedule get-togethers when there is no agenda? Why spend a month chasing stakeholder-committees for trivial project decisions. Why spam people’s inboxes with monthly newsletters and weekly narratives about how great our team is?
They called it out in my performance reviews: I lacked “respect for authority.” “Microsoft people are well-tenured,” said my boss once. Many employees are with Microsoft for 15 years or more. Sidestep hierarchy and tenure at your own peril.
I became cynical about the whole process. I was seen as a “rebel” and the leadership team began to marginalise me. My planned and promised promotion was cancelled.
Month after month, what I saw as a dubious case was put together. Official HR warnings were sent. My time ran out. I was offered 12-weeks’ pay for an amicable departure. Instead I decided to escalate the thoughts above to the highest echelons of Microsoft.
I think Windows 8 is doomed to failed on the desktop. But, much as I dislike Windows 8 and its Metro interface, I thought it had a chance on the business tablet. Oh, forget about Intel and Microsoft’s dream that the first wave of Windows 8 tablets will push the iPad’s global market share to below 50 percent by mid-2013. That’s not happening. But, Metro’s designed for tablet-sized displays and, I presumed, IT would be able to deploy and manage them with their existing Active Directory (AD) tools. Guess what? Microsoft won’t be supporting AD on Windows 8 on ARM (WOA).
In a TechCrunch column entitled "Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft," Max Zachariades (who blogs under the name Max Zografos) offered his own no-holds-barred opinion of his former employer.
Zachariades' tale starts off promising enough back in 2007, with him pleased and proud to be working for the software giant, even scoring a Gold Star within the first year. But after suggesting that some of the money devoted toward employee gifts and gadgets be diverted to charities, his Gold Star status apparently began going downhill from there.
His complaints about the company slowly turn his once-happy job into a frustrating chore.
Microsoft declined CNET's request for comment on Zachariades' version of events.
The MonoGame team has been working on a port of its open source version of XNA to the Windows 8 Metro environment. For XNA programmers this is important, and it highlights the fact that Microsoft is making no effort at all in this direction.
Comments
Needs Sunlight
2012-04-28 17:11:27