What was the Reardon Steel equivalent of GLEAM?...
And the point is? Are you suggesting that Microsoft should abandon its diversity program? What?
The real problem with the MSFT business model is that it puts programmers high above product support people. Product support is the key, especially in an organization where so many of the developers are mediocre.
It would, I believe, be very difficult to argue that the relative proportion of mediocre developers is higher than the proportion of mediocre product support folks, especially since PSS seems to knowingly hire less-than-sterling staff at the lowest levels, just to run them through the system and shake out the good ones. Those who stick with the group seem to highly competent, but it's that first-tier level that one must wonder about.
One might also argue that despite the lip-service (along with stock options) given to developers, that it's always been the product management folks (ahh, marketing) who have run the show. Microsoft has always functioned on paranoia both toward other companies and toward other parts of itself. It seems that every small group at the company is told officially that it alone is the most important group in the company. Occasionally, one finds people who hear that line, believe it, and then begin to wonder why everyone else doesn't consider that group the most important.
Any company falls into imbalance occasionally. When Ballmer took over officially, he made a big deal about changing things. He, apparently, saw an imbalance. He went on a press junket to tell the world about it, and about the changes he has made to try to bring it into his vision of balance. It might have even sounded like "product support" should have become a more important part of the whole system. Has it? I don't know.
It's a difficult thing to do at Microsoft or any software company. The major problem is that the entire development cycle, and much of the marketing process is future-directed. It is working on the next version or the next product. Product support, on the other hand, must be past-directed. It must focus on the product that's out there right now -- a product that most of the development folks washed their hands of long ago. |
