The .NET Sweatshop (v2)

For what it's worth, it was worth all the while...

After six years at Microsoft, I’ve decided that it is time to move on with my career and my life. I’ll be taking a role at a software startup that appeals to both my passion for the user revolution on the internet and my desire for a smaller, more personal atmosphere that is found in a 40-person company that is almost entirely housed on one office floor in a San Francisco skyscraper. As is customary at Microsoft, I wrote the typical farewell e-mail that I'll send to my past managers, peers, colleagues, and direct reports.  Most of that text is here.  But a blog gives me a little more latitude to be verbose (or at least anyone who has read this blog know my tendencies) and I will take advantage of that. 

As with most people, my decision to leave is bittersweet. I love telling people how I had no intention of staying at Microsoft for longer than three years, but the combination of compelling work and a great people led me to double my expected tenure. This was my first job after business school and Microsoft saved me from a life in management consulting, spending my time composing diagrams, matrices, and graphs but never really building anything. I worked on some great teams on exciting initiatives and it was rarely boring. However, my desire has always been to help grow and lead a startup company and this move brings my career back towards that goal.

With a software company like Microsoft, it’s intrinsic value doesn’t lie in manufacturing plants or raw materials, but rather in talented employees who dedicate their lives to build great software with a quest to change the world.  Similarly, my experience was less about the tangibles and more about the people that I had the great fortune to interact with during these six years.  To identify everyone who impacted me would lead me to a Oscar-style speech where I run long and still miss important people (I envision Hillary Swank forgetting her husband in 2000).  I’ll just say thanks to everyone that stuck me in front of the fire hose, pushed me to prove myself, challenged me intellectually, supported me on my quests (as far-fetched as some of them were), and taught me the “Microsoft Way”.  I leave here wiser and more battle-tested than when I came in.  I only hope I provided half as much in return—and that goes for managers, peers, and the teams I managed. 

I always wondered what my legacy would be when I left Microsoft.  After all, I was one of 70-80,000 employees here and it's easy to get lost in the crowd.  That said, looking back at the list of accomplishments brings a smile to my face.  I take pride in what came out of the patterns & practices team and the tremendous adulation from customers that came with it.  I am amazed at the runaway success of the patterns & practices Summits that Keith Pleas and I conceived of three years ago.  I love showing the scars of how Betsy Aoki and I (more her than me) saved GotDotNet.  I brag about the lengths that Jim Newkirk and I went through to get CodePlex through the system and out the door.    And I am heartened by the ambition my team tried to show with Tagspace and Claimspace, two projects that I believe were revolutionary in many ways but never found a happy home.  If there's one thing that seems consistent, it's that I worked on projects that were unconventional, somewhat counter-culture, and a little risky.  I suppose my need for ambition and risk lends itself to a startup atmosphere, which helped make my choice that much easier.  Now, we'll find out if I can pass the test without the great support system that I've grown to rely upon in the last six years.  If I can find the right partners in crime like the ones above, I trust I'll be just fine.

I don't know where my next blog will be.  I should still have access for one final post for subscribers to redirect.  I haven't provided details on the company because I'd like to keep it somewhat quiet until it has been officially announced (in case you were wondering).  This much is certain:  I like the people.  I like the job.  I like the opportunity.  It looks like the rest is up to me.

It's probably either corny or cliche to end with a song quote, but what do I care--I'm out of here.  So, I will bid adieu to the words of Green Day...

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf of good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it's worth, it was worth all the while
It's something unpredictable but in the end is right
I hope you had the time of your life

Yet another blog post about Facebook

Has any company garnered as much attention in such a short-term as Facebook?  Yeah, you can suggest YouTube or Skype, but Facebook went from hot to scorching hot in the course of a few months.  Rupert Murdoch, the man who owns MySpace, showed some major envy when he suggested that his property wasn't the hottest on the web any more.  Sergey Brin is publicly speculating on whether they'd even accept being acquired (which essentially suggest that he'd be an interested buyer).  And just this week, they acquired Parakey along with key guys from Mozilla.  Man, that is one heck of a run.

Personally, I signed up a few weeks ago to see what all the fuss is about.  Instantly, I received a lot of "friend requests" from people all around Microsoft who are riding the Facebook wave.  From many people on my team to people I've met only a few times.  It was fun to laugh at people complaining about their cars or refrigerators.  Heck, I was fascinated to see where some people went to college or worked before Microsoft.  And true to its name, it did feel a little like looking at a live Facebook like the ones we used to have in high school and college.

On Monday, Alan Griver and I had an interesting discussion about what the future held for Facebook.  Personally, while I've enjoyed it, I didn't know whether it would "change my life forever".  I'd say blogging has changed my life in this respect as I have a continuous of my professional life (this blog) as well as my personal life (my Live Space) and even my journal as a baseball fan (http://fourthplacebirds.blogspot.com/).  But would I stay connected closely to Facebook?  Maybe.  Alan seems far more convinced.  He's a much more social person than I am (a "yellow", as he likes to describe himself) and perhaps this plays more into his personality.  He's using the mobile piece, twittering, biting people into zombies (if you don't know, don't ask), and joining groups left and right.  He raves about instances where knowing the inside info has helped him or a friend.  Now, maybe I am the curmudgeon in all of this, but in most cases, if I care what someone is doing or thinking, I'll ask.  I have ~20 friends at this point, which is fairly manageable.  But at some point, it'll get unruly, won't it?  Alan has 60+ friends and if they are each staying active, isn't that information overload?  It makes me think of the world's contradictions:  if we have all this diet food, why is the world fatter than ever?  Or if computers are supposed to make our lives easier, why are we chained to our laptops doing e-mail?  In this case, if we are already overloaded with e-mails, v-mails, IMs, etc., isn't Facebook & Twitter going to make things worse?  

My take: I think that answer is that if you use the technologies correctly, they can be very valuable.  It's like RSS.  Unless you are Scoble. you can't handle hundreds of RSS feeds a day--and frankly, that would defeat the purpose.  Ideally, you want the most relevant information pushed to you as it becomes avaialable.  I have ~50 RSS feeds, but on a given day, only 5-10 will be updated and that's a nice 10 minutes I read to get better informed on a few topics that are near and dear to me.  By the same token, I think there are probably a handful of friends that I'd like to stay in Facebook-like contact with.  For example, it'd be interesting for a development team to have a Facebook group as it's a useful mechanism to keep the flow of communication going (as well as get to know one another better).  I know I already subscribe to the blogs of everyone on my team to stay up-to-date on what they're thinking and I could see Facebook being an effective approach to achieving that.  And of course there are applications outside of business.  I spent last night selling the idea to my wife about how it would make for easier communication with the other mother's in setting up playdates or planning group events--at which time, she proceeded to waste two hours roaming all around Facebook looking for friends and old Stanford classmates, with the occasional outburst of "oh, check this person out..."  Yep, she's hooked.  Sorry Rupert, I guess you're right.  Everyone IS going to Facebook.

 Oh, and no, I didn't touch on the "Facebook as a platform" concept.  That's another blog post...

The Customer Isn't Always Right

The business mantra for years has always been "The Customer Is Always Right".  I recall reading business school case studies about how comapnies like Nordstrom were phenomenal is how they made sure customers were extremely satisfied--going to unimaginable lengths to send them home happy.  Obviously, at Microsoft, we are very sensitive to our customer satisfaction as we know the connection between satisfaction and loyalty (and thus intent to purchase future Microsoft products).  But in every business I've ever been in, there's always those customers (internal and external) that will NEVER be satisfied.  The ones that completely deflate you because you just can't do enough to make them happy, no matter how hard you try.  Some of them don't care that you are trying to support a business that (gasp!) exists to make money.  Some think their situation is the only situation and, therefore, can't understand why you aren't targeting their scenario more effectively.  I remember listening in on support calls and feeling pity for the engineers in some cases.  It's not that I don't empathize with the customer needs, but at the end of the day, it seemed like they were being a little unreasonable and trying to address the needs would break a lot of other scenarios.  But, like they say, "The Customer Is Always Right".

Or is he/she?

Sprint just announced that they are pre-emptively dumping 1,000 customers.  I have NEVER heard of anything like this.  They're basically saying "you are more trouble than you're worth and we'd rather you be someone else's customer".  At a time when they've gotta be losing significant busines to AT&T Wireless on the heels of all the iPhone defections, it's an incredibly bold move for them to do this.  I can't figure it out.  Is this a suicide mission from a PR perspective ("Sprint only likes you if you don't challenge them") or is this a blow on behalf of businesses everywhere that lose money on these customers when you consider the time they take with customer service reps, the concessions they demand, etc.?  You could say this is like insurance companies that will only insure good drivers or health people in that they need to ensure maximum profitability, but in those cases, the customers are pre-selected.  In this case, they were customers and now they aren't at the behest of the company.  It's like you think your girlfriend is madly in love with you, but as it turns out, you make her sick and she dumps you.  And she wasn't that much of a catch in the first place.  This is definitely a new twist on customer-relationship management.

Now personally, I had Sprint for several years and finally switched in 2005.  I loved their coverage, didn't like their customer service, and really hated their shady shenanigans regarding the termination.  In fact, I've had a grudge against Sprint since they charged me the fee even though I had been with them for seven years, claiming I approved a service upgrade less than 2 years earlier and needed to honor that agreement for two years.  Maybe I did it, but that just woldn't make sense--if I'd sign up for two years, I'd want a cool phone out of it.  They claimed to have proof in that they recorded the call, but I asked them to produce the taped phone call of the approval, they said I'd need a subpoena.  Uh, yeah, whatever.  Obviously, they didn't care that I was angry because I was leaving them anyway.  Needless to say, I will now NEVER go back to Sprint (something that would've been possible if they had gotten the right phones).  Given my experience with them, it makes me wonder--would I have been one of the 1,000 customers because the pulled a shady move on me and I tried to call them on it? 

I suppose any business has a right to refuse to cater to someone if they want ("No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service"), but I am definitely curious about those 1,000 people.  How bad were they?  Were they unfairly demanding or did they just need a lot of help?  I'm also curious about what effect, if any, this has on the other millions of customers.  Personally, I don't think I'd change if I were still with them, but does this affect the climate of trust between Sprint and its customers?  Do you want to pay $1000/year to a company that will kick you out if you challenge them too much or ask for too much help?  I remember a customer once telling me he went with Microsoft because, when something went wrong, he knew exactly who to yell at and he couldn't get that with an open distro of Linux and he didn't like Red Hat's ability to respond to his yelling).  Doing what makes the customer happy has always been the hallmark of a good company--or so I thought. Perhaps this will go by unnoticed. Or maybe this will start a trend.  Something tells me Microsoft won't jump in, but I could think of some people over the years I would have loved say adios to.  Maybe I can still be involved, just for the final say. ;-).

Rumsfeld's Dilemma and the Community Cure

When I talk about the value of community for developers, I've been known to quote what I've come to describe as "Rumsfeld's Dilemma".

As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.

Actually, it's also how I described my first year of fatherhood, but that's another story altogether. For the things we know we don't know, that's really what search engines are all about. If you know you don't understand what ActiveDirectory is, you will go to Google or Live Search (or Wikipedia) and get up to speed on the topic. I'd like to think our forums provide that abilityas well. If you have a problem and can't find it through search, you post a question and someone from the community shares their wisdom. But things get interesting when you talk about things you don't know you don't know. Let's face it: how do you search for something if you don't know if exists. Well, that's what I think this new wave of on-line experiences (must...resist...saying...Web 2.0) provides. Blogs, tags, voting systems like Digg--they all illuminate what you didn't know needed illuminating. When I subscribe to certain blogs, I usually assume they are going to keep up on the latest trends. I didn't know about twitter, but by subscribing to Steve Rubel's blog, I probably caught on before many people. If you are an ASP.NET developer, how do you not read Scott Guthrie's blog? If it's important to .NET web applications, he's gonna be the first to know about it and he's not shy about sharing it. My favorite example is someone on our own team.  I realized need to pay attention to Brad Wilson's blog a little more closely because he seems to catch on to things six months before I go on my little technical excursions. For example, when I started teaching myself Ruby and Powershell and knew what I didn't know, I kept coming up on Brad's posts even though he is on my team and I should've been paying attention in the first place (when I didn't know I didn't know). In Brad's case, I read his blog, but I guess I shouldn't have just been paying attention to the CodePlex-related stuff. :)

The value of getting information to fill the holes of knowledge is something the internet has always provided. But just like the friend that introduced you to your favorite rock group or favorite author, the internet can make the world's epiphanies your epiphanies.  This may seem like common sense to any who has made the internet a part of their lives, but there's a lot of people out there who haven't reached this point.  The on-ramp is easy.  Subscribe to RSS feeds.  Tag data and look at what other people are tagging.  Find your on-line trusty source of cutting-edge info (hint: it's not CNN or CNET.  If you've waited that long, it's too late) and follow what they are reading and saying.  Truly reaping the most from the web requires a level of open-mindedness and willingness to trust the community to know more than you do. Then, and only then, do you overcome Rumsfeld's Dilemma.

Microsoft Community Applications and Services: The Next Wave

We hear a lot of feedback about how the forums and blogs should work.  And I mean A LOT.  Whether it's internal or external, people always have opinions about how to make them better. I prefer to think that the feedback is proof of how valuable these services are and that we have a responsibility to not only address the feedback, but look for ways to innovate as well.  So, for the past several months, we've been working on evolving our work to reflect the changing nature of community activity.  Our goal is to help people be better informed, better connected, and more productive.

With that in mind, we've release a beta (or we can use Visual Studio terminology and call it a "CTP") of our new services and you'll notice a new one in the mix. 

• Forums: http://beta.communities.microsoft.com/forums
• Blogs: http://beta.communities.microsoft.com/blogs 
• TagSpace: http://beta.communities.microsoft.com/tagspace

Tagspace is our way of recognizing the value of user-contributed metadata and how important that can be in connecting people not only to valuable content, but to other people.  The overall information, FAQs, videos, and other good things are here. As you can imagine, the features are not all there yet and I am sure you will run into bugs.  There's a lot we are still working on and you should feel free to provide feedback (our engineering goal is to get into "release early, release often").  This beta release is the first of many steps to get us closer towards the overall vision, but we'd like your help in identifying what's next. Over the course of the next several weeks, our team wants to use the new forums to have such a conversation with you on the questions above. We know we're not perfect, but you ability to partner with users to evolve this platform will result in a solution that everyone can rally around.

We're looking forward to the feedback.

The Death of the Smart Client is Greatly Exaggerated

I was watching a great presentation recently from a Berkeley professor who came to speak to a bunch of senior people in my division.  He threw out a lot of interesting sayings, but my favorite one may have been "the most dangerous three words in the investment community is 'This time, it's different!'"  When I see a lot of what is going on in the industry, I get the same sense of deja vu.  Advertising business models.  The death of the PC.  The idea that XML will change the world.  And, of course, the network is the computer--where the offshoot is that the browser is more important than the OS.  People, we've been here before.  Now, don't get me wrong--I do think things are different this time and I do believe changes are afoot and I am bullish about those changes.  However, the MVP Summit that took place a couple of weeks ago was a great reminder of the fact that the world is not 100% sold on browser apps and there's plenty of power in the "Smart Client".

It started when I met up with Billy Hollis for the first time in a couple of years.  Billy and I spent a lot of time together during my days in patterns & practices, but hadn't seen one another lately.  Billy, the King of the Smart Clients, still felt pretty good about the importance of client apps and the fact that ASP.NET did not need to be the lone choice for developers out there.  It was nice to get the gospel (and those who know Billy realize that with that southern accent, gospel just seems like the right word) that didn't imply that everything needs to be intermediated through a browser--which, in my moments of frustration on the topic, make me think of being told all food needs to be fed through a straw.  The next day, I met up with a host of MVPs for a breakfast that was organized by Alan Griver (aka Yag) from our team.  We shared some of the social computing stuff that we're working on and integrating into the upcoming releases of Forums and Blogs.  While the response on the new ideas was good, there were still many who loved NNTP and wanted it supported.  It mostly wasn't about the technology, but rather about some of the things you just can't do with a browser app, such as successful off-line operation.  I guess AJAX isn't that asynchronous.

No matter how wonderful AJAX becomes, it will never provide a richer customer experience than a smart client.  I know--there are those out there who will disagree.  Hey, I know I prefer poking around an AJAX site instead of downloading an EXE file, installing it, and then finding out it stinks.  In many cases, I admit that I don't bother getting that far.  But to rely on a browser as the sole means for access?  I don't know if that's an ideal long-term strategy.  Personally, I think it's the difference between the person you want to date and the person you want to marry.  A browser app is easy, quick, no fuss, no deployment hassles, install files, etc.  It is one URL away and, if you don't like it, you move on.  No commitments, no strings attached.  It's dinner and a movie.  A smart client requires deployment, installation, OS compatibility (though browser apps have to now deal with browser compatibility), DLL installation (notice I didn't say "hell"--we don't have that any more, right?). etc.  It's a much more committed relationship, in a sense. 

Many of my single friends love the former, but (and I suppose I say this as a happily married guy) the browser app is fleeting in the long-term when compared to the benefits of the smart client once you know you're ready to commit.  Once you are sold on the service, you have to be frustrated by the things you can & can't do in the browser.  All this computing power and I am at the mercy of my network bandwidth.  The sandbox nature of a browser is great when you don't trust a site, but when you do (as I do with Amazon, eBay, and several other established brands that have given me great customer service and earned my trust), it's incredibly limiting.  As one example of someone who saw this and wouldn't compromise on the experience is Apple with iTunes.  You would think Apple would rather create a browser-based application with a plug-in than have to support writing an application for (gasp!) Windows.  But they continue to write and update it.  Why?  Because I don't think you can build that rich an experience through a browser.  Will you ever?  Perhaps, but by then, client capabilities will have increased as well and Apple will have done something new that the next versions of IE, Firefox, and Safari won't allow. 

So what happens next?  I have a belief that technological progress is often affected more by trends than by need or opportunity (not always, but often).  If people believe AJAX-enabled browser applications are the future, the Smart Client becomes an after-thought and investors/large companies/etc don't want to go in that direction.  I am hoping that is not the case here.  I think the rise of APIs, which is thriving as a mash-up technology, could give way to an increased number of smart client applications.  An example that has worked for me in Flickr. I like the web API, but I've started using some of the smart client apps to handle the heavy workload tasks (like batch uploads).  The Flickr Uploadr is a great utility, but doesn't get the "ink" that any Flickr mashup gets.  Personally, I think the ideal would be to do what Microsoft gives you in their messaging offering.  To give Outlook & Exchange their due, you have two ways to access your e-mail.  There is Outlook for richer processing of data, off-line usage, and access to the hard-drive for archives.  Then, there is Outlook Web Access when you are on a kiosk or another person's PC or if you don't want to start up Outlook and just need a quick & dirty way to check if you have mail.  Personally, I use both very liberally.  I think you could make a really good Amazon application.  Or eBay.  Maybe they could happen.  Maybe I could beg Billy to write them...

Thank You Teamprise!

While CodePlex has had a pretty good run, we've gotten some flack for having only offering Team Explorer to work with our source control system.  Personally, I use it on the internal CodePlex and it has positives and negatives.  That said, there's nothing wrong with options, right?  Well, Jim got to "break" the story, but I think it's worth repeating here: 

Teamprise announced a complimentary license of the Teamprise client suite for anyone wanting to connect to an open source project on CodePlex. I can't thank Martin Woodward and the rest of the team at Teamprise for offering their great tool to our customers. This opens up CodePlex to a larger number of potential projects who in the past may have considered other open source hosting solutions. 

If you are CodePlex contributor, visit the Teamprise site here to sign up to receive the complimentary license.

I agree with Jim on the accolades for Martin Woodward, who I met for the first time at the MVP Summit and he's clearly a CodePlex fan (I'd have bought him a beer, but they were free anyway).  Now, if you want an alternative to Team Explorer, you're in luck.  I'll be very interested to see how many people take advantage of the generous offer and what the feedback is. Heck, I'm tempted to test this out on my old Apple Cube just to brag about how cross-platform we are (not that I personally am able to write any useful code on my Cube :) )...

Regis Philbin and The Link Between Reality TV and YouTube

I spent my December break reading "The World Is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. OK, maybe I was a little late to that book, but better late than never. While I can't say the book told me any specific fact that I didn't know, it's ability to wrap up the last 10-20 years in a tight package and highlight it's influence on where the future is heading is fascinating. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the level playing provided by the Internet open doors for something we couldn't imagine in my youth. Friedman does a great job highlighting several trends that have emerged that help flatten the world. But there's one trend that he didn't cover that I find fascinating and it relates to the world of media more than anything else.

No one needs a lecture on Web 2.0 (if you do, the video circulating on it does a great job). Simply by reading this blog, you're taking part in it. Heck, Time Magazine even named you "Person of the Year" (take a bow). But there is a line between official content and community content that I think bears distinguishing. When I compare our Communities team to MSDN or TechNet, I usually joke that they are "CSI" and "Desperate Housewives" while we are LonelyGirl15 or Diet Coke & Mentos. They are CNN.com and we are Wonkette. People should always care about the official word, but it's cool to see what the "common folk" have to say. In the last several years, the community's credibility has gone up and people are almost as anxious to see what they have to say as the official word. It's why I love this stuff. But who is our hero? To whom do we owe a debt of gratitude? Tim O'Reilly? Robert Scoble? The Channel 9 guy? GotDotNet? :) Perhaps. But there's a phenomenon that pre-dates Web 2.0 that, in retrospect, proved that we were ready. All hail Regis Philbin.

Regis?

Yes, Regis. No, not for his ability to put up with perky co-hosts or be David Letterman's foil. No, Regis put a bunch of normal people on prime-time with "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" and made it work. Sure, quiz shows had a history of success decades earlier, but it was clear people preferred to spend their evenings with the Beaver, Marcia Brady, the Fonz, the Huxtables, and six coffee-drinking twenty-somethings in NYC. And the more glamorous and idealistic, the better. People loved the glitz of Dallas and Dynasty, soon followed by Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. Even Seinfeld, a show credited for capturing the humor of life in New York City, by the last couple of seasons, the lead characters were mostly dating women right off the fashion runway. Having lived in Jersey for most of my life, I can tell that there are many beautiful women in New York and very few of them went for "short, stocky, bald men who lived with their parents" (as George Costanza would describe himself). People love living in the fantasy world.

Then came Regis. He put on people of all shapes and sizes. They had personalities you couldn't make up because they were too genuine. But you watched them in a pressure situation and if you knew the answer, you spent the time watching them squirm with some level of intellectual superiority. You related to these people. Unlike Jeopardy, where the questions are much harder and there's no multiple choice, this contest was virtually dumbed down. [NOTE: I should mention that I think there may have been a UK version of the show, so I am definitely writing with a US bent] With Millionaire as a hit, Survivor was next and we've never looked back. There are as many reality shows as standard shows. The nation's appetite has extended to wife swapping, no-nonsense nannies, bachelors and bachelorettes, several amazing races, a one billionaire's really strange hair. Some are fascinating, while others are completely tasteless (anyone remember "Temptation Island"?). You root for some contestants and you're shocked by others. And because you can continually refresh the players, the premise doesn't necessarily get stale. We still have our fascination with the fantasy, but we're having just as much fun with normal people and ratio of reality shows to fantasy shows remains high. Arguably one of the best non-reality shows on TV is "The Office", which is a TV show about a reality show--almost mocking the genre.

The old cliche about Hollywood is that every actor eventually wants to direct. So wasn't YouTube bound to happen? The new media levels the playing field for anyone to participate and that goes WAY beyond YouTube. Wanna write a book? No need for a publisher. With a copy of Word, a copy of Acrobat, and a seller account at Amazon, your novel can sit on the same virtual shelf as John Grisham and JK Rowling. Got a hot garage band? No more waiting for the recording agent to catch your latest gig. Use ProTools, connect with iTunes, and you're set. Think you're better than Oprah or Rush? Host a podcast and put it up on iTunes and you could have thousands of people listening to you. You hear the stories of the great movies that came from shoestring budgets (including "Clerks", a part of any good Jersey boy's education), but now, it's even easier and there's a willing audience waiting to discover you. I remember once looking for the video for the Foo Fighters song "Resolve" and saw a bunch of amateurs covering the song. And you know what? Each of those covers had thousands of views!

Given this willing to break TV down to the "common folk", should anyone be surprised we've done the same for the web? So now, we care about what our peers say. Personally, when we released CodePlex, I was as anxious about what the bloggers would say as what eWeek would say. The world really has been democratized or, to Friedman's term, flattened. It's all a level playing field. And to think, we have Regis to thank...

An Ode To GotDotNet

About two years ago, I stepped into this role with a primary responsibility being to help get GotDotNet back on its feet.  As the first Microsoft community for .NET, GDN held a dear place in the hearts of many.  However, it had clearly fallen on hard times and there was a strong proposal to end the site.  Personally, I had used GDN way too much to see it go down without a fight.  When Betsy Aoki left the team, I gave a little insight to the story of how we stepped up when no one else would.  It's hard to believe all of that was two years ago.

It was a battle where we had some pretty nasty things said about us while we tried to right the ship.  Our first move was "Project Tourniquet", which was literally to stop the bleeding.  We then opened CodeGalleries and re-did the site design to usher in a new age of GDN.  Outside of a tough deployment in November 2005 (when we rolled out the new chrome/site design AND moved from 1.1 to 2.0) and a pair of weird hiccups in 2006 that each lasted about a day, we've reached a smooth operating machine.  I can remember when the tide truly turned.  After the November 2005 deployment (at which time, I was so frustrated that I was ready to shut down the site then and there), I wrote a service to ping our eight most popular pages once every 15 minutes and ensure that the site was not only responding, but doing so with something other than the infamous "Troubleshooting in Progress" screen that so many people. As the months went on, I went from agonizing about those statistics to getting excited as the numbers started getting really good.  Meanwhile, the general mood of customers completely changed.  I can't tell you how many glowing mails I've gotten from people practically apologizing for their previous harsh words (although they were admittedly warranted).  It's been a fun ride and we had some great uptime statistics in the last twelve months.   I look at Betsy Aoki, Jana Carter, and George Bullock (the three PMs for GDN during my tenure) and see three people that helped turn site once called an "embarassment" into a legitimate example of a .NET web application. In the process, I learned a ton about running a web-site and dealing with customer requirements on the fly.  You can say I owe a lot of my career sensibilities to GDN.

However (you knew there'd be a 'however'), the project we were doing in parallel with the rebirth of GDN was the birth of CodePlex.  As proud as I am of the revival of GDN, I am more proud of the soup-to-nuts story of CodePlex.  Jim Newkirk and I fought hard to build a site that would treat sensisbilities of a community developer as a priority and to do it from the ground up.  With CodePlex, I think we really nailed it and continue to do so.  As CodePlex approaches its one year anniversary and continually grows its traffic, the need for two communities from the same team addressing the same customers is nearing its end.  GotDotNet hit an all-time high in traffic the month before CodePlex came out, but has been declining since then.  It's clear that this isn't a conincidence.  So, this summer, we will be closing the doors of GotDotNet.  It was a hard decision, like having to put your dog to sleep (well, I've never had a dog, but I'd imagine it's similar).  Over the next few months, keep an eye on the front page of the site to keep abreast of how we'll handle the migration.  To those of you who supported GotDotNet and put such compelling content on the site, I want to say thank you.  And if you have any great new ideas, I suggest you give CodePlex a try.

Oh Boise! My Second Code Camp

Last weekend, four developers from my team and I headed over to Boise, Idaho for my second code camp. Having never been to Boise, I was almost more curious about the town than the Code Camp itself. After all, my image of Idaho was rural farmland, potatoes, and, well, potatoes. Granted, that isn't very worldly of me, but given I grew up in New Jersey and many people think of toxic waste, Bon Jovi, and the Sopranos (hey, we got Sinatra and the Boss too!), I guess you could do worse than potatoes.

Well, I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. Not only was it a nice city, but there were a lot of people that were excited by what was going on in the Microsoft developer space. We arrived Friday and started with a speaker dinner the night before the event, where 40 or so people got together to get acquainted and get some presentation tips. Jason Mauer was the only other Microsoft employee at the event besides our team, so this was clearly a community event.

On the big day, we headed over to Boise State University for all the action.  Actually, before the Code Camp, I went for an invigorating 4-mile run around the campus at at 6am.  On the minus side, I nearly got lost and didn't have a cell phone on me.  I had visions of calling someone from my team collect and having them come find me (which I would clearly never live down).  Then I realized that it's impossible to get lost in Boise and found my way back pretty easily.  Meanwhile, back at the hotel, apparently there was a fire alarm and all the guests had to evacuate the building.  I was completely oblvious to all of this until I got back to breakfast.  There's a satisfaction a runner gets when he gives up sleep only to realize that everyone else got woken up the hard way. :-)

Refreshed by my run and armed with our Starbucks (grande sugar-free soy Cinnamon Dolce latte with whip--I can finally order that without thinking), we joined the 200+ people that attended (about as many as Tampa, which was another great Code Camp).  The topics were pretty diverse, with everything from XNA to PowerShell to the Mechanical Turk search for Jim Gray. It was interesting the see the trends of what people were interested in. For the second straight Code Camp, Ruby was a hit.  Also, I was surprised at how many people cared about Subversion and continuous integration (separate talks).  And agile clearly seems to be hitting the mainstream, although not always in a smooth fashion (see the panel description below).

Our team stepped up with some great talks. I missed Carl Prothman's ADO.NET talk because I was watching Tim Shakarian, er, TSHAK deliver a great session on Mock Objects. Doug Seven teamed with Eric Mahlberg to give a pair of talks on Test-Driven Development and Unit Testing and then Doug followed that up with a talk on REST web services (a very hot topic for our team right now). As the lone non-dev, I opted out of speaking (I considered doing the "Intro to Javascript" talk, and then remembered that I HATE Javascript).   Plus, since I hadn't given a technical talk in two years, I probably would've been rusty anyway.  Of course, that's the beauty of Code Camps--the pressure is off and it's really more about the community aspect than the polished speakers.  Even the seasoned veterans were doing talks on stuff they were interested in learning more than the stuff where they had tons of expertise. 

One of the more entertaining sessions was the panel discussion on methodologies.  It elicited a conversation that could've gone for hours.  While people had some great perspectives and it was fascinating to see how other people build software, I did continually hear my agile conscience (which strangely has Jim Newkirk's voice) screaming in horror at how many of the agile concepts were being misunderstood.  The implication was that you were sacraficing quality when you chose the agile route.  Plus, people kept talking about adjusting their agileness for different situations (not sure, but that might have been the quote).  With all due respect to those people (who I'm sure make great software), I'll use one of my favorite Jim quotes and leave it at that:  "Being more agile is like being more pregnant.  You are or you aren't."

Our Saturday dinner conversation was pretty entertaining.  Take eight geeks, put them at a round table, add a few beers, and start a religious conversation about C# vs. Java vs. Ruby.  It's rare to hear someone be so passionate about strong-typing vs. weak-typing (I prefer to think of it as flex-typing).   There was also some heavy praise and criticism about Microsoft products.  In both cases, there was just a tremendous amount of passion around everything discussed.  During one stretch of their requests, I had hinted at one of the things we were doing with CodePlex in the next month or two that addressed their concerns (stay tuned) and a couple of the guys nearly jumped out of their chairs.  The enuthusiasm overall was great. My favorite quote was from one of the primary community influencers there: "I get really excited every time I see all the new amazing stuff Microsoft is cranking out.  This is just such an exciting time." It is always nice to be appreciated.

One person I had a chance to spend a lot of time with Peter Kellner, an MVP who came up for Northern California.  Peter is an ASP.NET MVP and ran the Silicon Valley Code Camp.  We bonded on our experiences at Cornell and went into his rapid rise in the .NET community.  He's really thrown himself into the community with his blog, MSDN articles, and MVP status.  We discussed some of goals for Forums going forward.  Small world anectdote:  I went back and looked at a previous forum post answer that I gave a few weeks ago and as it turns out, it was to Peter's question, so apparently we had indeed met before--virtually. Peter is a really good guy and it looks like I'll have to make a trip down to the bay in October for their next Code Camp.  Someone mentioned that Code Camps were a little like the Grateful Dead on tour in that some people just followed them around.  Maybe that's where I'm headed (cue the music to "Truckin'")...

As for our team's work (with both CodePlex and the other projects we refer to as Athens, which includes the next generation of Forums and Tagging), we didn't oversell it, but we definitely did share some of the high-level work we were doing. Our support for REST interfaces is something that customers can really get excited about.  As I said to a couple of people, the user experiences that people build on top of services can often trump the original author's services (e.g., see del.icio.us and direc.tor).  I'd love to see the community build their own experiences on top of our platform.  We'll be releasing in early April and the feedback we can get from actually getting it out there will be valuable.  For those of you attending the MVP Summit, we're planning to host a couple of breakfasts to share what we are doing and give a sneak preview of Athens. So if you're coming to Redmond and want the sneak peek, let me know.

We closed out with some team bonding Saturday night and flew back Sunday morning.  It was another very valuable event and less than 48 hours away from my family--I highly recommend attending a Code Camp.  Oh, and about the Idaho potatoes, the waitress at a restaurant we went to claimed that the potatoes that they used were actually grown in Oregon.  So much for stereotypes...

Microsoft: Open 24 Hours

I've always joked to my wife that if I wasn't married, I'd probably get a cot and sleep at Microsoft on the nights when I really got into my work.  Well, thanks to the latest Seattle weather debacle, I ended up doing an all-nighter at Microsoft.  Herein lies 16-hours in the life of a Microsoftie that should have been home with his wife and kid...

4:00pm - While chatting with my administrative assistant Paige about hardware budgets, I notice an e-mail from my wife with a mention of snow & traffic.  Look out the window in time to see a massive downpour of snow/hail.  Paige thinks she might want to head home early.  I agreed and suggested she get home as fast as possible.  No worries about me getting home.  I'd be fine since I was taking the bus.

5:00pm - Chatting with Dave Morehouse.  Spend an hour getting knee-deep in discussions around software development, the advantages and disadvantages of agile development as well as the challenges of ramping up, and our future calendar for our team.  No worries about me getting home.  I'd be fine since I was taking the bus.

6:00pm - Time to go catch the bus.  Traffic might be ugly, but I've got my laptop and Zune.  No worries about me getting home.  I'd be fine since I was taking the bus.

6:25pm - Hmm.  Still no bus.

6:45pm - Hmm.  Still no bus. And it's cold.  Real cold. And someone just said they've been waiting for an hour?  OK, time to move to a better location--even at the risk of missing this bus.  After all, there's supposed to be another coming soon.

7:00pm - Grab some powdered Apple Cider and watch for the bus from a stairwell in Building 35. The previous bys never showed.  But the next bus should be here ANY time now...

7:30pm - Still no bus.  That last one should've been here by now.  Starting to lose a little faith in public transportation. 

7:45pm - Woohoo!  There's a bus!  Oh, it's not mine.  My daughter's bedtime and I'm not there.  Starting to curse public transportation.

8:15pm - Forget it.  Learned that the previous four busses did not show.  I guess I should be happy I didn't wait three hours.  Head back to office and figure out a strategy (and get some work done).  Made a mental note:  write angry letter to Al Gore for guilting me into taking the bus more often with that Inconvenient Truth stuff.  Also, buy a Hummer to spite Mr. Gore. 

8:30pm - Get to my office and call my wife.  My daughter is asleep and I missed a night with her thanks to the wonderful bus people.  Still combing the internet looking for any mention of the bus cancellation and can't find it.  Wonder if they've heard of the internet.  Wonder if they even care what happened to those of us who rely on that bus and that they took away a night with my family that I'll never get back.

9:15pm - Monty Python plays in my head:  "Always look on the bright side..."  Start catching up on e-mail while hatching a plan to take a bus to downtown Seattle and then another from there to my place.   Chat with Huong and Jason, a couple of our testers, and get into a random discussion about macroecomonic theory and the minimum wage.  What--you don't have conversations like that with your testers?

9:45pm - I realize that with my downtown bus strategy, I'd get home around midnight, if I'm lucky, and subject myself to more freezing weather.  How did I ever survive the east coast winters?  Need a new strategy.  Meanwhile, I find time for an IM chat with an old friend that I hadn't spoken to in a while.  Also, time to author 2007 kickoff mail for the team.  Starting to think an allnighter might be productive.  Or at least an interesting story to tell (hey, if you're still reading, it must be mildly compelling).

11:15pm - Call my wife and tell her I ain't coming home.  My last ditch effort was to take a cab, but I did try to call the cab company, but the line was busy.  Aparrently, they weren't interested in my business. Nice comfy couch to sleep on and plenty of work to keep me busy.  Good progress on work so far.  Inbox down to 21 items (from 200+ last Wednesday and 90 this morning) and the kickoff mail has been completed and sent out for review.  I love crossing things off a checklist.

12:15am - Find a kindred spirit in Don, a PM from the Global Marketing Platform team down the hall.  He's stuck too, so at least I'm not the only one here.  Time to start working on a cool dev side project that I put on the backburner for weekends.  Writing an app to do some cool things with the Zune.  I started it just before the holidays and mothballed it since.  Haven't coded after midnight in years (used to be when I was most productive).  Of course, it always helps to have a TV with Conan O'Brien.  Still need to figure out the firewall here to access my Slingbox.  Hmm, may just have time for that tonight.  But first, another cup of Apple Cider to keep me warm.

1:00 am - Hey, here's advantage of beind stranded:  now on Paris time.  IM conversation with Kevin Connolly, former Group Product Manager and now our liason to the EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) subsidiaries.  Discuss organizational stuff as well as some plans for the next few months (and his impending bundle of joy).  Kevin comments that he sees visions of me as Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.  Inspired enough to go make myself a cup of tea.

2:00am - I had been working in silence, but I needed some music. Wake up the Zune--it's time for Moby's Hotel.  Meanwhile, the app looks about complete and the Readme docs are almost done.  I reward myself with some hot chocolate and Mango Pineapple Trail Mix, which has the healthy tag on it, but ends up have 18g of fat.  How is that healthy?

3:00am - My application looks done.  It installs and runs properly on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003.  I'll try it on Windows XP when I get home (whenever that is). Need some water to counter the hot chocolate.  Also, need a little U2 Joshua Tree to provide some nostalgia.  It's at this point that I realize this experience needs to be blogged for posterity's sake.

4:00am - I spent last 30 mins typing this and now I'm caught up.  It's 4am as I type this and I don't feel tired.  I play some Stone Temple Pilots No. 4 and grab another cup of tea.  I might actually make it till the morning.  Of course, it is freezing in here.  I am constantly sitting on my hands to keep them warm.  I look outside at the peaceful serene snow-covered landscape.  It's actually kind of calming.  Or maybe I'm calm because it's 4 in the morning.  Just remembered I need to run a tool on our blog data the determine the global reach of our corporate bloggers.  It's an app I wrote a year or so ago to be a nice guy and now I am stuck running it every month and I didn't build it for the long haul--I've learned my lesson.

5:00am - Still not tired--looks like I am going to make it and without any coffee (though I've drank so much tea, cider, and cocoa that I am getting plenty of exercise with my trips to the bathroom).  I've got the Foo Fighters debut album going and I've opened my door to try to warm things up (not gonna bother too many people this time of day).  The last time I qualified for an allnighter was when I started my own business several years ago and a dose of developer inspiration carried me into morning.  I remember rewarding myself with a trip to Denny's.  That'd be fun as I could go for a Slim Slam. Of course, with no car, I'd have to take the bus.  On second thought, I'll just get a Snickers from the vending machine.

6:00am - Working on a patent document for an idea I had two years ago.  It's amazing what one night of free time will do. Darkness is still upon us, but it shouldn't be long before the dawn.  In true fashion of the old days,  the light in my office was never on.  All that was there was the warm glow of a couple of LCD monitors.  The Zune's battery finally gaveout (should have charged it before I left home), so no more tunes.

7:00am - Still, this is about the time I'd be getting on the bus on a typical day, so it should feel just like I came into work early.  We'll see if/when the lack of sleep hits.   An e-mail just came around saying they'll be serving a "contintental breakfast" this morning, which destroys my vision of some nice scrambled eggs.  I've got three meetings scheduled today, including a finance review for last quarter (good thing we nailed our budget), but we'll see how many people show up.  Wimps...

8:00am - It's a brand new day.  I've got my coffee and my reward scone.  I hopped over to Building 2 for a quick shower to refresh me.  I'm raring to go, though things seem quiet around here.  I just had one of my three meetings cancelled, so we'll have to see if my solitude continues.  Still need to work on my patent doc, though it probably won't get done and I'll have to save it for a rainy, er, snowy day.

There it is.  My first allnighter at Microsoft. Other than not seeing my family, it wasn't so bad.  King County public transportation definitely gets a thumbs down, not so much for letting me down yesterday as much as (a) not doing anything to notify riders and (b) the consistent poor service they've had in the last two months in general.  Well, time to finish off the double-shift and then go home, catch a nap, and play with my kid. 

The game of 'Tag' in the 21st Century

OK, apparently there's this meme thing going around where people are tagging one another to find out five things that most readers wouldn't know about the blogger.  I think it's a pretty cool idea and now that I've been tagged by three people (Andrew Connell, Chris Kinsman, and Alan Griver--thanks guys!), I guess it's time for my five things.  Since I constantly mention my sports fanaticism and my "holy trinity" of the Baltimore Orioles, Tennessee Titans, and Georgetown Hoyas, I'll leave that one out (though learning about Andrew's love of the Jags makes me think there's a trip to Jacksonville I'll need to take to catch a Titan-Jaguar matchup).  I'll take a crack at stuff that is probably less likely to be obvious about me...

1. Sold Software at 11 Years Old - I wrote games for the Tandy computers that were at our middle school and sold them to fellow classmates.  Some were simple (like Russian Roulette) and others were pretty impressive IMHO (like Kaboom).  Eventually, I moved on the Commodore 64 and I called the "company" Eggbertvision.  I spent half my time writing code and the other half typing up price lists.  We never went public, but I made more profit than a lot of dot-coms that did. 
2. Believer In Fate - My wife and I lived less than a mile from each other in New Jersey until I was 8 and she was 6, but we never met until 20 years later and 3000 miles away.  Even then, after we met at a party, I didn't get her number and had to track her down on the internet and send her an e-mail.  It was 1998 and I was way ahead of my time (both the tracking down and using e-mail--though truth be known, I also found her phone number and was just being a wimp).
3. No Shortage of Sheepskin - I've mentioned in this blog that I have an MBA, but only a few people know I have four advanced degrees.  I have a BA in Physics from Ithaca College, a BS and M.Eng in Electrical Engineering from Cornell, and an MBA from Wharton.  It's no wonder I didn't pay off educational loans until a couple of years ago.  Of course, my father is a PhD and my brother is an MD, so I still get flack for not being "Dr. Khaund".  I guess I still have a degree to go.
4. I Found Nirvana - I've always said that the album Nevermind changed my life.  On the 10th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death, I ducked out of work early, drove to where he used to live, and walked the grounds with a bunch of the other mourners.  It may have looked weird that they were all dressed in black while I was wearing a J.Crew sweater and (as I later realized) a Microsoft badge, but it was a pretty memorable experience.
5. The Indian Nuke Laloosh - I have a wicked fastball that was once clocked as high as 87 MPH (the same velocity as Barry Zito, the $126 million man).  Of course, the reason I haven't even made $126 from playing baseball is that I often go through bouts of control issues that evoke memories of Rick Ankiel.  That experience includes a tryout with the Chicago White Sox when I was 19 that started great, but went awry (buy me a beer and I will tell you a story). 

I guess it's my turn to tag people.  Yag actually already pinged Doug & Bob, whose entries I'd love to see.  It amazes me that no one has tagged Korby Parnell or Josh Ledgard, unless I didn't see where they posted it or they are just ignoring their requests--in which case, I will continue the campaign.  While we're at it, I'd love to see what Jim Newkirk has to say (though I don't know if he'll bite) and we need to get Scott Densmore blogging again.  To make sure we sneak a non-Microsoft person in here, let's see if Keith Pleas would take the time to share some insight.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time? (Part II)

Following up on the Yahoo memo, I found it interesting to read the section regarding the effort level at Yahoo. I believe the larger your company grows, the harder it is to get everybody driving hard--especially at the levels of a startup. For as much as people love to lobby for the "startup mentality" at large companies, I think that's rare to get that to happen. I would love to tell my team to operate like a startup, but if my VP (or for that matter anyone up to Steve Ballmer & Bill Gates) hands down a mandate that we use a certain product, restrict a branding decision, or align with a corporate direction, I am obligated to push that direction down on my team. And by accepting these uber-decisions, the team knows that it answers to a higher authority. Startups don't have that. With the exception of the venture capitalists, the highest authority is usually sitting just down the hall or, in some cases, in the same room. No "blaming it on the man"--you are the man.  That's empowering.  Yahoo is a mature company and a random developer in Yahoo Mail eventually has to make sure he is aligned with Terry Semel and his band of merry executives, who, in turn, need to keep Wall Street happy. Sorry, but that's different than a couple of guys in a garage with a dream--no matter how much you encourage your team otherwise.  Go ahead and try to convince him to work like it's a startup.

So as a manager for the world's largest software company, does that mean I'd accept anything less than a 100% effort from people on my team?  Of course not.  Occasionally, you spot people that are dogging it and I expect the managers on the team to call them out and suggest they look for more interesting employment if we can't keep them entertained (and that has happened in my career).  Complacency is contagious and it's nice to nip that in the bud. 

But what of those people ready to work, but lacking the motivation that is built-in to to startup's "do-or-die" culture?  In other words, how do you maximize the effort at a large company?  I think it's twofold.  First is to "accentuate the positive":  I think you need to focus on a separate set of incentives at play with a larger company, not the least of which revolve around the magnitude of the impact they can make.  While the startup is exciting, 9 out of 10 startups fail (heck, I've failed once myself). Doing something at Microsoft is like doing it into a megaphone and the thrill of knowing your effort will be enjoyed by millions of people (which is what I can boast to my team) is pretty powerful as well.  It's the difference between the effort an indie band makes trying to score a record deal and the effort that U2 makes during a sold out set at Madison Square Garden.  Just because you've made it doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels--in fact, the expectations are higher.  Nothing in the Yahoo memo suggested that the success they have had should hold them to a higher standard.  It's as if they'd be better as the two Stanford PhD's who create a web directory.  Embrace your success!  Second is to eliminate the negative: while I can hope that they feel enough autonomy to let operate at a startup pace (complete with insane hours and the sense of being on a mission that makes the effort worth it) and feel that level of empowerment, I realize that it's foolish to set it as an expectation when I'm at a 70,000 person company.  That's said, minimizing the impact of the rest of the company on the individual contributor, shielding them from the unnecessary garbage that often comes in.  Only then do you get the empowerment and autonomy that creative people crave.  That spurs effort.  The delta between what comes from the team themselves and what reaches the customers should be minimal.  That's empowering.  Getting caught in the exec spin cycle of "tweak this, change that" cuts down on the empowerment.  Of course, what, then, is the role of the "boss"?

The Yahoo memo did make mention of the bureaucracy facing their company and how ownership was split around the company in different disciplines (Engineering, Finance, Marketing, etc).  With no clear ownership, execs were being forced to make decisions.  My question is "which decisions?"  In most cases, execs don't need to make decisions, but rather they need to assign who should make which decisions and stand behind those decision-makers (unless they are in strong disagreement, in which case, a discussion should occur).  They should also ensure proper collaboration between the appropraite parties to come to compromises when necessary and arbitrate when no other solution can be reached.  I like what Eric Schmidt at Google said about his role as CEO (I believe this came from the SF Chronicle, but I lost the link):

(Schmidt's) primary job is to run Google's numerous staff meetings. To get the most out of them, he relies on two philosophies. One is getting opinions from as many people as possible, particularly dissidents, under the theory that decisions are better when based on many viewpoints. Another is to set deadlines because, unless there's a reason to end an argument, people will continue to argue. He described a time when founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were arguing violently about Internet browsers and software that had pitted them against one another in front of other managers during a meeting last year. After a while, Schmidt, who was also in the fight, put his foot down. He emptied the room and told the co-founders they were to reach an agreement by 6 p.m. because the dispute was confusing the staff. They resolved it by the next morning.

That's a powerful way to lead:  ensure all avenues are reviewed, get the objections out of the way, and force the elimination of dangerous stalemates.  Life is all about dissenting opinions, tradeoffs, and compromises and your ability to navigate effectively is the difference between success and failure.  The exec should be a part of the debate and, when necessary, step up and make the decision.  Yet it shouldn't be an in a vacuum, but rather the exact opposite.  Empowerment isn't absolute authority, but rather an voice that will be heard loud and clear--particuarly as it relates to one's expertise.  It's not consensus.  It's not even necessarily a democracy where majority rules.  It's a collaboration where the collective establish mutual respect and can generate something greater than a solo entity and the best ideas win.  Imagine that...

Peanut Butter Jelly Time? (Part I)

The shakeup at Yahoo is a fascinating reflection of the life and times of a tech company. Now many consider Yahoo a competitor to Microsoft and I have no interest in disparaging their company, but this is an interesting business case study and there is a lot of learn here from a strictly academic perspective. So ignore my MS bias and assume my statements are made from the perspective of a innocent bystander.

Seems like even before the shakeup, there'd been a lot of dissension over at Yahoo, which included an e-mail entitled "The Peanut Butter Manifesto" that came out last month. In it, a Yahoo senior exec called the company to task for (among other things) spreading themselves too thin across too many projects (losing focus) and pretty much giving a half-baked effort on their projects. He seemed to think the company lost its drive and was wallowing in their bloat. Interesting. There are two parts of the document that are interesting:  the diversification of interests and the operational efficiency of a disenfranchised workforce.  I've got a lot of thoughts on both, so I'll split them into two blog entries.

Judging the "Peanut Butter" effect as it relates to an overdiversification of business interests, it makes for an interesting debate. According to rumors that I recall floating around, Google is undergoing the same sort of internal scrutiny and recently shut down their Q&A service as a possible harbinger of things to come. While their success has been far greater than Yahoo, they are being critical about how they are execute on their charter. They also believe that they need to focus on the businesses that have the highest chance of success instead of the spaghetti approach of throwing a bunch of stuff against a wall and seeing what sticks. When Jack Welch was at GE, one was his most popular approaches to optimizing its success was to tell businesses "either you're #1, #2, or you will be #1 or #2 in an market within a couple of years. If not, out you go." Well, those might not have been his exact words, but you get the point. Welch was focused on markets that he could successfully compete in. For students of the BCG 2x2 matrix, he wanted to be a Star or a Cash Cow, but had no interest in the question mark or the dog. For those who have read Jim Collins' Good to Great, this sounds like the "Hedgehog" concept (fwiw, I really didn't like that book) in determining what you do best.  With the Yahoo memo, there was a suggestion that they were complacent in being the question mark (high growth, low market share) and that was impeding their ability to succeed in their other businesses and hurting their overall corporate health. Some might suggest that Microsoft is in danger of doing the same thing.

I agree that simply getting into businesses for the sake of getting into the business is a bad idea. I also agree that you need to learn when to say no. But I also believe that there are some businesses that may take a while to incubate and you need to know where to preach patience and where to come quick. I look at other companies and wonder how their decisions are being perceived internally. eBay's decision to buy Skype shows a plan to diversify in a way that (in my mind) still doesn't quite align with their strategy to be the world's greatest flea market. Amazon's S3 play is a bold move that has nothing to do with retail. Are these good or bad? My instinct is to say "bad", but I've been too quick to judge in the past.  I do recall chuckling when Apple came out with the iPod, thinking "what does the iMac company have to offer the gadget world? Here's another Newton..." Well, I was obviously wrong about that. Now, in retrospect, that was a great move by Apple. But wasn't that spreading the Peanut Butter a little bit?  I have to admit that I like a lot of Yahoo's offerings.  I think their foray into being a content company wasn't as flawed as people are trying to make it out to be in retrospect.  The problem with bold, gutsy decisions is that you are a hero when they succeed (Steve Jobs and the iPod) and an idiot when they fail (John Sculley and the Newton)--and oftentimes, the result has as much to do with luck as with any specific aspect of the decision.  For Microsoft, diversifying into enteprise computing has given them a growth engine that has been pivotal in the last several years.  Building a home and retail presence with XBox and Zune is meant to give us something to hang their hat on for the next decade.  To base Microsoft entirely on operating systems and productivity applications (the historical primary money makers) and cut all else would completely ignore the fact that you need to prepare for life after your core competency.  Thank goodness Microsoft didn't give up on SQL and hopefully we'll be saying the same about Zune in a couple of years.  

Again, I'm not suggesting haphazard business launches for the sake of letting workers do whatever the heck they please.  But when I see things like Live Labs, I am excited, rather than pertubed, by what to bodes for Microsoft's future.  Cutting businesses provides a short-term fix and does quench the Wall Street thirst, but be careful where that leads you in the long run...

Dude, you got a Zune?

Why yes, I did.

In the words of Jim Newkirk, I "drank the Kool-Aid" and picked one up.  Rarely have I seen such a fascinating launch of a product from Microsoft--it's certainly the most interesting in my 5+ years here.  The first thing everyone does is compare it to the iPod (fair) and proclaim that it's a failure because it doesn't completely measure up (not fair, at least IMHO).  Personally, I spent a lot of time debating whether I'd get one or not.  I definitely wanted to get a portable video player and was stuck between choosing the iPod, Zen, and Zune.  Now, I do try to support Microsoft whenever possible, but rarely do I get something only for that reason.   I didn't get a PocketPC Phone when it first came out (even though I really wanted one) as it was too rich for my blood compared to how much use I'd get out of it.  I still haven't gotten an XBox 360.  So the Zune was definitely not a guarantee.  Talking to people in and out of Microsoft, I didn't have anyone saying "you DEFINITELY have to get one" (as opposed to an XBox 360).  Of course, I don't know anyone on the Zune team and maybe they could've been persuasive.  I was close to giving up on the Zune until I started looking at the criticisms and tried to figure out which ones I cared about.  Here were the big strikes against Zune and why I personally didn't care:

• Doesn't work with Plays For Sure - I didn't really have much PFS content anyway and I can always burn those songs to CDs and re-rip them (a pain, but I did that for my iPod).
• iTunes is still better - I never really cared for iTunes.  In fact, I've never been compelled to buy anything off it, though I've browsed.
• It's bigger than the iPod! -- If I was trying to buy a Nano vs. Nano-clone, this would've made a difference.  And I am still a fan of the Nano, which I will keep for running and when I want something that fits in my pocket.  But making a stink for the extra ounce and surface area is a little like complaining about gas mileage differences when comparing SUVs--it's important, but it's secondary or else you'd be buying a Prius (or in this case, a Nano or Sansa).  I already have my Nano and now I want something with more capabilities that I can throw in my bag for the commute or the long plane ride.
• Doesn't work with Vista - I trust that it will when I am in a position to put Vista on my home computer (in the new year).  For now, only my work computer has Vista RTM (which, BTW, I have been really enjoying since installing yesterday) and I don't use that for digital audio anyway. 

So I wasn't bothered by some of the complaints tossed about.  Of course, with some of the scathing reviews on the Zune, the one challenged "why would anyone buy a Zune over an iPod?"  Fair question.  FWIW, here's what I was thinking:

• Bigger Screen - I can't believe this isn't a bigger deal for people.  The iPod and Zen screens are 2.5" where the Zune is 3".  Technically, the difference in ratios is the same as a 30" screen over a 25" screen.  That's a lot!  I don't care about the resolution being the same because the picture still looks great.  I watched "Vince Young: Next Level" yesterday on the way to work and it looked great (and I could actually tell the difference between Vince Young and Mario Williams!).
• ZunePass - It really has to do with my love of Canadian women.  Before my wife gets worried, allow me to re-phrase that.  Two albums that I've been thinking about this Christmas are Sarah Machlachan's "Wintersong" and Nelly Furtado's "Loose".  The fact is, I'll likely spend the next month listening to them quite a bit.  But the season will pass and the Sarah Machlachlan holiday music won't sound as good in January.  As for Nelly Furtado, I love her evolution to hip-hop lady and I am amazed at how well her work with Timbaland turned out, but I think my appreciation is only going to last so long before I move on to something else.  For albums that end up being flavors-of-the-month, I hate to drop $10.   With ZunePass, I can enjoy and discard.  With the albums I know I'll love for years (like the latest Audioslave), I'd buy the CD anyway as it doesn't cost me any more than iTunes and gives me the maximum flexibility.  With the CDs that I might like, I can spend some time getting used to it before taking the plunge (like Death Cab for Cutie's latest, which I couldn't get into despite the fact that I loved the first single).  I had been doing this with Napster and you can extend that service to certain devices, but having a dedicated device optimized to a specific service is preferable.  And, of course, you can't do this at all with an iPod.
• FM Radio - Sometimes, you want someone else controlling the playlist  I always liked this about the Zen and was surprised that the iPod didn't have it.  I won't use it a ton, but in case I need a little NPR to make me smarter after one too many listens to Eminem, I have the option.
• The Future - I love the guy that thinks the Zune is dead in six months.  Is that really possible?  I suppose anything is possible, but it reminds me a little of rumors going around with customers 3-5 years ago that .NET was going to be ditched (customers honestly approached me with that fear after reading some goofy articles).  You just don't make a bet as big as that and drop it so quickly.  Frankly, anyone inside Microsoft that thought we would jump in and eliminate the iPod is delusional.  They were anxious to get it out for the holidays.  But what about 2007?  I've heard rumors about what's next for Zune.  I've seen a couple of confidential things.  To this Chicago Sun-Times writer, I'd remind him that the game is barely in the second quarter and he shouldn't head home yet.  Just ask my Tennessee Titans. :)

So, here I sit on the bus for my evening commute and the Zune blaring away.  I'm not saying it was an obvious decision and the 10% employee discount helped.  Plus, I don't know about Zune software installation issues (mine worked perfectly and I had much bigger problems with the iTunes installation where it kept adding additional modules and I had to roll back twice).  As for the Wi-Fi sharing, maybe I'll care about that someday, but that didn't really sway me.  After all, I'm still surrounded by iPod users (maybe Joe will "squirt" me some songs if we make him happy with our next version of Forums).  But I truly do believe the Zune is legit and worth consideration.  And if the guy from the Chicago Sun-Times is right and it'll be dead in six months, then I will happily use it for a couple of years and then sell it on eBay to a collector (the same way someone sold me an Apple Cube two years ago).  I can't lose!

{Garden State Soundtrack (on my Zune)}