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I was a software engineer with no reports at MSFT, and at the time had 5 people between myself and Steve. Since leaving, I've heard from former coworkers that the team was reorganized... to make it flatter. The problem with Microsoft's org chart is its width, not its height. The best metaphor is "warring city-states", with a large helping of "the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing". Each Microsoft product team or department has the ambition and manpower to believe that they can build a world-changing product - after all, this is Microsoft! We can make a new, better standard for web content if we want to do that! Go big! At the same time, no individual product team has the official authority to quash other projects that might duplicate, negate, interfere with, render obsolete, or drain resources from its own project. The key word is "official". When a decision has to be made about a troubled or behind-schedule project, the more-important divisions will typically get their way. Software development being what it is, there will always be several troubled or behind-schedule projects in a company the size of Microsoft. Then you have to sit down, compare future plans and bug lists to schedules/budgets/available developers, and decide what to do about it. It's in those meetings that Microsofties discover some product teams are more equal than others. This is what the original article sounds like. There's an ambitious product, yet it suffers for lack of attention and resources. Some developers are overworked (their project is too large) while others are bored by inaction (their project is too small). It suddenly comes to the attention of Team Foo that Team Bar has built a system which does not use Foo, even though Foo is supposed to be Microsoft's all-purpose framework for your Bar needs (Team Bar did not know about Team Foo and vice-versa). The problem is recognized, yet nobody actually seems to be in charge of deciding what to do. Finally there is a come-to-Jesus moment in a "corporate realignment". Foo: Yes or no? Microsoft retroactively discovers that actually, it's OK with Foo not taking over the world. The project ends, often with the notable developer/evangelist/whatever in charge saying that they were very excited about the Foo technology but it seems Microsoft didn't agree. Some level of bitterness is expressed at the fact that Microsoft never said so up front. |