joeware - never stop exploring... :)

Word on the street is that Robert Scoble, renowned blogger, is leaving Microsoft. This is sort of confirmed by Robert on his blog in that he says he is upset about what some of the people are saying especially in regards to Microsoft about it.

I am not certain this event is deserving of all of the hoo ha it is generating but if he is leaving, good luck to him in his future work. He always seemed like a good sort of chap. I never met him but some of his blog entries have been pretty interesting. I wouldn’t say he has had any influence on getting me to blog or what I blogged and I don’t think I would classify him as the father or even the favorite (favourite) uncle of blogging like some people seem to be drooling about. However I respect that he doesn’t appear to hold back in his blogging and I know how difficult that can be, especially since he is blogging about his employer and his employer’s competitors and not always saying how great his employer is. He offers an honest (from Robert’s viewpoint) look at MSFT and not every company wants people to have that look.

You will note, I do not blog about my employer, at least not in a way that Robert did. I may mention them occasionally but only in response to news articles or other things that have little to nothing to do with my employment and I do not say that they are my employer. In fact, most people unless they have done a little digging or have run into me at a conference have no clue who my employer is and that is the way I like it. It isn’t that I am ashamed of where I work. Heck no, I am quite proud to work there though I admit not everything is silver lined and in fact it is a miracle I work for my employer at all because I worked for them in the past and I wasn’t very happy with them when I left. Only one person could get me to come back and it took him 4 months to convince me.

I don’t blog about my employer because I am very careful to keep a strong separation between the “work me” and the “everything else me”. One reason Robert and I have this difference is probably becase the “everything else me” is far more well known than the “work me” and I was who I am and known for it before I came back to my employer. Robert will be in the same position now if he takes a job at another company which makes me wonder how his blogging will change if/when he jumps. Anyway, this separation for me is both personal choice and guidance from various individuals in the company. I know I am not the normal corporate mold employee which is both something my company loves (and consequently leverages) about me when it needs my special skills and something it is probably scared by as well. I respect Robert and what he has been able to say and do and I am proud of MSFT for allowing him to do so. Most companies I feel would not allow this as evidenced by how many bloggers have been fired and I am pretty certain I could not get away with bad mouthing my employeer or saying good things about my employeers competitors even if I wanted to share.

 

So why would Robert leave? Who knows, we will know if he says and knowing his blogging style he will probably say if he can and hint if he can’t outright say. I expect he will say it is because he sees a new opportunity that he would like to leverage but I expect that there is a decent amount of money under it all as well which when it really comes down it is what we should be looking for because when we are 90 years old stumbling about, the company you work for isn’t going to be there holding your hand. No… you will be paying someone to hold your hand and change your bed pan and the money you make now is the money you have to use then.

One thing I have noticed about MSFT is that they don’t tend to pay people as well as they probably should (well some of the people should feel lucky anyone is paying them). At least if someone doesn’t have a full doctorate in something that MSFT wants you to have a degree in. I find that a trifle funny knowing the full history of the company but hey, it is their company, they can do what they want but you wonder how much talent they lose now because of it – that is fine though, MSFT is better when someone outside of MSFT does something better so MSFT has to catch up. If it weren’t for the money, I probably would have started working for MSFT long ago when a completely smashed drunken MSFT manager was stumbling through the streets of London with me spilling all sorts of internal gossip trying to convince me to come work for MSFT back in 2000. I still get pinged by head hunters and others fairly regularly but still haven’t seen anything change in terms of money. Also you seem to have a choice of traveling a lot or working in Redmond. Neither is appealing to me. Redmond can be beautiful to visit but overall I don’t want to live there.

I doubt Scoble possibly leaving has anything to do with MSFT directly forcing him or anything like that. I think MSFT is realizing that the bloggers are putting a “human” face on MSFT which is something I have said MSFT has needed for a long time[1]. People need to understand how brilliant some of the folks in MSFT are and how funny a large number of them are. I have been asked in the past to give a profile of the folks that work at MSFT and I have to say, I don’t think there is one. I have met such an eclectic bunch of people through the years in dealing with Softies. Many of whom I have found to be completely worthless as technical people and pretty much worthless otherwise and many who are some of the most intelligent and funny people I have ever met.

I think this variety is part and parcel in a larger company but I think something very good about MSFT is that it doesn’t really try to subdue that, at least not in Redmond. I don’t know about its other R&D facilities but Redmond is definitely a very interesting place and if you ever have a chance to go there and meet with the product teams, DO IT. Don’t think once let alone twice, they are some very cool people for the most part. Sure they also have some worthless folks because that is just going to happen anywhere, but mostly, wow, the people are incredible.

I am not saying that they will give you love and put flowers in your hair. In fact, they may threaten to beat you to death or turn purple and you will assume they are about to jump the table and try to strangle you and if you have an idea be prepared to defend it or change your mind because that is the usual outcome. Do NOT make any judgements about the folks by the way they are dressed or how they communicate or how they look or whether or not it appears their hair has been washed or combed in the last day week or month. Do not make judgements based on the level of destruction in their office.

I have met people there who you think should be out on a sidewalk with a skateboard and you wonder if they know what a comb is, people who will look everywhere in the room but at you, people who look like they should be giving an apple to their 10th grade teacher and should actually be in class right now, people who you think are a member of Hell’s Angels and you wonder if you should hide your wallet and maybe yourself, people whose arms flail so much when they talk the room temperature goes up and gail force winds advisories come out, people who talk and will stop midsentence and apparently forget you are even there and not make a sound for 2 or so minutes and then pick right back up where they were before, and many people who are apparently just a little too much interested in their tech stuff they work on and you are pretty sure there is nothing else in their lives. It may scare you a bit but it is great.

Personally I think you should be able to find people like this in ANY company, at least any technical company IMO, because all of those characteristics are unimportant in terms of what the people can accomplish. The fact that someone can shower, put on a suit, and comb their hair to the side in a pleasing manner has nothing to do with their technical skills and don’t forget it. Just because someone looks like a kid and comes rolling up on roller blades and a ripped shirt and shorts falling off his (or her) butt doesn’t mean they aren’t the most brilliant person in the world on the items they are working on. Microsoft apparently is really good at getting people like that and not forcing them to change, well not forcing them all of the time, I am sure they get more and more coaching as they rise through the ranks and more and more have to talk to outsiders. This changing for the outsiders is not for MSFT and because they feel that is important, but because other companies have such sticks up their butt and make judgements based on those things.

Err so to try and wrangle this crazy all over the place post in, I don’t think MSFT tried to change Scoble resulting in him possibly leaving. I expect it is more about money, maybe it is about travel and Robert wants to spend more time at home with wife and kids, in part I am sure it is about some opportunity that maybe MSFT isn’t quite getting into yet. Who knows. Good luck to Robert regardless.

   joe

 

[1] Microsoft produces these internal movie spoofs that are great. They are something that they show internally and at MVP events and some of them are seen at public events as well. They are absolutely hilarious and show that MSFT and Bill Gates and the other execs have no problem making fun of themselves or their competitors. Of course if they showed these things to some people, they would just go ballistic and start trying to sue people because the sticks are shoved so far up their bums they don’t have a sense of humour anymore. I have three of those that are my all time favorites. The first one where Bill and Steve did a version of the VW commercial with the “Da da da” song and instead of picking up a stinky piece of furniture they pick up a Mac computer. If you know the VW commercial you know how it all plays out and it was hilarious. The second one is Bill Gates trying to get a drink out of a soda machine and he is walking around a dark and empty office asking for change. Now that may not seem entirely funny if you don’t know understand MSFT well. The first and easiest funny point of course is the idea that Bill being the richest man in the known universe looking for pocket change. The second funny point is that MSFT gives away free soda on campus, you walk up to coolers and take what you want, when you went. In fact, some of the employees drink this nasty ass tasting drink which is basically just carbonated water to slow themselves down from drinking so much. The third funny point is a dead empty office. I think a good portion of the employees sleep in their offices when they occasionally decide to sleep but usually I would expect to see people at all hours. The final favorite was a play on the matrix with Steve playing the part of Neo (SteveO). In the interrogation room they Mr. Smith character had a Linux laptop that didn’t work because it didn’t have the right driver and later when SteveO meets the Morpheus (Bill Gates) character, he has to chose between the red pill and the blue pill and the red pill was this nice normal size pill and the blue pill was this Giant fat pill with an IBM logo. That stuff is great. MSFT should be able to put that on as regular commercials and if someone gets pissed, they make their own commercial, they don’t sue.  Oh btw, if anyone has the full version of the Matrix spoof, mind sending it to me? I tried to find it previously but could only find bits and pieces of it.