Re: [TLUG]: Re: [TLUG]: Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant

[William Muriithi]

Hi,

-0700, James Mcintosh wrote:
> > The article (or excerpt of the article) mentions "stack ranking", the
> > compelled rating of employees, and its harmful effects.
> >
> > I doubt that this process is unique to Microsoft.
> >
> > I think that I first heard of it about Wang, and business periodicals
> > praised it back when Wang seemed to have potential.
>
> In academia it's called "grading on the curve".
>
> On reflection, it's a very strange thing to do.  When Laplace started
> putting probability theory together, he was dealing explicitly with
> gambling, and physics in a big world, and situations generally where
> information had to be incomplete.  Why use it in situations where you
> know as much as can be known?  The employees are right there; the
> students are right there; the year's results are right there.  Calling
> on probability is a tacit admission that you're only guessing at the
> output of your own process.

Very good observations here. When I read the article last week, it reminded
me of Jack Welsh of General Electric.  The guy took this to a whole new
level. There is some business books out praising his management skills and
the market at that time thought it was a great idea too. When I read about
it back at business school, I thought it was not a good idea and always
suspect GE could be even better long run if they did not have Welsh as CEO.

Market and actually even governments are short minded these days and no one
want to think long term. I always swing my head when I hear someone talking
about efficiency to the extreme, I mean the 5 sigma stuff. Take a case of
Volkswagen, they are doing great because they looked at thing long term
even when it was not profitable then.

Anyway,  I guess what I am trying to say is these guys should give
Microsoft a break.  History is full of companies that made the same
mistakes and they wrote how great an idea it was.

Microsoft problems are external and these internal problems would not be a
big deal if external factors were not too bad. And you can't expect every
CEO to win as Job. That is to repeat the same mistake the article is
whining about.

Regards

William



>
> Some time ago nakedcapitalism.com got up-in-arms about financial
> regulations that tried to treat policy implementation as though it were
> something like industrial materials handling.  Regulations stipulated
> that if instances of fraud fell below a certain rate, then legal action
> would not be taken.  Astonishing!
>
>         Mel.
>
>
>
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