Comments on: Growing pains

By: sam

sam — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 15:32:12 +0000

A tech company needs a “nerd” to be its CVO (Chief Visionary Officer)..Something that Bill Gates should have become rather than just moving away …..Just in the office and dream….

Not the job for the Marketing types who are good for jumping around the stage shouting Developer…Developer…Developer….

By: DickM

DickM — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:29:40 +0000

Yep – they are a being run as a marketing company not a technology one.

Thankfully there are people there working hard on technology but it looks to me like the “decision-makers” are not tech people anymore but BDMs with stock price in mind and Marketing types who are always thinking all that matters is the lowest common denominator.

Too bad because IMHO if you’re going to be a technology company you have to lead with your technology – aim high – and everything else will follow you. Be the best for your customers – and your customers are the actual people who USE your technology not the CEOs and CIOs who’s butts they spend so much time and money kissing lately.

MS are not a technology company anymore. I’m not really sure what they are frankly.

Dick

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:03:39 +0000

thats a fair point Harlan. what I have seen first hand though is the conversion of every engagement initiative (think partner program, MS qualifications, MSDN roadshows, Office developer advisory council, most of the conferences, etc) from a way to connect to the user community to share info into a brash, crass failed marketing exercise. I know who I point the finger at for that. And I have an idea on the long term impact.

By: Harlan Grove

Harlan Grove — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:38:33 +0000

re MSFT and Gates vs Ballmer, one argument is that Gates knew when to exit, another argument is people who have some understanding and demonstrated ability to design/build the products they sell are better leaders than people who only know how to sell.

By: Johan Nordberg

Johan Nordberg — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:23:35 +0000

I generally have 3-4 instances running on my 3 year old Dell laptop without problems or performance issues… But…. Sorry for hijacking the thread…

I do think there are a lot of industries with the same problem. Just look at the entertainment industri. It took a computer company to really make the music industri wake of, and they’re still snoozing…

The movie industri is even worse. They turn customers into their enemies instead of selling what customers actually want to buy.

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:12:02 +0000

Johan I prefer VS to VBA for sure, but VS2010 on a general corp developer box? its unusable.

But the post was more about these huge IT companies struggling to make the next step. Does it happen in other industries?

By: Johan Nordberg

Johan Nordberg — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:37:04 +0000

What’s wrong with Visual Studio? It doesn’t even have a ribbon…

I regulary use Visual Studio 2010 for all web development. I use Xcode and I use Aptana Studio (based on Eclipse). Back in the Office days I used the VBA IDE.

Visual Studio is by far the most productive tool for me.

By: excelandaccess

excelandaccess — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:04:44 +0000

It seems this is the way it usually works. Look at Excel 2008. Really, what was that all about?

And Excel 2011, wow, seems that there are a lot of people using that one. At least that is what we see on our end.