The last week I
have read this
news http://mashable.com/2013/05/15/google-stock-900/
and a few others
about the fact that, according to the number and the
value of the shares, Google now worth more billions
than Microsoft. But money
is not what I want to
talk about, I would instead
spend a few words on this recent and
somehow related
“story” I have
seen here these
days:
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74. For the lazy people
not willing to read that blog post (in my opinion you really should),
just know that a Microsoft insider has
made a few critic
statements, there reported, that point out how bad management
decisions and bad hiring practices
are destroying the company. Aside many technical considerations and
comparisons with
Linux that really
worth reading, I'm going to report here a
few things I consider particularly
interesting:
“Another reason for the quality gap [with Linux] is that that we've been having trouble keeping talented people. Google and other large Seattle-area companies keep poaching our best, most experienced developers, and we hire youths straight from college to replace them.”Then:
“our good people keep retiring or moving to other large technology companies, and there are few new people achieving the level of technical virtuosity needed to replace the people who leave. We fill headcount with nine-to-five-with-kids types, desperate-to-please H1Bs, and Google rejects. We occasionally get good people anyway, as if by mistake, but not enough. Is it any wonder we're falling behind?”
Sure, a few points
are debatable, but what
to say? Did he
really tell the truth? Does it sound
reasonable to you?
My
short answer is:
well, I think he is very right but somehow very
wrong as well.
Honestly, I can help
but saying that I really believe his words, because it is a very
common situation these days,
especially in Europe, and in Italy in particular. Saving
costs is now the rule to be competitive and the vast majority of
engineering
companies seems to forget that the real
value of this kind of company
lies in the
employers, their
skills, their know-how
and their ideas. And even worse, they
have a pair of legs and can leave the company taking some knowledge
away with them. I
can say that here in Italy every medium to
large business seems to care about just one
thing, to pay the very least for their engineering staff. The result
is that people starts being very frustrated, discouraged and less
productive. Hence
the most talented people (try to) leave the company (usually
landing in
smaller companies where their opinions and skills matter),
which in turn makes these
companies hire younger and less trained
people, often unable
to carry on because there are no longer enough experienced engineers
to guide and
train them. Of course you can't keep up for a
long time,
on the long run
the company is going to loose a considerable know-how
and market share.
So, sure,
I believe is indeed a true story, but only
half of the story. In
fact he fails to see how a company cannot
be considered good or bad and valuable
on a technical
basis only, there is much more. For instance, people's attitude,
attention to the customers, meritocracy
and many more aspects.
The real problem with Microsoft is that it
keeps copying and never innovate. It
is not relevant how many
skilled people you have, no
innovation no future. I'm neither
saying that copying is always bad as you
might still gain money providing more
value over
pre-existing products;
nor that
innovation is sufficient as you are still
required to translate it into a (good) product.
But, seriously, I
can't remember an
innovation coming from Microsoft. Not even
one! Neither MS-DOS. I'm not going to
discuss and elaborate whether
Windows was better than OS/2 &
MacOS or not.
whether MS-Office was better than StarOffice or
not, whether
Windows Server + IIS + ASP
was better than LAMP, IE was better than Firefox,
whether the .NET platform (C#, F#)
is/was better
than Java/Scala/Clojure,
the Xbox is/was
better than the PlayStation, Windows Phone
is better than Android and so on. I'm just pointing out that I can't
remember anything
really new from Microsoft, at
least targeting the mass market. If your
products are good and the context is
favorable you might perform well, but sooner or later you will fall
behind as the market is a moving target.
“Is it any
wonder we're falling behind?”. Indeed,
not at all, but
mostly due to this latter fact than the former he
was sustaining!
What surprises me
most is that this problem
has been there for
at least 10 years and nothing
really changed meanwhile.
During my first year at the university back
in 2001 there was a plenty of Microsoft
advocates who
would have joined the company immediately
if only they got an offer.
Because Microsoft is Microsoft and Bill
Gates is a rich
famous computer genius (while Richart
Stallman is an horrifying loser and Linus
Torvalds... who
is Linus Torvalds?).
There I was maybe
the only person seriously
interested in Linux (and
not because of
Stallman's ideas, I mostly don't give a shit even today), because
it was something new, dynamic
and different. I really thought about new
possibilities. I admit it, Linux has never become what I expected and
hoped for (it
turned out it
is not bad at all),
but it really opened the road to many new and innovative products we
have today that are
not related to the data center world.
And keeps changing
and improving!
So, it comes as no
surprise to learn that Google, which
takes both
skills and culture very seriously, is now more valuable than
Microsoft and that Linux is faster than
Windows.