Response to Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble, who left my org at Microsoft last month, has spent a bunch of time the last couple of days attacking the “anonymous cowards” on our team who have posted comments on Mini-Microsoft about Vic Gundotra’s sudden departure. I just saw it all this afternoon and wrote a response to him, but then I saw that Mini is trying to get people to calm down and get out and enjoy the holiday. So I’ll post my response here instead.
If you’re interested, here are the two threads involved:
“Vic Gundotra Goes to Google, RIF Comes to Microsoft?”
“Bad Mini, Scoble’s Exit, and Truthiness - Links”
Robert, I can understand your desire to defend yourself and Channel 9. But you haven’t provided a counterpoint to your former teammates who have anonymously criticized Vic, you’ve just changed the subject from “Vic’s management efficacy” to “the cowardice of anonymity.” If you’re trying to demonstrate that it’s OK to publicly criticize Vic, why haven’t you said a word about him in any of your numerous posts on that thread?
Vic loved to talk about transparency. But when he bailed out on his own team, the silence from him was deafening. We had to learn about it from one of those pesky field folks, who emailed a CNN/Money link to everyone. He’s gone from GAL, gone from PressPass, just plain gone, and never said a word to his own damn team about why he was leaving and how that fits with all the things he told us about his alleged faith in Microsoft, and in us.
Vic was also 100% silent on your departure. He emailed the group about you and your team having “the right stuff” and how lucky we were to have you, but when news came out a week later that you were leaving the company, he had nothing to say. (Maybe he whispered some things behind closed doors, but he never again sent an email to his team after the day your departure became publicly known.)
Both you and Vic lost confidence in Microsoft, and you’ve fled for what you perceive to be greener pastures. You both feel like the “cool stuff” is happening elsewhere, and you both think you weren’t adequately appreciated or empowered or rewarded by Microsoft. So you’ve left.
That’s fine, everyone has a right to follow their dreams. But you don’t speak for anyone other than Robert Scoble. you don’t speak for those of us who are still working hard to try to make a difference at Microsoft, and you certainly don’t speak for those of us who had reputations for speaking out and speaking up long before you started working in technology, those of us who have confronted persons in positions of power many times in ways you can’t begin to imagine. Speak for yourself, but don’t pretend to have a direct line to God on what’s cowardly or courageous. That’s not for you to decide.
Another thing that isn’t yours to decide is the question of who is most important to target in our our efforts to evangelize development platforms. With all due respect, I don’t think a non-developer is in a good position to understand the subtleties involved in that type of analysis. And there isn’t any consistency in your view of what’s important in our target audience, anyway. You vacilate between beating your chest about Channel 9’s millions of visitors and statements like “It’s not how big your audience is. It’s how influential that matters.”
Regarding Steve Cellini, maybe you’re right, maybe he’s a great guy. I’ve never met him, but I’ve heard only positive things about him behind closed doors in Building 18, the same place I’ve heard so many negative stories of Vic’s attitudes and behavior. So I’m hopeful things may be getting better. Time will tell.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 at 2:23 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on July 4, 2006 at 5:43 pm Robert Scoble wrote:
Good point. I don’t and didn’t know what Vic was doing myself. We didn’t have many conversations in the three years we worked together. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t willing to defend him where I was willing to defend Steve Cellini. Steve’s a guy I worked with a lot and watched from close-up range and he is doing a great job.
I learned about Vic’s decision from that reporter, by the way. So that tells you he treated everyone the same.
He still hasn’t called me back or emailed me.
I hear that’s how he’s decided to handle his career and this particular decision. I don’t agree with that method. I’d rather be transparent. But, that’s me.
That said, he’s always been great to me and he’s always been there helping me to remain excited about the mission. When I thought Mix was going to be a total failure (privately and phoned him, he always accepted calls until late at night) he told me why I was wrong.
He was right. I was wrong then.
As to his decision he’s in a place where there are potential lawsuits that could spring out of his decision (ala Kai Fu Lee). I think he decided not to spin the situation and just disappear off the face of the earth for a while.
Sorry I let you down, I won’t be back at Mini. I really hate anonymity and FAR prefer taking on people who have the courage to use their own names. I greatly appreciate seeing this post here.
on July 4, 2006 at 6:02 pm Doug wrote:
I agree, the venom on Mini gets to be too much. As somebody said recently there, the anonymity seems to encourage some really bad behavior. My own feeling is that we’ve got all the dirty laundry out there for everyone to see, now let’s see if we can actually do something about it. Piling more and more hurt feelings and disappointments on top of one another isn’t moving the conversation forward.
Sorry if I pushed a bit hard here, but you’re the only person I could push on by name. I guess that’s your point.
I’ll tell you, when I started at Microsoft, some of my friends thought I was nuts. I’ve spent most of my career as my own boss, for better or worse, and couldn’t imagine being a cog in a big machine. But I was encouraged by two specific things that made me believe a guy like me might fit in at Microsoft: the existence of Mini’s site, and your public confrontation of Ballmer on gay rights. I figured a place where you could do that and still have a paycheck might be a good place for me.
Thanks for dropping in, and good luck with the new job, the move, and everything else.
on July 5, 2006 at 8:25 am Dave wrote:
I know nothing about Vic, but I do know about doing off to a big competitor (like Google).
When leaving to go to a big competitor, you are told not to send a parting email by msft.
I’ve been told that this can be construed as recruiting people to join you (esp if you mention where you are going), which would break your non-compete agreement.
In general, the parting is a tricky matter. Ideally, Vic’s manager would have send an email to inform the team but it is a hard email to write. Just like you would like to have heard about Scoble’s departure from Vic.
on July 5, 2006 at 10:57 am Doug wrote:
You’re right, Dave, that’s an issue I hadn’t thought of (Vic’s need to be careful about appearing to recruit people). I was a bit raw from all the heat on that thread and didn’t think through things carefully.
on July 5, 2006 at 7:33 pm Tom wrote:
I’m too much of an idiot on this subject to post anything relevantly on-topic, but I can’t help but notice the power of blogging here.
I don’t know the ins and outs of the Microsoft culture, but I do know that it’s pretty amazing to get the attention of someone with the cache of Scoble here. Not that he’s particularly special (no offense, Robert), but the fact that someone in such a public transition is able to find the well-spoken opinion of a Microsoft employee and respond to it is a testament to the power of a new medium.
All that said, I wish perceptions weren’t involved (the recruitment issue, for example). I think being butt-deep in business has a very bad effect on communication between employees - when you start worrying about how something as benign as a parting message can be taken as a recruitment tactic, you’ve pretty much lost your ability to communicate rationally to co-workers. This builds suspicion, which builds walls. Too bad - I wonder how many of the classic rivalries (Google vs. MSN, MS vs. Apple, etc.) are based somewhere in this kind of silliness.
Easy for the self-employed dude to say, though - I know that working for a larger organism simply causes some of this, try or not to avoid it. (I can’t help but notice that there’s a lot of soap opera stuff here that, while perfectly valid from an employee perspective, seems like extra energy spent in a somewhat lost-cause direction - PLEASE DO EXPLAIN if I’m wrong, though.) Additionally, I’m feeling pithy and free - I agreed today to be done with my office gig as of the end of this month and back to the self-employed world entirely. I’ll miss the paycheck, but I’ll enjoy the hours. And the lack of pants requirements. But perhaps I’ve said too much …
on July 5, 2006 at 9:37 pm Dave wrote:
*blush* s/non-compete/non-solicit/ in my comment above.
btw, it may vary by division about not sending email but it was true for mine (– the directive came down from a VP in our division).
fwiw, if you let them know you are going to a big competitor, don’t expect to be around for much time. I’ve heard that folks giving their two weeks notices are told their job for the next two weeks is to stay home and don’t log in — which I suppose is wise for boht sides — and of course, ms could just fire them immediately since it is at will employment, so it is nice of the company to do this.
on July 5, 2006 at 10:51 pm Doug wrote:
That’s cool, about letting them work their final two weeks at home. Good solution to a complicated little problem.
Tom,here’s an example of the power of blogging: remember when I posted some “Things to know about Office 2007?” I said that if anybody had an Open XML document they needed to convert back to the old binary formats, just send it to me and let me know. Well, I’ve got a bunch of them, especially the last couple of weeks. Last week, I converted an expense-account ledger for a guy in France. Over the weekend, I converted a spreadsheet that was an order for some type of dry-skin remedy, sent to me by an engineer working in Saudi Arabia. And yesterday I converted a spreadsheet (whose content wasn’t interesting enough to recall right now) for a developer in New York. It all feels so … global.
As for your pants requirement, Microsoft does require pants, but underwear and showers are optional in Megan’s department. I’ll let her explain.