Troubling Exits at Microsoft

BusinessWeek's latest features a cover article on the latest of the high profile exits from Microsoft. The competitive landscape for the best and brightest has always been a tough one for the technology industry. Microsoft has always played well in this field, trouncing its competition in acquiring the best minds. Lately however, it has dawned on Microsoft that it is no longer one of those nimble upstarts. It had become an entrenched giant, with serious turf to protect. This change in Microsoft has resulted in a company that critics claim, is bureaucratic and stodgy, lacking spirit, and stifling creativity and innovation. There has always been Microsoft critics -- but now those critics are coming from inside the hallowed halls at Redmond -- and Microsoft is having a near impossible task quieting the noise. Many of the critics blame Steve Ballmer for the latest woes -- but stop short of blaming Bill Gates. Ballmer in response, appears to be in denial. Makes you wonder what's up with the guy. He didn't even acknowledge that there are critics. I especially enjoyed his insanity that came clear in a Q&A with BusinessWeek. I've quoted the juicy bits below -- check out the questions, then the answers. It's like Ballmer appears to be on autopilot -- he's not even hearing the questions being asked. He's answering with "the message" and nothing else.

Two researchers at Microsoft wrote a paper for [Bill Gates] called "10 Crazy Ideas to Shake Up Microsoft." One of the things they say is that "a crisis is imminent" because of the growing bureaucracy and impediments to innovation. Do you agree?
  I think we have a great culture. It's a culture that encourages and fosters criticism, and constructive suggestions, and I love that about our culture. People criticize everything -- the way we do things, what we need to do in the marketplace, in our products, and lots of other things. That's a fantastic thing because it's only through that kind of strong culture that drives self-improvement, which is one of our core values, that we continue to try to get better.
  We certainly have the best pipeline of new innovation [over the next 12 months] we've ever had in our history. We obviously can always improve. We've set high expectations for ourselves. But, man oh man, have we got an incredible pipeline of innovation coming in the next year.

To be clear, do you think the point that the authors made in that paper is one that needs to addressed?
  If you take a look at where we're going with innovation and what we have in the pipeline, I'm very excited. Take a look at what we've done with [Windows] Vista and Office 12, both of which while we're sitting here, we've got about 8,000 developers [at Microsoft's Professional Developers conference in Los Angeles] who are fantastically excited by what those products are, not only as developers, but as end users.
  We have a wave of new things coming in the server and platform side: The new version of Visual Studio 2005, [and] SQL Server 2005 product comes later this year. If you look over the last few years, we've done nothing but build market share, both with .Net and with SQL Server. We outsell Oracle (ORCL ) and DB2 [IBM's database software] on unit volume combined, and it's because of the innovation in those products. And I can keep going through a number of areas.
  So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.

That's just a couple of choice bits -- the rest can be found online.