Ballmer's biggest mistake was the review system at Microsoft.
- Managers spent easily a quarter of their year on reviews
- Employees often competed against one another (have a great idea? Okay, but That Guy down the hall found out about it and did a half-assed implementation and got a great annual review, and you got slammed for not accomplishing enough. Or maybe your idea simply got sabotaged in some closed-door meetings. Customers? What are those?)
- Sorry, we know all the people on your team are good, but you have to fire five of them. And . . . don't bother picking them, HR already did that without your input.
In 11 years I went through four changes in how reviews were done, and things got steadily worse with each iteration. I hear things are better now; it wouldn't be hard. There was a ton of bad attrition, of really good people who got fed up with things and quit.
In a Q&A session I asked Lisa Brummel, the then head of HR, what she was doing about bad attrition, about good employees who were leaving because of the review system and politics. She wouldn't even admit that the problem existed.
The board should have fired Ballmer five years earlier; on the other hand, they might have wound up with Kevin Turner running things, OMFG. Microsoft Kremlinology is a thing.
- Managers spent easily a quarter of their year on reviews
- Employees often competed against one another (have a great idea? Okay, but That Guy down the hall found out about it and did a half-assed implementation and got a great annual review, and you got slammed for not accomplishing enough. Or maybe your idea simply got sabotaged in some closed-door meetings. Customers? What are those?)
- Sorry, we know all the people on your team are good, but you have to fire five of them. And . . . don't bother picking them, HR already did that without your input.
In 11 years I went through four changes in how reviews were done, and things got steadily worse with each iteration. I hear things are better now; it wouldn't be hard. There was a ton of bad attrition, of really good people who got fed up with things and quit.
In a Q&A session I asked Lisa Brummel, the then head of HR, what she was doing about bad attrition, about good employees who were leaving because of the review system and politics. She wouldn't even admit that the problem existed.
The board should have fired Ballmer five years earlier; on the other hand, they might have wound up with Kevin Turner running things, OMFG. Microsoft Kremlinology is a thing.