Yah, Mule, yah!!

That was the cry from SteveB at MS' latest Town Hall meeting (if only he was as cool a Clinton). He implored the employees to put out more effort since it appears that MS does better when employees work harder. (Boy talk about blinders, no wonder I didn't feel THAT bad about leaving) He of ocurse made no mention of the problems talked about on MiniMicrosoft

As I thought, or began to think months ago, those rich guys in charge don't care one bit about the rank-and-file. They see lots of value in maintaining the StackRank StatusQuo obviously. I'm not seeing it whe you consider MS is losing people like MarkL on the dev side and, not to blow my own horn, but me on the test\sdet side). My latest automation harness consisted of a proprietary script language.

Anyway, it seems like the LisaB Listening Tour is a pacification technique with the highlights given by Mini (I can't bring myself to say Who'da). It's unfortunate because MS is in the unique position of driving innovation but they seem to be stifling it. Companies who could enter a market fear to do so because if they do well enough MS will "come after them" and the best they could do is sell. That's not right. There may end up being a problem when Vista releases. There are so many people saying that it won't be wrth an upgrade. With the enthusiasts becoming more and more vocal, Vista may just lay a Pyrite egg.

Of course, I loved MS and I don't hope that happens but with my experiences I won't be sad if some of them don't have several billion dollars to dangle in front of employees and prospective employees. i guess sometime next week we will see if anything is implemented to turn the tide of dissent currently threatening to drown MS' War Chest. I wouldn't bet on anything changing, though. MS obviously has to protect themselves from something, though I don't know what could be so powerful as to cause this kind of panic.

In my opinion, twisted though it may be, the idea is that someone had to make sure that the money stayed in certain hands and away from others.