Jeffrey McManus

Ken Moss, a general manager on Microsoft’s search team, offers a challenge to Mini-Microsoft. Mini is an anonymous blogger and a Microsoft employee whose thesis is that Microsoft is bloated and bureaucratic. His solution is that Microsoft should just fire a bunch of people. Seems like a blunt instrument to me (my solution would be organize the company into business units that are responsible to customers first instead of responsible for supporting the Windows monopoly), but it’s good that Mini is getting people talking about what the company needs to do next.

(I’m only reading three Microsoft blogs at the moment: Mini’s, Scoble, and the Excel team’s blog, which just got started but is tremendous. I should probably be reading Scott Guthrie’s blog as well because he is my hero, but I’m trying to avoid the siren song of ASP.NET 2.0 as long as I can, and I know that by reading Scott’s blog he’ll just make me want to use learn it and use it.)

Anyway, Ken proposes to bring Mini in, under guarantee of confidentiality, for an interview to join his team. Great post, I wonder if Mini will accept the challenge. (And I also wonder whether Ken can be trusted…)

Ken also has some great words about people who provide feedback (both constructive and non-constructive). He makes a distinction between "no-birds" (people who criticize but never provide solutions) and constructive criticizers. As a manager, I don’t come down quite as hard on people who point out problems without providing solutions — teamwork means that sometimes the best solution is in the other guy’s brain. But I do know what a drag it can be when someone criticizes without helping most of the time. Conversely, I’ve also had managers and cow orkers who feel threatened even by constructive feedback. Doing this with a light touch isn’t easy.

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