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See All. Site Home : Background about the site and some key features in the front page. IRC Channel : Come and chat with us in real time. Design by Beccary and Weblogs. Microsoft Bill Gates Deposition. Roy Schestowitz Summary : Matt Rosoff leaves Directions on Microsoft and a year veteran Brad Lovering also abandons the sinking ship, which now suffers turbulence in the Interactive Entertainment Business and renames things as a miserable last resort seven-washing and the like M icrosoft is like SCO some time around Will people get the reference without confusion?
Post Author Dr. I control my expenses and I know a lot of Microsofties also control their expenses - I think I can afford this change. I hope this will bring some goodness to Microsoft bottomline in a positive way - people won't go to ERs for cold, cough, minor sprains, muscle aches or atleast they would think twice about it.
I happened to be in an ER once several years ago, and the doctor mentioned that a lot of their patients are microsoft employees who show up for really no good reason - people would hopefully learn about health care, aren't we the smartest people on earth.
Good for him and I believe in chiropractic care - though not to the extent that people are currently using this - I was hearing from some folks high up in microsoft that mobile medicine costs are growing like crazy for microsoft. Com'on guys - this was meant to be an alternative to ER not to regular doctor visits. I still like working at microsoft and I work hard. I see my manager, my reports and my collegues also working hard. This is my fourth job in last 10 years and I found this to be a much better place that previous ones.
Now, on the down side - I hope this is not Kevin Turner changing Microsoft to Walmart, where health coverage is slowly changing from fully covered to a teasing with HSA and then forcing with HSA and eventually taking to state funded health care. I like this guy for how potentially he can make microsoft a cost conscious business but who knows what the future is going to bring to us.
I loved the company meeting. A lot of us have put in a ton of hardwork to make these great products that were demo'ed. I hope this reverses the microsoft's downward trend. Absolute nonsense. Sounds like someone saw "Sicko" without engaging his bullshit detector first.
I hope this reverses the microsoft's downward trend Don't hold your breath. I left MS several years ago and I remember that post company meeting feeling of hope. Those hopes were invariably dashed. One year I was sitting at Safeco field, listening to the same BS as usual, and I decided I wasn't going to get suckered again. A few months later I left. Better pay, better atmosphere at a successful and growing company.
I agree that Sinofsky didn't deserve to get promoted. Others got promoted to president by doing even less. More importantly, it shows the defunct culture at the company.
You get promoted for shipping no matter what. Sounds like someone saw "Sicko" without engaging his bullshit detector Well, why don't you publish some numbers if you can? This was in and health care cost has continued to go up faster than inflation and GDP growth.
Sinofsky did not get promoted; he got drafted to save Windows after the BrianV debacle that was Vista. In their eyes, who better to turn that org around after the chaotic BrianV years than the guy who ran the only other organization of that magnitude? You may not think much of Sinofsky but try to remember he didn't ask for that job; the board drafted him.
I happened to be in an ER once several years ago, and the doctor mentioned that a lot of their patients are microsoft employees who show up for really no good reason" This is an awfully big brush to tar people with. Why would anybody go to the doctor, let alone to the ER, for a cold or muscle soreness? And yes, some sprains are worthy of a trip to see somebody, because it's hard to tell the difference between 'major swelling and bruising, with crippling pain but it's only a sprain' from 'something is broken inside here'.
Depending on the hour of the night? That might make an ER visit necessary. My PCP isn't open all hours. But I've been to the ER once as a parent with a dehydrated infant, and I wouldn't go waste my time there for anything I thought could wait. I don't know anybody who wants to go sit at the ER for hours for "no good reason". There's something else going on there. The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. I suspect these are people who, for whatever reason, do not have PCPs, who were caught after regular clinic hours, or lacked the knowledge to do "home" triage on illness or injury, and wanted to leave the diagnosis to somebody with more experience.
When was the last time you "shopped" for your doctor? I am one of those unlucky people with a complicated disability and I have shopped for the best in-network specialists to keep me functioning and able to be productive and on the job. Shopping for cheaper specialists who give sub-standard care is not an option for me.
I am an informed medical consumer and I make educated choices about which doctors to see and when to see them. Seeing a "cheaper" doctor often means having to see a 2nd doctor later to catch what the "cheap" doctor missed, which amounts to no savings for anyone. This change has me thinking about leaving the company for the first time after many years, to find one that will pay better wages with similar benefits.
The thrill of working at Microsoft is gone. The difference between the food I want and the food that's cheap is nearly insignificant in terms of my budget. To be comparable you'd have to be talking about people who require velociraptor steaks with a side of dodo bird eggs to survive. The analogy just doesn't work. I think it's funny that Anon got two people to "agree" with him about offices despite the fact that their rationales contradict each other: 1.
Anon wants this as an alternative to cost cutting how is this not meant to be cost cutting? Anon pointed to the facebook office plan. Not bad, but that one still has lots of space per person, which means it doesn't achieve the other guy's goal of saving money.
Also, there's no cubicles there so it's clear they aren't talking about the same things 3. Anon complains that offices stifle collaboration. Remembering that the first guy was promoting working from home and cloud collaboration, that's basically a completely opposite argument. He wants people stuck in the office, but without the privacy that inhibits his teamwork. Would that be the same system that has the US 15th in the world on infant mortality? The same one that has us slipping on longevity?
It's about results, not how much you spend. And we spend more than most, and get less than most. Or did the facts slip by you during the Palin lecture? I mean really? Were those two fat motorcycle twins from the Guinness Book of World Records too busy to give the speech?
So give shit raises across the board because that will only cause the mediocre to leave? Maybe you should hold off on the sanctimony until you investigate the facts yourself. If you remove all pregnancies involving fertility drugs and instances where a mother's health was in jeopardy or the child died shortly after birth, you'll find that the US is at or near the top of the list. It's not as simple as quality of care. Because pregancies involving fertility drugs are risky.
In the third-world countries you admire so much, those pregancies wouldn't occur. Do you think it's some triumph of quality for a country to simply not offer the fertilization option? Likewise, in cases where there is some danger to the mother, those "developing countries" just perform an abortion.
In the US, it's more likely that the unhealthy fetus is delivered prematurely. It counts as a birth. When it then dies, it's counted as an infant mortality statistic. But at least the child had a chance at life that it wouldn't have in your precious developing countries. As to the longevity allegation, once again you make a correlation that's not logical. Americans on the whole have worse health habits than most countries. Obese and sedentary people tend to die early in spite of the quality of US health care, not because of it.
If you were actually comparing apples to apples, your snarkiness might at least have some validity behind it. Please make some effort to educate yourself about the issues. It's obvious with both your lockstep adherence to the radical left's assault on the quality of US healthcare and the Palin crack that you see the world in shades of black and white, or D-good, R-bad. It's not that simple. The entire sentiment of "Before you criticize the company, why don't you look at your own performance and the people immediately around you" that inevitably surfaces on every mini-msft comment thread is really irritating and offensive.
There's always somebody who will point out that posters here are being presumptuous in assigning blame for Microsoft's problems on the company management. Who do they think they are? Why don't they focus on improving their own work, and then the company will thrive etc. It's ignorant, facile nonsense. The whole point of hierarchical structures is that critical decisions are made by those at the top of the hierarchy. A boss can do more harm to a company than an underling, by definition.
If I have some great idea about how to improve something, either I get listened to or not probably not. This distinguishes me from those running the company, and entitles me to critique the decisions made by those who unlike me have power. There's nothing presumptuous about it. The idea that we can "all" collectively improve the company by improving our own small portion is nonsense.
It's like shopkeepers in a town with a coal plant being told to concentrate on keeping the sidewalks in front of their own stores coal-dust-free rather than bitching about the big plant spewing pollution over the whole town.
I don't know why so many people have such trouble understanding this. Anyone that claims to prefer an 'open pit' style to an actual office either never has had an actual office or is lying, or both. The idea that offices 'close you off' from your co-workers is fucking ridiculous unless they don't have doors or you are too fucking lazy to leave your office other than to hit the head you don't pee in your office do you??
Good to know. I should have known better than to expect you to be able to connect the dots on your own. The point is, just like the premature birth who'd have been aborted elsewhere, a child who dies shortly after birth in the US would have been counted as "stillborn" in the developing world.
Still waiting for "facts" instead of infantile emotionalism from you. Let me guess, I get to eat dinner but only after I spend all my personal time evangelizing the benefits of consuming Microsoft food products? Agree to an annual commitment to turn WinCalories into more work hours? BrianV saved Windows just like Sinofsky saved Win7. Windows client revenues are comparable to where Vista was in And win7 is losing market share. Sinofsky is setting the stage for the next disaster which will be the end of Microsoft.
His greatest legacy will be the triad model and giving career path to PMs who wouldnt have made the cut elsehwere. And I suppose that your bullshit detector is Fox News. Everybody knows that the biggest contributor to the deficit is medicare and medicaid. This is not just MS. This is industry wide reform. This will be the straw that breaks the camels back.
You will have less options to get quality medical care in the future than you do today. Less access to that MRI machine or that new cancer treatment. You will be making substantial co-pays on your prescription drugs. You will always be thinking twice before taking your kids to the doctor and will get less face time when you do.
You will be filling out forms and dependent on big government for your life. That is what is on the table here. I certainly wouldn't have done anything as objective as investigating the source and determination of the rankings that Michael Moore mischaracterizes.
But he knows you're too much of a sheep to ever investigate and figure that out on your own. Meanwhile, you'll continue to project that same gullibility and lack of objectivity towards people actually conversant with the facts. I've never watched Fox News, but if people like you are against it, maybe I should. Some thoughts: 1. This doesn't take effect until If the Executive Team want me to believe this was really because of Health Reform, and not because they wanted to get out of the way of continually rising medical care costs, I want to see them point to the exact portion of the law in question.
That they are doing this because of a change in the law, don't blow smoke up my ass. It's a dumb idea for Microsoft. The problem is, we can quantize the results too. Once I have to put a price on it, that also makes it much easier for me to compare the cost of taking a job somewhere else with a lesser health plan.
And since health packages are the single least customizable part of an offer package, it makes it much easier for employees to leave, or other companies to poach, which leads to the next "cost saving" problem. The hire package costs of a replacement for someone you want to keep dwarf the benefit you're saving, even if you ignore any domain knowledge not transferred. The failed attempt to buy Yahoo? When a tremendously profitable company does benefit cost cutting without showing any sort of penalty to executives for decisions that have cost far more than those benefit cuts will ever save, it goes down unpleasantly.
He picks fights with his peers and doesnt listen to even the CEO. His decisions are backward looking. He conveniently left Office just when his approach started to fail. Jobs, the Google guys, Ellison and Bezos will run circles around Sinofsky. Microsoft needs its employees to be more cost-conscious. Wow that sounds really great. Now let's talk about the realities of being human.
While I have no doubt that Micro-snot has a few ass clowns that drive over to the pro club three times a week for frivilous elective crap, I would bet it is the exception. Most people don't choose to get sick. They do not wake up and want to go to hospitals or dentist offices. They don't choose to have a child that needs a half a million dollars in care.
It is not a choice any of us make. Don't buy the preventative hype. When it comes to your health - most of you aren't in control of anything. Do you think under this new system that you will get preventative full body scan MRI's?
Get real. It won't materialize. Will our "merit" increases going forward simply be code for funding for benefits we now have to pay for? I am fortunate to have a healthy family but I admit, the benefits was one reason I've stayed in the craziness this long.
I'm a top performer not in all the weed out categories mentioned so far but I got to say the madness here is getting worse in recent years. No, you dont have to go that far. Then compare the spending per capita. If the compensation problem around here would get solved, I could afford to buy my own health care privately in the free market. I was earning more as a contractor in at EDS then I do now after 13 years at the worlds richest software company.
Something is wrong with that picture. The middle class are being wiped out. I know I am one of them. As long as Jeebus is happy The new law is pages. Even the pros don't understand the full impact so I would never expect you to. Well, if "the pros" want to claim that a company decision was made because of the new law, either they understand it enough to know where the law is driving the decision, or they are lying.
I love it when Mini turns off moderation on this blog because it gives the world a chance to see just how nasty it really is inside Microsoft. Pay attention kids, is this really the company you want to work for when you get out of college? Unfortunately, your imagination is lacking, what with all that steak you eat. The medical benefit has been overly abused by employees such as yourself, who would like to fit in steak into their oversized gut everyday.
That is why those employees who genuinely need it, just lost it. Again, you're picking two examples of countries with an extremely healthy populace by habit. What good habits the Singaporean culture doesn't instill, the extremist legal system will.
That's not to suggest the Singaporean health care system itself is subpar it isn't , but to look at the infant mortality rate and give all the credit to the health care system is to ignore the very significant lesson that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The above is a thoroughly repellent sentiment. That's interesting Most medical problems are genetically influenced.
I'm talking about cancer, infertility, infant mortality, premature birth, peanut allergies, you name it. These conditions are hereditary, at least partially. Even non-genetic problems let's say obesity due to poor diet are still handed directly from parents to their children. In a balanced ecosystem, these problems are quickly weeded out by Natural Selection, i.
Certainly you'll find the occasional allergic squirrel or cancerous bird, but the trend stabilizes after a generation or two. It rarely becomes an epidemic. The idea that everyone should be healthy, that every kid should grow up to have his own kids, is a noble and moral ideal — a useful inspirational guide. But modern healthcare seeks to implement that ideal as a direct policy.
It completely disengages the brake of Natural Selection. By nurturing people with various ailments, in a way, we are nurturing the ailments themselves. This is why America, the country that seriously wants to treat every person and every medical condition even infertility! We should pursue the ideal. I'm not arguing with that. But when "Doctors are confounded by an increased trend of premature births", you've got to realize that the doctors ARE the cause.
Premature babies grow up to give premature birth. It sucks. Biology is a cruel system. Before you think I'm touting some eugenics plan, hear me out. I'm not saying that. I'm saying two things: First, people who point to the superior health statistics in poorer countries need to realize that they're pointing to a higher instance of Natural Selection, not some brilliant government strategy.
They might as well be pointing to a healthy squirrel population, by which I mean all those potential squirrels that you never saw, that didn't make it. America has chosen to support the unfortunate. It's noble, but it means our population of unfortunates will keep growing. Get used to it, or move to another country.
Everybody's going to die sometime. We're not "saving lives," but rather postponing inevitable deaths.
At the cost of other things, some noble, some not. You have to draw a line somewhere. Personally, I would rather die a decade earlier, versus burning up my family's or community's finances in extended care. I wouldn't expect others to pay that for me, and I'd rather not be payin' it for others either. I'm not saying you should do the same.
Just that it should be a choice. I've had the displeasure of actually speaking with him on numerous occasions. One of his biggest contribution in recent years is the triad-ification of Windows.
Now each discipline can focus on the two most important things: 1. Promote him to CEO! A Michael Moore basher who has never watched Fox News. Typical fat cat republican tactic - try to discredit facts without any data, but pick faults with inconsequential things that are said. The same people who want the "weak" 10 percenters to go away want your sick baby to die.
What a surprise And it is your belief all the 'nasty' people work for Microsoft why exactly? I hear on the interwebz there are these people called trollz, they hang out places like the 4 channels and do things for the lulls! I see no evidence of that. Is 40 the new weak? Do somethings have nothing to contribute? Or are they a convenient scapegoat that lets MSFT pat itself on the back for having gotten rid of the "useless eaters"?
If they really believe the company is so much better off without those "weak" people, why are those people doing so well when they get jobs elsewhere? Why are other companies willing to pay them as well or better? It's all nonsense. It's a flawed process based on a false premise. It's hurting people and I bet it's not even helping Microsoft.
That means even dev and test managers have literally zero official authority over the design of their product. The PM teams really have complete control over the product design even though they're off in PowerPoint imagination land and the dev team actually makes the product and the test team has to use it day in and day out.
Recipe for fail. It's sad that you'd think I'd have to be a Republican to see through the shell games that Michael Moore engages in.
We're so cool and smart over here! I acknowledge that Singapore and Taiwan have a lower infant mortality rate - excuse me for even daring to suggest that there's more to the story than simply "US healthcare sucks. But where is the example of the developing country whose healthcare is on par with the US?
That's the Moore-inspired claim that sent me to the WHO's original report when his crockumentary first came out. It was in the WHO's methodology where I found out that they claimed nothing of the sort. Yet you're emotionally invested in that claim and will not be educated otherwise. Go ahead, call me a fat cat and a "Republican" again while avoiding any substantive interaction and pat yourself on the back for how clever and impartial you are.
It's not transparent at all, really. Do you know if there is? I mean legally, of course - is there a way to inquire somewhere?
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