Ceolas writes about The Industry:
Performance based? Nope, it hasn't been performance based for almost ten years. It's seen a loss of innovation and invention. Microsoft's former VP elaborated the problems within the company in an op-ed in the NY Times that have killed it's future, what he didn't mention, was the fact that Bill Gates has always only been a one trick pony who got lucky, and isn't interested in invention and innovation so much as denying others with the ability, the opportunity to succeed where he has failed. He also didn't mention the fact that the preceding decade has been one where Gates displaced US citizen workers with cheap Indian and other visa workers. Un/under educated, and in no way skilled or talented. Anyone who works in the industry knows that while they might like to act like sharks, they're incompetent and capable of doing little more t han steal the efforts of others. Everyone knows the real story behind the failure of the Indian tablet pc. It was a stolen prototype, one that hadn't been fully developed. India's tech house of cards will fall, because it's based on a lot of hot air and theft. Everything they touch, they foul.
A lot of this is right, and I would like to discuss it.
First off, Gates and Microsoft are not the spark of the industry, they are a marketing powerhouse and a very hermetic universe. They are almost incapable of innovation because everything is done the Microsoft way. My experience is that they are simply too thick to be agile and that they spend all of their time selling to mass markets. At Microsoft scale, they are a one size fits all company, and even when they break things up, like the different versions of Windows 7, it's still just too huge. There are very few people who think the way I do who expect much from Microsoft in terms of cutting edge. There are many boring things that Microsoft does well, but few truly exciting things that Microsoft does that win over hearts and minds of techies like me. They have just been too obstructionist too many times and so it is no surprise at all that a company like Google could just come through and steal every bit of glory Microsoft ever had.
There was a sense two years ago, when I spent a lot of time in Redmond, that MS spends a great deal more time being a defensive company and that their captive audiences really make MS believe that they change the world. Microsoft is starting to show its age. They should voluntarily break themselves up. And they should make a tiny, new OS.
As for the Indian quotient. I have to say that there are just too many flavors to make broad statements, but I know where the dissatisfaction is coming from. I don't blame the Indians so much as I blame corporate IT for outsourcing their own brains. And corporate IT has just discounted itself below the threshold of where people with software skills are willing to work. And this is what leads to the incredibly sclerotic world of enterprise software, where good ideas take forever to materialize and Oracle, SAP, IBM, and a handful of pretty unimaginative business models are entrenched.
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