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July 05, 2006

Scoble vs. Mini

Ex-Microsoftie Rober Scoble has been having some verbal battles with posters on the Mini-Microsoft blog. He doesn't seem to dislike Mini himself so much as the comments that people post. It's a series of posts; to get all of it, read the comment thread for the posts " Vic Gundotra Goes to Google, RIF Comes to Microsoft?" and " Bad Mini, Scoble's Exit, and Truthiness - Links". You'll see Scoble getting annoyed, people getting annoyed at Scoble, Scoble stomping off in a huff, and then some discussion of whether Mini-Microsoft is "good for Microsoft" or not.

This may be the beginning of a "Who was that guy?" reevalutation of the Scoble era at Microsoft. First step in this is that it now seems more politically correct for a) Scoble to bag on Mini-Microsoft and b) Mini-Microsofties to bag on Scoble.

What set Robert Scoble off seems to have been a personal (and unwarranted, in my limited experience with him) attack on Steve Cellini, who is taking over for Vic Gundotra as head of developer evangelism. The thrust of Scoble's argument has now settled on the claim that Mini is bad because it is anonymous (or more precisely that the commenters are anonymous--as I said he seems to have more of an issue with them than with Mini himself).

That doesn't make sense--Mini exists (as a phenomenon) because it is anonymous. If it weren't anonymous then people wouldn't post the stuff that makes the blog unique.

I also don’t quite understand the notion that Mini was "good" at certain points but is now "bad". Mini is what it is and has always been. And it is very much against the spirit of blogs to try to control it so that it only reflects positively on Microsoft. It contradicts Scoble’s notion of letting 1000 blogs bloom. The key thing is to connect with your customer and in the case of Mini-Microsoft the customer is other Microsoft employees, and it serves its purpose well.

Sure, you can't believe everything you read on Mini-Microsoft. So? Anyway my basic rule on analyzing rumors is "They’re true". Some would argue it is naive to assume they are true and a more sophisticated consumer of rumors would ignore them. I would argue that in my experience the most sophisticated thing to do is to assume they are true. People don’t make stuff up, or more precisely they CAN’T make stuff up--they aren’t clever enough to invent a reasonable rumor. It's much easier to report actual facts you have heard. I haven't seen too much on Mini-Microsoft that could have been fabricated by someone external--it's mostly internal Microsoft stuff that only employees would know about. And the few times where someone has said something wrong, they've been shouted down by other posters.

Of course, that’s talking about real facts. Subjective opinions like "Person X is an idiot” are just opinions; what the person is really saying is "I think person X is an idiot". Well, I can’t really prove any counterargument to what somebody thinks, nor do I need to. I take any subjective opinion with a grain of salt. So I don't see the point of Scoble coming in with his "I've learned that a lot of the posts here that you're reading aren't done by Microsoft employees" attitude. Sure you can say anything anonymously, but when you put your name on something, you tend to run it through the "how does this make me look" distortion filter. So there are tradeoffs either way. Anyway I’d rather see everything and make my own decision on what to believe, rather than let others do it for me.

Dare Obasanjo comments on this situation and makes the statement, "I agree with Robert that in its current incarnation Mini-Microsoft does more harm to Microsoft than good." Again, I disagree. Has Mini-Microsoft gone through some various incaranations? It’s always been about a frank discussion of Microsoft, complete with employees posting things that violate their NDA. Are people saying it’s OK to have a frank discussion of Microsoft when it happens to be about something they agree with (like changing the review process) but if it's discussing something else then it’s not good? Anyway, I 100% believe that there is no such thing as bad publicity. The fact that there is a very active blog discussing Microsoft internal stuff, which is followed by lots of non-Microsofties, is a good thing for Microsoft. Besides I can't think of anything posted on Mini that would actually dissuade someone from buying Microsoft products. "Gee, I’m not going to buy Vista because I heard that one of your employees might not be a nice guy". Shocker!! The big news discussed there, that might actually make a customer nervous, is all stuff that is public anyway (WinFS change, employees leaving, etc). And take the employee departures. If you just read the news you might think we are hemorrhaging people. If you read all of Mini, you realize that the departures are for specific things, the replacements are good also, we have lots of talent, nobody is panicking, etc. It’s a more balanced view of Microsoft.

So Mini, if you are reading this, don't stress too much about the "Is Mini good" question. I don't know if I'm suppose to officially condone what you are doing, so I'll just say that I don't think anything has changed.

Posted by AdamBa at July 5, 2006 09:17 PM

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Comments

>Are people saying it’s OK to have a frank discussion of Microsoft when it happens to be about something they agree with (like changing the review process) but if it's discussing something else then it’s not good?

I guess you missed the point of my post. The problem with mini is that you see people saying racist, sexist and generally dumb stuff as well as spreading rumors about sexual misconduct. That makes us look bad. Even if it is the kind of frank conversation you'd have with your buddies over a beer at the pub or a coffee in the cafeteria.

Posted by: Dare Obasanjo at July 6, 2006 07:19 AM

Sure, some people post dumb things. What I don't see is how this makes us look bad. They usually get shouted down, and anyway do people really think there are no racist/sexist/ignorant people at Microsoft?

Surely months and months of a constant "our review process sucks" theme would do more to scare people off than a few comments. Yet that persisted on the site and now is viewed as one of its triumphs.

- adam

Posted by: Adam Barr at July 6, 2006 06:31 PM

The blog reflects badly on Microsoft employees especially to potential new hires. It's up to your personal opinion whether the 'good' done by the blog outweighs the perception that Microsoft employees are a bunch of racist, sexist, whiny brats who are jealous of the wealth of their senior management based on the ones that comment on that blog.

I think the value of Mini-Microsoft to MSFT balance has tipped towards the bad outweighing the good especially given some of the recent positive moves by our execs but YMMV.

Posted by: Dare Obasanjo at July 6, 2006 08:28 PM

The blog reflects badly on Microsoft employees especially to potential new hires. It's up to your personal opinion whether the 'good' done by the blog outweighs the perception that Microsoft employees are a bunch of racist, sexist, whiny brats who are jealous of the wealth of their senior management based on the ones that comment on that blog.

I think the value of Mini-Microsoft to MSFT balance has tipped towards the bad outweighing the good especially given some of the recent positive moves by our execs but YMMV.

Posted by: Dare Obasanjo at July 6, 2006 08:28 PM

I have to agree with you on the rumor issue. Contrary to what Dare is alleging, the "rumors" around sexual misconduct by Martin Taylor have turned out to be very accurate. I think it is healthy and totally legit to call out such bad behavior on the part of our top exec's. It helps us peons to know that the rules are the rules, no matter what your title or how close you are to Steve.

Posted by: Just Another MS'er at July 7, 2006 04:49 AM