(This is a snapshot of my old weblog. New posts and selected republished essays can be found at raganwald.com.)
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Pro Forma
Assaf pointed me to Microsoft touts cost savings of Vista over XP, an article wherein InfoWorld reveals the secret of MSFT’s ability to sell into the Enterprise: their deep knowledge of how to calculate corporate finance quantities like Cost of Ownership and Return on Investment:
This is why I do not want to work for The Borg or their minions. Why bother actually making software that will save people money when you can go ahead and make up whatever savings you need to close the deal? Instead, I prefer to work for companies that are forced to actually make stuff people can use. Companies that have to compete on value. Such companies often have to make hard choices about what to ship, by when. But they rarely have the luxury of shipping complete dog- aw, you finish the sentence.
This is my “bottom line,” as they say in Finance. Different companies have different strategies for success. The important thing is to make sure that the things you value in your career and business are aligned with the strategies your employers, partners, and/or customers pursue.
When they aren’t, you do not have a fit and need to reëvaluate your participation. But should you be fortunate enough to work with people whose strategies depend heavily on your values, you are going to be happy.
Pax, and I thank The Borg for yet another lesson in life’s little truths.
Assaf pointed me to Microsoft touts cost savings of Vista over XP, an article wherein InfoWorld reveals the secret of MSFT’s ability to sell into the Enterprise: their deep knowledge of how to calculate corporate finance quantities like Cost of Ownership and Return on Investment:
Peculiarly, the study actually was based on XP usage and extrapolations based on Vista capabilities because there was not a substantial base of Vista clients in use yet when the study was done early in 2007.In summary, they paid someone to do a quickie telephone survey, then report how much money people might theoretically save if they theoretically switched from XP to Vista, and simultaneously switched from whatever they were doing at that time to the theoretical “Vista best practices.” Instead of—how quaint—actually measuring how much money people did or did not save. So without any control groups or study parameters or other bothersome restrictions on what they could print, the survey company just made the numbers up, Enron-style. When I studied Finance, we were told that when we made stuff up, we were to use the Latin words Pro Forma to tip people off that we were engaging in creative accounting.
This is why I do not want to work for The Borg or their minions. Why bother actually making software that will save people money when you can go ahead and make up whatever savings you need to close the deal? Instead, I prefer to work for companies that are forced to actually make stuff people can use. Companies that have to compete on value. Such companies often have to make hard choices about what to ship, by when. But they rarely have the luxury of shipping complete dog- aw, you finish the sentence.
This is my “bottom line,” as they say in Finance. Different companies have different strategies for success. The important thing is to make sure that the things you value in your career and business are aligned with the strategies your employers, partners, and/or customers pursue.
When they aren’t, you do not have a fit and need to reëvaluate your participation. But should you be fortunate enough to work with people whose strategies depend heavily on your values, you are going to be happy.
Pax, and I thank The Borg for yet another lesson in life’s little truths.
Comments on “Pro Forma”:
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Given the amount of collective brilliance at Microsoft, it's clear that their marketing acumen is getting in the way of their engineering.
A technology company can not be successful long-term when it is run by marketeers. Microsoft has never been a top innovator, but they have put out some great software over the years. They need to re-tool themselves to put the engineers and usability experts back in charge of product development. With Gates retiring, Microsoft faces serious challenges in the vision department, and if they don't recognize the error in their ways they will wither on the vine as technology leaves them behind.
A technology company can not be successful long-term when it is run by marketeers. Microsoft has never been a top innovator, but they have put out some great software over the years. They need to re-tool themselves to put the engineers and usability experts back in charge of product development. With Gates retiring, Microsoft faces serious challenges in the vision department, and if they don't recognize the error in their ways they will wither on the vine as technology leaves them behind.
dasil, you hit the nail on the head. Microsoft has been 'run' by the devvers since the beginning. That has done very bad things to the simplicity and stability of their projects, but on the other hand, the software was at least interesting.
Now for the first time microsoft is being run by marketers. With Ballmer (marketer) at the top, but he's not the only one.
Personally if you're on that ship I'd bail before the titanic goes down. Microsoft won't die or anything, but they are being increasingly relegated to the 'just not interesting' dept.
Personally if the job I'm in isn't changing the world, I failed.
Now for the first time microsoft is being run by marketers. With Ballmer (marketer) at the top, but he's not the only one.
Personally if you're on that ship I'd bail before the titanic goes down. Microsoft won't die or anything, but they are being increasingly relegated to the 'just not interesting' dept.
Personally if the job I'm in isn't changing the world, I failed.
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