Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Locked Doors, Martin Taylor, MarkZ, and Links

I parked my car, grabbed my stuff, and went to the usual entrance to my building. I waved my badge, waiting for the prompt click! that unlocks the door.

No click.

Uh-oh.

Wave. No click. Wave. No click. Wave. No click.

Okaaaay... I figured at that point a fifth attempt wasn't going to improve the chances of a click. 'It looks like,' I thought, 'I've got some serious 'splaining to do...'

I took a deep breath and headed for the high-traffic entrance. As long as you have something that looks like a blue badge you're going to get inside Microsoft, click or no click. As I walked towards my office, I took a peek around the corner. Men in black? Nope. Able to log-in? Yes. Email working? No! Oh wait, the wi-fi is off... okay, email working, yes. Greasy haired geek with a nervous tic? No. Whew, looks like I dodged one and went to work for another day.

Unlike Martin Taylor. What the heck happened? I have no idea. Perhaps a black SUV screeched to a halt in front of him and a tanned and serious Ken DiPietro threw open a back passenger door, grimly saying, "Get in. We have much to discuss." Poof. All I can say, without knowing what third rail Mr. Taylor might have danced on, someone is most likely going to do it again and not know how serious the implications are...

Another exit I didn't notice: Mark Zbikowski (MarkZ) has left Microsoft, too, as of June 9th, according to Wikipedia. People here in the comments noticed him missing from the GAL. Dynamic references to NTDEV\MarkZ have started 404'ing inside. Hmm... maybe our mini-mizing has finally started... in a silent, scary, horror-movie sort of way.

Other going ons:

  • Awakening Microsoft by Jason Kirby touches on the Microsoft stock price. Are employees motivated by the stock price? Do you pay attention to it? Do you wish it would go up vs. staying flat or, as of late, plunging? Duh? Will employees speak with one voice soon to say (perhaps even wear buttons to the Company Meeting): It's the stock price, stupid. Can the financial investors and employees team up to convince executive leadership to start making moves to raise the shares and commit to a plan that will succeed at that?
  • Microsoft Declares Quarterly Dividend Financial News - Yahoo! Finance - one approach to improve the stock price and investor confidence that we've heard over and over: a consistently bigger dividend than nine whole pennies.
  • The Seattle Times Business & Technology Microsoft will stay the course - hey, chops to Brier Dudley for interviewing Ballmer and Gates and actually bringing up the issues discussed here, vs. throwing softball lifestyle questions. Kudos, Brier. Somehow I've missed Brier's blog - I'm a subscriber now.
  • Ballmer ain't goin' nowhere! - Jun. 19, 2006 - hmm, do we need to start taking bets on departure dates? I really had no clue how deeply connected BillG and SteveB are until I sat in on the Town Hall where BillG explained his decision to move on in 2008. That internal video of them going off to play and goof-off during work is beginning to make more sense to me...
  • Microsoft Developer Unloads On The Vista Process - was listed on Wednesday's internal Microsoft Daily News summary email. Praise be to Phil- oh wait, let me check to make sure the post is still there... yes, it is. Okay. Praise be to Philip!

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