The message was very clear: talent is not the source of MSFT value stream. The insulting remarks by leadership, spreading it across waves to create an environment of fear, stopping raises and cutting bonuses were all to signal that the talent had no leverage. Instead they are signaling their value is derived from B2B agreements, licensing, contracts and patents. Which… is the IBM model. This also reflects in the org structures: all of the consumer product development is squeezed into an increasingly smaller E+D, while government contracting and cloud get their own higher investment orgs. The investors they attract with this want the spoils from this self-cannibalism. With the aggressive acquisitions that aim to gain control of various IP rather than the productive output, they will be showing much better margins in the short term. But I would not be expecting them to come up with any new competitive offerings. It is now basically a chop shop for buying cars on the cheap and dismantling them for parts. It will become more and more of an annoying license and patent trolling shop like Oracle and IBM in the long term. And the investors will fly once the cost of new IP they acquire for parts start exceeding the returns.
"Talent" never mattered.
You just summarized all of the big companies in the US. Thanks.
Not really. There are lots of companies out there who promise value in producing new things, and a lot of investors who prefer to trust them with their money rather than competitors who juggle IPs like shitcoin schemes
This new IBM is soon going to overtake Apple in the Market cap.
Not sure why they are only "officially declaring" now. It has always been the case that MSFT doesn't treat its employees as well as the rest of big tech/unicorns. Unless you're Partner and above, it doesn't matter to you personally that chatgpt is storming and MSFT is having a fantastic business year - your refreshers still suck and layoffs are still on the table
It was a frog in the slowly boiling water situation though. It got to this point very slowly since Ballmer’s handover
Ok why are you so angry? Stay at apple 🤣
Yeah I think people were saying that about MS when MS saved apple from bankruptcy as well. The real money at MSFT comes from dozens of multiple billion dollar software businesses. Where does the money come from at apple?
For the last 10 years, IBM has been known known for its Resource Action - the parent of PIP. Nothing else. Even Watson is a semi-joke. MSFT has Azure product-wise. But what else (lately)? Windows?:) If it becomes IBM i would stay the hell away from it.
All big companies end up becoming “sales” companies in the end
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So very well put. It has always been like this. Nothing new.