This email was literally BillG sending an email to the people he holds accountable for this, pointing out to them that he believes his experience resulted from a systematic lack of attention to end to end user experience.

I’m not sure why you see this as evidence BillG didn’t understand that to be his job.

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bluegatty 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have struggle to understand how someone could come to that conclusion, maybe I missed something?

The email is a 'rant'.

It's a 'list of broken stuff'.

It's not:

1) identifying underlying first principles of design or UX that have been broken

2) not identifying which parts of the system may have resulted in the negative outcome

3) not reference for either operational or cultural that were braoched or need to be address

4) not at all cognizant of systemic concern at all.

5) didn't allocate responsibility, hint at how to organized a response, what structural issues need to be in place.

It's actually a really bad an embarrassing lack of leadership.

It's basically 'user rant' - not what one would expect from a leader.

He 'made a list of complaints and threw them onto the org.' - who are obviously being 'reactive' and moving in a bit of a frenzy.

'Dear Leader, doesn't like how the picture frames are set in the office! Fire the picture framers, everyone get out your rulers and fix the picture frames'.

This is really common and it happens because people have this magical belief that the 'founder' or 'ceo' has 'special powers and insight' and then issues roll down hill among sycophants and yes men, trying to appease.

A good example of 'leadership' would start out with 'I take responsibility for this', hinting and the possible source of flaws, where in the process those things should have been caught, an attempt for accountability in certain areas (divide the concern), a requirement to convene on this issues and make sure everyone understands what's important. Especially and including the fact that anyone responsible for a product actually has to 'use it' aka dogfooding or else etc etc..

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thinkling 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In 2003, Gates was no longer CEO; I think he was President of the Board and something like "Special Advisor"? None of the people involved reported to him, so he may actually correctly have felt he could not tell them what to do?--so he stuck to venting his frustration.

	▲	bahmboo 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Exactly. bluegatty has great points for a CEO role but Bill stopped being CEO in 2000 three years earlier. The board and advisors cannot direct the company internally - this is by law. Separation of oversight and management. They can tell the CEO what to do but the CEO decides. Then they can fire the ceo if they don’t like it.
	▲	Gagarin1917 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If the President of the board has an issue with how the company is fundamentally operating, they go to the CEO. If the CEO doesn’t understand or doesn’t prioritize the concerns of the board, then they get replaced. He’s may not have been the CEO… but he was the boss of the CEO and represented all the individual owners of the company.

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dpark 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It's basically 'user rant' - not what one would expect from a leader.

It is absolutely a user rant, but it's entirely appropriate for a leader to call out "this is not okay; this is a garbage experience".

> who are obviously being 'reactive' and moving in a bit of a frenzy.

That was the intent. "Fix this." This was an email to a bunch of execs who are capable of driving the actual fixes. If Gates needs to hand hold them through this then they need to be replaced.

> A good example of 'leadership' would start out with 'I take responsibility for this'

This is vacuous corporate speak, the kind of message you send to shareholders to soothe them. This is not leadership.

> hinting and the possible source of flaws, where in the process those things should have been caught...

Again, if Gates needs to do this then everyone on the To line is dead weight.

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bluegatty 2 hours ago | parent [-]

completely disagree

1) sending the org into a reactive frenzy on the minor issue when the structural issue is the problem - is bad. He's also pointing them at the symptom and not the cause.

2) 'taking responsibility' is not 'vacuous corporate speak' - that's a terribly cynical view. It's literally the case - the leader takes respnosbility because they failed to set the conditions for the good outcome.

Gates failed to institute 'design and usability' as a fundamental aspect of the product and operational culture.

The email implies that some underling is to blame which is bad framing.

3) "hinting and the possible source of flaws, where in the process those things should have been caught.." - that's literally his job.

	▲	dpark 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> sending the org into a reactive frenzy I don’t see an actual “reactive frenzy” here. I see that Gates started a conversation with the execs he believes are responsible for fixing this mess. And again, these are execs being paid millions. They do not need to be coddled. You are acting as if Gates sent this to a bunch of junior engineers. > ‘taking responsibility' is not 'vacuous corporate speak' - that's a terribly cynical view. It's literally the case - the leader takes respnosbility because they failed to set the conditions for the good outcome. It’s absolutely vacuous to say 'I take responsibility for this' when you are telling a group of people they need to fix their shit. Any CVP/EVP who fails at a job and then hears someone above them take responsibility for the failure knows they are about to be out of a job. > The email implies that some underling is to blame which is bad framing. If by underling you mean “highly paid executives” then sure. At some point people have to take responsibility for their jobs. This wasn’t a failure of some individual engineers. It was a collective failure of a group of executives to deliver a good experience. > "hinting and the possible source of flaws, where in the process those things should have been caught.." - that's literally his job It’s literally not. That’s not what CEOs of large corporations do and Gates wasn’t even CEO at this time. He was in an advisory role. His job was literally to give feedback.
	▲	robotpepi 34 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> 2) 'taking responsibility' is not 'vacuous corporate speak' - that's a terribly cynical view. It's literally the case - the leader takes respnosbility because they failed to set the conditions for the good outcome. Tbh it seems like you're autistic and simply don't understand how such a "o take responsibility" message really looks like and what effect it'd have.

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russelldjimmy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks for this reply. I learned something today!

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windowshopping 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Really good reply, well put

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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wjnc 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sorry, but board room or top-50 professional discussions are ment to be a lot more meta. Bill using 500-1000 words to voice his concrete experience in downloading an app, with his directors immediately chiming in for fixes misses the forest for the trees. And Bill starts the quest for the one tree in his choice of words. It was disalignment in his organizational model and the CEO is on the line for that alignment. The happy install flow for moviemaker.exe - who cares… Just look at that thread! Response 3 is already “that’s not my turf”-ing. I’m not saying it’s easy to create a shift in a company of that size, it’s that they weren’t trying when the problem was yelling in their face.

(Typing this with a hot lap thanks to Windows update. The agony. Debian solved that 20-30 years ago.)

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jameshart 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Most of the thread is lower level staff specifically trying to address the raised issues. We have no idea what conversations this triggered among the exec team about the broader strategic issues Bill raised.

	▲	bluegatty 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Those are all Executives. It's actually funny that you're thinking they are 'lower level staff' because that's how it seems by their reaction, but those are literally top Execs. That's really how these orgs often work. 'Dear Leader Is Angry' will set the whole org into a tizzy. I've seen this countless times - 'XXX said it', and the littlest thing will get moved. Often - this is good, it means the org is responsive to the direction of the founder, but it's 'abused' all the time. I think leaders forget their responsibility and truly believe that 'their whims' are essential. 25% of the US are looking at the insane things POTUS is putting out and believing there's some kind of 5D chess magic, when it's actually -5D - aka extraordinary bad leadership. That's the 'power of power'. 'Self Awareness' is probably the #1 superpower of a leader, because nobody is going to keep them in check.
	▲	wjnc 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Every single recipient on the thread was a Vice President, Corporate Vice President, or Senior/Group Vice President. Gates intentionally bypassed lower-level product managers and emailed the executive tier directly to demand accountability for platform-wide usability regressions. If you think this is not missing the forest for the trees, please explain.

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detourdog 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Becuase it was a typical MS user experience. MS was shipping their software on 25+ install floppies. Having an install fail on floppy 19 was a nightmare. Getting a fax modem that shipped with the PC to function could also be a problem MS would blame the vendor and the vendor blamed MS. It’s not like his moviemaker experience was a rare occurrence.

	▲	xtracto 42 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		People forget the "if Microsoft invented the iPod" parody video." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yvh5k1RWER4 It describes the culture of both companies at that time very clearly. I think the difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Steve was a "product" CEO. He would bot only send that email, but in addition he would somehow oversee/sypervise those changes ALL the way until he was satisfied.