This afternoon, as regular readers of this Web log can readily imagine, my dear brother Rob Roy invited himself and his son Jason over to my home in Great Falls, Virginia, to watch the World Cup Championship on the oversize HDTV in the furnished basement. And to avail themselves of my extensive collection of world-class potables while they were at it, of course. I played soccer as a kid – I’m in that demographic – and I’d be the first to vouch that it’s a very absorbing game to play. Watching it, on the other hand, is a skill I have yet to fully acquire. So while, about thirty minutes into the match, the highlight of which was a putative Argentine goal being ruled offsides and subjected to excessive scrutiny, I must confess I was becoming a bit bored. As luck would have it, the Fates were kind, and my land line rang. Glad of an excuse to leave Rob and Jason yelling at the screen in the basement, I quickly made my way upstairs to the living room in order to answer before the fifth ring rolled the call over to voice mail.
Tom: Hello?
Voice: Tom Collins?
Tom: Yes.
Voice: This is Harold Merde. I work for Microsoft.
Tom: My sympathies.
Harold: I’ve been with Microsoft nearly thirty years.
Tom: My deepest commiserations and most sincere sympathies.
Harold: I’m a software engineer at Microsoft.
Tom: My deepest commiserations, sympathies and heartfelt condolences.
Harold: I worked on development of the Windows operating system.
Tom: May Jesus Christ have mercy on your soul.
Harold: Um… yeah, right. I’m going to Hell, aren’t I?
Tom: If there is a God, and there is a Hell, then everybody who works, or has worked, or will work for Microsoft is going there, yes. How did you get this telephone number?
Harold: Your um… friend, Morton, gave it to me. He used to be with Microsoft, too.
Tom: I know.
Harold: But he’s with Yahoo now.
Tom: Having worked for Yahoo certainly isn’t going to cut him any slack with Satan when Morton finally arrives where he so richly deserves to be.
Harold: What would, in your opinion?
Tom: If he spent the rest of his life providing practical nursing services for terminal AIDS patients in impoverished sub-Saharan African villages without pay, that might take the edge off the tortures of his eternal damnation. What do you want?
Harold: Morton suggested I contact you for advice. He said that even though you get mad crazy money to dispense advice to diplomats, politicians, high-ranking bureaucrats and people like that in Washington DC, you’ll give anyone advice one time for free. Is that true?
Tom: Well, the general idea is, as part of my business development strategy, I offer an initial appointment free of charge to prospective clients of my policy consultation practice.
Harold: Ah, yeah, Morton explained it was something like that, and I have to admit, I’m probably not a prospective client for your, um… policy consultation practice. But could you… um… advise me without charge anyway?
Tom: Considering the alternatives to doing so at the moment, why not? What’s your problem?
Harold: Microsoft has a new CEO, Satya Nadella.
Tom: So I’ve heard.
Harold: And this week, he issued a memo to Microsoft’s employees. Have you read it?
Tom: Unfortunately, yes, I have.
Harold: Unfortunately?
Tom: I had to – in order to prepare for a consultation with a paying client.
Harold: Okay, then, what do you think?
Tom: I think I’d like to know what your problem is.
Harold: Oh, all right then. I’ve been through Gates and I’ve been through Ballmer, but even compared to them, this Nadella guy is a complete whacko.
Tom: How so?
Harold: Well, just look at this memo of his, he says, “we must rediscover our soul.” What’s that supposed to mean? When did we lose it?
Tom: About 1980.
Harold: Okay, so Microsoft lost its soul so long ago, half the people alive today on the planet weren’t even around to notice. So what? Microsoft’s done just fine since then without a soul, hasn’t it?
Tom: Depends on how you look at it. I guess a soul would have gotten in the way while Microsoft was breaking the law so it could get competitive advantages.
Harold: Damn right it would. And how about this: “We must all understand and embrace what only Microsoft can contribute to the world and how we can once again change the world.” What’s he talking about, how Microsoft can change the world? Microsoft makes money, that’s what Microsoft does! And can you believe that [expletive] about contributing to the world? What are we, a God damned charity now? I own quite a bit of Microsoft stock, and frankly, like any sane stockholder, I’m not interested in anything but corporate profit!
Tom: Don’t worry, that’s just rhetoric. He doesn’t really mean it. He’s speaking as if Microsoft had a sense of corporate responsibility beyond making its stockholders wealthy and its executives obscenely rich. And of course, we know there’s no way that could possibly be true.
Harold: I should hope not! But Nadella says he wants to “synthesize the strategic direction and massive opportunity” he’s been raving about at everybody around the company for months, with “the fundamental cultural changes required to deliver on it.” Now, when I hear “fundamental cultural change,” two things happen. First my bull-[expletive] meter flies off the [expletive] scale, and second, I see hordes of bean counters and hatchet-men headed for Redmond, ready to [expletive] the people who actually built Microsoft right up the [expletive] with no [expletive] Vaseline!
Tom: Which, you must admit, is what Microsoft has been doing to the true software innovators for its entire history.
Harold: Of course! That’s the Microsoft tradition! And speaking of traditions, what does this [expletive] Nadella say? He says, “Our industry does not respect tradition – it only respects innovation.” Seriously, what planet is this guy from? What parallel universe is he living in? Microsoft’s tradition is to have no respect for innovation! We steal innovation – whatever we want, whenever we want, from whoever we want! We make a bastardized copy of it, rush it to market, bury the competition with backdoor distribution deals and massive marketing campaigns, and then rely on our huge legal department and battalions of K Street and Wall Street lawyers to crush the innovators if they so much as complain, much less sue for patent infringement!
Tom: As traditions go, that’s right up there with the spoils of war, jus primae noctis and slavery.
Harold: All of which were perfectly good traditions in their time, and I say it’s still time for the hallowed traditions that made Microsoft what it is today!
Tom: Actually, I think Nadella agrees with you on that point.
Harold: You do?
Tom: Definitely. I’m sure Nadella has no intention of changing the founding tradition of Microsoft, which you just described, that Bill Gates instituted in the very beginning. Nor does he intend to change Steve Ballmer’s tradition of squeezing innovators until they pop, then buying them out at fire sale prices, afterward diluting their vision and prostituting their products to deliver the same bug-riddled, inferior crap that has, traditionally, made Microsoft so profitable. He’s no more serious about changing that than he is about Microsoft actually contributing anything to the world, or, even more absurdly, Microsoft making the world a better place. Come now – Microsoft is the Standard Oil of the digital age. Did Standard Oil concern itself with making the world a better place? Did Standard Oil worry about whether it was making a contribution to society? Did Standard Oil change its corporate traditions?
Harold: Hmm… I guess not. But this Nadella guy is still a total flake in my book. Check this out: “We live in a mobile-first and cloud-first world. Computing is ubiquitous and experiences span devices and exhibit ambient intelligence. Billions of sensors, screens and devices – in conference rooms, living rooms, cities, cars, phones, PCs – are forming a vast network and streams of data that simply disappear into the background of our lives.” Give me a [expletive] break! Who does this guy think he is, Aldous Huxley or Philip K. Dick? Then he says, “Our customers and society expect us to maximize the value of technology while also preserving the values that are timeless. We will create more natural human-computing interfaces that empower all individuals… We will strike the right balance between using data to create intelligent, personal experiences, while maintaining security and privacy.” Right! So now we know – he thinks he’s Arthur C. Clarke!”
Tom: More like Lewis Carroll, actually.
Harold: What makes you think so?
Tom: Because if he believes Microsoft can maintain security and privacy in an environment like that, he’s obviously living in Wonderland or On the Other Side of the Looking Glass.
Harold: Exactly what I’m worried about. If I had a dollar for every time some pimply teenager has cracked Microsoft security from their parent’s basement, I wouldn’t be worried about what’s going to happen to the price of Microsoft stock after some pimply teenager hacks into this Panglossian fantasy that Nadella’s dreamed up and posts everybody’s Social Security number, mother’s maiden name, date of birth, credit report, medical history and collection of nude selfies on a Bulgarian web site. What’s Nadella going to do then, huh? Claim the [expletive] EULA gets us off the [expletive] hook? How many times does this bozo think we can go to that well? I tell you, this turkey has his head up his [expletive], pure and simple. Listen to this: “We think about productivity for people, teams and the business processes of entire organizations as one interconnected digital substrate.” Did you hear that? “Interconnected digital substrate,” he says. Where does he get this nonsensical [expletive], anyway – [expletive] Davos, TED Talks, Santa Fe, [expletive] Mars? What the [expletive] does it mean?
Tom: It means he likes to put words together at random until he gets something that sounds profound and meaningful. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had a computer program that grinds them out for him. He knows that if a phrase like that gets repeated often enough, it will eventually assume a meaning based on the context of its use. Enough of those, and the world will proclaim him a visionary genius.
Harold: I’m about ready to proclaim him a babbling idiot. Check this out. He says he wants to turn Microsoft into a “productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world.” Microsoft used to be about greed, power and abuse – those worked just fine, and I say, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it! This Nadella clown wants to turn Microsoft into a string of half-wit buzz-words!
Tom: Relax. There’s one important thing you’re overlooking here.
Harold: What’s that?
Tom: This “memo to Microsoft employees” isn’t really written for Microsoft employees. Sure, most memoranda from corporate CEOs addressed to their employees are actually intended for their employees to read. Who else, after all, will read them? But Nadella knows that a Microsoft employees’ memorandum will be read by the media, the courts, the politicians and the stockholders. And they are the actual targets of this memorandum. They are its true intended audience.
Harold: Oh, really?
Tom: Sure. The stockholders want to be reassured that they should continue to hold their investment in Microsoft, despite the fact that it seems to be losing control and direction. The courts and politicians want to see some indication that Microsoft intends to stop acting like the digital version of the Mafia and play nice from now on. And the media want some Buck Rogers copy they can mindlessly parrot for their fawning gee-whiz rah-rah technology pieces on the tube and the Internet. You folks at Microsoft know the real score – Microsoft is going to continue as it always has, a well-upholstered snake pit of office intrigue, unbridled greed, unethical scheming, malicious gossip, character assassination, back-stabbing and lies.
Harold: Really? You think so? Honestly?
Tom: Absolutely.
Harold: Oh, what a relief! Yes, yes, now that I’ve talked to you about this memo, I’m sure you’re right. I feel so much better now. How can I thank you?
Tom: A simple “thank you” will do. It seems to me we’re done here. Please give my regards to Morton.
Harold: Oh, I will, I will. And thank you – thank you from the bottom of my black, stony and greedy Microsoft heart!
Tom: You’re quite welcome. Goodbye.