Double Journey

When I was at Microsoft, I worked on the billing system for my product.  This was mostly an integration effort with another Microsoft team that specialized in payments.   One of things that I worked on was trying to resolve a lot of the problems that our customers had with giving us money.  For a myriad of reasons, we did not make it very easy for people to hand money to us.  Many of these problems were not ours but that of our partners.  You would think that something as simple as handing someone money would be easy but it is not and our customers would constantly get tripped up just trying to do this one simple thing.

Well, this just bit me in the ass.  I have another website that I use for personal reasons.  Microsoft was handing free domain names and free hosting when I was looking to get it so I signed up with them.  My needs were relatively modest so I was perfectly happy to let them handle it.  Well it is time for renewal and the free offer is up so they want me to start paying for the service.  I have no real issue with this so I tried to log in to figure out how much it would cost me to renew.

Well, I spent at least 15 minutes clicking every possible link but absolutely nowhere can I find information on how much it is going to cost me to renew this domain.  How stupid is that?  All I want is the price.  This is the most basic thing in any sales transaction.  Tell me the friggin’ price. But this piece of information is NOWHERE to be found.  For all I know, they could charge me a million dollars to do this renewal.

The saddest part of this is that this is what almost all of Microsoft’s online applications use to get paid.  Anyone have any thoughts on why Microsoft can’t put a successful online strategy together?  If you can’t get billing right, what the hell?

I recently got a message from this blog asking me if, two years later, I thought it was worth it to move back to California.

Before I get into this, I have to say it did not really occur to me that I have been back in California for two years until I got this e-mail.  I knew the two year anniversary of my job was coming up but it did not really sink in how long it has been until I got the message.  The past two years have been such a blur and it seems hard to believe I have been at this job longer than I was at Microsoft.  Maybe that says more about the job I have now compared to the one I had before.

Now on to the question.  Was it worth it to move back to California from Washington?  Ironically I answer this question the same day that it was pouring rain in Los Angeles.  But this makes my answer to this all the more certain.  Yes, it was absolutely to move back to California from Washington.

I was thinking about this as I rode the elevator to work.  I am in a very high skyscraper and the elevator has a television in it that I find myself catching news clips as I enter and leave the building.  On the ride down today, the news had “Storm Watch” flashing on the screen.  Now, after living in Washington for two years, I can tell you.  The rain wasn’t all that severe.  It came down hard, but it would be a pretty normal day in Seattle.  The reason this made me think of how good I have it is because weather like this is so unusual we make a big deal about it here.  This is the first time it has rained in the last several months.  Think about that for a second.  It is December and it probably hasn’t rained of any significance in several months.   I actually can’t even remember the last time it rained. You can’t buy weather like that.

Of course, that is not the only reason I am glad to move back to California (but it is a big part).  I’m happier with my job and I am glad to be around family and friends.  My wife is happier (weather affects her more than it does me) so that makes my life better.  So if I had to do it all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat.

But I caution anybody from taking my experience and translating it to your own.  My situation is unique in many ways.  First off, I grew up here.  The culture and lifestyle just really work for me since I grew up here.  Moreover, I have a base of friends and family here.  Moving out here, not knowing anyone, can be really difficult. I find it easy to make and meet new friends but this is not true for everyone and California can be a lonely place if you don’t have any friends or family.  But perhaps the biggest deterrent to moving out here has to be the money.  Can you make it work?  Moving to California with no money is not an easy tasks.  It is not easy even if you have money.  Housing is expensive and taxes will take whatever you have left.

My situation is likely not the same as yours.  I make very good money and I live very frugally.  While I certainly “miss” the money that California extracts from me, I probably will not miss it as much as those who live paycheck to paycheck.   The cost of living does not affect me nearly as much as it would other people.  And make no mistake about it, California has a high cost of living.  You combine that with our high unemployment rate and (still) high housing prices, and it can be a daunting financial burden.  This has gotten so bad, I have written how I think the California Dream is vanishing for many, even myself.

So while I have no regrets about moving back here this is not to say I won’t once again leave.  High taxes and high housing is driving me away, I’m sure it will drive others as well.  In fact, I had such a conversation with someone about this on Saturday.  But I’ll write about that in my next blog.

I was reading an article about people who failed to adjust their life after losing a job.  The article focuses on those who thought they could maintain their lifestyle because they got a severance check from their former employer and failed to realize that they might be unemployed longer than they expected.

It was hard for me to read the article because it is irksome to me to read about people who do not understand the reality of their situation.  It is especially bothersome to me to hear that people act this way in this country where most people have little or no money saved to deal with emergency situations.  Getting severance is a gift.  Few people have the “right” to a severance package.  Most employers provide them as a way to make all the parties involved feel a little better but they rarely if ever have to dispense generous severance packages.

I guess I just do not have a lot of sympathy for people in these situations.  I might if these people immediately cut their spending to the bare minimum to make their savings last as long as possible but none of these people did that.  They all decided to ignore the situation and continue to live as if nothing serious had happened.  I compare this to my own situation of life without a job.

I quit my Microsoft Job in September.  I was officially on payroll until the end of October but I stopped working at the end of September.  I simply used my vacation for that last month.  Despite the fact that I chose to leave, I had enough savings to last several years at my then rate of consumption, I still had a paycheck coming in, and my wife had a job that could cover all the bills, I started to immediately watch my money the day I gave notice.  Why?  I had no idea how long I would be out of a job.

My original idea was to take at least six months off.  That didn’t happen because I have a problem not working and the uncertainty drove me nuts.  But despite my very safe position it was just prudent to not spend money the same way as I had before.  I was more careful about anything I bought.  We ate out a lot less.  We canceled plans that would cost us too much money.  I then look at my wife’s position when we first moved to Washington.  She did not have a job lined up when we moved.  I made more than enough money to support the both of us but despite this she decided to get a retail job just to bring in some cash.  It wasn’t great work but it paid and she wanted to make sure she brought a little something home just to get used to the idea and not feel too “safe”.

Perhaps all of this was “easier” for me to do because I made a conscience choice to leave my job so I got to do it on my terms.  The psychology of it does not make much sense to me since I would think that having the situation forced on you would make the problem more immediate and urgent.  But I suppose there are those who would rather avoid the situation than tackle it head on.

Found this on news.com.  It seems Microsoft changed the look of one of the people pictured on its website.  The controversy stems from the fact that on its Polish website, it overlaid a picture of a white man over a picture of a black man.

Now, I’m pretty sensitive about certain racial issues but I am not in this case.   In fact, I see pretty much nothing wrong with what Microsoft did.  This is advertisement.  It needs to appeal to the demographic you are after.  I know nothing about Poland but I am assuming that the demographic is nothing like it is in the U.S. and that there are not many people who are black.  To appeal to that demographic, Microsoft probably felt it need to make the people look more “Polish”.

While I would like to think everybody would be enlightened and not take race into consideration, I know better.  My company puts up several webpage.  We have one page in particular depicting a family.  This family looks very “American”.  It depicts a white couple with a cute young daughter in front of a big suburban house.  This page works great for our site, but it only works great in the United States.  In ever other country, it does much worse.  The page is rather simple, and it changes language depending on the country.  The only reason it would only work in the United States and not in other countries is because the family just looks American.

So I see no problem in Microsoft changing the picture to better match the target audience and have no idea why anybody would make a big deal about it.  What do you think?

Promise to not make this a Bing blog but just wanted to write a few more comments on what I thought.  I spent my first full day using Bing and I liked it.  Haven’t really missed Google yet, but time will tell.  Some of the features I liked best.

•  Video and Picture search are very nice.  The interface is much better than Google’s.  I like the preview of the Video when you hover over it and I like the lack of clutter when looking for pictures.
•  Searching for restaurant chains will give you the most useful information right up top with a map of locations to boot.
•  Searching for sports teams gives you their record, schedule, and recent scores.  It is laid out in a really attractive way
• Not so sure about the feature on the right of the search which expands to give you more information about the page without having to visit the site.  Nice idea, but the few times I’ve used it not so good results.
• The left hand navigation is useful for sure.  I like the suggestions it comes up with for the most part.  Sometimes they aren’t useful, but most of the time the topic Bing suggest is pretty relevant.
• Search history on the left is also good … I think.  I do search for the same thing often, but not sure how useful it is to see what I just looked for.

I’ll keep using it, but I promise this will be the last time I talk about it.

Microsoft released its new search engine Bing.  All I can say is that I’m pleasantly surprised.  I’m trying to use Bing as my default search engine just to try it out and see if Microsoft has finally caught up with Google.

I was writing a different blog than this one, one about sports, and did a search for “UCLA basketball championships” on Google and Bing.  Google returneda wiki page on the NCAA basketball tournament.  Bing returned a page on UCLA championships.  I was looking for the years that UCLA won the NCAA tournament.  To my surprise the bing result is actually better.  I’m also finding the left hand navigation to be more useful than I thought it would be.

So far, I like Bing.  I used Google almost exclusively even when I worked at Microsoft because I just did not find my results on Live Search to be as relevant as I would like.  But if Microsoft can close that gap, I may have to switch my default search engine.

Have you tried Bing yet?  If so, what do you think?

Only a quick post tonight because I’m busy doing what I’m about to blog about, setting goals for my team and for myself.

It is an odd to set goals for your team and to watch other set goals for their teams.  I believe in setting SMART goals.  For those that don’t know SMART goals are

• S pecific
• M easurable
• A ttainable
• R elevant
• T imely

This simple thing is actually quite important because I am a strong believer in you have to do what you say you are going to do. Setting goals is just that, you should be sure that they are clear and that you can achieve them.  Other people just do not seem to get that and it amazes me.

Now to be fair to others, this is the first time my current company is really having everyone do goals.  This is a huge change than in years prior where nobody really had goals and everyone just went around to do their job without having any clue about how their performance would be measured.  Now, I do not believe you should go overboard with goal setting.  I have seen it go too much the other way, especially when I was at Microsoft.   But in general, I think it is important for employees to know what is expected to them and how they can demonstrate it.

But as I look over the goals of others, so many of them are extremely vague or completely unobtainable by that employee.  I have seen goals like, “Make people better”.  What does that mean and how do you achieve that?  I see several people with revenue goals for the company but these people have no real way to affect that number.  I know it is important that the company meets their financial targets but why should an employee have a goal which they have no way to influence?

My goals are by no means perfect, but they generally follow the SMART guidelines.  How about you, have you ever had to set goals or had goals set for you that were completely unrealistic?

I was talking to a friend recently who was lamenting her government job.  It was not that she was particularly disgruntled with her job, it was just that she felt that she had reached the peak of what she was going to accomplish in the next dozen or so years.  You see, for her to move up anymore, she would have to wait for her boss to leave or retire.  Neither of these seem likely at the present time.

This is in contrast to my current situation.  I have had some pretty good growth over the last few years.  The one exception for me would be at Microsoft.  Ironically, I would say Microsoft, up until recently, is almost like a government job.  What do I mean by this?  One of the reasons people covet government jobs is the security.  Take my mom for example.  She never had to worry about layoffs.  She worked for the government for over 35 years.  Through booms and busts, she kept her job. She did not have fantastic career growth, but she always had a job.

Now think about this.  If you have a government job, and your job is pretty safe no matter the situation, that means all your coworkers also have pretty safe and secure jobs.   There can only be so many managers in any organization whether they be public or private.  If there is never any turnover, there are fewer opportunities to move up as the bosses stick around just like the people underneath them.  As I stated in my previous post, some of my best career growth came at times where there were layoffs.  Layoffs create voids.  Voids at work create opportunities for someone to step in and take more responsibility.  This inevitably leads to career advancement.

I felt this way at Microsoft.  I felt trapped under the weight of the management above me.  There was great opportunity for growth when the size of the company was doubling every other year, but the pace of growth had slowed down dramatically and it had reached a saturation point when it came to management.  Because people just did not lose their job anywhere near fast enough, I worked with several people that should have been kicked out long ago, and the benefits are good enough to keep many people around, I just did not feel I could move up at the pace I wanted to and I was used to.  So I left, because, while I liked a lot of things about the company, and I was certain I could have had a job for years to come, I was never going to get the growth I desired.

And as if to prove my point, my career growth has come much faster than I could have ever predicted.  I now run an entire technology organization for the main division of my company including development, QA, and project management.  This same position at Microsoft would have taken me at a minimum six or seven years and more realistically it would have taken me ten or twelve.  Some of this has come with a lot more uncertainty, I could lose my job tomorrow for all I know, but it is a trade off I’m willing to make.

What do you think?  Is job security worth sacrificing career advancement?

Just this Morning, Microsoft announced that it was going to layoff 5000 employees.  This is the first time in history that Microsoft has ever had a layoff and it really shows the depth of the economic problems that we are facing right now. I left Microsoft over a year ago for numerous reasons.  One of the reasons was because I thought Microsoft was sorely in need of a culture shock.  When companies get as big as Microsoft has become, inertia sets in.  It can be extremely difficult to get the organization moving.  And once moving, it can be extremely hard to make it change course.  I became frustrated on a daily basis just trying to get basic things done.  This is in direct contrast to my current job where I think people often move too fast for their own good.

I have nothing but good wishes for Microsoft going forward.  While I did not leave on the best of terms, I think that this was a situation very specific to me and not at all to do with the type of company that Microsoft is.  I still have a lot of friends there and hope that they are unaffected by any of this.

From the outside looking in, I think this is a good thing for Microsoft.  I think they needed to get smaller.  It is sad that there had to be an economic crisis for it to happen, but at least it is happening.  As someone whose job is to plan for the unexpected, as someone whose job it is to be proactive and not reactive, and as somone who developed this skill at Microsoft, I find it somewhat ironic that Microsoft is handling their headcount reduction this way.  They should have done this well before this.  They should not have waited for the economy to dictate their actions.  But again, maybe that just says something about the company that Microsoft is.

Not sure where most of the cuts will come.  My guess is that there needs to be hard looks at divisions which are not profitable and have no near term possibility of becoming profitable.  Near term being within a year or two.  This is not the environment where you want to be throwing money at things “hoping” they become profitable soon.  Shareholders get restless.  They do not like to see declining revenue AND declining earnings.  When revenues are near flat, your only recourse is to cut expenses.  The #1 expense at any technology driven company is headcount.  The first people to go need to be the people who do not bring in revenue commensurate to what they are paid.  Cash cows like Windows and Office are probably safe.  Products like my old one are not (it has already been announced that this product will be discontinued).

I am dealing with my own company having layoffs.  While I was personally unaffected, I think that that layoffs can be a very positive thing (I promise to write more about this in the next few days).  I’ve been part of several layoffs in my career.  It is almost always a good thing in the long term for both those who are let go and those who stay behind.  I have had some of my best career growth because of layoffs.    I am the type of person who always tries to see the bright side of things, even when they are at their most dire, and this is no exception.  I think Microsoft will become stronger for this if they can execute it correctly.  But that’s the big question, can they?  I have my doubts.

They have already made one mistake.  They announced that there will be 5000 layoffs, but on about 1500 of those will be today.  Umm, that’s just dumb.  Layoffs should happen once and only once.  Doing a slow bleed is very hard for all those involved as people are always looking over their shoulder rather than looking forward.  Looking forward is extremely important when there is more work to do and less people to do it.  You add that to the news that Apple had a fantastic quarter, and you have to wonder if Microsoft even has a coherent strategy to handle all of this.

Like many companies, my company recently announced a scaling back of certain employee benefits.  Some of them were quite significant, like the suspension of our 401K matching.  Some of them were important but not as significant; we scaled back the variety of drinks we offer for free like Red Bull and bottled water.   In these tough times it is to be expected so none of these changes actually caught me by surprise.   Funny enough, I see the financial statements of my division, and we are cash flow positive with no debt, a relatively strong position to be in as the economy worsens.

But it is always wise to be conservative going into problems rather than be caught off guard when things eventually get worse.  And I am sure they will get worse from here.  The thing is, and maybe it is just me becasue I was expecting it, most of the other employees seem to be taking this quite well.  Perhaps I have a skewed view of things now because I am in management.  I might also be bias because I do  not expect much from the company I work for other than a place to work, growth opportunities, and of course my paycheck.  However, almost every employee I talked to seem to be taking the cuts in stride.

This is in stark contrast to my experience at Microsoft where there was an uproar over losing towel service, something probably used by less than 5% of employees.  Perhaps people are just more understanding in a down economy.  It is universally understood that these cuts were made in lieu of losing headcount.  How many people would argue about keeping an energy drink over losing their job or having to see one of their fellow employee’s pack up their stuff?  Perhaps the difference this time is that people at Microsoft rarely worry about losing their job as opposed to most of the rest of the world which realize layoffs are a real possibility.

So I was pleasently surprised how well the staff was taking the announcement.  In fact, many people offered more suggestions about where there should be even more cutbacks.  Most of them really appreciate how honest and upfront management has been about the situation.  Most of them enjoy being part of the process.  It is ironic to me because I have been in other places which want to hide the truth from people until it is too late thinking their employees will not be able to handle it.  This case clearly shows how people can be if you are just upfront with the situation.

So how do you think you would handle getting your perks reduced?  Is there any perk you get that you think your company should do away with?  Is there any perk you would get upset if they took away?