On: Microsoft is not a web company

[richtaur]

Yup, that's why they were looking at buying Yahoo! for a while there. The thing is, they do everything. And when you do everything, you can't do all of it well. They have too many eggs in too many baskets (for example, why did they compete in the mp3 player space with Zune?).

They do some things really well (Xbox Live is amazing, for example) but yeah they fail hard at the web.

[IsaacSchlueter → richtaur]

Also, let's not forget, once upon a time, they had a pretty damn nice OS, compared to their competitors.

And IE6 killed Netscape at least in part because it was better in a lot of ways.

When I was entering college as a CS major, working for Microsoft seemed like a pretty awesome career goal. Now, I wouldn't even consider it.

What happened, Microsoft? How have you fallen so far?

[dantheman → IsaacSchlueter]

Microsoft still does lots of good technology, so I guess it depends on what you're interested in.

[jballanc → IsaacSchlueter]

One word: Management!

...completely hearsay, but I've been told that the management culture at Microsoft is positively stifling, and all the best engineers are off working on niche projects that will probably never ship...

[adharmad → jballanc]

Completely agree. This book <br> http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Windows-Fumbled-Future-Micros... although dated gives some good historical context on Microsoft Management culture (although it is focused more on Gates).