No matter how you look at it, one person cannot be evaluated and paid in isolation of budgets.
Disruption is a critical element of the evolution of technology - from the positive and negative aspects of disruption a typical pattern emerges, as new technologies come to market and subsequently take hold.
Innovation and disruption are the hallmarks of the technology world, and hardly a moment passes when we are not thinking, doing, or talking about these topics.
The industrial revolution that defined the first half of the 20 century marked the start of modern business, typified by high-volume, large-scale organizations. Mechanization created a culture of business derived from the capabilities and needs of the time.
People love to play expectations games, and that is always bad for collaboration internal to a team, with your manager, or externally with customers.
When you delegate work to the member of the team, your job is to clearly frame success and describe the objectives.
Macintosh felt like a system. As I learned more, I felt like I was able to guess how new things would work. I felt like the bugs in my programs were more my bugs and not things I misunderstood.
Management, at every level, is about the effort to frame challenges, define end states, and allocate resources to navigate between them.
When you build a product, you make a lot of assumptions about the state of the art of technology, the best business practices, and potential customer usage/behavior.
As much as we think of performance management as numeric and thus perfectly quantifiable, it is as much a product of context and social science as the products we design and develop.
Assuming a specific resource is high cost is often a path to disruption when someone makes a different assumption.
It is impossible to count the blessings I have received over my years at Microsoft. I am humbled by the professionalism and generosity of everyone I have had the good fortune to work with at this awesome company.
Knowledge created a new culture of business derived from the information gathering and analysis capabilities of first the mainframe and then the PC.
The best work for creative folks on the team is when the problem is big and the solution escapes everyone.
Things will absolutely go wrong. In a healthy team, as soon as things go wrong, that information should be surfaced. Trying to hide or obscure bad news creates an environment of distrust or lack of transparency.
It's not cool to have your name in print when it's not the truth.
I always feel great. I get to come to work every day and see the build from the night before, and every day we do more stuff.
With the general availability of Windows 8/RT and Surface, I have decided it is time for me to take a step back from my responsibilities at Microsoft.
I've always advocated using the break between product cycles as an opportunity to reflect and to look ahead, and that applies to me, too.
After more than 23 years working on a wide range of Microsoft products, I have decided to leave the company to seek new opportunities that build on these experiences.
