evildictaitor said:
InkMaster said:
*snip*
** So you're saying that the head of the biggest tech company in the world shouldn't know atleast his own product?

He needs to know what it IS, and how to sell it. In terms of technical knowledge he doesn't need to know any more about Windows or Office than the average joe off the street.

** Well... if they're too incompitent to the trusted with something that small.... guess one has to either do everything himself or find people who are more qualified to lead a team of developers and designers.

If Ballmer tried to oversee all of the decisions in the company at that level personally, Microsoft's productivity would stop overnight, and it would drive Microsoft straight into the ground. The board don't and shouldn't have any control over the finer aspects of product development (like which fonts to use, which programming language, how the threads are partitioned, who does what specifically in each project etc) - these decisions needs time and care given to them by someone close to the team who are implementing it, or need to be outsourced to experts in the field. If members of the board had to do micromanaging at this level they would have no time left to look at the "bigger picture", and because Microsoft is big and the board members few, they would be required to give hasty ill-thought out decisions due to time-constraints, and would become a bottleneck for productivity in the company. Additionally, if you're not going to give any of the managers lower down the company any kind of responsibility to make decisions over their product, they'll leave and go work for someone else.

** Just the way I see it is like this; IF you're hired to manage a company, then manage it, hire compitent project leaders, and oversee those who report to you and if they're not doign a good enough job managing their team replace them with someone more compitent...

If I were assigned to a management role, I would be responsible for managing people and helping make the decisions for the department. If I were elected to the board of a corporation, I would concentrate on maximising the profits and sustainability of the corporation, and assign managers to oversee the various aspects of the company and report back to me. I would certainly be careful who I chose to report back to me, and that they were honest and competent, but I certainly wouldn't be firing them because the japanese version of one of my products didn't have anti-aliasing on one of the fonts. In fact, if they started to tell me about it I would say "go sort it out .. it's not my concern". If a customer complained about it, I would pass them on to whomever I had assigned that job to.

Delegation isn't just about offloading your own work onto someone else so you don't have to. It's about assigning responsibilities and lines of accountability through a corporate structure. If your company gets beyond about 20 or so people, then not having anyone dedicating themselves to knowing and planning the "bigger picture", or having senior managers micromanaging the minor decisions of the various products is a sure sign that the company needs new management.


"If your company gets beyond about 20 or so people, then not having anyone dedicating themselves to knowing and planning the "bigger picture", or having senior managers micromanaging the minor decisions of the various products is a sure sign that the company needs new management."

Ok then, lets forget about Ballmer.  Lets say, he's not to blame for his company's products.  Who can we blame for the "Windows experience" then? Tongue Out I propose Julie Larson-Green as the corporate vp of "windows experience" http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/julielar/ Smiley