If I had Bill's job I would....

If I had Bill's job the first three things I would do are ... any ideas?

Good question, I'll give it a try:

• Lower all product prices with 25%
• Steal patent cubes from employees (just for fun)
• Free certification of "Made for Microsoft Windows" software (if the software is tested successfully)

I would stop selling off millions of shares of MSFT and I would give the shares to my developers.

I would sell MSN and use the money to hire more developers.

I would hire some Marketing Pro's and fire all the PR Slime.

I would construct the ultimate High-Tech Office Building in New York City and call it: The Microsoft Building

1: Go look at the prototypes Microsoft has hidden in the basement.  Get involved.  Press buttons, and be a general nuscience to a lot of highly qualified computer scientists.

2: Have some of Microsoft's best programmers teach me how to code.

3: Ask for a raise (you didnt' say his money, you just said his job.  The man is under paid for what he does.  Seriously.)

eagle wrote:

I would stop selling off millions of shares of MSFT and I would give the shares to my developers.

I would sell MSN and use the money to hire more developers.

I would hire some Marketing Pro's and fire all the PR Slime.

I would construct the ultimate High-Tech Office Building in New York City and call it: The Microsoft Building

I like these ideas.  Except, instead of selling MSN, perhaps improve it.

Buy a major league baseball team

Really push the Tablet paradigm

Break up Microsoft into smaller autonomous units that can react quicker and reposition faster

Rossj wrote:

If I had Bill's job the first three things I would do are ... any ideas?





1. Lose it
2. Try to get it back
3. Fail

Willy Duitt wrote:

Refuse to sell or support my product in countries whom attempt to tell me how to run my business or what my products should or should not include...
Require that consumers interested in purchasing my products pass an aptitude test to insure they are intelligent enough to use these products safely...

Ooh, I like these 2 as well.

Rossj wrote:

If I had Bill's job the first three things I would do are ... any ideas?

Build a 100 foot solid gold robot with diamonds for eyes and giant lasers for ear with which I shall CRUSH MY ENEMIES!!!!!

Erm, seriously...

I would, firstly, reorganise the development teams so they are more customer-facing during earlier stages of development.  A great deal of problems within Microsoft technologies is down to people in a development team making stupid design decisions for which other teams have to then take up the slack and make poorer workaround solutions.  A part of that would be to make it so developers talked as much about "deployment stories" as "development stories".  Make developers themselves visit client companies.

Once Longhorn is complete, set a new goal.  From that moment on, every part of the OS is modularised.  By Longhorn R2 (2008), the kernel is modularised, allowing people to build Windows in as slim or as fat mode as they want.  By Blackcomb (2010), everything is modularised.

Based on that previous point, set a goal that by 2010, the desktop computer will be for the majority of people no longer the main interface to their computer.  Personal devices will be the computer of the future.  Throw gigantic amounts of money into the research to make the cost of devices pennies.  Rework licensing so that isn't a factor in the take up of devices.

Oh, and the gigantic gold robot.

• Steal music... all day long.
• Every day at noon take $20 worth of change and throw a quarter at developers browsing slashdot or listening to stolen music on iPods.
• Hostile take-over of Sun, rename "Java" to "Java.NET" and make fun of everyone who said Java is "non-proprietary."
  

- Release the XP - Explorer.exe (aka default shell) Source Code for free and for private use to all XP owners.

- Reduce Windows (Home/Office/Server) by 10% (To combat Linux)

- Reduce Office (Home/Office) by 10% (To combat OO)

- Start CPO (See footnote)

- Hire a full time web-developer to the C9 team

- Fund an internal C9 advertisement campaign

- Hire a team of fresh MIT students to work on a better spellchecker

- Release Office spellchecker updates 'free'

- Start a migration program away from antiquated newsgroups for feedback and towards forums (Which more people have access to)

- Fund a half-decent US president

Footnotes:

CPO: Cooperative Patent Organisation - Companies of any size can join the CPO on the condition that they share all their patents with all other members of the CPO and in return can use other member's patents for free (Solves the 'Patent cold war' problem).

 

 

 

1. The past
2. The Future
3. The Present!

... with regards to Microsoft as a whole, including, its employees, customers, etc. etc.

The past, because learning from it is a, well, good thing.

The future, the ability (vision) to judge what lies ahead more accurately, and thus navigate the sometimes rough seas of business.

The present, the understanding that here and now is what your (er.. my for this example) company is all about!  Because you can talk a good game, but when it comes right down to it... the present is what everyone sees!

Fire the entire Windows team and hire the best and the brightest and redesign and rebuild Windows from the ground up.

rjdohnert wrote:

Fire the entire Windows team and hire the best and the brightest and redesign and rebuild Windows from the ground up.

And after you finish that just declare bankruptcy... Windows isn't popular because it is perfect, it is popular because people have invested in the platform (writing programs etc) .. your suggestion would break all of that and allow someone else to come in and take over (e.g. Linux)

Who said anything about leaving my legacy customers out in the cold?

1. Build a Windows Server for Consumers
2. Get Dell to sell a Dell-branded Tablet-PC
3. Partner with Visa & The automobile manufacturers to develop a privatized universal identity token

1.
Invite Lenn, Charles & Scoble round for a C9 interview where I goof about demo-ing an XBox2 whilst discussing ship dates for IE7, Longhorn, Blackcomb  and confirm my share price expectations for the next fiscal year.

2., 3.
err spend a lot more time pursuing some of my more altrusitic philanthropy interests when the MS board fire me