Big and surprising news this morning. Some considered him the crown prince of the Microsoft empire, slated to take over after Ballmer’s eventual departure, but this morning, Steven Sinofsky announced his resignation from Microsoft. His role will be taken over by Julie-Larson Green. Persistent sources indicate that we’re looking at a Forstall-esque situation; Sinofsky was, supposedly, not a good team player.
Sinofsky has been with Microsoft for a very long time. He joined the company all the way back in 1989, and has, since then, been responsible for several important releases, including Office 2007, Windows 7, and, of course, Windows 8. His track record is impressive; all these three were major releases, and two of them – Office 2007 and Windows 8 – were radical departures from previous versions. In other words, Sinofsky managed to make disruptive changes in a company as large and established as Microsoft, and that’s a rare quality.
I’m guessing this rare quality didn’t always make him friends, as sources indicate that his departure resulted from his attitude supposedly being aggressive – focussing on Windows and letting everything else kind of fall by the wayside. Now that Microsoft has clearly shifted towards the integration of its various product lines, the need for someone who can make disruptive changes to existing produces – collateral damage be damned – diminished.
Sinofsky himself of course denies these rumours in his letter to Microsoft employees, published by Paul Thurrott. “Some might notice a bit of chatter speculating about this decision or timing. I can assure you that none could be true as this was a personal and private choice that in no way reflects any speculation or theories one might read – about me, opportunity, the company or its leadership,” he states, “As I’ve always believed in making space for new leaders as quickly as possible, this announcement is effective immediately and I will assist however needed with the transition.”
Sinofsky’s responsibilities will be taken over by both Julie Larson-Green, who will be responsible for Windows software and hardware engineering, and Tami Reller, who will take care of the business side of Windows, together with her existing roles as chief financial officer and chief marketing officer. Both Larson-Green and Reller have a long history in the industry, and especially Julie has been involved with Windows as a regular public face for a few years now.
“Leading Windows engineering is an incredible challenge and opportunity, and as I looked at the technical and business skills required to continue our Windows trajectory – great communication skills, a proven ability to work across product groups, strong design, deep technical expertise, and a history of anticipating and meeting customer needs – it was clear to me that Julie is the best possible person for this job, and I’m excited to have her in this role,” Ballmer said in the press release.
I can only go by Larson-Green’s public appearances demoing new Windows versions, but it seems that she might be the right choice for this one. Sinofsky always came across as very forward and overly enthusiastic – which is great if you need to shake up a sleeping company division, but not once everyone’s awake and cooperation across divisions is needed. Larson-Green, on the other hand, came across as more reserved, expressing the enthusiasm for the work that she does in more subtle ways. A more reserved, careful person might be exactly what’s needed to get Microsoft’s divisions to work together properly.
All in all, a big shake-up, which, according to Microsoft, has nothing to do with Windows 8’s performance so far – which makes sense, since it’s far too early to say anything meaningful about such a drastic release.
It is my analysis that the Sinofsky departure had nothing to do with Windows 8, Metro, or Surface. Be that sales (which 75% of retailers say is on track, and 25% say is above expectations) or it as a whole.
Julie was Sinofsky’s right hand in a lot of the Windows 8 engineering, and for the inevitable Metro hater in this thread: She invented Metro. If Sinofsky was being canned for Metro or Windows 8 or Surface, they wouldn’t put the person in charge of the User Experience at the helm of Windows.
My take is mostly that Sinofsky had plans to leave Microsoft and Windows probably sooner than most people thought. He wasn’t keynoting at Build, suspiciously. Most people usually wait until their product ships to leave the company. This might be just Steve being glad his babies are out of the door, and feeling its the right time to move on (Between major Windows releases)
In addition, what’s less clear is how the internal power struggle in Microsoft has played into this, and how his departure changes the dynamics. It could be that as Microsoft moves to eliminate the redundancy in itself (For example maintaining something like four different XAML stacks), Sinofsky’s reluctance to play nice with DevDiv would be seen as undesirable.
Whatever reason for his leaving aside, there is absolutely no denying the incredible influence that Sinofsky has. He’s an Office guy, like Julie, so they’ll continue to run Windows like Office is run (Organization wise).
I don’t think a lot of people truly appreciate the size and scale of the Windows operation. For Sinofsky to essentially streamline that process for Windows 7’s release, and further refine it with Windows 8 is a testament to his managerial prowess. It’s a shame, I really had him lined up to be CEO in my mind. He seemed much better suited for that role anyway.
I’m not sure if Julie is an interim appointment or not, but she has monumental shoes to fill.
“Microsoft Surface RT may only achieve 60% of forecasted sales”
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20121112PD219.html
“Microsoft Surface Sales “Starting Modestlyâ€, Says Ballmer”
http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/12/microsoft-surface-sales-starting-m…
Green only “invented” the Tiles, not Metro. Also she was only last years at Sinofsky’s side like many many others. She’s a designer, did not lead anything so far and now gets to command the central Windows devision. That does not mean that she may not prof to be a rockstar but so far she isn’t/wasn’t. Compare that with Sinofsky who was already very successful leading the Office division and a rockstar when taking over the Windows devision.
Edited 2012-11-13 17:10 UTC
Indeed…
This is very different than…
“Be that sales (which 75% of retailers say is on track, and 25% say is above expectations) or it as a whole.”
Some more:
“Windows RT Already in Trouble: OEM Interest Low After Surface Launch”
http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2012/11/windows-rt-in-trouble-oems-sur…
“Microsoft Surface RT: The Sad Treadmill Of Overhyped Expectations”
http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/microsoft-surface-rt-the-sad-tread…
The WP7 story repeats with RT and WP8. Microsoft seems to need to learn the hard way that there asset, the reason why Windows desktop sold so good all this years, is the 3th party win32 ecosystem that was build up over decades where they had zero serious competition. They depend on and are stuck on win32.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
Edited 2012-11-13 17:50 UTC
These statements are meaningless without actual numbers.
We do know that pre-release install rates were low
http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-8-has-five-times-less-pre-releas…
You don’t release a product that half the public immediately hates. Freaking stupid.
Why hate? There is gray between black and white. Like those that will buy a Surface but prefer win32 compatibility and hence buy Surface x86 rather then Surface RT.
That’s the whole deal. Microsoft offers you two near identicial (price, feel, look, name) products. The one runs all those Windows applications out there and allows non-app-market installations, the other not. Why would you buy the later one?
Edited 2012-11-13 18:15 UTC
I was actually talking about Windows 8.
Surface RT is a lousy idea as well. A Windows tablet that doesn’t run Windows programs at a price higher than Android tablets. Just awful. Oh and a name that confuses consumers to top it off. Sinofsky is a clueless hack and developers were right about him from the beginning.
I think such a “win 8 sucks” generalization is wrong.
Win8 is not one product. Its multiple products. We have Win8 desktop and server, win8 x86 for tablet, win8 RT for tablet and WP8.
Win8 desktop suffers most. It’s in a transition-state with modern (Metro) and classic (win7) both in one. Not bad per se but both those desktop UIs are half done. Classic misses classic elements like startmenu. Metro misses proper adaption to desktop.
What will they do with server version?
For the tablet RT suffers most. It has only disadvantages to x86. Its again classic (x86) and modern (RT) again but modern is incompatible.
Then there is WP8. Its only modern (Metro). Its incompatible to classic.
They tried/try to bring all that together but are close away. Most important are a desktop optimized desktop metro, a better classic desktop and a public win32 for ARM API.
Edited 2012-11-13 20:13 UTC
When people say “windows 8 sucks” they are talking about the desktop. The 10 or 20 people who bought Surface don’t matter. WP8 is called Windows Phone 8, not Windows 8. But in general the Windows 8 family sucks.
Because it is lighter, thinner, fanless and with better battery life.
Personally, I don’t care about x86 software at all. But current Surface RT model is rather weak. If only it was built on Exynos5 with good high-res screen => instant buy.
She’s just a temporary replacement.
Sinofsky is a douchebag who had a ridiculously stupid plan of forcing Metro to the point of even taking away the registry hack. I still can’t believe he talked Ballmer into it.
Ballmer likely looked at some early install or sales data and decided to get rid of the Steve Jobs wannabe.
Goodbye douchebag.
There’s probably more to it with the whole “Silverlight-goes-dead-overnight” debacle. I still don’t understand why we don’t have access to DotNet apps on WinRT.
You can thank Sinofsky for that.
He avoided these types of questions on his blog.
He’s basically a tech trendster who thinks anything older than 5 years should be deprecated.
His unexplained hostility to Silverlight caused irreparable damage with the Windows developer community. Overnight Microsoft went from promoting Silverlight conferences to deleting questions about where it fits in with WindowsRT. Sinofsky is clueless and hates being questioned, I’m totally ecstatic to see him leave.
I don’t drop a shed for Silverlight.
The way that MS withdrew the support for it could have damaged the Windows developer community, but his dead was a spectacular win for the web as a whole.
Though Silverlight & Moonlight are a rather nice, well performing way of doing web videos – nothing Flash or HTML5 video* can even begin to approach, for whatever reason.
*which is generally… slower, more demanding of the hardware than Flash; especially noticeable on old machines. At least there’s always the method of redirecting video streams to mplayer…
Really?
My C# code runs just fine.
The .NET framework isn’t there which is what really matters.
Corps can’t port over their internal .NET applications. Sinofsky has been anti-.NET and thank God he is gone.
on RT? big deal…they can get the x86 version and it will be there.
The .NET framework is there. You haven’t done a day of development for Windows 8.
For someone who regularly mentions his .NET experience, you sure do know very little.
You are too inexperienced, Nelson. It’s too early to tell whether the product will catch on or be a flop. Right now it’s mostly early adopters, but early adopters are always a niche(People like you that loves Microsoft and everything Windows related and does compulsive-buy).
The real test for Windows 8 will be whether uses and companies will want to move to it. Companies are out of the picture for now because most just moved to Windows 7 (and they are not the real target for the OS anyway).
So, success or not will be determined in the long term by how much are users interested in products with Windows 8.
Well Microsoft (Ballmer) stated that sales were only modest, that was the same phrase the board used when they docked Ballmer and Sinofsky of their bonuses.
So taking that into account this is likely related to Windows 8, the excuses for his departure are standard cookie cutter reasons every corporation gives when they boot someone.
Isn’t it a bit early (or is that too late) to get the chop for Win 8, the numbers can’t be in yet.
Bit strange for him to go just like that…out the door with security in tow?
No it isn’t too early.
They have a huge amount of data that they can sift through, let’s not forget that every copy of Windows phones home. Ballmer saw something and flipped out, that’s why it was so quick.
That the cron prince, that was handled as Ballmer’s successor and that had such strong reputation, support and success, leaves immediately from one day to the other is neither normal nor in any way good or healthy for Microsoft.
He IS leaving a huge gap and the transition is so fast that it hurts strong. That Microsoft fills the position he left with 2 characters, where neither of them has the technical background or stand or proven success reflects that.
We can only guess what was happening but it must have been a serious clash. Is it related to the modest Surface RT start? The RT-news just hit the very same time that clash happened. Its not an unlikely scenario that this at lesst contributed in parts to the case. Sinofsky is THE Microsoft success-story. All he took over sold well. He turned things into gold. He fixed Vista. But it seems this may have found an end with Surface RT.
Another realistic option is Windows 9. We know that the planing for Windows 9 is on high speed right now. Maybe Ballmer and Sinofsky clashed on central aspects of where Windows 9 is heading to? Not unlikely either. Sinofsky was not easy to handle and I can imagine that he stands his opinions even when Balmer throws chairs at him. The disagrement may have been huge. Up to a level Sinofsky was not willing to accept and so did took the last joker:
Sinofsky: If this is done I will leave!
Ballmer: bye.
Suggestion for other explanations are welcome.
Edited 2012-11-13 16:48 UTC
Sinofsky has never been a team player, the likely explanation is that they only put up with his attitude until they were able to analyze early sales data.
If Windows 8 was loved by the public then he would still be there.
I think what he’s done is nothing short of remarkable: shipped two versions of windows nearly on time and relatively bug free. Compare/contrast that with the previous windows releases: Win Vista and Win XP. To do that, I’m quite sure he made some enemies who are now free to publicly air their dirty laundry.
It will be interesting to see if MS goes back to its earlier ways without him at the helm.
Windows 8 is a POS.
Windows 7 was Vista with an additional service pack. It was more of a marketing scheme to deal with the negative public perception as seen in the Mojave experiment.
Vista was released buggy but was fixed by SP1. However Vista hatred was still popular and most people respond to crowd opinion rather than data.
Windows 7 is not a crowning achievement and Sinofsky’s “Windows convergence” plan is inane. Sinofsky has also caused serious damage to the remaining trust between developers and Microsoft. The guy is an overhyped hack and it just took Ballmer a while to figure it out.
This is still the first time since the mid to late 90’s that MS actually gave a roadmap for releases and delivered on them time and feature wise. I don’t like the whole Metro stuff, but I’m impressed that they did it as quickly and smoothly after win 7. Don’t mistake admiration for the process for admiration of the products.
Not it isn’t. It does soo many things better than 7 on the desktop. While I don’t really use the Metro Apps (except for the video player and skype) … it is a good OS.
Windows XP was a POS at launch. Windows Vista was a right pain in the backside until Service Pack 1 and came 5 years to late.
Win 7 and Win 8 had almost no stability problems in the pre release and beta versions.
It would be a good os, if I could get Metro out of my way for good. As it is, if I even want to launch a fucking program I have to interact with it unless I want to clutter up my desktop or taskbar with shortcuts. Windows 8 is a great os right until you actually need, you know, to be productive and do work. That thing most people actually use their computers to help accomplish.
You guys sincerely have the patience of a saints, I cannot imagine using Windows at all, couldn’t tolerate it.
I demand my OS work for me, not me working around it’s limitations or how IT (MS) thinks I need to work.
No, I’m a dedicated Mac user either.
I am pretty sure that MS don’t ever tell you how you should be working.
Funny but plenty of people are productive on it. Scott Hanselman has been using it since Beta and the amount of stuff he gets done is ridiculous.
Oh a Microsoft employee likes it.
I guess that ends the debate right there.
It not about liking it, you said about getting work done and he seems to get plenty done.
In fact he even talks on a few blog posts about the things he doesn’t like.
Oh well if you are going to act like an irrational anti Microsoft Troll at least go full retard on us like Lemur2
I never said you can’t get work done with it. You can get work done but Windows 8 hampers your productivity and metro disrupts your focus.
Windows 8 is not about boosting productivity, it’s about boosting Microsoft’s position in the mobile/tablet market. Sinofsky never denied this and avoided specific questions about productivity.
Call me irrational all you want but I called out Sinofsky as a problem early on and now he is gone. I also said to short MSFT before the Windows 8 release and anyone who took my advice made a profit.
Irrational? I don’t think so. What you need to do is take off your shill goggles and realize that MS is needlessly pissing off a lot of their existing customer base with this crap. Sinofsky’s plan of forcing a tablet interface on mouse/keyboard users is one of the worst ideas in tech history.
Citation Needed
Citation Needed.
Citation Needed.
I am an existing customer and this simply isn’t true.
If only they spent the hours coding Metro on something useful, something to make 8 more than yet another Service Pack masquerading as a new OS.
It’s stable like a turd with wings.
The problem is the UI. It’s a weird mish-mash of a tablet and desktop UI. It doesn’t make sense and not only increases mouse strokes but has a jarring effect that disrupts workflow when switching between the two. Then there is the whole file association problem. Oh you wanted to view Hooters.com? That requires the other IE since it needs a plug-in, hang on while I dump you into the other desktop. So freaking stupid.
I rarely agree with darknexus on anything and yet we agree on Windows 8. Thom and I were in dead agreement with Windows 8 when the first preview was available. Windows bloggers for the most part have hated it. When one of the top Windows authors calls Windows 8 a POS you know something is wrong.
Windows 8 is wrong. That is why Sinofsky is out.
No Win 7 and Win 8 are really stable.
The UI is fine, basically there is a pattern.
All the old Windows guys hate it, all the new Windows Guys love it.
Tech bloggers like to stir the pot with the fanboys … it gets page views. So sorry opinions of bloggers doesn’t count.
“a history of anticipating and meeting customer needs”
I didn’t know they had such a person at Microsoft
The word on campus is that Sinfosky wanted to take over and there were vocal investors voting blocks who would support him.
But Ballmer made it clear he was staying for the foreseeable future and so Sinfoski called it a day.
First Forstall gets removed from iOS for being an asshole, then Sinofsky gets the push? Reality course correction complete.
What? No wild guesses?
Here is mine: Sinofsky and Forstall will shortly start working for Jolla, or establish a company in that ecosystem.
I bet you didn’t see that coming, eh? 😛
The phenomenon shall be known as Corporate Goatse: no one expected those arseholes.
Can’t wait for the sp1 re-relase! Windows is dead, long live Windows9!
Hopefully Windows 9 will get rid of that ridiculous Metro kludge, but seeing that Julie Larson-Green is on the “engineering” side (I’m still scratching my head about this), that possibility is growing thinner by the minute… 🙁
Bye, Steve. Thanks for Win 7, but WTF were you thinking for Win 8?
Seems another has fallen but not as far, the guy in charge of Windows Phone was just relieved of his duties for that product.
Common denominator, Windows
Doesn’t take long for the shills to visit.
8 is a pos in China they call it gou shi which translates as “dog shit” meaning rubbish
Thank you for explaining what “dog shit” means.
Its the same story we saw with WP7. I still wonder they keep the WP7 course with WP8 even after the disaster. Every other company would take that as advice, move back to the scratchpad and get a product done that addresses the issues why people did not buy it. Not so Microsoft. They even put the same failed concepts on there previous successful cash machine. Something is going wrong there.
Edited 2012-11-16 16:39 UTC
well then you clearly don’t understand MS. They are persistent, they iterate, they do improve …and eventually come to dominate fields they decide to focus on.
First efforts of MS at OS, GUI, office suites, or consoles also had lukewarm reception. But look where are they now.
PS. Also, you don’t seem to realise for some reason that the real customers here are the mobile carriers… many of them probably don’t like how Apple wrestled some control from them, don’t want to allow that with MS & Skype.
Edited 2012-11-20 10:21 UTC
I never did get what the big deal was that everyone seemed to make of that guy anyway…
Seem that Microsoft advertises 32GB of storage space on the Surface and does not include any disclaimer on the package indicating that it is shared with the system and applications. So a class action has been filed in Los Angeles, this is one they will certainly get hit hard with unless the number of units sold was small.
Microsoft countered that the information is on their website, of course every one knows that it has to be on the package.
Maybe we will be saying Bye Bye Ballmer soon
The worst thing is, the way things are right now, if you did not like Windows 8/RT and would like to install something else to reclaim your disk capacity… you’re technically forbidden by Microsoft from doing so, and Secure Boot is there to make sure that doesn’t change without money going Microsoft’s way.
BUT… in this case, Microsoft is supplying not only the OS but also the hardware itself (Apple-style), so in this case it is somewhat understandable. Just avoid Microsoft (and Apple) hardware, and hope that some companies either produce Windows RT tablets but do not go for Windows certification, or simply choose to provide Linux and/or BSD variants (which would have no requirement for this supposed “Trusted Computing” bullshit).
Edited 2012-11-15 09:14 UTC
Microsoft can not forbid you from doing anything on a device that you own. Make it difficult, sure, but they have no legal way of stopping you from doing it.
Its the other way around. Microsoft and others have and use technological ways to close the hardware and we, customers, have NO LEGAL way to claim our BOUGHT hardware back. The smash your property with a huge hammer the moment you try to use it for something they don’t like you to use it for. This is not your property otherwise such behavior would be illegal.
Edited 2012-11-16 16:45 UTC
No they don’t, that would be against the law. Doing their best to prevent you from doing what you want is one thing, deliberately destroying your property when you try do something they don’t like is something completely different.
Companies do the first (which is perfectly within their rights), not the second.
[q]This is not your property otherwise such behavior would be illegal.[q/]
Unless I am renting or leasing the device it is my property.
Technically forbidden. Read that wording again. It is 100% accurate; Microsoft has made technical measures that cannot be bypassed and in the process have forbidden you from installing any other operating system.
Hey, I wonder if they’ve morphed the DMCA in such a way as to somehow make cracking the EFI trusted computing master keys to run whatever you want illegal yet? If not, it will probably eventually happen. Just give it time.
We’ve already reached the technical stage. The legal stage and the enforcement that comes with it will probably be coming next.
Edited 2012-11-17 07:36 UTC
BSD? Are there any projects for ~mobile/touch on top of BSD? (apart from iOS, kinda, but I’m sure you didn’t mean this one)
Edited 2012-11-16 08:41 UTC