Instead of writing "Christ", you should consider posting an email as if you were the one newly responsible for a $364B company and a reduction in 18,000 jobs.
I'd be curious to see other people's management style from their armchair.
I would spontaneously combust if I were responsible for a $364B company on a good day, never mind deciding how layoffs should be done. It's just surprising that parody-level corporate-speak still gets used despite having being derided for years in mainstream press and conversation.
A few people may express derision for the political apparatus, but the reality remains that this type of language is extremely effective.
I used to believe that if one were selective, he could find discerning groups of people where political shenanigans were of minimal effect. I've since learned that no matter what, politics is a matter of survival in any group of 5+ people, especially in cultural circumstances that emphasize individual independence and freedom.
We can't fault a corporate CEO for donning highly-sanitized corporate political speech. Like it or not, executives would be dead meat without it.
That's not really "being political" since both statements are true. Congress didn't act on the immigration problem, so he acted on his own with the limited power of the Executive. This isn't a good example.
People are downvoting you because this quickly became blatantly off-topic and distracting from the subject at hand, not because of your political views.
The only bit I would disagree with is, "For our business to continue running..."
Last year, Microsoft made over $20 billion profit on almost $80 billion in revenue. The truth is that Microsoft has accumulated many useless employees over the years, and they could be even more profitable by laying off those people.
"In order to maximize shareholder value in the long term..." I would hate to be fired, no matter the phrasing, but kudos to a CEO brave enough to say things just how they are.
Yes, but at that point it's not a "running business" but a charity.
Pruning all the carefully hidden useless employees is a massive effort, getting rid of a department that is longer relevant is a minor effort. Expecting them to undertake the massive effort for the appearance of fairness is unrealistic.
Hey team, got some good news and bad news. The bad news is not everyone can be part of some of the current transitions, you're more than welcome to re-apply to new positions that will be evolving in the future, for those of you who are still relevant. The good news is that for those of you who are staying - Microsoft is now a mobile-first company! We're making the productivity equivalent of Angry Birds. Also, we're keeping xbox, you guys are cool.
Except, they're not laying off most of the staff. This email is, with 85% confidence, going to staff members who will not be fired.
This is a notification that it's happening, that you're not going to be affected, and that they're doing it because they think it will help the company grow and adapt.
Though it's advice aimed at much much smaller companies than Microsoft it still resonates. Also I bet HN readers are much more likely to have to one day lay off 18 people than 18,000.
I agree (and even added some of my own commentary at http://www.mimiran.com/proposals/the-importance-of-writing-w...). Nadella is not yet at the level of Ballmer, but he's working on it. Which is too bad, they are both really smart guys running a really important company. I'd like to think that if they had a clear direction that they could communicate clearly, they would be more successful.
Here's my attempt at removing some of the worst fluff from the email:
Last week in my email to you I outlined our direction as a productivity and platform company. On July 22, during our public earnings call, I’ll share further specifics on where we are focusing our innovation investments. The first step to building the right organization is to make changes to our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.
It’s important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic areas. My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible. We will offer severance to all employees impacted by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their contributions to this company.
Later today your Senior Leadership Team member will share more on what to expect in your organization. Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes: work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration.
First, we will simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability and move faster. We plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making. This includes flattening organizations and increasing the span of control of people managers. Our business processes and support models will be more lean and efficient with greater trust between teams. These changes will affect both the Microsoft workforce and our vendor staff.
Second, we are working to integrate the Nokia Devices and Services teams into Microsoft, completing the acquisition announced last September. To win in the higher price tiers with our first-party phone portfolio, we will focus on design and technical innovation. In addition, we plan to shift select Nokia X product designs to become Lumia products running Windows. This builds on our success in the affordable smartphone space and aligns with our focus on Windows Universal Apps.
Making these decisions to change are difficult, but necessary. I want to invite you to my monthly Q&A event tomorrow. I hope you can join, and I hope you will ask any question that’s on your mind.
Thanks, that was great. Your version is clear and to the point without losing anything. It really makes me wonder why corporate messages are so often written in such a strange style. It clearly isn't necessary, and often ticks people off.
That may generally be true, but people capable of becoming CEOs of big companies are almost certainly not a fuzzy thinkers, which suggests to me that there is something else going on. Maybe this sort of corporate-speak, while being a negative signal to the set of people I'm more familiar with, is a positive signal to different and more important sets of people, like other executives, business media, and investors.
Making the public earnings call the centerpiece seems like a real bad morale move. If I were a 'Softie it would be a strong signal where the leadership's priorities lie (stock price). It gives the talk of "lean" and "accountability" a decidedly negative undertone IMO.
I do like the line about "the respect they deserve" without qualifier. It adds a bit of humanity to the whole thing.
But not enough overall IMO. It really leaves me with the impression that this is just typical corporate speak trying to put the stock price ahead of the mentions of "design and technical innovation".
well, his duty is to the shareholders so having that as a priority sounds like a good thing to me. Yes treating your employees well is a good thing, and it's necessary for a successful business, but that doesn't mean you should keep people who aren't needed or aren't performing.
With an acquisition of this size there are going to be redundant people, and as Nokia was headed towards going out of business, everyone would have lost their job instead of just half.
> well, his duty is to the shareholders so having that as a priority sounds like a good thing to me.
I think it's pretty tone deaf in a letter to employees. But tomato/tomato I guess.
I didn't say anything about keeping redundant positions, just that he wants to raise the bar for results, and I feel like this release only hurts that effort.
I'm not aware of any great turnarounds that began with "look, we're here for the share-holders". (I'm sure for good or ill they're out there, but they haven't come to my attention for whatever reason).
It's just about the exact opposite of other famous turnarounds based on the "it's the product stupid".
I don't know... I just feel like there's a lost opportunity here. Morale is going to suffer regardless. That doesn't mean you have to make it worse by being tone-deaf.
I was just thinking of doing this yesterday, you should email it to him! Could be fun to try to do this for all overly wordy corporate email/announcements.
When you fire that many people, then this is the tone you use, unfortunately. It's not specific (so people won't be able to argue that they're really needed, etc.), it does not have any negative statements (no blame on people who're let go), it not personal (Nadella cannot and should not express any strong positive or negative personal feelings about the event).
It can be a disgusting read, but everybody does that in a situation like this -- with a reason.
> Everyone talks like 'Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction'?
Its a way of softening the blow for the people being laid off. I mean, sure, you are losing your job, on the other hand, do you really want to work for someone whose brain works in a way that would let them write "Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction"?
It's funny, I'm doing my MBA right now and many of our profs specifically warn us against using "MBA speak" or "MBA jargon" in presentations and assignments.
It's much easier to retreat behind MBA speak, especially when you don't have a clear grasp of what you're trying to communicate or are saying things you don't want to be heard saying. "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit".
It CAN be a useful tool to deflect and confuse, but sadly I think 99% of the time it's not used intentionally. It's simply much, much harder to communicate complex ideas in a simple and clear way - it takes a lot more effort and deeper understanding, and many people are simply incapable.
You should write a post on this, I'd be interested to hear the MBA's perspective. Like the OP, I'm jaded towards MBAs due to my personal experience, but I recognize that's limited experience. I'm genuinely interested in the benefits a company gets from hiring an MBA, especially an early to mid-stage start-up company.
Choosing among various projects to pursue at a large company requires understanding of market trends, financial projections and assumptions behind them, as well as various human resource management issues. Clearly, a very smart person could pick that up on their own - but you can also study from a body of knowledge of how to do this effectively. In some ways, picking up CS is much easier on your own than knowledge you get from getting an MBA
I don't have an MBA. I've just worked with people who were both gifted and in possession of an MBA. The presumption that people won't 'get it' because they have an MBA is laughable.
It's a social indicator, not a definitive attribute. I've known several MBAs personally and only one was legitimately intelligent -- the rest were sales guys who thought their MBA entitled them to make big decisions with perilously little background or knowledge of much of anything related to the situation.
I know an MBA right now who is pursuing a business wherein he offers wifi hotspots to small businesses. His literature claims that renting one of his hotspots will make the business "PCI compliant". I've personally advised him on multiple occasions (gently at first, growing more stern over time) that this claim is patently ridiculous and only displays his incompetence to anyone knowledgeable in IT, but he refuses to amend his materials or statements. Just the tip of the iceberg with him.
Granted these are anecdotes, but I think they embody the anti-MBA ethos. Qualified persons strongly dislike MBAs because MBAs often feel their MBA grants them immunity from doing things incorrectly, and that they are instantly authorities on everything without requiring any experience or research.
I swear they have to explicitly teach that in business school, like: "Now, this degree grants you the magic power of never needing advice, information, or training, and you will always be right, and normal people won't understand that because they didn't go to business school... but remember, business school is the only school that matters. No one would have money without us! Just tell the nerds to shove it if they try to tell you anything else." It's far too universal a feeling among MBAs to be coincidental.
I know a guy with an MBA who runs a successful interactive agency thats had 100% revenue growth year over year. His MBA has better trained him to handle the operations, accounting and marketing side of his business, since up to the point of starting his company he'd only worked as a software engineer.
Indeed -- as I conceded in my original comment, some MBAs are smart and my experiences are anecdotes. Conflicting anecdotes certainly exist. However, the person I replied to stated that he/she did not understand why it was common to dislike MBAs, and I shared what I think is the primary reason.
Fully agree that YMMV, but generalizations are useful tools as long as we don't take them as absolutes.
> The presumption that people won't 'get it' because they have an MBA is laughable.
Uhh... who said that MBAs didn't "get it"? The original accusation was that MBAs sometimes employed a particularly objectionable type of vapid and duplicitous speech, not that MBAs were lacking in any particular mental department.
I see several people trying to extend an olive branch ("my personal experience coincides with the stereotype BUT I know my experience is limited, please fill in the gaps"). Instead of filling in the gaps, which you are presumably able to do
> I've just worked with people who were both gifted and in possession of an MBA.
, you insult the people asking you for information and you ignore their polite request. WTF, mate?
The culture of a place like Hacker News is diametrically opposed to the type of people who would seek out and get an MBA. We're all supposed to be start-up focused entrepreneurs who are waiting for our exit by a corporation, only to also leave and start over. It's a common perception (even if it's wrong) that one of the tenants of an MBA is a communication style like the one used in Nadella's letter.
You basically just said "this perception might be wrong but it's one we criticise anyway", which... yeah.
In any case, MBAs can help start-up focused entrepreneurs. They can be start-up focused entrepreneurs. Your perception that it can't be so is exactly what I'm talking about.
I was intentionally ambiguous. Of course an MBA can do those things, but MBAs don't start in their parents' garage. Steve Jobs didn't have an MBA. Larry Page and Sergey Brin only have honoraries. David Karp of Tumblr didn't get an MBA. The ideas just conflict, so it makes us dismissive for no good reason.
It's not MBAs per se that get negative attention. It's MBAs with no technical background in the companies they manage, who sound (and act) hopelessly inept(ly), all the while ignoring advice from the technical people inside the business.
One of the most obvious indicators of this is people who retreat behind the bulshit bingo, which is why it is so rightfully disparaged. Seriously, 'synthesized'?? That word doesn't mean what he thinks it does, unless he literally made up their strategic direction on the spot, in that email.
CEOs and other leaders need to consider their audience. Anyone who casts a company-wide memo to a technical audience in such terms comes off as hopelessly out-of-touch, and deserving of scorn.
> Can HN lay off the MBA hate? It's getting really old.
As soon as the majority of MBAs start displaying a moderate amount of domain specific knowledge that makes them look less like complete fools to the petty peasants that work for them, I'm sure the hate will fade.
Well unfortunately given his background not surprising shows a cultural cringe and poor leadership by using long 10dollar words where simpler less waffly words would be better.
I could see him being Graded cat 4 "in need of improvement" and put on a PIP in one company for that less than stellar performance.
It's the sort of management email that I would read with my internal management spam filter fully engaged. I would probably get to the end and delete it without even taking in what he was saying.
I'm just thankful I don't work at either of those companies. 18,000 is a huge number and a big blow to company morale, but that letter is the icing on the cake. The corporate sleaze speak was extremely thick, and while Nadella did avoid the term "headcount" he never referred to any of those laid off as "people" (only jobs, roles, workers, positions).
At the very least he could've added a thankyou for your hard work, or an apology to those that no longer have a job.
Hemingway App (http://www.hemingwayapp.com/) gives it a medium rating of Grade 12. I would have expected worse. I guess there are no truly awful sentences, and the app doesn't measure its general overuse of big words.
