For employees Microsoft throws in the towels |
In a move which is bound to be seen as placation and a serious case of Googleplex envy — by those who aren’t employees anyway — Microsoft has restored the employee towel service that was axed for “cost cutting measures.” I’m sure the next time customers pay $499 USD for Office Professional, they’ll need one of those towels to get over their excitement.
And yes, the company is restoring the discontinued towel service, a previous cutback that became a lightning rod for employee dissatisfaction and bemusement over Microsoft’s cost-cutting initiatives. That particular announcement today received an especially boisterous response during the meeting, according to people who were there. Among other things, the company will be expanding food service options on campus.
Scoble, who is still in Montana attending to his mother, got the email and is practically orgasmic by the changes.
Predictably, Mini-Microsoft is gloating about the towel mess:
It’s not like we’re sweaty work-out animals always in need of a shower and fresh towel. No. What riled us was the bone-headed way the towel cut-back was handled, explained, and justified. It truly made us wonder just who are these people in charge and just who do they think they are leading? The towels became the symbol of poor leadership.
Towels a “symbol of poor leadership?” Who da Punk’s real name must be Who da Kidding. If Microsoft plays lemming to anon cowards like this then the decline of their stock is far from over. I’m sure shareholders will be pleased that they restored towel service and put better food on the menu, thus restoring employee morale — until the stock drops even further.
Outsider customers like me have to wonder what’s next in the long list of employee perks for these major corporations? Why stop at the marginally sane perks? How about insane ones like escort services? If only Microsoft and Google were in Nevada, they could cut deals with the local brothels I’m sure. Heck, maybe escorts.live.com could be a promising vertical niche. The search for skin and sin is on.
Seriously Microsoft, enough of this BS, get back to work on Vista and make sure all those freshly toweled employees roll out a bug free product that doesn’t send your customers spiraling into wondrous new blue screens of death — and then charging us more $$$ in support calls to pay for these overzealous employee demands amenities.
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or red screens of death for that matter.
Comment by darkmoon — May 19, 2006 @ 11:13 am PST
The broader point is being missed here - in order to ship good product, you need a happy workforce that feels it is being treated equitably. And that’s where the real substance of these changes are found, in the employee comp and review system (forced curve, lifetime avg review scores, 5.0 scale, almost zero financial upside for performing above expectations, etc). The towels, food service, etc are just window dressing, mainly symbolic efforts to show that the company isn’t trying to cost cut its way to profitability, but rather invest in its workforce. Small and inconsequential, but important.
On Mini - I think he (she?) is far from a “coward”, given their identity is becoming more and more well known within the senior ranks (or so the rumor goes). Agree or disagree with the anonymous part, Mini has helped act as an amplifier for some long-buried employee complaints. That the company listened, studied, reached out across the company on listening tours, and acted is a sign of strength to me.
Comment by Kevin — May 19, 2006 @ 11:25 am PST
Employee towels might be important to you, but they aren’t important to me — the customer. The broader point isn’t being missed, Kevin, at least not by me. Customers and investors rarely care about the minutiae, they care about the final, finished product. Look at Nike shoes. People still buy them despite the well-publicized subhuman work conditions.
I’ve been to Microsoft campus many times and I don’t see any sweatshops running there. If you do have serious complaints with your pay, work conditions, perks, etc, quit, get another job, work for Google. The biggest way to send a message to any company isn’t to piggyback on some anon blogger, it’s to vote with your feet.
Towels, candy, better cafeteria are luxury items. Sorry, I don’t think employees — which include the senior executives — of Microsoft, also culpable for the stock that has floundered for the last five years, should be receiving any luxury amenities. When the stock starts rebounding, then bring on the towels. I’ll be blogging here pushing for you to get them.
Kevin, it also pays to remember the perspective of the person offering the criticism. Which brings me back to why I think Mini is a coward. We don’t know his perspective, bias, etc. For all we know he’s Microsoft PR spin, or an employee with a serious axe to grind, which if this is true it makes those luxury towels even more vexing. Give me a microscope and I’ll find dirt on any company. That’s not a challenge. The challenge is finding ways to actually help your company turn things around.
I didn’t and don’t expect any Microsoft employees to agree with me on this one.
Comment by TDavid — May 19, 2006 @ 11:59 am PST
The only thing I was ever jealous of MS campus was the free drinks. Moto’s Bothell campus never had that. But in reality, none of it is needed. Moto is by far, ranked in one of the best in benefits packages when you sign on. Everything past the base package is extra stuff.
Yes, while I’d love to have better food, free drinks, a gym, and all sorts of other stuff on campus, it’s not needed. Moto provides reimbursement for gym membership if you drag yourself to the gym. Health is important, but towels? Please. Be glad you have a gym and free drinks. I know plenty of major corporations that have perfectly happy employees without those.
Next thing you know, people will be complaining they didn’t get a mint at their desk every morning.
Comment by darkmoon — May 19, 2006 @ 12:17 pm PST
Microsoft Listens to Mini-Microsoft
Trackback by Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life — May 19, 2006 @ 12:33 pm PST
This is crazy. I bet 12 year olds in India could do the same job without towels. lol
Comment by orangecrush — May 19, 2006 @ 2:18 pm PST
So let me get this straight. The best way to influence a company to improve working conditions is by leaving? What good does it do you then? What an idiotic thing to say.
Comment by Dor — May 19, 2006 @ 7:13 pm PST
“Employee towels might be important to you, but they aren’t important to me — the customer.”
Exactly. So shut up about it already! Employees care, it makes them happier. How much can a towel cost, compared to hiring and training an employee just to have him leave? Believe me, NOTHING. You’re talking $5 bucks vs. tens of thousands. You as a customer shouldn’t care about the towels. You should care that employees will have a better motivation (even if it’s just SYMBOLIC) to work harder and longer hours than what they’re paid for, and have less good employees leave. That’s what makes a company successful. Unfortunately you just don’t get it. It’s all about the stock price for you (and who gives a damn? MS is not a growth stock. Get a friggin’ clue.)
Comment by Electrica — May 19, 2006 @ 7:17 pm PST
Dor - let’s see, Microsoft is having a hard time finding good help, yes? You do realize that, yes/no? If employees are leaving and citing on their exit interviews all these pedantic little gripes like free towels then they will have to make changes. Connect the dots, it’s really not that hard.
Electrica - Part of the point of this blog is me not shutting up, so maybe you should get with the program or stop reading before your head explodes. And please clue us all in where I ever said Microsoft was a growth stock? Actually it’s a decaying stock since 1998 (see graph). I don’t own Microsoft stock and wouldn’t buy it in its current state. I love it when people’s arguments weaken to the point of saying “you don’t get it” and then proceed to focus on things that weren’t said or intimated, throwing in a token quote.
Going to have to try harder, Microsoft employees, to win 99% of the rest of the world over to your side of the fence on luxury amenities.
Comment by TDavid — May 19, 2006 @ 7:58 pm PST
This sounds like jealousy or envy to me. Why do you care how much Microsoft employees are paid or what benefits or perks they get?
It’s common sense that a company should try to make its employees happy especially during a time when there hiring landscape is competitive. Of course, you may come from the WalMart school of employee management [but even they are beginning to change].
Comment by Dare Obasanjo — May 19, 2006 @ 8:09 pm PST
Dare - if when read aloud this sounds like jealousy or envy, it’s time to get an ear exam. Why on earth would I want to punch a clock when I haven’t had to do so for well over a decade? I love my job, don’t you love yours?
Clearly from this towelgate stuff, some at the big M don’t.
You bet it’s common sense that a company should try to make its employees happy but what about the employees making the company and the company’s customers happy? You see, the type of me-me-me thinking is why I got out of the corporate ratrace and have zero desire to return. It’s a top down cancer that runs through too many big corporations.
As I said at the end of #3 above: I didn’t and don’t expect any Microsoft employees to agree with me. Perhaps a few execs — and certainly some other small business owners (and perhaps former disenchanted corporation employees) — might.
I would rephrase your question to: why do I care about Microsoft? Because we buy and use their products in our businesses. They are important tools that we depend on to work properly and as advertised and promised. When these products crash and waste our time and resources to fix them, I am left wondering why we bought them to begin with? Despite what you carelessly described as “vitriol” I see as evidence of desire for Microsoft to succeed and build better products and services.
If I didn’t care at all I wouldn’t waste the time and words. Really it’s that simple.
I’d like to see Microsoft turn it around and become a serious, real competitor against Google — as Gates and Ballmer keep saying you will be — because if Google has no serious competitor they will get lazy just like Microsoft has done in the past. And then we’ll start getting a bunch of subpar, bug-ridden crap tools. The tools will get worse and it will start impacting our businesses. Some think this process has already begun with and I sincerely hope that’s not true.
Our businesses will spend thousands of dollars on Microsoft products/services in 2007. I wonder how many others won’t because they are tired of some of the very things I’m mentioning here. For all Microsoft employees sake, I hope the numbers are small. Whatever they are, nobody should be calling or thinking of these numbers as insignificant.
Comment by TDavid — May 20, 2006 @ 1:12 am PST
It’s my sense from visiting the MS campus numerous times that a fair majority of the employees have never worked for any other company, or have always worked in the tech industry not as consumers but as producers. Thus they are clueless about companies that have to watch every penny, budget down to the last penny, can’t download the latest versions of software whenever they want, or have some of the latest technology show up on their desks. Thus they have some of the entitlment mentality that Dare seems to exhibit in his comment. “The company owes me….” MS employess, talk a tour outside your sheltered campus and see how much of the rest of the corporate world lives. Then you’ll understand TDavid’s perspective about how ridiculous your reaction to towelgate looks and how spoiled and childish it makes you look.
Comment by DWM — May 20, 2006 @ 12:33 pm PST
Here’s the point on the towels:
1) Health care costs are a huge - and rising - expense for Microsoft. People who are using the towels are exercising - some of them pretty heavily - and are therefore likely to save MS a significant amount of money.
2) There is a serious parking shortage at MS. Some of the people who use the towels are commuting by bicycle, and therefore aren’t taking up a parking space - which has a specific cost per year that you can figure out.
It’s in Microsoft’s best interest to encourage both of those behaviors, and in fact, they have programs specifically designed to encourage such behaviors. But they made a decision that actively discouraged people from these behaviors, for a very measly cost savings.
It’s not that people felt that they *deserved* free towels. It’s that by taking away the towels, management was demonstrating that they weren’t paying attention, because doing so was so clearly against the programs already in place, and clearly not in the company’s self-interest.
I care whether my company has internal coherence in its decisions, and I think that customers and stockholders should also care.
Comment by Eric — May 22, 2006 @ 5:16 pm PST
May 22, 2006 07:03 PM ET SEATTLE (AP) [Ed: link added] - Microsoft says it’s over budget, so it’s asking about a thousand contract workers to take time off without collecting pay from the software giant.
But will they still get towels? Because those are so very important!
Comment by Shelley — May 22, 2006 @ 6:40 pm PST
[…] More towels seem warranted in this case. This is a good — or bad depending on your perspective — example of how difficult it can be to make blanket statements about Microsoft. A massive organization with far too many moving parts. […]
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[…] What about you? How many licenses will you be buying? Maybe Dare was right and I am jealous of a company that can make a product that continually gets exploited and abused and then charge us a yearly fee on top of the steep OS licensing fees to make it more secure (not!). […]
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