In our never ending quest to learn more about Microsoft and what it’s like inside the company, we spent a half hour chatting with a former high level employee at the company yesterday.
There’s two basic problems at the company, according to this ex-Microsoftie. The management style is all screwed up, and there’s just too many people working there.
An entertainment business is different from a mobile business, which is different from enterprise software business. Yet, they’re all run with the same managerial style at Microsoft.
Steve Ballmer runs each division of Microsoft similarly because it helps him simplify what is an incredibly complex organization, says our source. For an example of how it should be done, our source pointed to IAC, which is a diverse group of companies with a very loose upper management, allowing each company to operate differently.
As for the headcount issue, our source says there’s probably 30,000 to 40,000 more employees than needed at Microsoft. There’s a lot of overlapping roles, and employees at the company are focused on solving internal issues, rather than fighting external competitors.
Microsoft has over 92,000 employees today, up from 31,000 at the start of the decade.
[via] Business Insider.
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