Soundtrack: EL-P - Flyentology
At the core of Microsoft, a three-trillion-dollar hardware and software company, lies a kind of social poison — an ill-defined, cult-like pseudo-scientific concept called 'The Growth Mindset" that drives company decision-making in everything from how products are sold...
Spooky stuff that helps explain a lot of the dysfunction flowing out from Microsoft.
Where's Ed been? Corporate philosophies are a dime a dozen in tech and they're always just vague enough to use as a justification for management to do whatever they were already planning on doing.
Microsoft's growth mindset is no more problematic than Amazon's leadership principles or any of the other corporate pillars we inevitably need to phrase our accomplishments around in order to get hired/promoted. They're all the same pseudoscientific MBA BS that's been permeating the industry for years.
This article could have been written about just about any large tech company with the same concerns and conclusions.
It's written about Microsoft as if this is their unique dysfunction instead of an industry-wide dysfunction. It feels out of touch and lacking the insight I typically enjoy from this newsletter.
what a limp comment you have made. The post contains a treasure trove of insider information and specifics that paint a picture that is dire even to a jaded tech worker.