Saturday, April 04, 2009

Reflections 19. G-20 summit and Microsoft collapse


The greatest vanity fair of the last week is over. G-20 summit in London was called a "turning point" by US president B. Obama, more meaningless papers more "crucial" decisions, but in the end the main success touted both by Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was the simple fact of the meeting itself. It was agreed for more financial guarantees for poor countries largely through the International Monetary fund. A slow motion towards substituting infamous American Fed by another monstrous financial organization - IMF. To my surprise, I learned that EU itself is one of the 20 members constituting G-20, not Spain or Greece or let's say Israel for a change :)
Undoubtedly there are still a shear cuts in understandings as of how to interpret this sudden crisis ? Is the current crisis one of the normal easy come easy go overproduction crisis, kind of predicted by Marxists, perhaps a grossly enlarged in line with Kondratieff waves theory or at this time we are witnessing something new not seen before. After all someone said that in the long history of USA this one is 33-th, so 32 are already behind.
In my spare time I happened to read one blog written by some Microsoft employee. There he was arguing that MS has grown too big in too short time and consequently he was praising for slashing workforce. This ideas of him are not new, he was presenting them since circa 2005 year. In one of his recent posts, when rumors about layoffs in Microsoft were spreading on the net, he wrote

In a year, when this all passes, we'll be back to hiring like crazy, learning nothing. Unless the leaders at Microsoft that run tight, well managed organizations can step up during this time and flush out the binge-hirers. There's my little glimmer.


And yet I can see a glimpse of denial in the face of the current situation, even a touch of horrifying amazement, like to say, "why now, what the hell ? "

In one of 1-st April jokes I read that MS was pleading for a bailout money. It may appear as a joke in 2009, but if this crisis is real the joke may prove to become very real in 2012. Let's not forget that if we are looking for example of a paramount success story in the last 20 years that company would be Microsoft. Yes there are financial "exuberations" and on and on ... But if you ask me who taught everybody to be an "office entity" in his private life that would be Microsoft. And this "office mentality" is the disease of unprecedented weariness, the main source of stagnation.

1 comment:

Nessa said...

Politics is not my forte and you don't even want to get me started on Obama's decision making skills.

As for an impending Microsoft collapse, I can honestly say that very little surprises me anymore. I never thought things would get this bad economically. And things are just getting worse with not much help in site for us average joes. Banks, car manufacturers, insurance companies, etc.. are all folding, it may come down to the MS giant feeling the hurt as well. Bottom line is these are uncertain times.

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