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Microsoft not letting the door hit former employees on their way to Google
Stuart Scott, Microsoft's former CIO, is not the only Microsoft employee unceremoniously being shown the door. Some staffers who are putting in their notice are being escorted off campus immediately. Why? Because they've put in their notice to join Google. In Microsoft's eyes, Google is Enemy No. 1. Anyone leaving Redmond for the search leader is a threat. Not because they'll scurry around collecting company secrets — as if Google's interested in Microsoft's '90s-era technologies. Departing employees, however, might tell other 'Softies how much better Google is. If an employee is leaving for Amazon.com or another second-tier employer whichdoesn't make Microsoft so paranoid, they'll probably serve out the traditional two weeks of unproductive wrapping up. So if you're planning on leaving Microsoft for Google, pack up your belongings and say goodbye to friends ahead of time. There'll be no cake and two weeks of paid slacking for you. And, Microsoft, don't expect former employees who are treated like security threats to ever want to come back, even after their Google stock options have vested.
exits
How Microsoft knifed its CIO
The Stuart Scott affair has gotten deeper. The latest wrinkle in the firing of Microsoft's CIO? A source close to Scott now claims that he was indeed on leave at the time of his dismissal — because of his sister's death. Scott was traveling to her funeral when the news broke. "Microsoft seems to have arranged the news for maximum embarrassment and pain for him — it's not so time sensitive that they can't take more than a month reviewing things, but they have to leak it when he's got a death in the family?" writes our tipster. If true, I worry for Microsoft's future. Top managers in Redmond really have time to plot such elaborate set-piece humiliations of straying executives? If they put this kind of energy into Web search, Google might actually be worried.
exits
Microsoft's department of internal affairs
As CNBC bureau chief Jim Goldman chatted with me about the abrupt sacking of Stuart Scott as Microsoft's CIO, I reminded him of another high-level firing. Remember Martin Taylor? A right-hand man to CEO Steve Ballmer and Microsoft's point person on its anti-Linux campaign, Taylor and Microsoft "parted ways" — code words, insiders say, for a firing. A commenter on the Mini-Microsoft blog claims that Taylor was fired not just for pursuing an affair with a coworker, but expensing a hotel room for weekend getaways. "'Internal affairs' takes on a whole new meaning at Microsoft," cracked Goldman. One hopes that Scott's sins against the company had more to it than just an affair. Sacking an employee merely for office hanky-panky seems meddlesome and moralistic. But frittering away shareholders' money on extracurriculars, as Taylor stands accused of? A firing offense, for sure.
rumormonger
Microsoft CIO, underling took family leave before firing
We've already got one theory on why Microsoft CIO Stuart Scott was fired. He and a VP-level direct report both recently took "emergency family leave," says a tipster. But the family leave was a ruse, our tipster claims, meant to cover up the fact that the two were having an affair. According to Directions on Microsoft, an analyst firm which tracks the software giant's org chart, Scott had only one female VP reporting to him, and we have yet to determine whether she's still employed. But let's put the rumor of an affair aside. Compared to, say, Google, Microsoft is surprisingly Puritan about such matters. What does Scott's departure really tell us? That the CIO job at Microsoft, where Scott's chief responsibility was inflicting Microsoft's newest, buggiest software on his colleagues, is deadly boring. Boring enough to make a bit of intramural entertainment plausibly worth the risk of getting caught. Scott's successor will be Microsoft's fourth CIO in as many years.
lazy valleywag
Why did Microsoft sack its CIO?
Heard of Stuart Scott? No, not the lazy-eyed Stuart Scott of ESPN fame, but the wandering-eyed CIO of Microsoft fame. He's been sacked from his chief information officer job at Microsoft after joining the company in 2005. Microsoft will only say:We can confirm that Stuart Scott was terminated after an investigation for violation of company policies, and have no further information to share.Sounds ominous ... and Valleywag-interesting. Do our beloved and knowledgeable readers have further information to share? Update: One tipster has a theory.
