Microstiff - Building Microsoft Academy

I’m beggin’ yah, Microsofties…listen up for a few minutes.

Your idea to build a Microsoft Academy is a truly noble one and would make a great difference in the lives of programmers, testers and developers at Microsoft. Surely, there would be a renewed sense of commitment and teamwork and spirit that would pervade your ranks. And…that’s where it would stop!

It’s a sad truth, mostly anecdotal, that your boss and your boss’s boss and your boss’s boss’s boss at Microsoft AREN’T and WON’T BE ANY TIME SOON…interested in your growth as a Microsoft employee. And, unless a Microsoft Academy will somehow put a feather in their tiny little political, façade-managing caps, you are pissing into the wind!

With all due respect to Mini and you guys and gal, why do you insist upon creating these wonderful ideas for these people only to have them fall upon their little deaf ears and clogged cerebral passageways? THE HANDWRITING IS ON THE WALL; has been for some time.

Sales courses and books of all types speak of talking in terms of the other person’s interests; of painting a “word picture of your prospect using your product and benefiting from it.” How is Microsoft Academy going to improve the business lives of the spiritually bankrupt legions of sycophantic Billboot lickers? Hey, talk to someone who cares!

I mean, are you you still in shock...or something ? What’s it going to take for you to move past this denial-bargaining stage into the appropriate anger and acceptance stages? This wonderful plan that would work in any sane business organization is doomed to failure where you work. Why? Because, as speech writers, you fail to know your audience! You continue to attempt to bargain with your captors if only to return to the way things were.

Trouble is, dear Microsoftie, things were NEVER good at Microsoft. Hey, once you learned that partners and managers with good business plans rated the success of their plans, when presented to Bill Gates, by the fewest number of times he said, “fuck”; that good plans hung on how well you caressed the ego of this self-possessed genius-madman...weren’t you just a TAD suspicious?

Hey, some of us come from upbringings where our parents were cold and distant; where hugs were non-existent and our spiritual growths were not a consideration. Welcome to Microsoft! Your quest for nurturing and happiness is genuine and respected; your ideas are good; your desire to make a difference, honorable. You simply have the wrong corporate family!

So, I suggest that you do what most of us in our families of origin eventually learn to do: Create a new family. Oh, you can visit the toxic ones from time to time but, you must remove yourself from the toxicity of this environment. Unless, you’ve got a good boss; one who buffers you from the evil…sorta like a big brother. Then, stay, learn, then go.

Meanwhile, don’t give up the dream for a Microsoft Academy. Just take out the word “Microsoft”.

Mini-Microsoft: Microsoft Academy