Exit Interview with Scoble

capt turnpike writes "It's no secret that Windows technology evangelist Robert Scoble (of Scobelizer blogging fame) is leaving Microsoft for a startup, but Microsoft Watch's Mary Jo Foley has the first exit interview with Scoble. Topics range from what Microsoft could have done to keep him spreading the word and building out MS's Channel 9 community site, where he sees MS going and more. From the article: 'There were times when I knew I was taking risks. I didn't know what would happen when I told Steve Ballmer that his leadership on the gay rights bill wasn't good.'"

That's easy....

I can predict what to expect: 50% chance of a dock in pay, with showers of chairs continuing until mid-evening.

Article text

Scoble The Exit Interview
By Mary Jo Foley
Microsoft tech evangelist and alpha blogger Robert Scoble talks about everything from his tensest moments at Microsoft, to what Microsoft could have done to keep him, as he prepares to leave the Redmond software maker and join startup PodTech.Net.

The Scobleizer hasn't yet left the building. But he will be doing so soon.

On June 10, word began to leak across the blogosphere that Robert Scoble, Windows technology evangelist and well-known Microsoft blogger, had decided to leave the Microsoft mothership and join startup PodTech.Net.

Scoble "swallowed the Red Pill" joined Microsoft in 2003. Scoble already was blogging before becoming a Softie. But he rose to prominence because of the blogging he did once he got to Redmond. Scoble was instrumental in helping Microsoft build out its Channel 9 community site. Earlier this year, Scoble and co-author Shel Israel published Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Business Talk with Customers.

We had a chance to ask Scoble five final questions via e-mail. (We threw in a sixth bonus question, for good measure.) Here is the transcript of our last convo with Scoble as a Microsoft employee.

Q: What was your biggest surprise about working at Microsoft?

A: That they'd really just let me walk around with a camcorder without having a PR person or a lawyer along. Even after quitting I have the entire run of the place. That's not typical even in the technology world. At Apple my brother-in-law's badge only works in his building.

Another surprise? That every bad decision that I thought was bad had a logical explanation behind it. I didn't always agree with the decisions but there was always a decent thought process behind every decision and, most of the time, after hearing the circumstances behind a decision I usually came to the same conclusion that they did. It's not easy building software that hundreds of millions of people use.

Q: Did you ever think you'd be fired? What was the closest you came to it? (I was betting, myself, you'd be fired before you'd quit.)

A: There were times when I knew I was taking risks. I didn't know what would happen when I told Steve Ballmer that his leadership on the gay rights bill wasn't good. When he changed his mind within a week that impressed me a lot. Since then I've learned that great leaders listen more than they talk. It's a skill you rarely think about or talk about in the press.

Actually, I broke a few rules. I wasn't supposed to talk to reporters and I always did anyway. But I was scared about that in the first year.

Q: Do you think Microsoft is leading/following/holding steady in terms of adopting Web 2.0 technologies, like RSS, podcasting, videoblogging?

A: The market isn't going to let them go back and because the business opportunities are simply too large now. Translation: competitors are going to add those features and if Microsoft doesn't jump on board with new technologies faster they'll just be left off of the growth and PR trains.

Q: Who was the most interesting person you interviewed on Channel 9 and why?

A: I'd have to say Bill Hill (guy who runs the reading technology/font teams) He was a huge amount of luck cause he was the first interview Charles and I did but he was hilarious and had great insights. His personality is great, too.

Q: What would have kept you at Microsoft? Money? Relocation? More Channel9 cameras/staff? Free HDTVs?

A: Actually they offered almost all of that stuff (they didn't try the HDTV's) and it still didn't work cause I wanted to do something completely different than what I was doing here. I also wanted to see if I could build something from scratch. Yeah, money and being close to my son played into it too, but when I looked around I didn't see something that would keep me excited.

Now, if they had offered to fly around with (Chairman) Bill Gates or (Chief Technology Officer) Ray Ozzie for a year with a camera and personally document th

This is all the evidence that Darl McBride needs..

Proof that Microsoft have also been violating some of SCO's intellectual property.

ROBert SCOble

Darl has already seen straight through that obviously made up Microsoft project name.

So in other words

FTA: "...but I want to do the startup life for a few years while I have the ability to take on a good amount of risk."

So in other words, this guy is rich and he can afford to work on a startup and that work is probably more exciting the working for Microsoft.

Re:So in other words

> This is another example of a rich guy with nothing better to do than expirement.

I detect negative connotations there, but why? What's wrong with taking a job that's fun over one that's safe but boring?

Re:So in other words

What's wrong is that the GP is jealous.

Re:So in other words

You're kind of forgetting a few (bigger) key examples; Linux and the GNU toolset were both "experiments" (that were created by people who weren't terribly rich).

So was DOS, most pre-1996 PC video games like Wolfenstein 3D and SimCity, and lots of other successful software (let alone everything outside of the software domain that was originally an "experiment").

Not being rich doesn't mean you can't experiment; it just means you have to figure out how to experiment with someone else's money, or carry out your experiment over a longer time. Both of which can lead to getting rich.

Re:So in other words

He's not rich from working at Microsoft, unless he seriously lied about his salary. More likely what he means is that he doesn't have to be saving for retirement or putting his kid through college for a few years yet.

The main problem I had with him was that he put a kinder face on Microsoft than it deserved. He was a shill, knowingly or not. What he will be doing next is a lot more honest, whether it succeeds or not. I personally think that blogging, including the audio and video forms has peaked (thank God!) but I'm sure there is still money to be had from it if you have the right product.

Do you know what 'shill' means?

The closest definition I could find for 'shill' on Google said, "In some cases, the members of an organization or the employees of a company may monitor and/or participate in public discussions and groups. Such people are not shills, since they don't attempt to mislead others."

As far as I can tell, Scoble did no misleading. He made no attempts to hide the fact that he worked for MS, and he did nothing that made his blogs or videos appear untrustworthy. For example, it is painfully obvious that his videos have no PR person directing them or even editing them. He just walked into peoples' offices with a video camera, hit REC, and started talking.

He may have put a human face on MS by letting us all see inside the belly of the beast, but I don't understand what's wrong with that. What's wrong with giving some insight into how things work and why certain decisions were made? Transparency is supposed to be one of the great things about Open Source, so what's wrong when it applies to MS?

dom

Nice to see

Nice to see that he still has good things to say about Microsoft and it's management.

Re:Nice to see

I think that he's smart enough not to burn bridges.

Or gates. :-)

read it carefully

I didn't know what would happen when I told Steve Ballmer that his leadership on the gay rights bill wasn't good.'"

Wow, it takes on a whole new meaning when you add some punctuation and capitalize Bill:

I didn't know what would happen when I told Steve Ballmer that his leadership on the gay rights: Bill, wasn't good.'

To those confused.

"Topics range from what Microsoft could have done to keep him spreading the word.."

Should actually read something like:

"Topics range from what Microsoft could have done to keep him, to spreading the word.."

It takes on another meaning without the punctuation. At first I thought they were trying to suppress him from spreading the word about the channel 9 site or something. editors?

Scoble Who?

Isn't this guy only famous because he was hired by Microsoft to blog?

Now he is just a nobody again, right?

From "Corporate Brown-Nosing for Dummies" comes..

FTA:

Another surprise? That every bad decision that I thought was bad had a logical explanation behind it. I didn't always agree with the decisions but there was always a decent thought process behind every decision and, most of the time, after hearing the circumstances behind a decision I usually came to the same conclusion that they did. It's not easy building software that hundreds of millions of people use.

Someone put too much XAML in his Cool-Aid...

What did one Borg say to the other Borg?

FTA:

Q: What was your biggest surprise about being A Borg?

A: That they'd really just let me walk around with a camcorder without having a PR person or a lawyer along. Even after quitting I have the entire run of the place.

oh neat

blogosphere drama, how fascinating.

Scoble was a good pickup for MSFT

He was a sort of newspaper ombudsman as well as their connection to the blogosphere. Someone who could take heat from the public without stonewalling it, who could act as a cheerleader for company products without coming across as too much of a shill. He built credibility by praising competitor's hit products early and often. Likeable enough to get lots of people inside and outside the company to talk. Interesting enough that readers came back the next day. Ambitious, but not so high and mighty that he would leave in a huff.

They must have figured out early on that he was only going to stay with them 2-3 years, and are relieved that he didn't move on to Google. I wonder if they'll replace him with another high profile type, or opt for the safer blog-by-committee.

Who is this guy again ?

Oh, I see he wrote the Windows Vista kernel. No ? MS Office ? Again no ? C#? No, no and no ??? WTF did he code then ?

Oh, I see he was a an MS evangelist and he wrote blogs! Impressive.

Don't....

There were times when I knew I was taking risks. I didn't know what would happen when I told Steve Ballmer that his leadership on the gay rights bill wasn't good

Don't let the chair hit you up the butt on your way out of Ballmer's office.

Lacking Challenge?

If Scoble is looking for something to keep him excited, I have the pefect recipe: be a Windows Evangelist on /.

Security?

FTA:
Q: What was your biggest surprise about working at Microsoft?

A: That they'd really just let me walk around with a camcorder without having a PR person or a lawyer along. Even after quitting I have the entire run of the place. That's not typical even in the technology world. At Apple my brother-in-law's badge only works in his building.

Sooo... they're taking the same lax attitude about computing security and applying it to physical security as well?

Not everyone should have admin, and not everyone should have all-building access.

I, for one, welcome our new Scobleizing overloads

I can say this because I work for PodTech.net. We're all incredibly excited to have him on board. I had been following him long before I started working at PodTech.net and consider myself a fan. I gotta say that it's been rather funny hearing all of the speculation regarding what we're about. I can't speak for why he left Microsoft, but I can only imagine that just as I left one great company that I still have high regard for, there were many reasons for *joining PodTech* for him as well.

These are incredible times and not just for PodTech.net, and not just for podcasting or the whole Web 2.0 thing, but how the world is changing right here, right now. This wave is much bigger than what happened in the 90s.

Windows is not the most imporant OS

>>Who was the most interesting person you interviewed on Channel 9 and why?

>>I'd have to say Bill Hill (guy who runs the reading technology/font teams) He was a huge amount of luck cause he was the first interview Charles and I did but he was hilarious and had great insights. His personality is great, too.

Check this [msdn.com] out, the guy is great. (Don't know why but he just reminds me of Billy Connaly. ;-)

Channel 9?

Scorchio!

Re:Gay Rights?

Is this Slashdot or the Daily Koz?

SlashKoz - News for liberals, tempests in teapots.

Re:Gay Rights?

It's interesting because it's the only specific case he mentions in the intervew where he actually told the MS leadership that he thought that they were wrong.

Re:Gay Rights?

And with all of the supposedly interesting tidbits you could have chosen to comment on, you chose to bitch about the blurb Slashdot picked.