Flutterby™! : leaving Microsoft

Bill Gates is leaving his day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft. I wrote this on the Chugalug mailing list:

On BillG leaving MS, though, he's been saying this for years. It's part of why Ballmer's had such a strong leadership role since 2000. As much as I like to be a Microsoft detractor, I think part of what we're seeing in terms of flat stock, struggles with the XBox, and security to the point where there's just been a published remote execution exploit bug that involves the lowest levels of the TCP/IP stack in the newer (2k+) versions of Windows, is that Bill Gates really is a brilliant business person and a pretty amazing leader, and he's going to be very very hard to replace in that role.

It's easy for those of us in the trenches to poo-poo the effects of the generals, but they really do have an effect on a company. I recently found myself wondering why the managers I've felt most productive under aren't those who rise to the tops of organizations, and I realized that there's a disconnect between what I see as productivity and what makes a company successful. I may bemoan the marketplace which rewards those other traits, but there's no shame in acknowledging that some people manage to take advantage of those systems very effectively.

Personally, though, I think that Bill Gates had to do something to take the attention away from the real Microsoft news this week: Scoble's leaving Microsoft.