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Brad Koehn's avatar

I've been enjoying the series (and catching up) thus far. I'd love to see more written about the emotions that the author and other subjects were experiencing and how that influenced their decision-making. You describe the list as "brutal;" what did it feel like compiling it? Were you anxious sending it to BillG and others? How did other people respond?

Don't be afraid to share the very real feelings you experienced in the middle of the maelstrom. It will make the reading more compelling and much more informative.

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Gary Lang's avatar

Excellent.

Until this post, you've not been super-critical of anything. Now, you're jumping right into it. I now understand what you were trying to do during WIn8. and now realize why taking the role I took when I joined was a career error. Around the end of my first 90 days, I could tell that PUM model had run its course and didn't make sense to me. I was grossly overpaid for the tiny role I took. Consider that I went from being an exec with 1,200 people at one company, came to MSFT and had 64, and was paid 4-5x what I was before, with RSUs now worth 8 figures. It seemed insane to me, but I wasn't complaining w.r.t. comp. That said, after sufficient vesting, the challenges became more interesting.

A question: did you run drafts of your memo by anyone before you "did your Jerry Macguire" (that's what my colleagues and I used to call memos like yours)? And how did you choose the people to disclose, if in fact you did?

I know where this is going, and I think you did the right thing.

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