Ballmer Addresses Employee Concerns

In his latest annual memorandum to Microsoft employees, CEO Steve Ballmer expressed optimism about the company’s potential for financial growth, explained the reasoning behind recent cost-containment measures, and reiterated important themes such as the need to innovate. But unlike past years’ memos, which focused on external goals such as being more accountable to customers and responding to competitive threats, this year’s memo mainly addressed internal concerns, such as a recent decrease in benefits and a growing sense of bureaucracy.

Concerns Include Benefits, Bureaucracy

For the last three years, Ballmer has sent a memo to all employees around June 30th, the end of Microsoft’s fiscal year, and each memo has been leaked to the media within minutes of its arrival in employees’ inboxes. The 2002 memo defined Microsoft’s core values, such as integrity and accountability to customers, and indicated that the company would begin considering these values in employee reviews. The 2003 memo focused on challenges to Microsoft’s business, including tighter IT budgets and increasing interest in Linux, and suggested several ways Microsoft could overcome these challenges, such as better integration among products (“integrated innovation”) and market segmentation.