What do you invest in your future??
Well, if you’re Microsoft, apparently the answer is “it’s increasing all the time.. right now we feel like $7.5B”. Apparently the ‘Softies have been feeling pretty good about the market ass-kicking they got when they said they’d significantly up their R&D spending (http://www.itworld.com/App/060531msrd/ ), so they’ve gone back to the well and upped the number..
Microsoft CEO forecasts $7.5 bln R&D spend in 2007: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance
So, I’m all for that. In fact, I think that’s pretty awesome – way to go Microsoft. Seriously, who else can look at people over lunch and say “Oh yeah, by the way, we’re spending more on R&D than we told you back in May. Guess we should have sent a memo or something..”
I found this part even more fascinating though:
“Ballmer said for years Microsoft had faced no competition
to recruit staff. “Finally, we have some competition (from
Google) for talent,” he said.”
Finally??? Finally??
I really want to know if that was just a flippant remark or if it was part of a detailed and serious comment. (Fine fine Scoble, I’m beginning to really believe you on this whole “video is the future” thing.. Yes, it’d be terrific if someone had taken video of this lunch. Why I didn’t figure this out after having worked at C-SPAN, I’ll never know..).
IF it’s actually true that MSFT has never really felt like they had to compete for talent before, can you imagine what the tech recruiting landscape is going to look like in a few years? Imagine, for a second, that talent was a product. Say, perhaps, that it was a browser. Then imagine that Microsoft is just resting on its laurels with IE for oh, 7 years or so. Then Firefox comes along….
Now, apply that logic to recruiting. If Microsoft wasn’t being forced to compete for talent before, you might want to be thinking about your “I’d love to work at Microsoft” pitch pretty soon…
Disclaimer: I was raised in Redmond. It was in the water. I can’t help it.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, war for talent, R&D investing, making big bets for the future, managing the street
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