Trouble In Redmond: Microsoft Boots CIO
Duncan Riley
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Microsoft has fired chief information officer Stuart Scott for “violation of company policies.”
Microsoft refused requests for further information from multiple sites, saying only that “We can confirm that Stuart Scott’s employment with Microsoft was terminated after an investigation for violation of company policies.”
Scott joined Microsoft in 2005 after 17 years at GE, where according to his Microsoft bio page he was recognized by CIO Magazine as one of the top 100 CIOs in 2003.
In a Q&A on Microsoft Presspass in December 2005, Scott described his role in two parts: “to help the company think through and define its strategic priorities, then deliver the business-process capabilities and solutions to achieve them….[and to] lead the Microsoft IT organizations in designing, building and running the IT systems that we use to run the company.”
Microsoft GM Shahla Aly and Corporate VP Alain Crozier will take over from Scott until a replacement is hired.
(in part via ZDNet)
7 children.
I guess he installed Ubuntu on his laptop.
Microsoft has fired chief information officer Stuart Scott for “violation of company policies.”
He switched to Mac?
Word on the “street” is that they caught this dude using an iPhone to surf pr0n in the bathroom while he listened to Steve Jobs’ podcast. He’s also been seeing with a Linux Penguin sticker on his VW Jetta.
gave larry and sergey a login
Don’t discount the porn possibility. I had a friend at Intel that got caught, and that ‘company policy’ phrase sounds eerily familiar.
If they can fire a CIO, he probably has done something really bad.
http://www.givemebeats.com
Searching for porn at Google with Firefox on his Walmart Linux laptop while talking on this iPhone to the EU in order to get the email address to send sourcecode that block realplayer from working.
Or so I heard
What The Hell Did He Do?
He wasn’t killing is minimum quota of puppies……
Kudos to Microsoft for dealing with the problem and not pretending it was something else (like resigns to pursue other interests).
Isn’t that what we want from business?
Also, maybe he was waterboarding people!?
http://www.beercosoftware.com/.....ars-later/
Rory Blyth and I were having an interesting conversation on the BCS blog about another instance of “Trouble in Redmond” about 4 years ago, except I’m afraid it was a little more serious than a simple firing.
He was checking his gmail at work!
He wore a pink shirt to work!
@ 8 .. all this while syncing his iPod with iTunes
I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it’s because he gave us a 65 slide Sliderocket preso on why we should standardize on Flash. We laughed. he even suggested we use it to demo Halo 3 on the Xbox. Please. We’d never do that.
Working on a startup on the side?
i am guessing it is something serious like sexual harassment.
For laughing in public at the facebook valuation.
“i am guessing it is something serious like sexual harassment.”
LOL. Sexual harrassment is the most made up corporate crime in history. If a man even looks at a woman the wrong way, he has “abused” her. Funny, it doesn’t work the other way around. Thanks, feminists…
I own my own company. I’ve had to fire someone very high up here the exact same way: clean and swift. The reason was grievous insubordination. This person let a then-recent promotion go to his head although he was still in the standard 90-day probation period. As days went by, he became more arrogant and then on about his 40th day of probation made a completely out-of-line suggestion to staff that he knew better than I and they did how to run this company, and started telling me, the CEO and owner of the company, “do this” and “get started on that”, “change this” and “change that”. On the basis of a probationary promotion, he felt he was indispensable and could therefore sass me. He was kind of talented in a minor, easily-replaced way. But he felt he was a Roman god and we minions were at his creative mercy.
The company door couldn’t smack the back of his ass fast enough. I fired him that same 40th day. Things have been smoother here ever since and my employees have all come to me thanking me quietly for getting rid of the individual. I feel bad for how long I kept him on and put them through having to knuckle under to him.
My take is this was insubordination. “Gates, I know better than you.”
Clean your office and desk. Be out in 15 minutes. Goodbye.
You guy’s are hilarious! ‘Didn’t kill his quota of puppies”. LOL
oh yeah - there’s always been the ‘microsoft exec with tb’s of porn hidden on the corporate network’ - i’ve heard that one for years - maybe there’s more than one.
It was probably just that he is not politically astute enough to survive at that level @ MSFT. Speaking as ex-10 year employee
At that level it is like the Roman Senate, every day you could get assinated or banished. If you don’t play the game on every level, someone who wants you gone can get an ‘internal investigation’ started and …ta da. 17 years at GE and 2 at MSFT sounds about right.
Because to get fired as an exec at MSFT you have to pretty much show up to work naked pushing a wheelbarrow of coke and with an AK47 strapped to your back and dragging a live boy or a dead girl dead girl behind you. Those guys all party and fuck their subordinates all the damn time, seriously. They are millionaires, and have huge egos, thats what guys like that DO. You have to do something amazingly stupid like do it in your office and get caught to get fired.
I think he just didnt meld with the good ol’ boys in the billionaires club so, buh-bye.
@22 - well heather, if you fired him, who is going to watch the lemonade while you go to the bathroom? the mailman has been known to swipe free samples.
everyone is a ceo on techcrunch.
From Seinfeld:
Mr. Litman: It’s come to my attention that you had sex with the cleaning woman on your desk?
George: Was that wrong? I mean, at the last place I worked at, we did it all the time!
@25:
“….an AK47 strapped to your back and dragging a live boy or a -dead girl- dead girl- behind you.”
Two dead girls…….that seems like a lot of physical work for a CIO.
7 children.
Exactly. Fuk children. Right?
I don’t know Stuart Scott’s particular sin, but I do know of 2 other very high level execs to be dismissed in the last couple of years for similar “violation of company policies” reasons.
Microsoft does an unusually good job of not letting the “old boys” get away with typical “old boy” crap (e.g., improper expensing, business conflicts of interest, sexual misconduct with suboordinates, etc.)
I’m just glad its not another facebook post…
@25 Well spoken for a techie flunky. I am sure that MS does not miss you and whomever you work for now wishes that MS would not throw out its trash.
Get an appointment with your shrink!
@rod, well thank you for your support of my ability to convey myself.
I am just saying, I saw a lot of stuff either firsthand, or from people who did (who I completely believe) and I know that drugs, sex (and freaky sex at that) and other crazy stuff, is pretty common amongst people who (despite the products that they create) are highly intelligent and have a lot of extra cash to spend on vices. People get caught having sex in their offices on a weekly basis over there, and they don’t get fired for it.
This dude either wasn’t a fit, wasn’t that smart, or got caught doing something really funny with his budget. MSFT will forgive any multitude of sins, but you fuck with the piggy bank and you are dead before you hit the floor. Screw your admin, that’s cool, steal from Bill, you are dead.
And I don’t work for anyone anymore. I am retired. Do the math. Count the splits.
My best guesses:
1. Refused to deploy Vista
2. Proposed to shift server infrastructure to Linux
3. Saw the support budget for the internal Vista deployment, sprinkled ashes on himself, and started dancing on his desk with occasional fits of nervous laughter.
4. Was exposed to Linux for more than 30 seconds.
I wonder if Scott is gonna have pbs with being hired again anywhere else now that he has the ms rejected stamp on him
Probably get fire because he love himself more than windows.
looking out of the windows too long
Heather - who’s judgment made him climb the ladder ? All of sudden easy to replace on the cheap?
I heard that he made fun of Bill Gates’ hair.
Maybe he ran Linux at home? Maybe switched to X-Windows.
He was caught doing the Ballmer monkey dance in the company breakroom.
He’s done a Rob!
Hilarious.
He was fired because he was adamant about his way of doing things and his way was not working. Simple as that.
The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let themselves down!
Good for you Scott
Wow, that’s funny. Sorry for the useless comment anyway
Concluded that the monolith was broken and could not be fixed.
I think he bought an iRack for gates. Probably better than what he had too
Ballmer needs firing!
Does anyone still use MS stuff anymore? Well, maybe the OS but anything else?
He contributed to a competing open source project under a pseudonym and got busted.
HE WAS CAUGHT IN MENS ROOM DURING AN INTERNAL MICROSOFT BATHROOM STING OPERATION
Couldn’t stop giggling anytime someone used the phrase “Windows Genuine Advantage”.
I’m about to fire me for insubordination too. I’m very arrogant with myself sometimes. I cannot get this anymore.
he was fired for being honest and not to cope with company’s practices.
Rumor on the street is…
…That he had the timerity to beat Balmer in the Chair Toss event at the annual company picnic!
What. No, really.
Agreeing with running some sort of startup project on the side. Working outside of MS’s domain on anything more technical than hobbyist model train repair is going to be frowned on very deeply. And for good reason, too, when he’s plugged in that deep to the upper levels of MS’s information.
Plus I think it’s something like that instead of some comedy option like “bring your hooker to work day” or “who left the bag of coke in the break room”. Misbehavior like that is usually what gets the hush hush “we’ll just say you resigned for personal reasons” out-the-door treatment. Coming out and saying “we fired his ass” publicly like that means that whatever line he crossed was one they want any future CIO to know is unacceptable. Lunchtime quickies with the secretary are probably unacceptable too, but not from a bottom line sake-of-the-business sense.
Open source dork: Lot’s of people use software that is not open source. It comes down to what provides the best value. Open source is far from free when all-in costs to implement and use “open source” products are considered. It also goes without saying that anyone who truly needs the horsepower provided by MS’s mature Office Suite products cannot make due with what is available on an open source basis.
I swear, so many of these open-source zealots are mindless drum pounders!
Fred:
Open Source software would be a lot more attractive to a lot more people if industry giants like Apple and Microsoft hadn’t come in and shit things up, and made it extremely difficult for open source developers to work. Not to mention every company that ever sucked up to either of them and provided drivers/software for them. Besides, you give open source such little credit. Mozilla is a huge brand of open source apps that’s existed for a long time. A good number of databases for huge companies run on linux distributions of some type or another, and even a good portion of chat functions, such as IRC, AIM, and Yahoo are being utilized on open source clients. Also, if open source didn’t exist, then steve jobs wouldn’t have anybody to steal ideas from and OS X wouldn’t be so great to everyone.
The rumor mill is already gushing about the story: turns out Scott had an affair with one of his subordinates, who recently go a big promotion that raised many eye brows around the company. The two were on leave together when the investigation started
The CIO was caught downgrading his VISTA to XP on his home computer.
The news leaked when his VISTA DVD was found and reported by the garbage collectors to the local authorities.
ashish:
Don’t you mean “upgrading” his VISTA to XP?
I am sure it had to do with a business venture.
Having worked for Stuart for a few years, I clearly recall that at every strategy meeting he was working on the “clientless p.c.” allowing GE to stop buying MSFT products.
I smiled when I heard that he joined MS, it is unfortunate that it took MSFT 2 years to figure out that they had hired one of the largest “non believers” in their products.
His stance was too wide while using the restroom stalls.
Actually he was probably doing his secretary on his desk and forgot to lock the door.
MS has some super hot ladies walking the halls and they know how to dress! Some of them are there to catch a high paid exec and it sounds like one got caught in the act.
I would guess that he was pretty good at what ever it is he does and won’t be ‘fired’ any longer than he wishes to be.
I would tend to go with the idea that he ticked-off someone a little higher on the food chain than he. At that level, it doesn’t take much …
He sold his shares of the company to buy Google’s stock…
The REAL Scoop:
Stuart Scott = Fake Steve Ballmer
The ‘real’ Steve Ballmer wasn’t so amused.
he might have thought linux is better than windows.
“Stuart Scott = Fake Steve Ballmer
The ‘real’ Steve Ballmer wasn’t so amused.”
That definitely rules out the “caught with his secretary” option, because I just don’t see that happening.
“You look nice today, Janet. Have you read my blog?”
“You know Janet, sometimes I wonder if having a wife and kids is all there is in life. Have you read my blog?”
“Janet, I can’t control myself anymore. I want to make love to you, Jane. Have you read my blog?”
“Oh, Janet! Janet..! Have you… oh… yes… have you read my blog!”
He was jerking off to a Steve Jobs keynote video on his iPhone at the bathroom.
He was found stealing one of Microsoft’s supercomputers from the data centre, that would actually have enough power to run Vista
The comments are better than Letterman and Leno. Watch out that they don’t steal your ideas.
He had an original idea.
this was what probably happened:
Stuart Scott: “What the f.. is wrong with this Vista! This is crap!”
(Bill Gates was passing by in front of his office)
Ballmer politics. There is likely ballmer in and a ballmer out corporate political factions developing at M$. Those that see ballmer as nothing but a drunken insurance salesman who is a dead weight at M$ and those that support him regardless of the consequences as long as they get paid and promoted until the inevitable end. So Stuart coming from a GE with basically a sound management team, promoted sound business decisions rather than pandering to ballmer’s bloated ego, hence a likely well paid dismissal with some bitter under tones.
He tried to convince Bill to stop doing things illegal way.
why is this kept as a secret?