Spooky stuff that helps explain a lot of the dysfunction flowing out from Microsoft.
Microsoft Growth Mindset = Amazon Day One
The more I think about it, the more “Day One” comes across as nonsensical.
I woke up this morning, we had multiple data centers across the globe filled with millions of servers… Day One.
I clocked into the swing shift, we have bins overflowing with unthinkable amounts of returned items, many of which are semi-perishable toiletries and personal hygiene products… Day One.
As a simple-minded catchphrase to orient one’s thinking, it becomes more and more absurd as the company scales. But Jeff don’t care, he punched out a long time ago.
My wife, as a teacher and educational psychologist, is honestly shocked that Growth Mindset’s bullshit has moved out of education and into business; it’s been responsible for removing classes that are streamed by ability and replacing them with things like tormenting low-achieving students by telling them they can achieve if they just try harder, and torturing high-achieving students by making them into unpaid teacher aids instead of extending them.
You, gentle reader, may be more shocked and angry at her news that some schools are adopting Agile, where they spend several hours every two weeks in retrospectives and planning what they’ll teach for the following two week sprint, with no long term plan for the children.
Edit: “Here’s four links, have at them.”
- https://www.sec-ed.co.uk/content/blogs/the-danger-of-growth-mindset/
- https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/growth-mindset-dead (2015!)
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2023/12/18/its-not-their-mindset-thats-holding-children-back-at-school-study-finds/
- https://www.edweek.org/education/opinion-misinterpreting-the-growth-mindset-why-were-doing-students-a-disservice/2017/06
It seems that happens to management at every company, at various strength. I swear there must be a source for all this shit, like Forbes or something.
A side note:
"… It’s all hallucination.”
prone to hallucination.
No, just no.
Everything generative AI produces is a hallucination.
Some may correlate with reality, but it is still a hallucination.
I think he’s underestimating the intentionality at play here. The dynamic he’s describing (and describing very well!) has been evident since the first chatbot, ELIZA. I don’t believe that Saltman and friends don’t know about this dynamic, and I’ll give them benefit of the doubt that they didn’t think we had AGI in the 80s with basic text templates.
Where’s Ed been? Corporate philosophies are a dime a dozen in tech and they’re always just vague enough to use as a justification for management to do whatever they were already planning on doing.
Microsoft’s growth mindset is no more problematic than Amazon’s leadership principles or any of the other corporate pillars we inevitably need to phrase our accomplishments around in order to get hired/promoted. They’re all the same pseudoscientific MBA BS that’s been permeating the industry for years.
This article could have been written about just about any large tech company with the same concerns and conclusions.
It’s written about Microsoft as if this is their unique dysfunction instead of an industry-wide dysfunction. It feels out of touch and lacking the insight I typically enjoy from this newsletter.
this is one of the wildest articles I’ve ever read
