MSFT hunting YHOO for "breakthrough engineering"?!

In this interview Bill Gates says that Microsoft is pursuing Yahoo for "brilliant engineers."

Huh?

Seriously ... Unlike most who comment about Blue Ocean Strategy, I'm an engineer, not a strategic consultant. As an engineer first, I understand engineers. I can say with certainty, Bill, if you want "brilliant engineers" the way to get them is to look at those tiers of non-customers, not to buy the basket-case of Silicon Valley.

Look in a mirror. Bill, you're a college dropout. Steve Jobs is a college dropout. Larry Ellison dropped out. Sergey, Larry, Jerry, and David all dropped out of grad school. Wozniak dropped out, though later went on to finish. Paul Allen's a dropout. Ballmer finished his undergrad degree, but he's a B-School dropout. Given this list I wish I would have dropped out of school.

Now, let's look at the "brilliant" people you're ready to pony up $44B for. There's people like Toby Lenk, founder of eToys, with his Harvard MBA. Ken Lay and his PhD in economics: he was generally thought to be brilliant, until he wasn't. Like Lenk, Skilling also shared an MBA from HBS: during his interview he apparently told them "I'm fucking smart" making me wonder what he said during his prison-intake interview. Bernie Ebbers has an undergraduate degree.

One of the tenants of Blue Ocean Strategy is to redefine markets. In the case of Microsoft, maybe you should think about redefining HR practices. Think about your well-known support for the H1B program, and the message that sends to potential engineers. US-engineers see its primary purpose to depress wages; Indian's on the program feel like they're indentured servants. Few of the people you'd actually want working for you is thrilled with the program.

More importantly, ask whether Jobs, Ellison, or you could get an interview, much less a job, at Microsoft. Ask whether a different approach to defining talent might have made Vista turn out better.

Bill, you don't need to spend $44 billion on Yahoo to get brilliant people. You need to redefine the meaning of what "brilliant" means, then realize there are plenty of people out there. You need to make sure that once you rope those brilliant people in that you apply Fair Process to make sure they remain productive and don't stray.

$44 billion isn't going to change the Microsoft culture, and brilliant engineers aren't going to "save" the company. Remember DOS? You apparently purchased it for $50K. Windows? Grabbed the basic ideas from Apple, who did the same from Xerox. Power Point was a purchase, and Excel a knock-off. The gist is that Microsoft's great people -- You, Bill -- don't have traditional backgrounds and Microsoft's greatest assets -- Windows and Office -- aren't the result of "brilliant engineering."

Take a look at this picture. Ask how many of these people, if any of them, Microsoft would hire. Then remember that they built one of the greatest companies in the world.