I read on the Google blog that Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is now allowed to work for Google. As you may know, Dr. Lee is a former employee from Microsoft who left Microsoft a few months ago to join Google. Microsoft’s reaction was to sue both Dr. Lee and Google in order to prevent Dr. Lee from being able to work for Google. At first the judge decided to prevent Dr. Lee from doing certain work for Google, but after hearings decided Dr. Lee could be allowed to work on a lot more things for Google. This is not yet a final decision, but it is a win for Google, as Dr. Lee can now work on things they hired him for in the first place.

I doubt Microsoft is going to really care about losing this case since I don’t think they were in this to win. I think it was more important for Microsoft to scare other employees so that they think twice before they decide to leave Microsoft to join Google. Microsoft just wanted to show that they’re not going to make it easy for anyone to leave and go to Google. If this is going to stop other Microsoft employees from going to Google remains to be seen. I think it’s certainly going to make it a little more difficult, and whoever wants to leave Microsoft for Google is going to have to be really careful from now on.

In my opinion, Microsoft gains nothing with this behavior. It has no use to try to scare people from leaving the company. It has no use to sue them. If employees at Microsoft are considering to leave, then it means they’re probably not happy at Microsoft, or think that working at Google is more exciting. I think Gates and Ballmer would be better off trying to figure out why people think Google is a better alternative. Are there not enough challenges at Microsoft? Don’t they have enough freedom to work on what they love most? Do their ambitions match with the company’s ambitions? What about the benefits?
From reading various blogs of Microsoft employees, I think there’s a lot Gates and Ballmer need to look at when it comes to the work environment at Microsoft.

The good news is that I do think they will eventually look at those things. It’s kind of the way Microsoft reacts to things that threaten them. First they react emotionally, attack the problem in question in a very emotional way, and then when that doesn’t really seem to work, they sit down and think about it. After that comes a well thought out response to the problem which usually is very effective. Kind of like their strategy against Linux. First Linux was compared to cancer. Then there were the TCO studies and get the facts campaigns. Now, in a very different strategy, Microsoft has its own Linux lab and is working on interoperability features between Windows and Linux, which means they basically came to understand that Linux is here to stay and even appear to learn a few things from it.

So what will happen is that after Ballmer’s chair, desk and other office furniture become airborne a couple of times, he’ll sit down on what’s left of his chair and think of more effective ways to keep employees from defecting to companies like Google. Hopefully nobody gets hit by flying furniture. Somebody should probably also warn the FAA.