Microsoft Rank And File Felt “Embarrassment All Over Campus” From Kin Failure (MSFT)
Microsoft's Kin failure sank morale at the company's Redmond campus according to an employee who emailed us after the news broke. — “Embarrassment all over campus from the rank and file about the Kin announcement,” says this Microsoftie.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two months after the lukewarm hands-on verdict on the Kin One and Two, the phone has gone from disappointing to dead weight: an employee tells Silicon Alley Insider there is 'embarrassment all over campus' among the rank and file, and the same outlet reports John Gruber has heard only 503 Kin phones sold. The failure is now confirmed rather than rumored, and it lands on top of a separate confirmed move — hundreds of targeted layoffs worldwide as part of Microsoft's fiscal-year strategic realignment.
What makes this story travel beyond one leaked email is where it surfaced: the longtime internal-grievance blog Mini-Microsoft folds the 'KIN-fusing KIN-clusion' into FY11 layoff rumors, turning a product postmortem into a referendum on management. That matters because Microsoft's summer otherwise looked strong — Office 2010 shipped in June after millions of beta users, Bing rolled out close to 100 new features, and Kinect was unveiled to fanfare — making the mobile miss stand out sharply against the rest of the portfolio.
First-order effects
- Morale inside Redmond takes a direct hit, with rank-and-file employees publicly described as embarrassed by the Kin announcement within weeks of launch.
- Confirmed targeted layoffs of hundreds of employees worldwide arrive alongside the Kin collapse, stacking fiscal-year restructuring anxiety on top of product failure.
Second-order effects
- Internal dissent migrates into public view through the Mini-Microsoft blog, which ties the Kin postmortem directly to FY11 layoff rumors and pressures management's credibility with its own workforce.
- The widely repeated claim that only 503 Kin phones sold — attributed by Silicon Alley Insider to what John Gruber heard — hardens the external narrative among carriers and partners that Microsoft's mobile hardware push is stalling while rivals advance.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, a company posting genuine wins in Office, Bing and Kinect while its phone bet craters faces sharpening internal debate over executive accountability for greenlight decisions — the kind of insider-frustration dynamic that anonymous employee channels amplify.
- Sustained public airing of rank-and-file sentiment raises the cost of opaque internal processes, from how projects are approved to how employee performance gets judged, pushing transparency questions onto management's agenda.
The trend: Microsoft's mobile hardware failures are turning employee morale into a public leading indicator of execution risk, even as its software franchises keep the broader business strong.