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The Cult of Microsoft

At the core of Microsoft, a three-trillion-dollar hardware and software company, lies a kind of social poison — an ill-defined, cult-like pseudo-scientific concept called 'The Growth Mindset" that drives company decision-making in everything from how products are sold, to how your on-the-job performance is judged. I am not speaking in hyperbole.

Hit Refresh became a New York Times bestseller likely due to the fact that Microsoft employees were instructed (based on an internal presentation I’ve reviewed) to "facilitate book discussions with customers or partners" using talking points provided by the company around subjects like culture, trust, artificial intelligence, and mixed reality. An employee told me the story of Feng Yuan, a high-level software engineer with decades at the company, beloved for his helpful internal emails about working with Microsoft's .NET platform, who was deemed as "underperforming" because he "couldn't demonstrate high impact in his Connects." Some of Microsoft's "Connect" questions veer dangerously close to " attack therapy," where you are prompted to "share how you demonstrated a growth mindset by taking personal accountability for setbacks, asking for feedback, and applying learnings to have a greater impact."

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