The Ballmer Re-Org Is All About Ruining This Hilarious Old Joke

Steve Ballmer's massive reorganization of Microsoft is going to take time to play out.

Even people inside the company aren't 100% certain how it's going to work. It's a brand new structure, so there will likely be kinks, at least early on.

We were speaking with a source at the company, trying to figure out how decisions would be made, who would be responsible for what. Our source stopped us, and basically said, you're thinking about it all wrong. You're thinking of the old system, where there was one person responsible for one business.

In the new Microsoft, everyone is supposed to be responsible for everything. Decisions will be more collaborative, which will hopefully result in more integrated products.

That's when we realized that Ballmer was essentially trying to kill the old stereotypes about Microsoft's org structure. Two years ago, we posted a humorous illustration that laid out how Microsoft was organized.

Here is the old structure. Each group at Microsoft was its own silo, fighting with the other groups. (Below this, we have the new structure.)