On Euphemistic Press Release Titles ⇥ news.microsoft.com

I like to picture the offices of PR and marketing teams when there’s a giant corporate shakeup. There must be a fairly lengthy process of whittling the press release title down to the most anemic combination of words possible. Remember when Apple did that big executive reshuffle back in 2012? Here’s the title of that press release — one of the biggest executive and strategy decisions in the company’s history:

Apple Announces Changes to Increase Collaboration Across Hardware, Software & Services

It’s not wrong, but it’s also redefining the phrase “burying the lede”.

Here’s Microsoft’s equivalent, from today:

Microsoft Aligns Engineering Teams to Strategy

As if Microsoft were not strategic with their engineering teams before.

Anyway, here’s the seventh paragraph, after much preamble:

As a result of the organizational moves, Stephen Elop, Kirill Tatarinov and Eric Rudder will leave Microsoft after a designated transition period. Unrelated to the engineering restructuring changes, Chief Insights Officer Mark Penn has decided to pursue another venture outside Microsoft and will be leaving the company in September.

That’s a lot of high-ranking executives that are leaving. You may remember Stephen Elop from helming various companies and engineering their acquisitions, or his weird memo exactly eleven months ago following another intra-Microsoft reshuffling.