Terry Myerson Flexes His Muscle, Removes Sinofsky’s Lieutenants From Power

While the Ballmer’s big re-org will not be fully implemented until the release of Windows Phone Blue, some parts are starting to take shape.  Myerson who has been in charge of the OS Engineering Group for two months now has decided to do a clean sweep of the management and will now have seven people that will report directly to him.

When Sinofsky left, his job was split in two between his right hand girl Julie Larson-Greene and Tami Reller.  With the re-org, Reller moved to oversee marketing and Larson-Greene went to oversee Devices and Studios.  Reller and Larson-Green report directly to Ballmer.  With the acquisition of Nokia Stephen Elop overtakes Julie’s current position, and she reports to Elop.  If Elop becomes CEO she may get her old job back, or a new CEO could shake things up again with new management.

Myerson has removed some of Sinofsky’s other lieutenants from power including Grant George, Antoine Leblond and Jon DeVaan.  You may recall Antoine Leblond came to power after Michael Angiulo got in trouble for rapping about “fucking two bitches at the same time” with Too Short for his 40^th birthday bash put together by his wife.  Sources have told me the three will stay with the company for now and will make a decision regarding their futures after a new CEO is chosen.

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Jeff Sandquist who rose through the company ranks to eventually become Senior Director of Developer Relations will be leaving the company to join as Twitter’s Director of Platform Partnerships.  A source told me, Sandquist has spent a lot of time working on special projects recently and was concerned about his future as new management was coming in.  The lure of Twitter stock (considering their upcoming IPO) was just something he could not resist and he jumped ship.  Sandquist isn’t the only one who has left Microsoft for the concerns over new management and lure of stock bonuses and other incentives.  Two notable ex-Microsoft employees Surupa Biswas (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/surupa-biswas/3/641/b08) and Lenn Pryor (http://www.linkedin.com/in/lennpryor) have left for Facebook.

Myseron has chosen Joe Belfiore is going to head up a cross PC-phone-tablets team.  He has also picked Marc Whitten to head up the TV and large screen team; he will retain his position overseeing Xbox Live.  Chris Jones will continue to head up OS services including SkyDrive.  Heading development will be Henry Sanders, who had worked with Myerson on Windows Phone. David Treadwell from the Xbox team will lead product management for the OS group, and Mike Fortin from Windows will head up test and quality. 

It is no accident Treadwell, Fortin, and Sanders are together again.  They are all former members of the Core Operating System Division (COSD).  Jon DeVaan was formerly in charge of this group, and it was initially put together under Jim Allchin. 

Dean Hachamovitch will retain his role as head of Internet Explorer and currently reports directly to Ballmer.  It is unclear as to who he will end up reporting to in the future and he remains a relatively powerful person within Microsoft at this time. 

Sources tell me that Myerson, Larson-Green, Qi Lu, Kirill Tatarinov, and Reller are not seriously being considered for the role of CEO put may go through the formalities of the process.  Instead, the board is looking for a CEO who would work with these six leaders and continue part of Ballmer’s vision for at least three years.