In the whole hullabaloo about Ballmer's alleged RSS comments (the original poster makes it clear that what he posted is not a verbatim transcript), I missed the most relevant tidbit - one of my readers pointed this out in email:

A. We believe RSS is important and will be around for a while but it is not going to change the world. It is a little too simple, that is also the reason everyone’s using it. We are working on more existing powerful stuff, around XML/web services [sic] that will address many issues beyond RSS. RSS will be around, but whatever we are working next will be cooler and more prevalent.

Emphasis added by me, btw. It's a little too simple? Right there, I think this speaks volumes about the corporate culture at Microsoft (not that it's absent elsewhere) - simplicity is bad - complexity means we accomplished something. Complexity means it's powerful.

In a nutshell, that's what's wrong with the IT sector as a whole.