Showing messages 1 through 6 of 6.

• Don't worry about sellouts
  2003-09-08 09:03:20  David A. Chappell | [View]
  
  
  BTW, Becky Dias (whom I have known for a few years and would never consider to be a "sellout"), has crafted a fairly well thought out response for you. And thanks for the jacket, Becky....I guess I'm a sellout too because she promised me a stylin' Microsoft jacket a few weeks ago at the XML & Web services conference...looks like she has owned up to her promise. :)
  
  Colleen Evans, who was another one of the people referred to in the Darryl Taft article, is also someone I would never consider a sellout. She has integrity written all over her. I look forward to working with her again in the future. I have not lost a co-worker, but gained an ally.
  

  
  BTW, I gave Glen a Sonic hat and a Sonic T-shirt to wear at the upcoming WSDL face-to-face, just so its clear to everyone who he is representing ;)
  

  
  Dave

• Don't assume everyone is a sellout
  2003-09-03 11:11:12  David A. Chappell | [View]
  
  
  I suppose its easy to attract Microsoft bashers by the title of my posting. I should have known. BTW, I don't share your view of MS, and I don't agree that everyone who goes and works there is a sellout. --Dave
• Don't assume everyone is a sellout
  2003-09-04 03:32:25  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I'm not the original poster, but...
  
  The real question is what happens to them when they get there. MS has a corporate culture that actively encourages technical decisions based on public relations and marketing, as well as a "get yours" attitude (remember FYIFV?). Excellence is not rewarded, shiny pretty things are. One comparison is universities which hire well known professors for name value, but don't expect them to actually teach anything - just publish a paper every once in a while to keep the school in the journals.
• Don't assume everyone is a sellout
  2003-09-04 04:54:36  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  You have no idea what you are talking about. I am no fan of Microsoft software and I spend a great deal of my energy encouraging people to use cross-platform standards-based software (which for the most part is *not* Microsoft software). But I also happened to have worked at Microsoft for many years and the "corporate culture" that you describe is nothing like the corporate culture that I experienced.

• Bash not, want not
  2003-09-02 19:57:17  gdaniels [View]
  
  
  IMHO, you should always take credit for statements like that, Mr. (or Ms.) Anonymous. :) While I (as the developer in question here) surely do agree about being motivated by excellence, I think there are a lot of people at Microsoft who are just that way, Don among them. Have you really *talked* to some of the guys over there? They're *sharp*. And Microsoft has played a huge role in the "XML revolution" of the past few years, not just by following but by leading; they were key players on a lot of the WG's at the W3C, and they whipped out parsers and toolkits faster than most. Ditto for other technologies. I'm not claiming that they're anything but the enormous organization they are, and thus subject to all the bureacracy and ill-conceived ideas that their size and history begets, but you can't paint the whole organization with a single "no innovation, money means everything" brush.
  
  That said, I do think it's really important that we keep a healthy ecosystem of LOTS of companies and organizations contributing to the growth of software technologies, and not concentrate all the intellectual energy in just a few "supernodes" (under just a few management hierachies :)). Corollaries to this include "not all good ideas come from Microsoft/IBM" and "just because it comes from Microsoft/IBM doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea".
  
  So there you have it - Microsoft ain't all bad, but neither would I ever want all (or even most of) the clueful people working there. The next few years are going to be really exciting, and a lot of that excitement is going to come from it getting easier and easier to hook your stuff up to everyone else's. The integration/WS party is a big one, and while Microsoft is certainly a high-profile presence, there are a lot of other companies with great things to contribute - which is why I'm headed to Sonic! Party on, dudes. :)
  
  --Glen
  
• Bash not, want not
  2003-09-03 10:47:28  David A. Chappell | [View]
  
  
  Yeah....what he said. Bravo on that response Glen! Dave