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MS Hires The Salesman Who Won Munich For SUSE
ron_ivi writes "In a move reminiscent of the 1997 MSFT/Borland Lawsuits, Microsoft has hired the SUSE sales guy who won Munich for SUSE.
So if you want a job in this tough job market, just be wildly successful at your current job and Microsoft will come recruit you. (Another interesting Microsoft hire is the chair of the ISO C++ standards body as their VisualC++.NET architect.) Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well."
Yes, it's war, and microsoft is not above recruiting the enemy's best lieutenants.
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Don't be successful.
Of $0, but he opted to go with Microsoft anyway.
Anyone know if they're happy with Linux in Munich?
-- jaf
they hire Linus as head Longhorn coder?
Microsoft is well known for their great hiring practices. I know quite a few of thier employees and they all are some of the best in the fields they specialise in. MS is pretty good at weeding out the chaff.
In God we trust, all others require data.
In sales it's all about making the money. I bet M$ will pay him better then anyone else has the ability to. Not a bad deal for him.
Evolution or ID?
I wonder how many good job offers MS has floated by Linus?
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
Get Munich back on Windows!
His boss: OK, you're on probation until you get this first sale. There's this council in Munich...
Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well.
Or did they hire him to make him less of a threat?
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Bill Gates: "Buy him out, boys."
My other processor is big-endian.
So if you want a job in this tough job market, just be wildly successful at your current job...
Thanks for turning the obvious into yet another anti-MS rant. Perhaps you should go into the inspirational poster business.
Why not hire those you think are best if you can afford them? And I'm not seeing these people being conscripted.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
Can I expect an appointment letter ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
If its Herb Sutter you are talking about, he's been with microsoft for awhile now. He's posted a few articles on msdn about C++ on things like conformance and feature improvements to VS.net
So people trusted this guy to switch 10k machines to linux. Now, how will people look at his face when he is promoting windows OVER linux? Seems there isn't such thing as integrity.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Microsoft actually does have a pretty good hiring process, if a little brutal. But a lot of people are saying things like "well, at least somebody recognizes that exceptional people are worth it" -- I don't think that these examples are exactly displaying that. Microsoft has been hiring relatively exceptional people for a long time now; the only difference is that these people already have multinational acclaim in their profession.
Just thought I'd point that out -- this is a good move and everything, but hiring people that are already well-known in their field is neither A) necessarily good news for those of you stumping for MS jobs, or B) particularly cost-effective for Microsoft.
On a side note, the REAL message that this is sending to professionals around the world is this: Hurt Microsoft And Get Hired. Whether a lawyer, programmer, politician or standards' body member -- I encourage all exceptional individuals to put all of their skill towards the destruction of Microsoft. They like it! Really!
isn't that he won't eventually give it all away or do some good, I believe him when he says that he will. However, people like Gates and those that run Microsoft have very little faith in people. Their arrogance is hard to beat. Even for such wildly successful people as those new hires, I wouldn't doubt for a second that they are getting a mere fraction of what Microsoft makes off them. Why would a proposed philanthropist such as Gates withhold all that cash, even from their "wildly successful" new hires? I think the answer is simple, he doesn't have faith in people to do the right thing with that money. This is of course if we take Gates at his word when he says he wants to help people with that money. While Bill Gates may eventually give talented people a chance, the damage he has done to the system by hoarding all that cash and unfairly eliminating competition far outweighs the benefits that will happen when he does give it away.
why is this news? He quit SuSE in 2003 and he got a new job.
--
I think it would be amusing if this same salesmen, KarlAigner, can go back to the City of Munich and win them back to Microsoft products. That would be salesmanship!! :P
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
From the C|Net article, dateline May 7, 1997:
Yocam maintains that Microsoft is luring personnel away with huge signing bonuses, some in excess of $1 million. "They have the audacity to send limos to Borland's headquarters to take Borland employees out to lunch. I mean, this has got to stop."
Ah, the good old days. Million-dollar signing bonuses. Limos for job prospects. Corvettes for hot programmers fresh out of college. Penthouse suites with the company logo in genuine Italian marble.
Why did it ever have to end?
Oh, wait, don't answer that...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
You have no idea how business works do you? You don't buy a competitor who is/has beating/beaten you to destroy them, you buy them in order to use their assets/skills/tech/etc for your own purposes. Only a fool destroys their betters! If you knew anything about business you would know it is in your best interest to hire the best people you can, yes, they might be a threat, they could destroy you from the inside and leave you hanging... but that is far better then the alternative of hiring your inferiors and being safe and secure, firm in the knowledge that they can never harm you and take your job/company/business/etc.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Sales is about selling... it has precious little to do with making the world a better place.
Herb Sutter mentions planned C++/.Net CLR extensions being discussed for later inclusion in the C++ standard in last months C/C++ Journal. (Sorry, there is no link on their site yet.) I thought it odd that the chairman of such a standards board would mention M$ proprietary software so favorably. Then I saw that he works for M$ and understood perfectly. No conflicts of interest here. Enough to make you sick. I wonder what Stroustoup thinks of this. What next? A Microsoftie on Sun's Java steering committee perhaps?
an ill wind that blows no good
First off, Herb Sutter joined MS over 2 years ago. He freely admitted that people would think weird of him to join such a company, but Visual Studio .NET's C++ conformance has greatly increased to the point of almost leading the industry. The current C++ compiler is missing a few esoteric language features and the 'export' keyword, but otherwise it compiles complex C++ just fine. This is a massive improvment over their previous offerings and is no doubt attributable to Mr. Sutter's involvement.
So your statement is completely misguided, and I assume that you aren't a C++ programmer that uses MS tools. Otherwise you would laud their efforts to bring the development community a solid (and partially free) tool for use under Windows.
Am I the only one that sees this as buying out the competition?
Which is a long held tradition in the business world. With the caveat that you cannot always do it -- there's that irritating little bit about freedom of choice. If someone doesn't want to sell their business to you (or, more particularly in this case) work for you, they don't have to.
And some guy is making the world better by furthering a standard. Let's hire him so that our C++ becomes the only stardard the world must follow.
Of course, the reality here is that VC++ was close to rock bottom when it came to meeting the ISO C++ standards (particularly in regards to the STL). Since Herb Sutter was hired by MS they have drastically improved compatibility with the standard, both in the compiler and in their STL. I don't think they're the most compliant, but they're a damn sight better than a lot of other compilers, GNU g++ included.
As for changing the standard for MS's benefit -- by merely stating that it proves that you have absolutely no clue how the ISO committees work, particularly when it comes to languages.
Oh, and in case you're wondering -- no, I don't use MS VC++. I code in Unix with g++. But I'm not a clueless moron.
MS seems to assume that they lost the sale because the Linux side had superior marketing instead of a superior product.
Who says you can't do both? This way they get the best of both worlds: They have him, and can use his talents. Meanwhile, SuSE has to scramble to find someone of comparable ability, or lose ground. You *can* have your cake and eat it too!
*That's* how successful corporate raiding works.
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Munich decided that Linux was cheap, extendable, powerful and usable enough to suit their purpose...so Microsoft hired the guy who told them all this?
/
If I write a database engine that even an idiot can administer, will Microsoft then hire the idiot?
Ade_
Big Bubbles (no troubles) - what sucks, who sucks and you suck
There's a very simple term for this kind of hiring. It's called "smart business". If somone proves that they can do something great for your competitors, like pull off a massive sales coup, then that's the kind of guy you want on your staff. The same applies to engineering, politics, and a host of other enterprises.
For example, the guy who designed the S2000 for Honda designed the 300ZX turbo for Nissan. (Both are benchmark designs for the auto industry.) David Gergen worked for both the Nixon and the Clinton administrations. (He may have worked for Reagan, but I'll need to check to be sure.) Hilary Clinton was president of her college's chapter of the Young Republicans, and technology companies exchange employees regularly.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
It's called having a job. If you're a salesperson, guess what? You sell what you're HIRED TO SELL!
Only on Slashdot, made up mostly of college students and unemployed, would it be considered a bad thing and a "lack of integrity" to sell things for one company and then go over and sell things for another.
It's not like the rest of the world views everything as "Windows vs. Linux" like you do. It's just another product the guy's gonna be selling. More power to him! The anti-capitalism mindset that permeates around here is so silly sometimes.
A very brief peek of Microsoft's career website shows that that's probably not Microsoft's standard practice. For one, do a job search on their page. A LOT ot bachelor's degrees there. Second, have a peek at their tuition reimbursement page.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
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