Slashdot Mirror
ESR Gets Job Offer From Microsoft
epsalon writes "Eric S. Raymond, the well known Open Source Evangelist, recently received a job offer from Microsoft, that he strongly refused. Is this another attempt to lure Open Source figures or just ignorance?" From his post: "I called [the Microsoft HR rep], who told me my name had been passed to him by his research team. I indicated to him that I thought somebody was probably having a little joke at his expense, and promised him an email reply."
Since when is a request for an interview a "job offer"?
How terrible it has been for them, to have this guy as their worst nightmare.
What a pompous ass.
sulli
RTFJ.
[grin] Would *you* dine with the devil ?
Given that I'm constantly being told how bad the IT job-market is, I suspect most would... Now Eric's made a chunk of change out of being an OS advocate (I think it was Redhat that gave him a load of shares), but I'm sure MS is in the position to offer seriously tempting offers to just about anyone. Kudos to him for sticking by his principles...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Pride goeth before a fall. The classy thing to do would be to thank the person (whose v- address signifies that they're a vendor, in this case a headhunter) and decline politely, then make your plans to piss on Gates's grave or whatever floats your boat.
Not to burst ESR's bubble, but it's not a job offer. It's simply a Microsoft recruiting vendor trolling for people who might be interested.
I get a similar e-mail every few months.
Look at his email. He takes credit for an entire movement? Cut me a break. His cathedral and bazaar paper was a bunch of pot smoking nonsense. What a blow hard. What did he write that was so amazing or complicated? His web site is all "I contributed to, was in a meeting with..."
The guy is a total fraud.
This is my sig.
The recruiter is just doing his job. Why abuse the guy?
As big as Raymond thinks that he is, bullshitting with IBM execs and "maintaining" the jargon file doesn't make you a B-list celebrity.
I've always found the the way that people treat waiters, clerical staff, etc reveals alot about that person's character. Raymond's self-aggrandizing, insulting and borderline abusive reply says nearly all that needs to be said about him.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
ESR got an unsolicited form letter from a recruiting vendor doing the email equivalent of cold-calling -- otherwise known as "Spamming".
/. attention, but please. Spare us.
Of course, his response was humorous, and possibly therefore worthy of
I would rather have seen an "unsubscribe" reply... with a followup in case he gets another email from the vendor.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
you came off like a professional and stable person.
Really... um... did you EXPECT ESR to react in a rational and polite manner?
It's like George Bush offering a job to Michael Moore. What do you think Michael Moore would do? Politely decline and keep it private?
Hell no!
That's the thing with vocal individuals... they're really loud.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Steve Ballmer and Eric Raymond have the exact same personality.
Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.
Eric should go work for Microsoft. He fits right in.
This is my sig.
I'd rather work for Microsoft than have anything to do with someone who writes an e-mail like that and is proud of himself after doing so.
The more you know, the less you understand.
As much as he's no doubt done a lot, he could do with toning his ego down a bit.
Seeing how the main attraction of Slashdot is the ability to discuss about the story, and seeing how quite a few stories are about various famous or infamous people and organizations, I'd say yes.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The people who are like ESR
You mean people too dumb to realize that the email was a template sent from a headhunter who is contracted to, but doesn't actually work as an employee of Microsoft?
Or do you mean people who are so absolutely lacking in sense and diplomacy that they go off like a loon on something like this, giving their "enemies" perfect ammunition in the form of "Gee, you're really thinking of open source stuff, huh? Well, you know... This guy (hands out a copy of this rant) is one of the key people behind that whole thing, and he doesn't exactly come off as stable, you know? Do you really want to trust your business to that guy? Or would you rather trust it to a company like us, with a long history and billions of dollars that isn't going anywhere?"
Or perhaps you mean people who are so self-absorbed that they dismiss the work of the entire OS community and take credit for their work?
Or maybe you meant someone who is so freaking delusional that he thinks he singlehandedly talked the Fortune 500 into examining open source?
I'm no MS fangirl, but jesus, if this is an example of a FOSS evangelist... There's a rather serious image issue, dontcha think? "Starving" the FOSS movement of resources like ESR might not be a bad idea.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Really, the guy is a freaking liability. The only things he can say now is worthless flamebait, and he hasn't made a positive contribution to F/OSS for an age. If he takes the Microsoft job, he might get Microsoft to understand free software a bit better, or he might just drive a few microsoft guys insane. We can't lose!
I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is seeing how many open source people will succumb to high paying jobs with nice stock options, though it was silly to contact Eric because there was 100% probability he would just flame them, use it to pump up his ego and be his usual publicity hound self.
If they identify a lot of open source contributors who are struggling to make ends meet working in the open source world and hire them they both reduce contributions to open source, and they make open source look bad. In particular they are testing to see if people will sell out and sell open source down the river in exchange for piles of cash. Their coffers are deep enough they could hire a lot of struggling open source developers with ease.
They kind of did this to OpenGL a while ago, hiring Kurt Akeley, David Blythe and Michael Cohen in particular. Those people were faced with clinging to the sinking ship that is SGI and OpenGL or sell out to Microsoft and DirectX which totally dominates the desktop and gaming. They both get good researchers and they drain talent away from OpenGL in hopes of pushing it further in to irrelevance.
If you hop in to the wayback machine they did the same thing to Borland, hiring all their top people just to put them out to pasture.
@de_machina
It isn't a matter of burning bridges. It's a matter of ESR being (for better or worse, to whatever degree) a public voice for the OS community.
He is putting himself forward as an evangelist, a mouthpiece, and he should know better than to behave like a whack-job.
I can very easily see ways that companies such as MS could spin this to make the OS community look like a bunch of loons. "Do you really want to trust your business to a guy who goes off like (hands out letter) this to something like a form letter from a recruiter? He can't control himself - and he's the best they've got!" (Not true, but how many suits know that?)
In short, if you want to claim to be a leader of something, then you give up the right to act like an asshole unless it is strategically beneficial to those you claim to represent. This was not. This was pure ego on ERS's part.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
After reading this, it is not difficult to understand why Open Source is not treated seriously. That ESR was offered a job at Microsoft is inherently interesting and amusing; his (public) reply makes him sound like a 14 year old boy trying to impress his friends with false stories of sexual prowess.
Eric Raymond is an idiot. He was known as an idiot in the usenet world, and he is known as an idiot in the OSS world. In between those he wrote a very thoughtful essay called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", but he went back to idiot mode right after he wrote the last word in that essay.
While the grammaticly correct version is "a lot" according to U.S. Law any string of letters published more than three times with a coherent definition is considered a word, though may still fall into the category of slang. Seeing as how so many have made the mistake of publishing "alot" instead of "a lot" your statement is technically incorrect. Therefore you are a duchebag! =) Language was created for the sole purpose of communicating thoughts and ideas between persons, not to fuel grammar nazis like yourself that get off on being a pain in the ass. So long as one is able to adaquately convey what they intended there shouldn't be any problem with how they do it. Of course language has rules like spelling and grammar to standardize it and make it easier for a larger number of people to understand. If you're going to spend your life correcting other people's typographical and grammatical errors even though you can clearly understand the intended thought you might as well just shoot yourself.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
A few years ago I got an interview with Microsoft and on the whole it very interesting. They flew me out to Redmond and footed the bill for everything. I didn't get the job, but I did meet some interesting people and on the whole had a good time. Next time ESR, go talk to them first and then refuse. Freebies don't pop up everyday you know! ;)
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I don't doubt it. Tech recruiters don't work for the company they are recruiting for, are often sloppy and in a rush, and usually not that bright. What they are good at, is social networking.
Pretty please?
With so many 3 and 4-digit uids, Your Honorable Sirs must be white of hair and wise of head, so can you all tell me why are you bashis His Honorable Gunman ESR?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
He's an intelligent and thoughtful guy, and certainly worth whatever fame he's managed to acquire. It's not that the man doesn't have skills, it's just that the sheer amount of geekiness (the kind that gets you laughed at) outweighs what valuable skills he possesses. Nobody would make fun of Linus for being as geeky as ESR, for example, because his skill is extraordinary enough to justify it.
11*43+456^2