Slashdot Mirror
Gentoo Founder Quits Microsoft
ChocLinux writes "ZDNet is reporting that Daniel Robbins, the founder of Gentoo Linux, has left his job at Microsoft after only eight months. From the article: 'The reason I decided to leave had to do with my specific experiences working in Microsoft's Linux Lab,' says Robbins. 'I wasn't able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating'"
What, did he have 2 different jobs at Microsoft?
But I suppose, the more experience you get, the more frustrating it becomes!
Ian D. K. Kelly
idkk Consultancy Ltd.
"Quality through Thought"
It's a shame that he wasn't able to use his full skill set working for that company. Nothing worse than being at a job you're more than qualified for but not getting to use all you know.
"Welcome to america, where we drive on parkways and park on driveways."
I sent applied several times over the years to Microsoft. I think I got form-letters in reply, thanking me for doing so. I guess there just aren't many jobs for a UNIX systems administrator at Microsoft. Too bad, too, as I think I'd be able to help them, in some small way.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Sounds like they sucked his brain out and poured MS oatmeal in the hole. From TFA:
.NET on Windows.
Daniel Robbins has decided to leave Microsoft to pursue his passion for software development with an independent software vendor where he will be focused on building in
Just junk food for thought...
FTA:
... to pursue his passion for software development with an independent software vendor where he will be focused on building in .NET on Windows ...
.net apps on Windows why would he leave M$FT? I mean that is probably the place to be if that really was his passion. I can't believe how much BS these people come up with.
If he wanted to build
sarchasm
.. in the software development field, this is normal.
People in software development are constantly learning more and more about their craft, constantly having access to cutting-edge technologies and APIs. But rarely do you have a job where you can play with this stuff on a day-to-day basis, because actual real-life mean and potatoes development takes place using tools and technology 3-5 years behind the curve.
When was the last time you heard of a production application being written in Ruby on Rails, or in D? Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but for the majority of us, we are stuck using older stuff.
Which is as it should be. Because if left to our own devices, programmers would always use the most whiz-bang, untested, unstable stuff out there. It's the technophile nature.
I'm shocked. Shocked I say!
I was so sure that the founder of Gentoo getting a job at Microsoft was going to end well...
I wish him all the best and I hope he returns to actively manage and develop Gentoo again. You can't blame him for wanting to feed his family and I'm sure he'll be welcomed back to our side.
ConsultingFair.com
after dodging chairs all day...
The reason I decided to leave had to do with my specific experiences..
:)
"Specific experience" with Microsoft eh?? I had one of those before! Like the time I switched over to that other non-really-real search engine company and the CEO started making monkey noises (something about "I love this company!!! RAWR!!") and throwing a chair around the room.
I love specifics
What a great job the poster did at editing out any pro-Microsoft sentiments in the article summary.
We wouldn't want to have that filth on the front page of Slashdot, now would we? Here is the full quote that was only partially included in the article summary:
"The reason I decided to leave had to do with my specific experiences working in Microsoft's Linux Lab. Although I believe that the concept behind Microsoft's Linux Lab is a good one, I wasn't able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating," he said.
Also, earlier in the article:
"I didn't make the decision to leave Microsoft due to concerns about the company as a whole -- Microsoft has just had a string of very successful product launches and I anticipate that it will continue to enjoy great success," he said.
Anyone suspect a plot just to remove him from a productive Linux project to a place he could do no harm? It might have gone like this:
Manager: So, here's your office.
Robbins: It's empty. I don't even have a computer.
Manager: That's okay. Look, here's a ball. You can bounce it off the wall all day.
Robbins: And I'd get six figures a year just for that?
Manager: Sure. Enjoy.
(Microsoft) Umm... NO!!!
(Dan) Later Fucktards!!!
Note: Joke leeched from Nucrash on ZDNet
But that's not what he said. To quote:
"The reason I decided to leave had to do with my specific experiences working in Microsoft's Linux Lab. Although I believe that the concept behind Microsoft's Linux Lab is a good one, I wasn't able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating," he said.Transaltion: they wouldn't give me the resources and the free reign to do something useful. They were pretty much tapping him for his Linux knowledge and hoping to turn that into some kind of Linux-killer. Took him long enough but he finally figured it out.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
He wasn't a mid-level guy. He is the founder of the Gentoo Linux project, he didn't just "contribute" to it. At that level you don't have to "behave" because your are far more talented than a true mid-level employee. This guy can write his own ticket.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
8 months on the salary they were paying him has given him a large enough nest egg to pursue better interests.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
"...has left his job at Microsoft after only eight months."
Sheesh, he didn't even have enough time to finish compiling Gentoo once.
After an eight month study, Mr. Robbins concluded that TCO for Microsoft was significantly higher than Linux.
Mr. Robbins was overheard to say, "While Gentoo may cost countless hours of tweaking for bleeding-edge performance, Microsoft required the sale of one's soul to a man named Lucifer and yet resulted in only average performance."
When asked for their reply, Mr. Balmer cursed and threw a chair at this reporter. Mr. Gates only response was to place his fingertips together while saying, "Excellent."
No further comment was available.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Tomorrow on slashdot: "Wintoo Announced" "Win32 installation that compiles itself to the specific needs of the hardware upon installation. Developers for Wintoo are remaining anonymous for the time being."
I think it's important to understand the history of this whole situtation to understand its current state. A few years ago, he came up with the idea for Gentoo. It was innovative at the time because there were few source based distributions out there. The idea of the source based distribution wasn't new, but portage definatly was/is the best source based package manager I've seen out there. He sunk a lot of his own personal money into gentoo that he never got back. When he left to work at MS, it pissed off a lot of purists and a lot of people shunned him. I think his move not to come back to the open source community (right now, anyway) has a lot to do with the fact he poured so much of himself into open source, and once he left to try and not live paycheck to paycheck, people immediatly forgot all of his contributions to gentoo.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
They probably made him use redhat enterprise and forced him to use the rpm-provided versions of software.
How big is this jackpot you propose?
:)
p.s. GP poster's ID is not low, 4099 is damn high.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This is just the sort of reason why, when one of these little Linux/MS "updates" shows up, I just shake my head in despondency, largely because of what you mentioned, that the purists in the Linux community looked at him like a sellout. These are the same sort of "enlightened anti-groupthink" individuals who've been tearing at the buttocks of MS for years, all to the delight of Slashdotters everywhere. And people call MS users "drones"... Whatever.
The longer I read Slashdot, the more I believe there should also a picture of Linus Torvalds in a Borg headgear with maybe a green laser instead of red, right aside of good ol' Billy G. Talk about an exercise in groupthink, 90+% of Slashdotters seem to have drank the Kool-Aid where Linux is concerned.
Now you'll excuse me while I brace for the inevitable modding down into the 10th Circle of Heck to which this post will be subjected.
While I use Gentoo, I don't know too much about it. But from what I've seen, Daniel must be a very sharp programmer. Very strong people typically have a rather difficult time landing decent jobs. There just aren't than many interesting and fulfilling jobs out there.
People who are interviewing are typically looking for people to work for them. If you are a very strong/experienced person, that is going to be a hard role to fill. You are their peer, if not more. Nobody wants to hire someone who is going to challenge them.
I recently had an on-site interview at Microsoft. Seattle is really nice and Microsoft is, after all, Microsoft. Had they offered me the job (which they didn't), I would have taken it. But I would not have been happy there and would have probably left after 8 months or so. Here are my impressions from the experience...
Contrary to popular opinion, Microsoft does hire lots of *nix people. But you aren't going to be doing cutting edge work. They don't even use C++. No, I don't mean they use C#. They use C and lots of reference-counted pointers. No STL at all. Windows is really pretty ugly inside. If you are programmer with very high standards, you aren't going to like it.
I don't know why I didn't get the job. But I definitely wasn't a good fit. I think Daniel was of such a caliber that they just had to hire him. In the end, he wasn't a good fit either.
In other news Google hires founder of Gentoo Linux, and Office Depot acquires new contract with Microsoft for office chairs.
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
I've been authorized to go as high as ONE dollar (Canadian) on behalf of my client(*).
(*) Who shall remain anonymous until bidding has ended.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
5 job changes and layoffs later you'll find not working to your ability is the way it's done in that country. American job titles are not egalitarian like Hong Kong or Japan. The software engineering level is pretty much the same no matter where you go or what you do. Only if you network your way into management does the work get creative or challenging.
Hard to believe with all the information available from generation after generation of celebrity Linux programmer doing the same thing, they still have this attitude of quitting day job after day job thinking the next one is going to be better but never really getting anywhere.
Back around 1996, I had an opportunity to interview at Microsoft, but I ultimately declined. Although it would have probably been interesting and a nice addition to my resume, I'm quite clear that I would have been uncomfortable the whole time I was there. I'd been in the Unix world for too long, and had very little respect for MS's solutions. Pushing that on unwary comsumers would have just felt too slimy for me.
Perhaps a similar unease finally settled on him too.
It may be that the 8 months is because he was having a hard time finding someone to hire him... ABC Coding Solutions (presuming that this is the proper company) seems like a rather pedestrian company for someone of his ability to move to.
I'm guessing that many Linux-based companies would just look at his resume, say "He's working at Microsoft?!" and put the resume in the circular file.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Sounds like a good concept for a screensaver, instead of Flying Windows.
i'd be frustrated too after 8 months filled with days spent trying 'emerge longhorn'
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
Portage is proof of this. Have you seen how bad the code is? - You cannot tell where the backend stops and where the frontend begins.
;)
Try to import portage and see how far you get? -- the emerge frontend does *everything*, portage is just a couple IO functions easier achieved with cat.
If Robbins feels he wasnt used to his full potential in Microsoft, then, hmm, nice to know the "real world" is much easier than all us students expect
PHB: "So, you're persuing technical excellence today?"
DR: "Yep"
PHB: "Same as yesterday?"
DR: "Yep"
PHB: "Still compiling is it?"
http://gentooexperimental.org/nt/
This is pretty close to the truth. Amongst the Gentoo developers, the general consensus was "Well, he has to eat, doesn't he?"
Daniel didn't leave Gentoo for Microsoft. Daniel had already left Gentoo. It just happens that he kept himself low on the radar until his job at Microsoft, which spawned this giant set of conspiracy theories from the uneducated on the matter. As far as Gentoo was concerned, it was a non-issue. Daniel is a good guy and we all wished him luck. There were no harsh feelings and nobody that had a clue what was going on thought that the sky was falling. It was pretty much the same sensationalist jackasses that make a big deal out of everything that made a big deal about Daniel's "defection" to Microsoft.
I suppose working with Anders Hejlsberg on the C# compiler is boring, eh? And writing a Bluetooth stack for Windows Mobile devices... that's probably as boring as implementing Quicksort now, isn't it? Or working on the new Visual Studio Team System source control software... that's cake, since we all know how to implement a simple, scalable revision control system, right?
Here's a thought. Maybe -- just maybe -- your brief interview experience did not expose you to some of the cutting edge work that Microsoft is doing...
Thousands of software engineers working on C code are collectively rolling their eyes right now.
If you think that "high standards" require use of C++ and the STL, then you might want to rethink why you didn't get that offer. Here's a hint: software engineering is not about the language, but how you use it.
Unless they've rewritten it lately, the Linux kernel is written in C. BSD is C as well. In fact, most modern operating systems were written (and are now extended and maintained) in C. I suppose your conclusion about Windows applies to those systems as well?
Oh wait, I almost forgot... while interviewing, you had a chance to skim all 50+ million lines of code in Windows and determine that they were ugly. I guess we'll just take your word for it, then.
I spent a lot of time on the forums and on the irc channels back then and I never heard anyone call him a traitor or other shit like that. It made us sad, not angry -- those of us who are adults understand that you need a job that pays and sometimes that means not working on OSS all day long.
I think that an awful lot of people would be very surprised how many of the hackers that write open source software have a day job in which they write closed source software. If someone wants to attack those hackers as "selling out" or a "traitor", it'd be kind of silly. Lots of hackers (I suspect the majority of hackers) write open source software because they want to make something *good* for themselves and their fellow hackers. They want to enjoy a world time pressures, bad administrative-level ideas, language and platform requirements are all just a bad dream, and they can create truly nifty stuff. It's not because they consider themselves soldiers in some crusade -- sure, it's a fun idea to play with, but it's not really why people spend their time working on something neat. Open Source just allows hanging out and showing off with other hackers, and making it easier for other hacker-types to give a hand.
Maybe a good analogy for hackery would be the guy who is a commercial graphic designer by day and an artist by night. All day he has to churn out relatively boring things for people who often come up with absurd requirements. He has to work under time pressure and doesn't have the freedom he'd like to experiment with his ideas. However, at night, he can try out his ideas, do really interesting stuff, and so forth. Just because he has to churn out bread-and-butter stuff doesn't mean that he can't legitimately explore at night.
Put simply, the hacker is the artist of the computer world.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.