18 Years in Software Tools, an Insider's View

calumtdalek writes "Newsforge (Also owned by VA) has an article on a talk given by Rico Mariani, an eighteen-year veteran at Microsoft, in which he speaks to the University of Waterloo Computer Science Club, sharing his unique take on the history of, and controversies surrounding, Microsoft and the industry in general. Particularly illuminating are his responses to advocates of free/open-source software. The talk can also be download from the csclub's media server"

Comments

Unique, huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this "Unique" in terms of "unexpected, enlightening and nuanced" or "Unique" in terms of "The 'Unique' Opinion Held By This Guy As Well As Everyone Else Who Has Been Immersed in Microsoft's Corporate Culture For Two Decades!"?

It's kind of hard to tell. Since this talk is, unhelpfully, only available as an audio download, (1) I can't easily listen to audio where I am right now (2) I can't skim it (3) it's slashdotted. In other words, I have no idea what this talk says. A transcript would have helped a lot.

This said, I can't help but shake the suspicion if I could listen to this talk, we'd come to the altogether shocking and unexpected discovery that veteran Microsoft executives don't actually think that Microsoft is the bad guy! Who woulda thought? You mean Microsoft doesn't internally hold the opinion that they're evil, world-dominating bastards? Wow! And here I always thought that bad things were only done by people who go home at night, polish their monocles, and cackle gleefully at their own evil while murdering cats.

Re:Unique, huh.

[kjart]

Is this "Unique" in terms of "unexpected, enlightening and nuanced" or "Unique" in terms of "The 'Unique' Opinion Held By This Guy As Well As Everyone Else Who Has Been Immersed in Microsoft's Corporate Culture For Two Decades!"?

I'd say it's unique in that's it's a fairly candid hour and twenty minute discussion (used loosely since he does most of the talking) with an (allegedly) bright developer who has worked for Microsoft for the past 18 years.

You mean Microsoft doesn't internally hold the opinion that they're evil, world-dominating bastards? Wow! And here I always thought that bad things were only done by people who go home at night, polish their monocles, and cackle gleefully at their own evil while murdering cats.

Yup, that's actually one of his points - people in Microsoft don't think of themselves as evil and don't have "World Domination" on their todo lists - they're too busy doing their jobs. The people responsible for the whole IE debacle (he actually uses this as an example) didn't integrate IE that way because they wanted to destroy the competition - they made an engineering decision at the time that they thought made sense and ended up causing a big brouhaha.

Since then, he says, people have obviously tried to be more careful with stuff like that, but the bottomline is that the people that do the bulk of the work at Microsoft are not bent on World Domination - they are bent on programming.

By the way, I like how you disclaimered yourself saying you didn't watch it at all and then went on to blast it. If it was because he was black, I'd call you a racist; since it's because he works for Microsoft, I'll just call you a Slashdot reader :)

Cheers

Re:Unique, huh.

[OnanTheBarbarian]

Right, because we hear frank talk from people who have been at _any_ tech company for 18 years all the time, this is obviously a non-event (this means that this guy was cutting code when a good proportion of Slashdotters were still crapping in diapers or watching Saturday morning cartoons). Face it, 18 years of actual activity (not just a few good years followed by 15 years of pontification or management or both) is a long time in this business and perhaps you should shut the hell up and at least listen, before shooting off your mouth. Even if the guy is from (shock, horror) Microsoft, and even if only you think that this guy is only useful as an insight into the enemies' camp.

You're awfully free with your criticism of a talk that you haven't actually listened to. I too prefer transcripts for the same reason, but generally don't feel the need to critique content that I haven't actually heard. I think that it's interesting - but not entirely surprising - that you can get modded "Insightful" on Slashdot now for commentary on a talk that you didn't hear.

18 Years? Wow...

[demongeek]

I'm not a psychologist, but surely 18 years in a single organization is going to brainwash you to some limited extent. You will either be (a) the corporate lovebug, touting everythign you do as infalliable, or (b) the corporate naysayer, whose sole response to anythign the company puts out is "it isn't read" or "this won't work".

makes for an interestign thought though -- how would one get objectivity (or a close approximation). Someone outside the organization could never truly understand the internal workings, but someone exposed to the internal workings would always hold a pretty strong bias (one way or the other).

Re:18 Years? Wow...

[killjoe]

All religions have words that mean "not us". It could be heathen, infidel, goyem or whatever.

I find it interesting that he uses the phrase "my guys". He doesn't say "us" or microsoft or "commercial software manufacturers" or anything else.

Maybe I am reading too much into it but that phrase really struck me.

What about the other commercial vendors though? Don't they force "your guys" to do a great job? I mean the development efforts of MS have been driven by apple and google more then anything else. Like clockwork windows implements two year old apple technology and adopts the latest apple GUI paradigms. These days it's virtually impossible not to hear an MS executive talk about implementing something google is doing. It seems to me MS is much more focused on chasing apple and google then what OSS is doing.

Re:18 Years? Wow...

[kjart]

I find it interesting that he uses the phrase "my guys".

I don't really find this odd at all. If you like your company/friends/coworkers you tend to identify them as "yours". I wold imagine since he has worked there for 18 years there are probably many people there that would be like family. Anything that is part of so large a chunk is bound to become personal - heck, you'd probably refer to "my wife/husband" instead of Mr/Mrs Doe after a much shorter period.

What about the other commercial vendors though? Don't they force "your guys" to do a great job? I mean the development efforts of MS have been driven by apple and google more then anything else. Like clockwork windows implements two year old apple technology and adopts the latest apple GUI paradigms.

Yes, that is his point entirely. He wants to have healthy competition because he feels that Microsoft does it's best work when they have serious competitors. The part I paraphrased was specifically about open source software, but he does discuss competition in general and the whole "healthy ecosystem" (and makes fun of himself for using that term) thing being good for business.

Also, just to give them a little benefit of the doubt, I think Vista has been in development for more than two years. So it's conceivable that they aren't "stealing" Apple's ideas, for example, but that Apple just beat them in releasing those features. I'm not saying that it's necessarily the case, but I don't think people should be so quick to condem - good features are good features.

Re:18 Years? Wow...

[RedOregon]

Not really. I spent 20 years in the Air Force, and I (and most retirees for that matter) turn into neither. Generally speaking, after that much time you know the organization well enough that you can both call BS on the BS parts, and support the good parts.