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Another Microsoft Exec Joins Google
SirClicksalot writes "CNN is reporting that Vic Gundotra, a 15-year veteran general manager at Microsoft, has left the company to join Google. Gundotra worked at Microsoft as general manager for platform evangelism to get software developers to use Microsoft's software and online offerings. The function he will perform at Google is not yet known, but he will need to wait one year before starting his new job because of a non-compete clause in his contract."
More people leaving MS and oining Google means more google greatness :)
Your only young once, but you can be imature forever.
More jokes about flying chairs.
dot-sig.
"Vic Gundotra ... has left the company to join Google. Gundotra worked at Microsoft as general manager for platform evangelism to get software developers to use Microsoft's software and online offerings."
Hehe. I wonder how devoted he was to the job of "platform evangelism" given his willingness to defect / commit apostasy.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
The Fine Summary sayeth:
That drives me insane. I had an employer once who tried to "get" me regarding a non-compete agreement, to wit he accused me of going after his customers. The problem was that no one could be excluded from that group -- he believed everyone on the planet was his customer. That's what I see when I read this. Google does not make operating systems or desktop software, they are a freakin' search company, and MS is not a search company. Yet MS identifies them as a competitor, just like they identify every company in existence as their competitor.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Not a bad deal. I'm sure Google will end up paying him for the 1 year vacation.
It really shouldn't be that way. If a company can stick a no-compete on you, then it is they that should have to pay you during the period that you cannot work in your profession. And if you do not have a job at the end of that period, they still should pay you up to two times the length of the clause.
So if you work for a company, and have a 1 year no compete, they might have to pay you up to two years. The US and Canada being at will employment should work both ways equally.
It really shouldn't be that way. If a company can stick a no-compete on you, then it is they that should have to pay you during the period that you cannot work
Was someone holding a gun at your head when you accepted the contract?
Chairman Mao's mordant quip notwithstanding.
No.
Power comes from the perception arising in the brains of others that you've got power.
Even more so, it comes from the perception that you are gaining more of it in the future. It's almost as if the human mind projects the trends outward and tries to jump on the right bandwagon. I experienced this in the 80s and early 90s as people began to abandon other platforms for Windows. There was almost a sense of panic, that if you didn't get in soon enough you would be crushed.
It follows that if the perception starts that you are losing power, you will lose it, and people will think about the consequences of tying themselves to you for too long. Lenin captured an empire pretty with little more than an audacious show of confidence in the face of deflating imperial fortunes.
Microsoft's mind share survived the massive storm of the antitrust suit. But that was easy. But a steady trickle of news of people going over to a competitor with growing mindshare and momentum hurts them far beyond whatever those individuals could posisbly to them working for the competition. In the context of the Vista delays, a trickle of executives jumping ship tends to look the vanguard of the proverbial rats.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That's amazing. Many companies use this 1-year non-comp clause in their employment agreements that are usually nothing more than a way to lock employees into working for their company and effectively holding them hostage to whatever salary range that they originally agree. Only those select few individuals that make god-like salaries have the ability to quit a job, wait a year, then start with a new company.
the sound a chair being thrown?
Almost died laughing. That was the first time I read that
joke on Slashdot..
today
in this article.
No chairs will be thrown over this departure. The dude was a bullshit master. And not just that, but he was managing other bullshit masters, which kind of means he didn't have much time to spout bullshit outside MSFT. There are millions of bullshit masters in the US, especially if you pay them Gundotra's salary. Chairs will be thrown if senior engineering staff (of Bosworth and Lucovsky level) departs. Those folks are harder to replace and Google should start targeting them instead if they want to piss off Ballmer.
Question (no offense intended): why waste a mod point modding posts down, even grammar nazis or trolls, when there are so many great posts that need to be modded up to insighful or interesting to make the threshold settings actually useful?
(Again no offense intended, I am genuinely curious why people do this)
Aside from really racist crap I don't see the point of modding trolls down (or even just humor that some people don't find funny).
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Both modding up the good posts and modding down the bad ones improve the signal/noise ratio.
Actually, that's not true. Like Beta Vs. VHS, DVD vs. Divx, or HD-DVD vs. BluRay you need to establish demand before the product sells. Many waited on the sidelines of DVD vs. Divx to see which would win before buying (the ones who bought Divx got stung). Why would one buy Vista for the DRM features when the new DRM is not even being offered by content providers? It's a chicken-and-egg situation.
More likely, people will buy Windows Vista for two reasons:
- Windows XP will be phased out of the market and Vista will come preinstalled on 90% of PCs
- the new GUI and Video games (this is a single reason, coming down to essentially eye candy. "Oooh, shiny!")
AFTER that, the content will come.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
You do realise that if people set their thresholds at 4 no-one would read any of your posts?
Maybe it's just me, but I'm not particularly excited about MS Execs being hired by Google. Do we really want Google to turn into another Microsoft?
Please Google, for the love of $diety, please hire execs from reputable companies...
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
Okay, I'm too late for a chair joke, so I guess I'll share my other thoughts.
Maybe Google are hiring away Microsofties in strategic positions, deliberately targeting those who have greater worth that their current compensation, partly to gain and partly to hurt Microsoft in a completely legal way?
They do have an advantage over Microsoft that they are probably playing to their advantage; ethically compared to Microsoft, Google are freaking angels.