The Joel on Software Discussion Group

Looks like Robert read Joel's post about recruiting ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/06/15.html ) and got his feathers ruffled a bit.

He responds ( http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/06/16.html#a10405 ) with a pretty lively bit about what kinds of resources, exactly, are at the disposal of your typical Microsoft employee.  There are actually a few really interesting items in here if you read through.

Although the tone of this exchange is a couple of notches down from the ideal, I think there's a lot of truth to be seen about working in small companies vs. large companies.  Lots of direct, quality impact when you're working at a small company, but nowhere near the kind of resources that can ultimately be at your disposal in a large company.

All in all, a couple of great points of view -- definitely worth contemplating for anyone trying to figure out where they want to work.

Pretty pissy comments from Scoble. What exactly is he for again? He's some kind of "Ra Ra" cheerleader guy, right?

Can I add one to his list?

"Do you regularly ship software that infuriates millions of users when yet another security hole is revealed, or it just plain doesn't do what it is supposed to? We do!"

i think it all depends on what you want. He made some valid points. My company's stock has gone through the roof (well, maybe not that high but good). A good stock price, doesn't mean a good company!

Its like, Joel is a troll and he just pwned Scoble


XD

I think the tone of his posting comments more lucidly on his lack of credibility as a marketeer than any of the actual content.

And the little pig ran all the way home...

Scoble fell for it. Joel wanted FogCreek to be compared at Microsoft level and Scoble took the bait :)

Simon: lack of credibility? Hmmm. Who hands out this credibility you talk of?

http://www.changethis.com/14.opensourcemktg maybe? http://beta.technorati.com/pop/blogs/ maybe? Or, do you have to say I have credibility?

I'm pissy cause I haven't had my coffee yet.

It was just a straightforward reply to Joel's claim that we can't hire anyone because we don't buy them enough toys.

I'm not sure how to play the "my toy pile is bigger than your toy pile" games without sounding pissy, though. I'd like to see you try it.

>Krish

Heh. Being told I'm helping Joel's marketing and being called pissy, while having no marketing credibility, makes me laugh!

Joel did throw the gauntlet down, and it demanded a rebuttal. Scoble simply provided it (as his position entails. I wouldn't expect Gates to address it at a keynote).

I do think that perhaps there is a bit of a marketing ploy behind this (with Scoble perhaps unwittingly playing along) given that relatively recently Joel was very positive about Microsoft as a tech employer.

Scoble,
I didn't call you pissy or say that you don't have marketing credibility. But you may be helping Joel's marketing here :)
In any case, this is all in good fun. We all luv ya :)

If you read Joel's paragraph about recruiting at Microsoft and concluded that he is saying that MS can't recruit well because of furniture politics, well you missed the point really badly.

Also,
"he has a Tablet PC too. Do you give your employees one of those? I didn't see any when I visited your offices recently. Oh, I guess you don't want your employees to go and work on code somewhere else other than in your office."

1. Could Microsoft try and push the idea of Tablet PC's any harder? It's not working well.
2. How does one code with a tablet PC and a stylus?

Scoble comes off as a smug teenager in that post, that's for certain.  Since I havn't read Joel's article, I can't say that he does or doesn't do the same.

In any case, deigning to respond to a petty attack like that in the first place is a sign of Scoble's character, and the actual content and tone of the post only makes him look like an ass.

I'm guessing he's in his early twenties?  If not, he might want to look for other work, like coaching high school baseball where most meatheads end up.

"It's not working well."

One must be careful about judging all markets everywhere simply based on what you see around yourself. Tablets are doing very well in a lot of vertical markets.

And while I admittedly don't code on a tablet, I do use my tablet for design, notes, meetings, etc. It's much, much easier to use when I am "anywhere but my desk" For some people, that may be a lot of the time, for others, not so much.

Philo [MSFT]

I don't think you code, but rather you test and make notes as to what needs fixing? And you feel cool b/c you are using a tablet. :)

>> 2. How does one code with a tablet PC and a stylus?

Great question.  Nobody's done it yet, and it may never turn into a hard-core coding platform, but when I think architecture and design, I think in pictures.  I usually work either on a whiteboard or a pad of paper.  I can't wait until I can build software on a tablet PC.

I just read a chapter header (I think it was in one of Tog's books) about not aiming a space probe at Jupiter, but rather at where Jupiter's going to be when the space probe gets there.

I think that's the point here....

"I'm not sure how to play the "my toy pile is bigger than your toy pile" games without sounding pissy, though. I'd like to see you try it. "

Pretty surprised that either of you are playing the game.  These are two excellent companies fighting for bragging rights over what?  You both have terrific working conditions, products, and people.  Why create controversy over dpi in your monitors?

This is a low-level version of squaring off with Ellison over who has the biggest yacht.

Mike

Oh dear Robert :-}, its a comment I made, not a statement of fact, though given the house style I know commentary is often mistaken for fact in MS that isn't usually the case outside of it.

Both Joel & Robert make good points. Both might have overlooked the part that says constructive critique is better than a mudslinging contest.

Joels post can be wittled down to:

- MS can no longer offer "get rich quick" as an incentive. Employees are now, well, employees.
- MS experimenting with openness will also expose heaps of internal critisism that otherwise would be blanketed and whitewashed by PR. Don't we all have friends in the industry? Every shop I know, large or small, will have people bitching in private, so what is truly different here?
- No large company is an "all star" corral (come on Joel, you have incredible difficulty finding a handfull of good people, and FCS is an icon. Suppose you needed a few 1.000)
- Developing large software is messy, schedules are constantly changed, features get ripped out and replaced, roadmaps altered. FogBugz is tiny by comparison, and yet FSC doesn't even give an inch beyond "We'll thell you when its done". Why is everybody acting so surprised?

I for one applaud the openness of MS. To be honest, I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a crackdown already. Kudos to the company for teking this on. I'm sure some shareholders might get pretty eeked about this at times.

But Robert, after first giving a good response of all the opportunities MS can offer, wasn't that last paragraph a totaly unnescessary tantrum lashout?

You know very well the a small shop such as FCS can not survive true bickering amongst the team, not in private, and most certainly not in public. There is no "internal relocation", "HR department" or "stay away from each other while time might or might not heal wounds" to padd the impacts as there is in a large company. You get into a bitter fight, you win or loose, you leave the farm, because there is only one penn and we're all in it.

You're the "social dynamics" expert, so you know bloody well that was a strike below the belt.

Now kiss and make up the both of you.

Mike -- Yachts are so yesterday.  Only Ellison can launch a developer into space:

http://oracle.promotionexpert.com/SpaceSweepstakes/en/index.jsp?Src=3559501&Act=11

I tried nominating some of my favorite people to be launched, but I've been told the contest doesn't work like that.  <g>

Matt B, you are nuts. Can MS push it any harder? YES! That's the whole problem. They haven't pushed it enough. Most people never even heard of it and lots of people are amazed by the versatility.

There aren't many people that own a Tablet PC and wish they didn't.

Now Robert:
"http://beta.technorati.com/pop/blogs/ maybe? Or, do you have to say I have credibility?"

Popularity != credibility, unless you think in high school terms, and not even true then.

Wow, so high level MS employees have better office than FC INTERNS?  That's ....not saying much.



So, Scoble has to go as high up the food chain as a Wiki developer* (assumably a high level programmer @ MS) just to find someone with a better office than a FC *INTERN*.  Not a flattering comparison for Microsoft.

*Dave Ornstein
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=77952#77952

Christ, this is so much about nothing. Robert, grow the f*** up. Joel, quit gloating, your company is small and you can't buy a small planet yet. (Nya nyah.)

Emotional maturity != industry visibility.

Looked closer, David O. is a SW architect at Microsoft.

So Scoble is saying that a MS software ARCHITECT compares favorably to a FC Intern. Not favorable for MS.

If you ask me, Joel's the one who fell into the trap. He's been able to remain largely above the fray with his Microsoft agnosticism over the years. But now with the success of FSC, he's gotten a little big for his britches and thinks he can go throw rocks at the rich neighbor's windows (no pun intended). Alienate the Slashdot crowd? Please. You think Bill Gates lies awake at night thinking, "Why don't those guys over at Slashdot like me?"

"They haven't pushed it enough. Most people never even heard of it and lots of people are amazed by the versatility."

It has been pronounced the "Year of the TabletPC" by Microsoft several times in the past, and they have gotten quite a lot of astroturfing done through the magazine media as well (remember that there was a pen computer version of Windows 3.1 - this isn't a new initiative), with wholes issues pimping table PCs.

If pen computing is revolutionary, it most certainly should be taking off like wildfire simply by the network effect - e.g. Five of Tom's peers see him roxxoring on his TabletPC, so they get one and then unintentionally sell it to each of their peers, and so on. My experience differs, and I've worked with a few people with tablets: Honestly it just doesn't sell me (and their use was generally awkward and better served by a piece of paper), and didn't seem worth the extra expense.

Yes, I think it was a cheap shot by Joel. He commented on Larry's blog earlier when Larry talked about his new monitor:

http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/05/19/420227.aspx#420283

BTW, I don't like Scoble's response to the cheap shot either. I don't know what will be ideal response but this was not it.

JD

"If you ask me, Joel's the one who fell into the trap."

Trap? Joel just got some premiere billing for Project Aardvark. This stuff is absolute gold. There is no negative outcome from this for FCS, while on Microsoft's side there is virtually no positive outcome.

The bottom line is that Tablet PCs are still too expensive.

+++If you ask me, Joel's the one who fell into the trap. He's been able to remain largely above the fray with his Microsoft agnosticism over the years. But now with the success of FSC, he's gotten a little big for his britches and thinks he can go throw rocks at the rich neighbor's windows (no pun intended). Alienate the Slashdot crowd? Please. You think Bill Gates lies awake at night thinking, "Why don't those guys over at Slashdot like me?"+++

Are you kidding?

Above the fray? 

Microsoft is a supposed industry leader.  Arguably THE industry leader.  OF COURSE it's a target for comparison and yes, ridicule at the hands of interested parties.

For an official channcel from Microsoft to acknowlege the comparison to a rinky-dink ISV in New York simply because an article got his dander up, that's something else.  Why is Scoble feeling so insecure over there?  My guess is that his girlfriend has been cheating on him with her English professor, or something.

>So Scoble is saying that a MS software ARCHITECT compares favorably to a FC Intern.

Actually, if I had only pointed at one person or one office, you might have had a point.

But, I pointed at a bunch of people, INCLUDING an intern.

Our company is fairly flat. People at the low end often have better equipment on their desks than executives here. For instance, I have a dual processor 64-bit machine and a Tablet PC (two of them actually) and two screens and a 3GHz Dell and I'm seven levels down from Gates.

Our interns, too, write software that millions of people use.

The audio feature in OneNote, for instance, was done by an intern.

>Why is Scoble feeling so insecure over there?  My guess is that his girlfriend has been cheating on him with her English professor, or something.

I'm married. Thanks for proving you don't read my blog at all and just are willing to take potshots at one item I wrote out of thousands.

Why am I insecure? Joel Spolsky is the most read developer on the planet. Seriously. He's sent me more traffic than any other person off of a single link.

So, what he says is taken seriously and needs to be refuted, otherwise it starts to be seen as truth.

Dennis: If pen computing is revolutionary, it most certainly should be taking off like wildfire simply by the network effect

It took six years for the Macintosh to really take off.

Computing devices aren't that easy to get to take off because they are so expensive.

The Tablet PC is doing just fine for only being out, what, three years?

"Matt B, you are nuts. Can MS push it any harder? YES! That's the whole problem. They haven't pushed it enough. Most people never even heard of it and lots of people are amazed by the versatility.

There aren't many people that own a Tablet PC and wish they didn't."

Haha please. When Bill G is giving speeches about Tablet PC, showing them off, and they're giving them away at TechEd, and giving it a full court press in the media, they're pushing it pretty hard.

The test for whether a product is desirable to the general market isn't how happy the (few) owners of them are, it's how badly people who don't have one want one.

I'd still like to know how to code on a Tablet PC.

You know that 'seven levels down from Gates' thing doesn't mean very much if you run a flattish (which in Microsoft's kind of organisation means its the screw that squeals that gets the oil), corporate structure.  I was once technically two away from Ray Noorda but it meant absolutely nothing.

Also, I love that Robert Scoble asks Joel if any of his employees (who are... software developers) have any nice hardware toys like the MS Hardware division has.

Talk about apples and oranges.

+++I'm married. Thanks for proving you don't read my blog at all and just are willing to take potshots at one item I wrote out of thousands.+++

So what you're saying is that your individual articles don't stand on their own merit, and that one has to read your entire body of literary genius in order to understand you properly?

Excuse me..

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA


::choke::

One final stone throw:

What do "evangelists" do anyway besides a) sound like pompous asses  and b) talk about how great stuff is that they didn't work on but take credit for it? Do YOU ship a million copies of anything?

This reminds me of the MS evangelist who said Firefox was great, but he couldn't understand why they weren't using Avalon and XAML yet.

I hope that the intern that did the audio code in One Note (an almost good Office application, so good it doesn't belong in Office), was properly compensated and is receiving royalties as, if he was an intern, then he wasn't an employee and so should have his intellectual property rights acknowledged.

By the way, its not necessarily a good thing in marketing to say that your product is written by interns (over simplification), it tends to only invite attacks such as 'Oh, so _that's_ why its so crap, they use beginners'.  This is regardless of the actual quality or not of the software.

>What do "evangelists" do anyway besides a) sound like pompous asses  and b) talk about how great stuff is that they didn't work on but take credit for it?

Keep in mind, my blog is my personal thing. I usually do it on nights and weekends.

Most evangelists here work with software developers, say, at Adobe or Amazon, to get them to build software for the next version of Windows (or, if you work at Apple, since they have evangelists too, for Macs).

It's a job that requires having technical skill, relationship skill, and presentation/strategy skills.

Me? I'm a weird one. My job is to walk around Microsoft with a camcorder and interview people about what they are doing. You can see my day job's work at http://channel9.msdn.com

Simon: good point, but in this case the feature is most excellent. I'm using it all the time. It's the killer feature of OneNote.

And, when you intern here you sign a lot of documents so that ownership of your ideas is pretty clear to everyone.

Yes, I knew the answer to the question, but thanks for confirming it so everyone knows he did it for the love of MS. 

:-)

Malcolm Gladwell actually did come to our office... I remember seeing some A-List blogger here recently also :)

And as soon as the Creek makes a billion dollars (like what Microsoft makes daily on interest)... all the interns are getting Hummers.  We will not be outdone by Microsoft!

Our interns could totally beat up your interns.

"Our interns could totally beat up your interns."

I would loveeeeeeee to see this fight! Are you going to shoot it in the movie?

From Scoble's blog:
>Did the Prime Minister of Indochina visit your offices a few weeks ago?

Huh?  There's a nation called Indochina ? And it has a prime minister?
I thought Indochina was the old name for the region of Southeast Asia(Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc). 

Perhaps you meant Indonesia?

Did the PM from Indonesia brings lots of one-dollar bills for each license of XP?

"Our interns, too, write software that millions of people use. "

*cough*
Well in 20 years maybe.


Seriously though, the pissing fight is really childish on both parts.

"all the interns are getting Hummers."

You know, if Fog Creek was anywhere but NYC I'd be sure he was talking about a car...

Philo

great point about mr gentoo though. not the /. arg but the fact MS hired him. The company needs to get smart about decoupling the OS and componetry to allow things like effective HPC. A script based MS Portage tool could be freaking awesome for admins. tie that into monad and some very interesting just in time configuration possibilities arise. one of MS's biggest problems is the interdependency fugazi. deploy one component and deploy em all. but customers want some freedom. portage was making it less of a worry in OSS stacks. now MS might do something in that regard for its own monolith. or maybe my redeye from NY last night is affecting my mind.

suffice to say MS just hired some talent.

At RedMonk our equipment is just equipment, but we have fun, and we never feel like we have to do anything makes us feel dirty the next day. that is good enough for me and Stephen. I hope. we can't really brag on anything though.

joel's skewering did seem slightly less effective than some others but that's the way it goes. i just appreciated a fresh post that wasn't just fog creek inside baseball.

keep up the argument - its fun.

"Keep in mind, my blog is my personal thing. I usually do it on nights and weekends."

Robert, come again?
That blog of yours got you the job at MS. Blogging is being touted as a revolution in PR, and customer relations, not in the least by you.
It's that blog that gets you to rub shoulders with the upper echelons at the mother ship.

And yet you remain that it's "a personal thing"? OK, I'll bite. If this is "just personal" as you state, where is your "official company blog"? Surely, a man such as yourself, probably one of the people on the planet most in tune with this new channel, and who's job carriers the title "evangelist", would not miss out on using this whole blog phenomenon on the job, right?

Aswer me this at least: Could Allan Greenspan have a "just personal" blog discussing finance? Could George W. Bush have a "just personal" blog discussing the middle east?

As a big Gentoo fan, I didn't know if I should be happy or sad that he got hired.  In the end, I always love when really good developers get picked up and given (hopefully) high paying jobs.

Scoble is the leader of the free world, now?

This thread gets more and more ridiculous.  I love it!

Robert - I don't follow you stuff - but the article came across as a very silly over-reaction.  Sit down, nice cup of tea, relax.

As for the rest, I'm always amazed by the ability of the usual suspects to find a flamewar.

I find this thread funny, too.

So Scoble is worried that Micro$oft is no longer the cool place to be for developers.

I'm not gooing to get into whether or not that's true, but if I were Scoble, I'd be more concerned that guys like this are turning off Windows: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/bing/0,15704,1067104,00.html

When the non-techie business user, he of the spreadsheet, word processor and email/web needs, stops buying, Micro$oft's precious revenues will vanish.

Stuff that in your office chair/research perks/worldwide offices/etc. and smoke it.

I responded here:

http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3296370981

The short version? Microsoft is currently choking on tightly coupled software - thus the interminable delays in getting marquee software out the door.  Beyond that, I've given Joel a lot of crap in the past (ask me about Exception Handling), but he doesn't come off as entering a pissing contest here.

This whole thing is rather disappointing. The quality of dialogue is the worst I've seen from both Scoble and Spolsky for quite some time. Scoble took the bait and responded in such a way that wasn't particularly flattering to himself to the company he was trying to defend. Even at its best, his defense seemed terribly juvenile.

On the other hand, Spolsky's opening shot, while is based on some reasonable points, the overall tone waste pathetic. Especially in light of the fact that the original post he was responding to on the Jobs Blog was over two weeks old, Joel comes off as what can only be described as being spiteful, bitchy, and just plain catty.

I agree with earlier sentiments: you two need to shake hands and grow up.

>There's a nation called Indochina ?

LOL!

Matt B:  How do you code on a Tablet PC?

Keep in mind that you can plug a keyboard into these things.  Also, there is an Alpha tool for Visual Studio.NET that Scott Weinstein did called IdentifierCache.  Details at http://weblogs.asp.net/sweinstein/archive/2005/01/18/355576.aspx

Robert,

First, I have to say that's a might impressive laundry list you have there. I'm not really that much of a geek, but you still had me drooling a couple of times.

Second, one way of coming across as less pissy might have been to be less personal in your post. You could have produced the same laundry list without the personal jibes - indeed, most of the list speaks for itself.

When you clearly have the upper hand, you don't need the literary technique of personal jibes.

But I must admit, the whole back-and-forth is fun to read :)

You think that's personal? Heh!

I like Joel. Maybe that didn't come through enough in my writings.

And, there are things that a small company can offer that a big company can't.

High risk/reward ratios, for instance. Focus of purpose, for another.

For crying out loud people! Grow up!

joel wrote an article that had no real point, other than to start a pissing contest.

Scoble answered that humorously, and i'd say, he well and truly won.

Come on guys, Joel stirred the pot and scoble replied.  Joels post was as ego centric as you can get, and scoble replied.  Granted, the better approach is to let egos be egos and move on, but he decided otherwise.

I was always puzzled by how all the Chinese are so crazy about Mao.

Now I witness it first hand.

Hmm, everybody here is so blinded by their anti-MS hate that they are doing anything they can to avoid the fact that, simply, Joel got owned. Badly.

Michael Pryor wins the days prize for the best attempt at a de-fuse. Good try! But hey, people love a good argument...

:)

Joel needs to post a rebuttal of the rebuttal to really milk this baby.

I think the people complaining the most do not really understand Scoble. He has a sense of humor, number one. But Scoble's brilliance is that he is unafraid to be stupid, something very rare at an organization like Microsoft. Actually, he is afraid of being stupid, but he overcomes that by pushing himself to not over-analyze how something may come across.
Sure, some of the lines could have been delivered better and there could have been some more discretion...but if that is what you are after than I think you are missing a large part of what makes blogging interesting.

Joel (with API war and everything): 10
Scoble: 0

Robert, don't ever make a mistake that your readers are so stupid you can just wave your and with fascination of village halfwits we will mistake parlor tricks for reality.
Yes, it *is* truth. It is painful truth you have to deal with. You can't get users to adopt even XP after all years. longhorn will be even worse irrelevent non-event for long time. You can't get people to install and thus use .NET. Just like Hugh told you there is nothing exciting your do or sell right now. "sell what we got" is a joke. you got nothing relevent, just the stuff you had decade ago with better pixels. TabletPC and FlightSimulator not going to save the day. Google is firing in all cylinders releasing one amazing thing after another – suggest, gmail, maps, accelerator, dark fiber – omg. I can’t even say you really playing catch up – you barely on that field at all. Oh, will MSN Earth API be open for 3rd party development right of the bat? If its going to be typical MSFT closed licensing gulag, *forget* any chances on getting initiative back on this.

You need to reinvent the company. you need to do exiting things that thousands of hackers around the world start hacking and building on top of your stuff in one click, not by filling out reams of legal toilet paper (remember Passport or Messenger licensing process?) Now its apparent you don't any incentives to attract people smart who can reinvent the company.

Read the fucking NOVEL already written on that wall over the years. Take ACTION. Raise alarm. Even if much of handwriting is Joel’s, its not his text.

BTW do you UNDERSTAND why Joel (and myself) are doing this? because we LIKE microsoft tech ecology. We don't for it to go away as irrelevent fluke in decade or so. will be emabarrasing to learn Linux in my old age. yet what what one can do if king is nacked and walks with imbecilic intensity right onto the cliff?

Scream your lungs out.

That's not parlor tricks. They are attractive. Otherwise why people are so excited about Google hiring so many tech icons?

Robert "rebuttal" is business as usual.

The only bad stuff is the following:

"Or, talk to famous blogger Joshua Micah Marshall about how compelling the new Tablet PC is. He's above you in the Technorati Top 100 so maybe he onto something?"

Anonymous Architect:

>You can't get users to adopt even XP after all years.
I wouldn't go that far. So far I've seen more than half the users have upgraded. Let's see, that's a few hundred million users. What have you done for a few hundred million people?

>You can't get people to install and thus use .NET.

I just talked to the IT guy at PACCAR. Don't know who they are? They build a serious percentage of the world's trucks. Kenworth. Peterbuilt. Etc.

They run all of their factories on .NET.

>Oh, will MSN Earth API be open for 3rd party development right of the bat?

Does Google's Maps have an officially supported API? Does it matter?

>Now its apparent you don't any incentives to attract people smart who can reinvent the company.

Oh, so you calling the guy who built Gentoo "not smart" now? Oh, you calling the guy who started Lotus "not smart" now? Oh, you calling the guy who invented Wikis "not smart" now? Interesting.

> [PACCAR] run all of their factories on .NET.

Sorry, but this sounds like those "Yahoo runs on Oracle" ads in the mid 90s.

Yes, Yahoo used Oracle in the HR department, but all the heavy-duty page serving and search tasks were on servers running BSD.

That company may use .net somewhere, but it's almost certainly not in the mission critical sense you make it out to be.

(That kind of stuff, BTW, is what has poeple so fired up about your brand of bs).

Participating in this thread is like pissing in a warm suit . . . you may get a warm/fuzzy but you just look like a sharp dressed invalid.

It's a win-win situation.

Joel gets publicity worth at least a million dollars, maybe more.

MS gets to show off some of its impressive tackle.

"For instance, I have a dual processor 64-bit machine and a Tablet PC (two of them actually) and two screens and a 3GHz Dell and I'm seven levels down from Gates."

Scoble, it is a nice perk to have all that hardware, but do you really need it for your day-to-day work? MS is a public company and shareholders may start asking questions ;-)

Robert:
(lets stay here to enjoy Joel impeachable sense of style with nicely formatted Georgia and virgin white backgrounds)

> I wouldn't go that far. So far I've seen more than half the users > have upgraded. Let's see, that's a few hundred million users.

Slightly more then half. And that’s it. Curve is going flat. Because Win2K is *fine*. XP is great. You know what you missing? Its no longer about what runs on CPU. It just solved problem. Actualy MSFT was largely responsible for solving it (kudos). Our problems are of new age. Social software. Geospatial applications. Metaverse tagging. Instead, you keep solving old problems.

> They run all of their factories on .NET.

Awesome. And I bet IBM still sells few mainframes now and then to factories or Kraft, or somebody who is so retarded they need them. Also this factories pay for water and electricity.

Robert, if you want to be IT plumbing company, all power to you. This is that derelict 4rth part of Geofrey “Chasm” Moore chart. That’s a commitment to become irrelevant, newer make any news, get P/E about 5 or 10, and slowly cruise your way to slow road to oblivion.

Can you make anything which makes student living in dorms wake each other in middle of the night screaming “look what MSFT just released, revolution is happening without us”?

> Does Google's Maps have an officially supported API? Does it
> matter?


THAT’S MY FUCKING POINT! NO, THEY DON’T. USE IT!!! Have you seen housing maps?! Have you see memento maps? Crime lab?  There is whole breed of social geospatial applications being born every week. Thankfully, thankfully once in a while Google makes dumbest mistake, goes evil and sends out cease & desist letters instead of using community momentum. You have little window to take the lead, open up API, and harness all this creativity to use as you see fit, become a leader and then convert it to suites of commercial services and apps.

Oh wait. You can’t really decide that. you just run Ministry of Truth and thre is 6 layer of management to make any sort of decision. And you think it doesn't matter. yep, homebrew computer club did not matter for a while. basic for altair was lame thing too. geospatial API doesn't matter today. social software are mostly toys so far. nothing to see here. move along. *sigh*

> Oh, so you calling the guy who built Gentoo "not smart" now? > Oh, you calling the guy who started Lotus "not smart" now?
> Oh, you calling the guy who invented Wikis "not smart" now?

Ok, that’s 3 so far. lets add you, Bill, Steve, Don, Dave, Andreas. What the heck – its probably a 100. don't see even half that in blogsphere, yet let say may be 200. out of 50,000? 0.4%? oh my. Nothing to worry about.

In dynosaur body it may take hours for pain to reach the brain.

Nenad: yes, actually I do. I do a lot of video compression while doing other work. It needs a lot of processor power.

>Have you seen housing maps?! Have you see memento maps? Crime lab? 

Yes, of course I have. If you've been reading my blog you know I was one of the first to link to those things and praise Google Maps.

I just found a cool weblog about maps, by the way. http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/

Did you see that Google shut down one hack? http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2005/06/google_shuts_down_map_hack.phtml

So much for building a business on unsupported APIs.

If you really want to see a futuristic map, check this one out: http://map.search.ch/

It even shows you where open parking spaces are.

Wow - this page *is* /. just in white. Very nice. Easier to read. Same pulp.

Joel seems surprisingly quiet on this one!

I've got respect for both gentleman (heck I just bought two of Joel's books last weekend, with a third on order when it's available) but it's a shame that some of his comments here appear to be so misinformed.

Robert's reply struck me as an appropriate "all guns blazing" response to one of Joel's less well thought out pieces.

I find it odd that someone who comes over so well - intelligent, considered, fair-minded and great at presenting clear arguments (OK, so he doesn't like "average" developers much and clearly doesn't tolerate fools gladly!) in his books should have got so "simplistic" with his mini-rant this time around. 

I felt the same way with his over-simplification of "the MSDN Magazine camp vs Raymond Cheng" arguments a while back, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do to get visibility (which is a shame). Sure there is the odd grain of truth in some of the discussion put forward but it's blown up and exaggerated out of all proportion, seemingly to get attention (for all the wrong reasons).

As for Robert, I don't know him at all but having heard him at the London Geek dinner last week I don't think anybody could call him a Microsoft bigot - truth is he's probably too honest for his own good.

> > [PACCAR] run all of their factories on .NET.

>Sorry, but this sounds like those "Yahoo runs on Oracle" ads in the mid 90s.

>Yes, Yahoo used Oracle in the HR department, but all the heavy-duty page serving and search tasks were on servers running BSD.

>That company may use .net somewhere, but it's almost certainly not in the mission critical sense you make it out to be.

>(That kind of stuff, BTW, is what has poeple so fired up about your brand of bs).

This is not a personal attack, just something that has been completely irking me lately, and it's all over the Internet, not just here.

Scoble posted something that he knows as fact, and the argument is "but it's almost certainly not in the mission critical sense you make it out to be." Do you know this to be true? If so, did you know at the time you posted, or was that a rampant guess (which is what it came across as)? How is your speculation more believable than Scoble's "brand of bs"? Sure, there is spin involved, but he would be a poor employee indeed if he didn't look out for his employer.

With such an obvious bias, one would think that you would take the time to actually refute Scoble's statements with facts of your own; instead, your argument loses all credibility, and any valid points you may have get automatically thrown out by anyone who can think for themselves.

JOS like /.? That's almost funny

.JOS is one of the most pro-Microsoft sites around these days. Mind you, while there are a couple of dyed-in-the-wool- begging-to-be- Microsoft-employee regulars (people who would somehow find a way of justifying Bill Gates personally eating babies, and who'll tell you that Longhorn is turning out exactly as planned), by and large most of the contributors are pragmatic and rationally pro-Microsoft: The kind that Microsoft actually needs (rather than a bunch of sucking-up-to-Scoble teat suckers hoping to get on the ins with Microsoft. Those people have zero credibility anywhere).

Jason,

I think Scoble and No Cruncher are both doing the same thing: without specific facts, they make misleading insinuations.

You're right about No Cruncher: he presents no evidence, and has an agenda.

But Scoble is doing the same thing: if it was a super important function within the factory he should have said so; leaving it vague like that is the wrong thing to do.

Somehow, I like the comment about this thread's being like "pissing in an old suit".

I know I'm feeling nice and warm now ;)

Since I'm the poor sot caught in the middle here.

I didn't mention my $2000 Bodybilt office chair.  Or the 3.4gHz P4 desktop computer with a 200G hard disk (and 1G of RAM).

As I mentioned in my original post about the monitor, if I'd asked for the monitor I'd have gotten it.  I just never asked.  I was happy with my two CRT monitors (one 20" the other 19").  It wasn't until I got the flat panel that I realized just how much better they are.

But if I'd asked for the monitor earlier, I'd have gotten it.

Who the hell is this "Robert Scoble"? :)

<jk>
Robert, Joel:  We're playing paintball in my little corner of Flyover Country next Sat.  Care to settle this with a duel--hot pink at 30 paces?
</jk>

Seriously, gentlemen:  How do either one of you actually *know* that either MS or FCS is the coolest place to work?  Asking people who already work there smacks ever so slightly of circular logic to me.  Even if either one of you would hire me (doubtful at best), I'm not sure that either company would hold my "dream job".  Not that my opinion amounts to a hot cup of diddley-squat to either of you, but I suspect that I'm not alone in wondering whether I'd want to work for or with y'all in light of this.

Don't get my wrong:  This is the politest catfight I can ever recall seeing, and I'm seriously impressed.  Pray continue, though:  This is both edifying and entertaining. ;-)

The shoulda had this thread on the Monty Python "argument skit".

>That company may use .net somewhere, but it's almost certainly not in the mission critical sense you make it out to be.

Not according to the executive I met with yesterday. Their .NET apps run nearly the entire factory line in 10 factories.

Wasn't it Hitler who said, "Don't criticize the other guys salad cream when yours has gone sour"?

But surely I can figure out that "Robert Scoble" is far less credible and is a poor writer than Joel because from his following remarks:

--"Keep in mind, my blog is my personal thing. I usually do it on nights and weekends."--

--"You think that's personal? Heh!
I like Joel. Maybe that didn't come through enough in my writings."--
 
Now should anyone take your words seriously?

Call me strange, but I like a stinging Joel post being countered by Scoble's shooting back full force from the hip.

Scoble says on his site that he is sorry. Don't. Thanks for responding before coffee and giving us all a good time. Now let's all hope Joel just had his yearly rum party and when coming home decides to flame right back instead of waiting till he is all sober and sensible again.

I find the "early morning" thing a bit tough to believe (not that it isn't possible, it just is very surprizing). It was very early in the morning on the West coast when Scoble replied, and secondly his retort was a lengthy, reference link heavy diatribe (and collecting all of those links, collecting them into a readable document, is time sucking).

It really didn't seem like something that one would spit out in a couple of minutes before making a pot of coffee.

Geeze, folks - I certainly thought this started out as a good-natured poking, but there seem to be a lot of people trying to drag it down into the mud.

Get a little perspective here, right?  We're talking about working environments, not ancestry, and certainly not world dominance.

What you have to remember is that many of us hae been off elsewhere perfecting our mudslinging skills and it's a pity for all that hard work to go to waste.

Michael

Just curious, have you ever seen a Hummer?

Sincerely
the Creek enthusiast

Y'mean "?off elsewhere", right?  ;-)

If I wrote a semi successful short story, would that make me the ulimate voice in the world of literature?

Joel, think about that.

This was great. It's like a catfight between two ex-girlfriends (the thought of either of whom makes you throw up just a little bit in your mouth).

Scoble's shrill tone jibes with the inner asshole he has probably worked much of his life to try and suppress. Dear Robert, no shit MSFT has all of that and more... it damn well should, duh (and you can do this kind of exercise at most successful global enterprises).

That he even dignified Joel's misanthropic little tirade with a response is possibly even more comical. I'm not sure how Joel could be simultaneously more clueless and self-important.

If you don't get that companies have to develop a certain level of order, consistency and bureaucracy as they grow by tens of thousands of employees, then you're naive beyond redemption. Moreover, as a self-professed hiring expert, you would think Joel might realize that people don't work places for chairs and monitors. They work there for work content, opportunity and sometimes even money.

If Microsoft is so damned moribund, how did they hire guys like Chris Sells, Brad Wilson, Don Box, Peter Provost, Jim Hugunin and Daniel Robbins. (And this is just a random smattering of real live badass developers just off the top of my head--would any of them consider working for Joel's little company? Maybe... can't say it's a certainty and I can't say it would because of the damn office space or monitors.)

Seriously, who wants to work at FCS? Are there really taht many people dying to work with ASP-effing-classic? Sad days man, sad.

So I score this 0 for Scobledozer and -1 for Joel. The both come off looking like open-mike night ingenues.

Seriously, this is like the president--these two yabos are some of the loudest voices of our industry? Where are the geniuses, where are the visionaries--why can't Anders have a blog for the love of God (hmm, imagine what he could do with a piece of crap like FogBUGZ...).

"If Microsoft is so damned moribund, how did they hire guys like"...

Life at many corporations is different for the celebrities - e.g. the established superstars generally get incredible salaries, and they inevitably are given significant influence and perks beyond what a normal employee has. The fact that Microsoft can open the purse and hire a few of the best doesn't necessarily mean that their general recruiting is as successful. The fact that Anders can be brought in and given rein to significantly direct a large part of the development can't possibly scale down to the grunt developer. I have no clue how Microsoft works politically or structurally, and maybe everyone really is that empowered and financially rewarded, but I doubt it.

Similarily, at FCS I don't think Joel is looking at hiring the established superstars - they're either doing their own thing and FCS couldn't possibly offer the financial or political reward they require, or they'd want to be partners (which I doubt Joel would be interested in).

The point is that the edge cases don't really apply.

Not unreasonable points, Dennis. Although not everyone I mention is really a cardboard-cutout-carrying superstar, a number of them are. And I would gather these folks get an extremely large and reward-filled playground to roam as well as many other self-actualizing benefits.

That said, edge cases don't always apply, but when someone's generalizing out of their hindquarters, the do have some bearing. There are still a ton of extremely sharp people working at Microsoft and they are hiring smart people there every day... just like they are at Google, Yahoo!, etc.

Microsoft is a big league team and there will always be people who want to make it to The Show. There are other competitive options right now and Microsoft probably lacks some of the hiring cachet that it had even 5 years ago. That said, the cachet they've lost is fathoms deeper than all the cred FCS could ever put together.

The original post from Gretchen, recruiter-droid has been widely bandied about as evidence of this or that. All her keyhole observation amounts to is that there are other big league places to go work. Ummm, okay, duh. Smart people used to go work at Lotus, Novell, Borland, or Corel. The big league always has more than one team or it isn't very big at all.

I don't think any of the basic observations about MSFT are that far off. But to conclude this is some massive revelation about Microsoft and then turn it into a My-Flat-Panel-looks-bigger-in-a-codpiece bitchfest is just absurd, particularly when the most compelling thing on your resume is that you used to work for Microsoft in the first place.

The information on which Joel bases his claims (i.e. the links he chose to include) paint a very narrow picture, or in some cases are just factually incorrect.

For example, as a new employee at MS I can certainly say that the information found in the "cutting benefits" story (http://bink.nu/Article1849.bink) is simply not true. And regarding "Furniture Police games", the week after I started I began ordering additional items I needed to be comfortable in my office - all on (approved by) the company.  (See Larry Osterman's previous response on this thread too.)

Robert's awesome for taking the time to dispute these claims - on his blog, in his comments, and in this forum.  Where's Joel been through all this?

I am only interested in:

Would Joel ever discuss MS again?

If not, then Robert wins :)

>>You can't get users to adopt even XP after all years.
>I wouldn't go that far. So far I've seen more than half the
>users have upgraded. Let's see, that's a few hundred million
>users. What have you done for a few hundred million people?

1. It is inevitable as people upgrade their PC's that they upgrade their OS. What AA is talking about is people rushing to upgrade, because they're so excited about the new product.

2. What have you done for a few hundred million people yourself? I can't wait to get hired by a huge company so I can start taking credit for all of their (past) success :)

You come off as a decent guy, but your argumentative style is horrible. What are you out to prove, that Microsoft is a big company that makes lots of money? Thanks, we get the point!

(Again, you've failed to address any of the serious points in Joel's critique about MS recruiting. And I wish very one would note that Joel's post was in response to something from a MS employee themself, rather than some random shot)

I'm loving this thread!

First, Scoble's all like "Oh no, you diddin'!" in his response to Joel... then muppet comes out and questions the Scobleizer's maturity. Priceless!

Adam, you're not coming across as credible. Are you saying that Microsoft has gone back to $0 copay for drugs? Gone back to the 15% discount on ESPP? Gone back to having towels in the locker rooms? I don't work there so I can't say.

Wether or not those are important in chosing a place to work is one thing, but the loss of them sure was some sort of message.

>Yesterday Scott Stanzel, former Bush-Cheney Press Secretary spoke here.

That's right folks -- THE Scott Stanzel.

Best. Boast. EVAR!

How do you write code on a tablet computer?  I dunno, since I've never even **seen** anyone with a tablet computer, but I suspect you just sit down and write it.  Back in the day, I used to write entire FORTRAN programs on the red-eye from LA to the East Coast on sheets of notebook paper, without any access to a laptop PC (which was easy enough, since they hadn't been invented yet).  Then when you got back to the office from the airport the next morning, you went to the keypunch machine, typed in the code that you had written out in longhand, took the card deck down to the glass-enclosed computer room, where the operator would run it and give you back the big stack of green-and-whyte line printer output so you could see whether the compiler caught any bugs such as elements in a COMMON block out of order due to your sleep depravation somewhere over the mid-West.  And if you had been mainlining enough caffein to do it right, the code would run!!!

IDE's are for wimps.  :)

mb,

10% discount on stock, not 15% anymore. And copays are still $0.00 (unless you want the brand name drug and a generic exists). 

Not much of a loss, especially considering the benefits are still much better than most (if not all) places.  Of course you don't work at MS, so you're the one that isn't credible.

This is somewhat related to "think small" idea at Microsoft which I recall from somewhere as reference to Robert Scoble.