[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[John Wallace]

On Nov 9, 7:25 pm, "P. Sture" <paul.nos... at sture.ch> wrote:
> In article
> <d75d3d4b-acf8-4b92-a8ba-1d1c21386... at v36g2000yqv.googlegroups.com>,
>  John Wallace <johnwalla... at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > On Nov 9, 11:00 am, Neil Rieck <n.ri... at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> > > When you go back and read documents like this:
>
> > >http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/bell.htm#Transitio...
>
> > With the greatest possible respect to the author, and even bearing in
> > mind the interview is in 1995 (a couple of years after NT first
> > emerged) what on earth is this quote about:
> > "Until Microsoft, I though DEC had the greatest engineering
> > organization, but Microsoft is substantially better."
>
> I think you have quoted out of context there, John. The full paragraph
> plus the first 2 sentences of the next one:
>
> "The more I¹ve gotten away from large organizations, the more I feel
> that this organizational hierarchy has to be totally supportive up and
> down. It starts with the CEO and it goes down from there. Why am I such
> a fan of Microsoft?  Look at Gates, Allchin, Maritz Š go down the line
> of people running the company.  Everyone link in the management chains
> is filled with great people. Why I like them is they¹re smart, they know
> their business, they know technology and they know what they¹re doing
> and they¹ve got this mission of creating this industry and wanting to
> put it out there. And I haven¹t seen that at other companies. Until
> Microsoft, I though DEC had the greatest engineering organization, but
> Microsoft is substantially better.
>
> DEC is doing a lot of interesting Internet technology and products right
> now[11] and they an advanced development group in the bay area, but it
> is managed by an incompetent. I don¹t see that they are going to figure
> out how to do it as a business."
>
> To me he is talking about the _organization_ there, not the final
> products.
>
> --
> Paul Sture

Fair comment, probably, but the role of the management organization in
a product development company is at least in part to, er, manage
product development successfully. Management can make or break any
business very easily. Management broke DEC and management made
Microsoft what it is today. Engineering management and "the
engineering organization" specifically also made Microsoft products
what they are today.

Back in 1995, when the interview was recorded, it may not have been
quite so obvious that even Windows NT would end up as a laughing stock
in the software security world, trusted by neither its end users nor
the "content owners" who thought Trusted Computing meant an end to end
copy-protected HD delivery channel (that's what Vista was for).
Hindsight's a wonderful thing.

What *should* have already been obvious in 1995 is, as has already
been pointed out in an earlier reply, very few folk in MS Engineering
or engineering management could engineer their way out of a paper bag;
every worthwhile asset had come from outside, either by legitimate or
other means.

Incidentally, there was at least as much VAXELN in NT as there was VMS
in NT. It's acknowledged in Custer's Inside Windows NT book but rarely
mentioned elsewhere, as stealing from an OS hardly anyone ever heard
of doesn't make for such good headlines as stealing an OS that was
once the industry standard.