[Info-vax] OT: Arun Kishan

[Neil Rieck]

On Jan 11, 5:01 am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:

[...snip...]

> > Why? Because of the influence of the ex-DECies at Microsoft.
>
> I think you vastly overestimate the influence of techies in a market-driven organization.

Nope: after recently reading "Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to
Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft (1994) by G.
Pascal Zachary" I learned that Bill Gates welcomed the exDECies with
open arms knowing that they (the exDECies) would fix the crappy code
bases based upon DOS. I don't need to remind anyone here that Bill
Gates and Paul Allen had access to PDP-8 systems at Lakeside School.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/gates.htm#tc2
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/gates.htm#tc4

So DEC Management really screwed up when they drove Cutler and the ex-
DECies into the arms of Bill Gates (who just happened to be running
Microsoft at the time). I see this all the time when upper management
over estimates their own value to the company while under estimating
the value of the hired talent. I'm not sure what happened to the VPs
at DEC but Cutler, along with many of the exDECies, have become
millionaires many times over.

On top of all of this, Cutler has retired several times from Microsoft
but they always lure him back to finish off stuff that the
microsofties could do. The last time this happened was with Windows
Azure.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2145

Bill Gates wasn't dumb. He set up two competing development streams
(exDECies vs. microsofties) then just chose the best one.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/