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Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot more to replicating something like Xobni in a megacorporation like MSFT than just the programming. In a lot of cases it's easier to get an acquisition signed off on than a new department to make a new product.

And they get more than just code, and people who write code. They get a little street cred back in the hacker community for picking up a YC startup. They get people who have vision, which MSFT appears to be in need of these days. It could be the beginning of a new era for them.

Also, Xobni has had a number of high quality engineers (probably much better than what you'd typically find slaving away in the trenches at MSFT) working on their plugin for a lot more than a few months. I'm guessing the programming cost would be a lot higher than you might think.

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I think there is a ill informed mentality that somehow hackers are "smarter" than the coders working at Microsoft. To be honest most of the people I have met at the startup community aren't really all that special in terms of "intelligence" but they do have that drive which is what makes them special. I just think people in this community need to stop ego boosting themselves... yes some of you are probably pretty smart... but most of you aren't impressively smart or talented -- just very driven... (which is a great trait by the way)

as far as the actual commentary goes I think Microsoft is doing it because honestly 30-40 million is chump change for them and yeah they could develop it but why bother when you already have it tall done and the structure already setup?

Perhaps the programmers I've met from Microsoft are atypical, but they've been smart as hell. Whatever Microsoft's problems are (and clearly they have some), it isn't that they don't have any smart people on campus there.

I know a lot of really smart people who can't program worth a darn.

If you want to work at MS you're already lacking in the taste department. And what's the interview process, brainteasers or BSing your way through random estimates like the number of gas stations in the country?

Being good at bluster can make someone seem pretty smart. But the computer doesn't care about that. It filters out what you can really do from what you can fool people into thinking you can do.

> I know a lot of really smart people who can't program worth a darn.

Like I said, they may not be typical, but most of the Microsoft people I've met work on compiler design, static verifiers, and things like that. If where you come from that's considered trivial stuff, feel free to make your own judgements accordingly.

> If you want to work at MS you're already lacking in the taste department.

Really? Last I checked, there are openings on the F# team. Would it really be that horrible to get big-company pay and benefits to have the opportunity to hack on compilers for functional languages?

> And what's the interview process, brainteasers or BSing your way through random estimates like the number of gas stations in the country?

Done away with, last I heard.

> I've met work on compiler design, static verifiers, and things like that

Not on the heavy consumer apps, eh?

> Last I checked, there are openings on the F# team.

So you're saying they have positions open that need people with taste to work on them. In other words, they have a shortage of people with taste ;)

> Done away with, last I heard.

What's the process now?

> Not on the heavy consumer apps, eh?

No, the Microsoft people I've met tend to be from the language teams, mostly because I'm working a lot with IronPython and F# in my codebase, so that's the kind of thing I go to conferences about.

And, to be honest, working on language implementations in small teams for Microsoft sounds a lot more appealing than working on Windows or Office in ginormous bureaucratic teams. Then again, being a tiny cog in the AdSense machine doesn't sound appealing to me either.

> What's the process now?

Doesn't sound all that different from a Google interview.

"I've told folks that my MS interview was on par in difficulty as my Ph.D. candidacy oral examination, partly due to the fact that it was much, much longer. (A Ph.D. oral exam is done by 3-5 professors vs. you in a room and they decide whether you continue in your studies or whether they kick you out). Mine started at 10am and ended at 6:30pm or so when I sat down with Scott Guthrie at the end of my loop."

http://www.iunknown.com/2008/03/steve-yegge-on.html

I also know a lot of dumb people that can't program worth a damn. What's your point?

Wanting to work a corporation that has big revenues with job security, stability, steady paychecks, interesting projects (yes, there are still interesting projects everything from online, web, to Xbox), big campus treatment, vacation, healthcare benefits, and et al. Yeah, that's just an outright dumb move.

> I also a lot of dumb people that can't program worth a damn. What's your point?

Try to keep up here, Freddo. Try following the context :) Smart is orthogonal to skilled at a particular endeavor.

> Yeah, that's just an outright dumb move.

Funny how you twisted "lacking in the taste department" into "dumb". It's a computer industry truism that MS lacks taste, whereas Apple has good taste.

This is also amusing: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/05.html

I think an emphasis on taste can be good, but not when it leads to a holier than thou attitude. Not only in terms of decency, but it also means less efficiency and aesthetics.

Say efficiency and aesthetics are two sides of the same coin. So, if you put them at odds with each other you won't ever reach the epitome of either.

Taste is also orthogonal to skill at programming. Apple had better taste then Microsoft even when their code was absolute crap under the hood.

You can have taste without being able to program well, but you can't program well without good taste.

The original point was that MS had smart people so a lack of smarts couldn't be the problem. The salient points are 1) smarts don't guarantee programming skill, and 2) smarts don't guarantee taste.

> You can have taste without being able to program well, but you can't program well without good taste.

Fair enough. In that sense, then, I wouldn't say that programmers at Microsoft lack taste by definition.

There are things at Microsoft that have demonstrated solid taste: the original NT kernel comes to mind, as do early iterations of Word and Excel (starting back when they were primarily developed for Mac). LINQ. WCF. The DLR. There are also smaller pieces of tools that seem elegant, even when there are issues with the larger design. Active Patterns in F#. Attributes in C#. The ADO.Net CommandBuilder and DataAdapter.

I'm not convinced that it's that everyone at Microsoft is individually defective as much as that their methods of collaboration, like those of most large corporations, usually yield results less effective than good individuals or small teams could have produced with sufficient autonomy.

"I'm not convinced that it's that everyone at Microsoft is individually defective as much as that their methods of collaboration, like those of most large corporations, usually yield results less effective than good individuals or small teams could have produced with sufficient autonomy."

Which brings this thread from the religious fervour of "what it means to be smart" right back to the subject at hand: Why MSFT would pay M$20+ for Xobni rather than write a kock-off in-house.

I didn't say anything about intelligence. I just said better engineers. Being a great engineer requires many qualities, of which intelligence is only one.

MSFT wants great engineers, and most of the people there probably aren't. Surely some are, but for a very long time now the kinds of people who make great engineers have shifted en masse either to going their own way (startups) or to working at Google, Facebook, or a number of other places.

[citation needed]

Seriously though, that seems to be a self talk thing in the hacker community, making me skeptical it's true. Places like Slashdot and the like seem to be echo chambers of ego boosting phrases.

That's a giant slap in the face of every engineer working in a big corporation.

I think you nailed it with the line: "they get a little street cred back in the hacker community for picking up a YC startup".

Exactly what I was thinking. If it's not the features, not the engineers, it must be the positive buzz they get for it. Probably this is some lame attempt by Microsoft to appear cool and show that they understand the new wave.

Or, you know, call me crazy, but maybe they just think those would be good features to add to Outlook, and this is the easiest way to add them and keep them out of competitors' products at the same time.

Occam's razor?

Because Bill Gates stays up all night worrying about what steveblgh on Hacker News thinks.

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