The Best Profile You'll Read On Steven Sinofsky, The Former Windows Boss

I'm really bothered by this one line:

"One said that computer engineers view coding as both an art and a science. A lot of them were pissed off at having somebody else dictate their art to them."

Well, yeah. Software is inarguably a combination artistic/scientific endeavor.

However, the very basic nature of working for a company is doing what they dictate they need from you. They're trading a little piece of paper called a paycheck in exchange for needed services that you provide via your talents and skills.

If you don't want anyone to tell you what to do, quit and work for yourself.

If that's how "a lot of" MSFT engineers think their jobs should work, then that speaks volumes about the historical lack of interoperability between one product and another, or even sometimes between one product and itself.

Disclosure: I used to work at MSFT a while ago but it was through an acquisition and I was fortunate to be insulated from the typical MSFT engineer, but the attitude above is unfortunately not surprising to me. :-(