Community Blogs : culture, General Software Development, Community News

You don't know Microsoft culture

ASP.NET Weblogs — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:23:00 GMT

I'm closing in on a month now at Microsoft. OK, not really, because with the holidays and a week out for a pre-hired trip, I'm obviously still in a bit of a ramp up mode. Although I checked in some code last week, which is very exciting. In any case, I've taken my share of cheap shots about the Borg, evil empire, M$ and the other predictable nonsense. Now I just find it sad that people spend that much time and energy on hating a company. I get it, some folks think the company is evil. Whatever. The thing that I've noticed about Microsoft, from an internal view, is that it's an enormous company. I find diversity in teams, groups, divisions, top to bottom. In orientation and training, this diversity is reinforced in every aspect...(read more)

The joy of learning and surprise

ASP.NET Weblogs — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:44:00 GMT

I just read the JJ Abrams essay in the previous issue of Wired . This essay really struck home about where we get joy out of life, and how we seem so eager to overlook it. This quote sums it up for me: "True understanding (or skill or effort) has become bothersome—an unnecessary headache that impedes our ability to get on with our lives (and most likely skip to something else). Earning the endgame seems so yesterday, especially when we can know whatever we need to know whenever we need to know it." That is true on more levels than I can describe. While the Internet has done so much to facilitate communication and bring people together, it has also managed to trivilaize knowledge and the process of acquiring it. I liken this to a suggestion...(read more)

Mix09 Twittering

ASP.NET Weblogs — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:56:00 GMT

I've poo-poo'd Twitter before, because I haven't found it to be anything other than another channel to keep up with, but I'll try being active about using it whilst at Mix this week. If I make meaningful connections (and find fun people to hang with at the Tao party), I'll officially change my tune and see the value. http://twitter.com/jeffputz Read More......(read more)

Mix09, with Mac in tow

ASP.NET Weblogs — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:27:00 GMT

This will be my third Mix now, and what a strange road it has been for me. The first one I went to on my own dime, sort of, in that the conference was free but travel was my thing. That was a perk of just having a book published. Then the conference got super popular. I didn't go in '07, but I did go last year, on my former employer's bill. It was pretty spectacular, and I hoped that I would have the chance to go again this year. So I made it a negotiating point when I accepted my current gig. Especially given my move away from day-to-day coding and more into architecture, this particular conference seems like a great fit. I love that it's not a hundred code demos, too. Not that those aren't fascinating, but I like to be...(read more)

What's so terrible about using software owned by a company?

ASP.NET Weblogs — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:21:00 GMT

I'm not sure I get the point of Mozilla wanting to push an open source video standard ( see Ars story ). They're pusing for an open platform for video. So why exactly does everything have to be "vendor-neutral, standards-based?" I don't care that Flash is from Adobe. If it works, and everyone has it, what difference does it make? And hey, with Silverlight making some inroads, it keeps Adobe even more honest and working to innovate. Everybody wins. I hate this religious crap. Read More......(read more)

State of the platform: Are we losing? Does it matter?

ASP.NET Weblogs — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:11:00 GMT

Ars Technica launched a redesign today. I seem to recall that they were on ASP.NET before in some custom made CMS. Now they're on Movable Type. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, the choices made in using a platform. I'm not interested in religion, but I'm obviously interested in ASP.NET as a platform because it's one what I know and love the best. Banks, insurance companies and dating sites enjoy use of the platform, but why is it that it seems to not take significant hold at the lower levels? Does it even matter? I think a part of it comes out of our culture. Face it, "our" platform enjoys its most widespread use in large organizations where process and bloat are nearly an expectation. Simplicity is hard...(read more)

Lingering thoughts about the Microsoft interview experience

ASP.NET Weblogs — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:18:00 GMT

It's strange how a number of different posts on my blog get comments practically every day. The big ones have to do with the failure of US education, my HP laptop from four years ago with the broken power jack, Xbox Live support sucking and the entire app/page/control event cycle based on pre-beta ASP.NET v2. A new one has become my post on my experience interviewing at Microsoft . The comments on that post were thin, but I'm staggered by the number of e-mail messages I get. They come from random strangers, people who work there now and probably know the people I interviewed with, and surprisingly, a ton of people who had a similar experience, turned off by the company as a whole. As I said in that last post, that's still something...(read more)

Leo Laporte and TWIT are getting out of touch: "Web developers don't like Microsoft"

ASP.NET Weblogs — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:43:00 GMT

I was listening to TWIT #136 and, wow, Leo Laporte is totally out of touch. Patrick Norton is not far behind. Listen starting around 36:30. I've found that lately these guys are hanging out in Pundit Valley and completely missing what's going on in the rest of the world. He's actually got the balls to suggest that Web developers don't like Microsoft, and that believing in Silverlight is akin to drinking the Kool-Aid®. Had Leo actually gone to Mix08, I think he'd feel differently. You can throw all kinds of sites out there that use ASP.NET today, like Chase, Match.com, Sharebuilder, Schwans, Ars, and this little start-up I work for called Insurance.com, and he still would believe something different. The funny thing is when...(read more)

On science, religion and actually shipping code

ASP.NET Weblogs — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:05:00 GMT

Frans had a really good post about some things he has observed in the "alt.net" world . Honestly, with all of the blog posts I see on this "movement" lately, you'd think there was a cure for cancer just around the corner. As if it's that important. I think the single most critical thing mentioned in Frans' post is this: "...The consequence is that the result of working on that idea has its root in the tool, technique or pattern, not in fundamental research in computer science. This result causes other ideas, which causes other results etc. etc. Is this bad? I don't know, but if these two worlds drift apart, and the more I think about it, the more this is going on already, the consequences could be severe: the world in which research is taking...(read more)

Scoble screwed up, and won't man up about it

ASP.NET Weblogs — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:20:00 GMT

Robert Scoble annoys me. I used to enjoy reading his blog, but it has gone to a point where he really thinks he has all the answers and is the smartest blogger on the Net, masked thinly by the occasional self-deprecating comment or whatever. But now he got booted off of Facebook because he was using an automated script to take all of the contact information from his 5,000 friends and dump it into Plaxo. Are you seeing the irony here? This is the same guy who called out Zuckerberg at Facebook for screwing with people's privacy and not owning up to it. Are you kidding me? Here's the big news flash, Scoble... I added you as a friend to see what you were up to, not so you could suck out even my name and e-mail and put it in some other system. Why...(read more)