[le-mark]

> Kickbacks are most likely not the case. Why would a billions of dollars a year in profit company need to pay people to adopt tech?

A lot of comments here echo this sentiment and yeah, it's not Microsoft, but there are plenty of shady Gold Partners and Solutions Providers out there, as well as shady execs purchasing tech for companies.

I saw a company once hire a VP of IT who came in, fired most all the java devs (it was a java shop) and mandated .net. That was a dumpster fire, spectacular failure, company went under. The company was in trouble anyway, and .net transition was part of a bid to turn it all around. I always suspected that guy got kickbacks for the ms server and sql server licenses, but never knew for sure.

[mattbrewsbytes]

Ok so something like a buddy has a "Gold Partner" reseller license or something, IT exec is partnered behind the scenes financially. Then goes to JavaShopCo, becomes IT Director and mandates .Net, from the reseller they have a financial stake in, and profits from it.

That's shady and probably violates JavaShopCo's ethics rules, but people that would do that won't care.