[wright]

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.

[wanorris]

> 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.

[wright]

> 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?

[wanorris]

> 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

[alaskamiller]

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.

[wright]

> 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

[yters]

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.

[wanorris]

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

[wright]

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.

[wanorris]

> 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.

[raganwald]

"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.