[tweedledee]

I got the impression that vscode (monaco) was green lit in order to retain certain people threatening to leave. MS is having retention and talent acquisition problems. Luckily there are enough people with enough clout to do these projects. But they are definitely not normal.

[spywaregorilla]

That sounds unlikely, but if true, is... impressive? That's a non trivial product launch that has been a pretty big deal.

[tweedledee]

I think people would be surprised how much of the innovation in dev div is directly attributable to retention projects. Basically, let me do this here or I will go to Facebook and do it. I think much of the open sourcing is due to people threatening to leave if it wasn’t. They get sick of building things that get shelved.

The Steve Sinofsky era did so much damage to morale at Dev Div that they’re now going to great lengths to placate certain devs.