[saberience]

No offense but this comment sounds really egotistical and shows a total lack of self-awareness. Software is all about teams and if you have one guy who thinks he's god's gift it ultimately hurts the whole team. I'm not surprised your compensation is much less than you think it should be, I suspect Microsoft has a more accurate view of your value than you do yourself.

[dvt]

> Software is all about teams

I mean sure, technically this is correct. But it also fundamentally takes away from independent contributors and visionaries. Sure, "software is all about teams," but Linus Torvalds is definitely the guy behind Linux, and Palmer Luckey is the guy behind Oculus. It's unfair to take their achievements away because nowadays millions of people people contribute to Linux and Oculus was acquired by Meta.

I don't know OP, but I've seen this play out dozens of times in the cutthroat of corporate day-to-day, so it wouldn't surprise me for Microsoft to have a revisionist interpretation of how Copilot got started.

[lisasays]

My own threshold for "I created X" would be "I was solo dev, until it got legs of its own and started needing serious outside help." I don't know the story behind Oculus, but objectively Linux and a host of other famous OS projects do have origin stories like this. Yet for this project -- even by his own telling, it wasn't just him, but "me and Albert". Okay. Not to mention it was all done in a bigcorp environment -- which by definition means tons of support from all kind of people (even while others may be simultaneously blocking or competing against you).

That's why the "I created" self-description rings hollow in my book -- as it does in essentially every other corporate / large-org case I've heard of (whether done as self-promotion, or the puff stories we're told about people we're supposed to hire or have run our teams or otherwise).

And which is why even people like Steve Jobs, who of course "was" the products he was famously associated with -- never went around saying "I created this." Not because he lacked for ego, or because his contributions were not monumental. But because he was smart enough to understand that once things get to a certain scale -- this kind of attribution is both absurd, and entirely beside the point.

[ReDeiPirati]

> Software is all about teams and if you have one guy who thinks he's god's gift it ultimately hurts the whole team.

I don't see this reading in the comment above. He is just sharing the passion and sense of ownership he put to create a great product. BTW He mentioned that it was a team effort in the thread, so I don't see any problem issue here.

[frankreyes]

> Software is all about teams and if you have one guy who thinks he's god's gift it ultimately hurts the whole team.

John Carmack would agree with you.

And it's funny because while Carmack was that single person which was pretty much the best dev in the whole company, Romero was a better fit of your description.

[saberience]

Carmack obviously is (and was) a genius developer but I don’t recall him ever saying “Doom was my creation” or “Quake was all me.” Even though he clearly had a huge impact on the success of those games. He’s always been (in my eyes) a pretty humble and easy to work with person (this is seconded by some people I know who worked with him at Meta) which has contributed to his success.

[frankreyes]

Probably because we all know that already? People literally worship Carmack. There's a book titled "Masters of Doom".

I know I do :D

[z3t4]

This total lack of empathy is why our industry is a circle wank of dudes. Why do you feel so obliged to defend the most evil company in history? And why do you feel the need to make personal attacks at some dude, is it because you think you are so much better yourself?

[mjr00]

It's not about defending Microsoft -- it's about defending and acknowledging the dozens if not hundreds of other people who worked on, and continue to work on, Copilot and making it a commercial success.

[anigbrowl]

A better approach to doing that (for the corporate employer) might be to say 'Here's a million $ bonus for the team, please divide up amongst yourselves as you see fit.'

[blibble]

that's probably what happened...

[belfalas]

> the most evil company in history?

Microsoft may be bad but it's not the most evil company in history, not even by a long shot.

[taylodl]

I'm not disagreeing with you but I'm curious as to who's on your short list of most evil company's in history?

[belfalas]

The short version are all of the "X East India Companies" that were formed in Europe that effected much of the West colonizing Asia. The list of atrocities is immense.

Exxon and Texaco (now Chevron) would also be high on the list.

I want to be clear: I am absolutely not giving Microsoft a pass here. They've done quite a lot of bad. But they're a relatively new kid on the block vis-a-vis other companies out there.

PS. Within tech, I would also say that Oracle might top the list of 'evil companies' - but in their case, they really seem to actively embrace it (not that that's a good thing).

[taylodl]

Completely forgot about the "X East India Companies"!