[grepfru_it]

The trick at Microsoft is to start working on your project in your spare time. Then incorporate it into your project at MSFT. You get the clout associated with having an open source project but then you also get to use it internally as a sanctioned tool

[DaiPlusPlus]

> The trick at Microsoft is to start working on your project in your spare time. Then incorporate it into your project at MSFT.

(Ex-msftie here)

Microsoft is great for being amongst the tiny number of software companies that not only allow their FTEs to have their own software projects without attempting to claim any kind of ownership (compare with Apple where I’m told having even a public GitHub account without manager-approval is grounds for termination…) - but MS even actively encourages it too (though I cynically note that was when the Windows Phone App Store’s app-shortage was thought-of as a serious problem)

BUUUUT - they do require you to strictly avoid cross-over with their own products: you can’t just re-use your own code in a company project, or even reimplement it from-memory. Yes, there are ways of doing this properly (involving weeks of meetings with LCA arranging a permanent irrevocable - and possibly exclusive - rights transfer), wasting time better spent on other things) - so your project had better be something special and you’d need to give-up hope of getting rich from it (spare a very modest bonus the year you do the LCA paperwork if your skiplevel sees any value in it).

[pjmlp]

Yeah, and that is how stuff like C++/CX gets killed, replaced by a side project that was never at the same tooling level in Visual Studio, even though there was a CppCon talk promising otherwise, and currently is in maintenance state because "it achived its goals", who cares about those paying customers that had to rewrite their code to a lesser capable tool, now abandonend.