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Microsoft Businesses SuSE The Almighty Buck

MS Hires The Salesman Who Won Munich For SUSE 422

ron_ivi writes "In a move reminiscent of the 1997 MSFT/Borland Lawsuits, Microsoft has hired the SUSE sales guy who won Munich for SUSE. So if you want a job in this tough job market, just be wildly successful at your current job and Microsoft will come recruit you. (Another interesting Microsoft hire is the chair of the ISO C++ standards body as their VisualC++.NET architect.) Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well."
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MS Hires The Salesman Who Won Munich For SUSE

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  • by jaf ( 121858 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:03AM (#8928993) Journal
    Anyone know if they're happy with Linux in Munich?
  • Good job offers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrWhizBang ( 5333 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:05AM (#8929006) Homepage Journal
    I wonder how many good job offers MS has floated by Linus?
  • tough job market? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:15AM (#8929147)
    slightly OT, but there's so much grumbling on slashdot about not enough jobs for IT people...

    I remember reading somewhere that there was a high demand for IT guys in the automotive industry... lemme google...

    ah, there it is

    New Cars getting too expensive to fix [csmonitor.com]

    The interesting paragraphs are near the bottom:

    "There's no shortage of general technicians, but there is a big shortage of qualified people to work on drivability and emissions issues," says Robert Rodriguez of Automotive Service Excellence. The Leesburg, Va., organization certifies repair shops and technicians.

    These specialist technicians need advanced reading, problem-solving, and basic electronics skills, he says. "The best people to find are those who have worked in the IT [information technology] industry," he says.
  • Re:Makes Sense (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kainaw ( 676073 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:18AM (#8929195) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft is well known for their great hiring practices. I think you mean hiring choices. When I interviewed through their hiring practices, I went through two phone interviews and then an in-person interview on a golf course (I don't play golf, but the two interviewers do). I was told that I would be considered if I agreed to quit college and to never attempt to get a degree. I stuck it out, got a degree, and now I'm making about $30k less a year than if I had went with Microsoft. I feel that I learned a lot in those last two years of college - a lot more than I learned in the first two. A hiring practice that asks college students to quit school just seems like a bad practice to me.
  • Re:Good job offers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman@gmaYEATSil.com minus poet> on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:19AM (#8929207) Homepage Journal
    Probably none. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but Linus doesn't *care* about Microsoft or taking over the world. He just wants to hack his kernel. If Microsoft removed him from the process, the Linux community would have to reorganize. In the process of reorganizing, they'll probably make several decisions that will make Linux more competitive in the marketplace (e.g. allow binary kernel modules).

    I have nothing against Linus, but he makes decisions for Linux primarily based on the idea that it's a "hacker's OS". Givin Linux's rising popularity, anything that makes it more market focused is a bad thing for M$.
  • Re:it's war (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:24AM (#8929262)
    MS is not just getting a good employee, they are also getting insider knowledge, and possibly returning payment for favours already done. If they had of been highering from gov then they might just have been investigated.
  • Re:tough job market? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by manganese4 ( 726568 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:26AM (#8929288)
    These specialist technicians need advanced reading, problem-solving, and basic electronics skills.

    Or they could hire anyone who has acquired a BS in chemistry, physics or engineering. These disciplines all train individuals to solve complex problems and to do it in a quantitative, reproducible and most importantly reportable manner. Not to call in question the problem solving skills of IT workers but hypothesis testing is not something typically encouraged in the IT world (or at least not by the managers whose only concern is padding their budgets)
  • Re:BORG! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by macrom ( 537566 ) <macrom75@hotmail.com> on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:30AM (#8929334) Homepage
    First off, Herb Sutter joined MS over 2 years ago [microsoft.com]. He freely admitted that people would think weird of him to join such a company, but Visual Studio .NET's C++ conformance has greatly increased to the point of almost leading the industry. The current C++ compiler is missing a few esoteric language features and the 'export' keyword, but otherwise it compiles complex C++ just fine. This is a massive improvment over their previous offerings and is no doubt attributable to Mr. Sutter's involvement.

    So your statement is completely misguided, and I assume that you aren't a C++ programmer that uses MS tools. Otherwise you would laud their efforts to bring the development community a solid (and partially free) tool [microsoft.com] for use under Windows.
  • Re:BORG! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:33AM (#8929365) Homepage
    Am I the only one that sees this as buying out the competition?

    Which is a long held tradition in the business world. With the caveat that you cannot always do it -- there's that irritating little bit about freedom of choice. If someone doesn't want to sell their business to you (or, more particularly in this case) work for you, they don't have to.

    And some guy is making the world better by furthering a standard. Let's hire him so that our C++ becomes the only stardard the world must follow.

    Of course, the reality here is that VC++ was close to rock bottom when it came to meeting the ISO C++ standards (particularly in regards to the STL). Since Herb Sutter was hired by MS they have drastically improved compatibility with the standard, both in the compiler and in their STL. I don't think they're the most compliant, but they're a damn sight better than a lot of other compilers, GNU g++ included.

    As for changing the standard for MS's benefit -- by merely stating that it proves that you have absolutely no clue how the ISO committees work, particularly when it comes to languages.

    Oh, and in case you're wondering -- no, I don't use MS VC++. I code in Unix with g++. But I'm not a clueless moron.
  • Re:it's war (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:33AM (#8929378)
    I can't believe SUSE doesn't make their employees sign non-compete contracts. Don't most companies nowadays?
  • Typical MS Mentality (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tritone ( 189506 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @11:34AM (#8929388) Homepage
    MS seems to assume that they lost the sale because the Linux side had superior marketing instead of a superior product.
  • by ValourX ( 677178 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @12:00PM (#8929759) Homepage

    Why hasn't anyone put forth the idea that maybe the product made the sale more than the salesman did? Microsoft should be studying the strengths of GNU/Linux and how to properly counter them with solutions instead of sales and marketing.

    The only difference between the Titanic and Microsoft is, the Titanic had a band.

    -Jem
  • by hak1du ( 761835 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @12:05PM (#8929817) Journal
    Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well."

    Yes, that is great. There is also nothing wrong with taking such an offer.

    But the effect is still anti-competitive. Microsoft has the money to buy up just about any talent around the world they like to. Where would the computer industry go if everybody who knows how to do anything gets hired by Microsoft? Because that's where this is going.

    The people to do something about this are not Microsoft or the individuals involved, but government regulators.
  • Re:it's war (Score:3, Interesting)

    by carlos_benj ( 140796 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @12:36PM (#8930251) Journal
    Yes, and all ___________ people are alike.

    When I was in marketing I developed a good rapport with my customers by being honest. When the Account Executive would try and blow smoke my customers would ask me if the claim was true. If it wasn't I told them so, but I also tried to show where their needs could be met through creative use of an existing function. I wasn't popular with management, but sales never suffered.
  • Re:it's war (Score:2, Interesting)

    by LukePieStalker ( 746993 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @12:46PM (#8930412)
    ... they are doing what any company would do, hiring the best people they can to do the job!

    Is that it? Or are they hiring this guy for his contacts list so that he can re-sell all the people he sold Suse to?

  • by $criptah ( 467422 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @12:50PM (#8930463) Homepage

    I remember laughing at Microsoft's posters at school. The company wanted to hire some inters for the summer, then, as the poster promised, the good ones would be offered full-time positions. At that point of time I said, "Bullshit, I am never going to work for them. I am a Linux geek. I hate that company!"

    I have been out of college for almost a year. I wish I had applied to Microsoft and interned there instead of different small companies around New England. Why? Well, first of all, they offered a good paycheck, secondly, the company did not have major layoffs compared to some other IT giants. Finally, with $50K in loans, I could use a job that paid well.

    Do not get me wrong, I still like Open Source and none of my home (and work) computers run Windows. However, paycheck is a paycheck. I am sure that sales guy felt the same way too. It is nice to do what is right, but sometimes you have to do what you must in order to survive. Good for him, I hope he does a good job and then gets out when shit hits the fan.

  • by sepluv ( 641107 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <yelsekalb>> on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @01:13PM (#8930755)
    Wildly off-topic (and FYIW IMO parent and grandparent are childish), but I think the $ sign is supposed to represent bribery and corruption (rather than just having lots of money). I don't know if they started it, but it was
    popularised by Greenpeace's use of "Stop E$$O [telus.net]"*.

    I must admit in view of recent behaviour of the EC (in relation to Microsoft, software patents, and other things), I have started abbreviating them to €C sometimes.

    [*Incidentally, although this was allowed under copyright &c because it is a parody, Esso attempted to claim that it was illegal in France [greenpeace.fr] because the dollar looks like an (illegal-in-France Nazi) inverted swastika. Needless to say, Esso's case was eventually thrown out of court [stopesso.ca] (after Esso succesfully got a preliminary injunction banning the use of E$$O)]

  • Re:Makes Sense (Score:2, Interesting)

    by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @01:18PM (#8930851) Journal
    I was told that I would be considered if I agreed to quit college and to never attempt to get a degree. I stuck it out, got a degree, and now I'm making about $30k less a year than if I had went with Microsoft.

    Hmmmm....Bill Gates dropped out of college, and is now the richest man in the world. You finished your degree, and are now making $30k less than you were offered to drop out yourself. Interesting data points, no?
  • Re:it's war (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Technician ( 215283 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @01:25PM (#8930958)
    i remember my days at Radio Shack, as well...
    You worked at a Radio Shack with a working scope, function generator sine, triangle, square wave etc. with sweep, AC voltmeter (that read in DB, DBmV down to -60 DBmV minimum) and not just a multimeter that might measuure a 50mV 3Khz tone? Where is this fully equiped Radio Shack? Most I've been to have no idea what a scope or function generator is let alone anyone that knew how to use them to measure frequency response, S/N ratio, THD, etc.

    I know, it's humor, laugh ;-)
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @01:37PM (#8931139)
    you forgot to mention that these practices all though fair and legal are just the more clean actions Bill takes with regards to monopolizing the software market.

    monopolizes the software market.

    If you didn't here, don't know if anybody here actually programs more than .asp files for a living but if you wanted to know just in case,

    that MONOPOLIZING THE SOFTWARE MARKET:

    is bad for developers (outsourced to india or not) and is bad for the software market (oh maybe things like the Interent Explorer virus thing, etc...)

    Just imagine what would happen if people failed to fight Bill and Microsoft and stopped making competing software products that didn't leave your computer vulnerable.

    Everyone would be making documents with word, using ASP to make non-sensical scripts written in "human language" and later if we all used Internet Explorer exclusively we might have things like POPUP BLOCKERS or we wouldn't have a way to access websites without the threat of VIRUS / HACKING of our computers.

    : )
  • by exmsfty ( 695351 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @07:51PM (#8934815)
    "Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well" Microsoft rewards self-promoters; I know no fewer then a gross of talented, hard working, money making machines that Microsoft allowed to be ass-fucked by bad managers and inept coworkers. Case in point: Alex StJohn single handedly (ok, three people...but who's counting) created DirectX in his spare time. DirectX made, and continues to make, MSFT a mountain of money. Alex was handed his head for being wildly succesful.

"And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb." -- Spaceballs

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