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Microsoft Appoints Kevin Scott as CTO
- 65827 10y agoWas linkedin really known for their engineering? Honest question I don't recall ever hearing anything good or bad.
- SEJeff 10y agoYes, for starters they wrote things like Kafka and Samza there @ LinkedIn. I consider this post required reading for anyone wanting to build serious business distributed data pipelines, and guess where it came from? :) https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-wha...
- eternalban 10y agoMicrosoft's technology portfolio & research /far outstrips/ anything LinkedIn did or would encounter. I'd guess that this appointment is Cloud/Azure related.
- SEJeff 10y agoSure, and it is also likely 100x the size. That wasn't the original question, the question was what has LinkedIn done engineering wise. I'd say Kafka was a pretty smashing success having met all of Neha, Jun, and Jay Kreps and talked Kafka with them.
- clumsysmurf 10y agoThanks for the link. I noticed their idea of "unified log" in a diagram about 45% of the way down. Does anyone know if this is the same thing talked about in the forthcoming Manning book "Unified Log Processing"? https://www.manning.com/books/unified-log-processing https://www.manning.com/books/unified-log-processing
- alexatkeplar 10y agoHey clumysmurf - author of the book here; yes indeed, the book is heavily influenced by Jay Kreps' LinkedIn paper.
- catwell 10y agoVoldemort was pretty influential too, even though it has been eclipsed by Cassandra.
- aji 10y agoKafka, Samza, Databus, etc. LinkedIn is pretty capable when it comes to engineering. From what I've seen, most people's beef with LI tends to be product-related
- jdoliner 10y agoA number of notable opensource projects in the big data space were started at LinkedIn. Kafka is probably the most prominent example but there are others too. So I'd say they're fairly known for their engineering. You definitely don't get good projects like that coming out of a company without really good engineers making them.
- glibgil 10y agoYes, they kind of overdid it in fact. They created Kafka, for example
- Xyik 10y agopretty much every big company in silicon valley is known for their engineering talent, since top talent just moves around from company to company (e.g: lots of ex-googlers, ex-facebook, etc).
- mendicantB 10y agoWorld class engineers (especially data eng) who built some amazing open source things, but internally was a mess. The reason LinkedIn is a terrible product is because it was mired internally by chronically poor engineering leadership and product politics. Nothing ever got shipped. This new rollout is nice but 5 years too late. I'm really hoping the MSFT buy will change things, as I really believe in the product and there are some great engineers there.
- fergie 10y agoThe only nugget that sticks in my mind was the massive password hack a few years ago. I wonder if Linkedin has a lot of MS tech in their stack? If so, and MS wants to push further into consumer facing services in the cloud, I can see why this appointment might make sense.
- chubot 10y agoKind of interesting because I assume Microsoft has deep technical talent in operating system kernel and user space design. But they chose someone who I assume must be a distributed computing ("web/cloud") guy instead. I guess that's where they see the bulk of their business being in the future.
- maxxxxx 10y agoI would think his role as CTO is less specifically about one field like distributed computing and more about creating a coherent vision over the whole of Microsoft which has been lacking for a long time .
- supernovae 10y agoMicrosoft has a vision, it just had problems executing on it. Those who paid attention knew of what was coming these years because of their infamous 10 year vision and interim video releases they had. Terrible at execution and I hope this guy can help that.
- samfisher83 10y agoI think Bill Gates achieved his vision which was put a computer on every persons desk running his OS. Its still a highly profitable company with pretty much a monopoly on desktops.
- throwaway91111 10y agoWhile that's nice, that's not saying Microsoft succeeded since the early 90s.
- Arizhel 10y agoI don't, I hope they fall flat on their face. Microsoft's visions are always horrible dystopian nightmares.
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- anon987 10y agoA story about some random dude's promotion to CTO is at the top of HN eh? Must be a slow day. Cool 'news'.
- jbuild 10y agoI think it should be noted that LinkedIn was recently acquired by Microsoft just last month. https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/08/microsoft-officially-closes-its-26-2b-acquisition-of-linkedin/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/08/microsoft-officially-close... edit: link
- openmosix 10y agoThe acquisition was ~6 months ago (June 2016). Last month was the close of the acquisition - post domestic and international regulatory approval.
- andyjohnson0 10y agoFrom his "executive bio": "Scott holds an M.S. in computer science from Wake Forest University, a B.S. in computer science from Lynchburg College, and is an all-but-dissertation drop out from the computer science Ph.D. program at the University of Virginia." [1] Props for not trying to paper-over that last part. [1] http://news.microsoft.com/exec/kevin-scott/ http://news.microsoft.com/exec/kevin-scott/
- timtadh 10y agoHe does have 10 publications from his time as a PhD Student. https://dl.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81100544101 https://dl.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81100544101
- yread 10y agoThis one has more than 200 citations https://scholar.google.nl/scholar?q=Retargetable+and+reconfigurable+software+dynamic+translation&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5 https://scholar.google.nl/scholar?q=Retargetable+and+reconfi...
- xapata 10y agoI don't think an ABD is seen as shameful, certainly not by most folks who have completed their PhDs.
- andyjohnson0 10y agoI agree. Not shameful at all.
- KKKKkkkk1 10y agoNo, if you didn't graduate then you didn't graduate. Bragging about your drop-out status reminds me of Elizabeth Holmes.
- fsloth 10y agoIt's not bragging, it's explaining where those years went. And doing publishable work does carry merit, thesis or no thesis.
- desireco42 10y agoThis is insanely tough job to have, but honestly, fantastic place to influence technology. I wish someone is crazy enough and give me such job :).
- hantusk 10y agoWe wish that you are crazy enough to ask for such jobs and work on any barriers towards them :)
- general_ai 10y agoHe will be out in 2 years or less. The problem with Microsoft is it has a massive old boys network. Once Ye Olde Microsoft mafia moves in, people who haven't been with the company for 15-20 years tend to move out, irrespective of their position. This is also why all Microsoft acquisitions where old boys network was allowed to intrude (basically all but Skype) have been promptly run into the ground within 2-3 years after acquisition.
- wmccullough 10y agoThis is why I leave HN for a few weeks every once in awhile. People in this thread shitting all over the guy, meanwhile back in their own lives, they still have to argue with project managers over the "right" way to get code done. The crabs are reaching out of the bucket hard today.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agoright... it's way better to argue with yourself over the "right" way to comment on HN. you're an ignorant hypocrite. you're all idiots.
- justinlaster 10y agoThere has always been an attitude of cynicism that tries to masquerade as wisdom around these parts.
- whkr1 10y agoAn absolute goldmine for http://reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/ http://reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/ material.
- dsimms 10y agoThe PR mentions he'll continue to serve on the LinkedIn executive team, so does that mean he'll continue to be based in MV? That'll be quite a change! (and challenge for him, I assume).
- rajdevar 10y ago"Empowering people" is Satya's favorite word. Looks like every Microsoft executive is using this now lol.
- sumitgt 10y agoIt's actually the company motto
- caseymarquis 10y agoWho is he replacing?
- SuperbSoko 10y agoThat's the best part of the news. I don't think people really recall the ex-CTO of MS.
- Irishsteve 10y agoWhat does a CTO in Microsoft do ?