5 ms·

IAMA: We are members of the IE9 product team (for real now)

18 points by kilian 16y ago

kilian 16y ago
This is the real team answering, with much less marketing-speak. (as opposed to the other "AMA") What I've read so far, they have an incredibly tough crowd over there, and they're handling it quite gracefully.
- trafficlight 16y ago
  I don't know about that. I didn't find a lot of worthwhile answers. Most answers are along the lines of "sorry, yesterday's AMA wasn't official, but today it is."
- 1010011010 16y ago
  After ruining the web for a decade, I hope they (the IE team/Microsofties in general, not necessarily these specific folks) didn't expect something other than a "tough crowd". There's a lot of pent-up emotion around IE.
pavs 16y ago
Man, they are getting ripped apart in the comments (They had it coming with the previous response). Whats annoying is that the Product managers are still answering more questions than the engineers and as usual dodging a lot of them with PR speak. Its almost like someone has a gun to their head and they are really carefully with what they say. Edit: It looks like Seth (an engineer) is answering more questions now after Reddit admin (Raldi) recommended that he do.
- jf 16y ago
  > Its almost like someone has a gun to their head and they are really carefully with what they say. It's not just one gun. Saying the wrong thing can get you in trouble with any number of people: lawyers, PR, managers, and other employees. I suspect that much of this is due to Microsoft being a large company, but I can't be sure as Microsoft is the only large company that I've worked for.
  - pavs 16y ago
    Google and Mozilla did several AMAs on reddit too (I am trying to dig them out), they were done by no-bs engineers without PR people and lawyers hanging over their heads. Edit: I couldn't find the Mozilla AMA yet (I thought they fixed the reddit search!). But some Google AMA I could find: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/art8x/iama_google_search_engineer_amaa/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/art8x/iama_google_sear... http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cj7im/iama_google_code_monkey_amaa/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cj7im/iama_google_code... One from MSFTi http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/b142w/i_work_for_microsoft_ask_me_almost_anything/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/b142w/i_work_for_micro...
- blasdel 16y ago
  One marketer, one gun, and one engineer is better than having a team of dozens of PR flacks compiling a dossier on an interviewer and debriefing all interviewees: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/03/enough_about_me/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/03/enough_about_me/
  - pavs 16y ago
    Holy smokes, how did I never see this one before? As it is I never had high regards for MSFT, but this takes things to a whole different level.
patrickaljord 16y ago
This is gold: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_members_of_the_ie9_product_team_here/c10vmml http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_memb... The MS guy admits that hardware acceleration can be turned off in the config menu after saying IE9 can't run on windows XP because it requires hardware acceleration.
- pavs 16y ago
  At this point I am starting to feel sorry for the MSFT guys. Its quite obvious that the engineers don't run the show, they just do whatever the profit-making overlords wants them to do.
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    I don't feel sorry for them, they are talented engineers, that means they could work for any company on any project they want. They chose to work on IE for MS.
  - djacobs 16y ago
    I agree, the MSFT engineers (not the marketers) seem likeable enough. I think they're handling criticism reasonably enough and I think the Reddit crowd should understand exactly how little input these engineers get inside of Microsoft's development model. (Still, I will continue recommending Chrome and Firefox to friends. IE anything is just bad.)
    - sriramk 16y ago
      Disclaimer as usual: I dont speak for MSFT, yada, yada. I rarely get into one of these 'defend-MSFT' threads but I couldn't let one more of these 'MSFT engineers are great but marketing is not' threads go by. I think your characterization of how product managers and devs/PMs/test work at MSFT is way wrong and represents a simplistic 'engineers vs bean counters/marketing' of sorts (apologies if that's a strawman). It's always a tag team effort and it's not always easy to see the boundaries between marketing/biz dev/engineering. All sides take part in collective decisions. If you have any real issues with big product decisions for any product at Microsoft, you need to go to a VP or the executive team. And most Microsoft VPs are from a engineering lineage. On a separate topic, I have nothing to do with IE but in this case, the product managers seem to be working really, really hard with what is a extremely hostile crowd. In some cases, the community has assumed what the real answer should be and even when they get the absolute straight line on why something the way it is, there is disbelief. (the truth as what I would hear if I met Dean Hachamovitch in an elevator and asked him the same question as a Microsoftie).
jfager 16y ago
And it's going really well: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_members_of_the_ie9_product_team_here/c10vfkv http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_memb...
- jacobolus 16y ago
  Yeah, not so hot: > -55 pts: "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a comment on Reddit" --Carter > 43 pts: You are a smug asshole. --EddieLomax
mikeknoop 16y ago
I could have sworn a member of the IE9 team had a comment thread a few weeks back asking for feedback here on HN. I cannot seem to locate it now however -- any help?

18 points by kilian 16y ago

This is the real team answering, with much less marketing-speak. (as opposed to the other "AMA") What I've read so far, they have an incredibly tough crowd over there, and they're handling it quite gracefully.

trafficlight 16y ago
I don't know about that. I didn't find a lot of worthwhile answers. Most answers are along the lines of "sorry, yesterday's AMA wasn't official, but today it is."
1010011010 16y ago
After ruining the web for a decade, I hope they (the IE team/Microsofties in general, not necessarily these specific folks) didn't expect something other than a "tough crowd". There's a lot of pent-up emotion around IE.

pavs 16y ago

Man, they are getting ripped apart in the comments (They had it coming with the previous response). Whats annoying is that the Product managers are still answering more questions than the engineers and as usual dodging a lot of them with PR speak. Its almost like someone has a gun to their head and they are really carefully with what they say. Edit: It looks like Seth (an engineer) is answering more questions now after Reddit admin (Raldi) recommended that he do.

jf 16y ago
> Its almost like someone has a gun to their head and they are really carefully with what they say. It's not just one gun. Saying the wrong thing can get you in trouble with any number of people: lawyers, PR, managers, and other employees. I suspect that much of this is due to Microsoft being a large company, but I can't be sure as Microsoft is the only large company that I've worked for.
- pavs 16y ago
  Google and Mozilla did several AMAs on reddit too (I am trying to dig them out), they were done by no-bs engineers without PR people and lawyers hanging over their heads. Edit: I couldn't find the Mozilla AMA yet (I thought they fixed the reddit search!). But some Google AMA I could find: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/art8x/iama_google_search_engineer_amaa/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/art8x/iama_google_sear... http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cj7im/iama_google_code_monkey_amaa/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cj7im/iama_google_code... One from MSFTi http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/b142w/i_work_for_microsoft_ask_me_almost_anything/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/b142w/i_work_for_micro...
blasdel 16y ago
One marketer, one gun, and one engineer is better than having a team of dozens of PR flacks compiling a dossier on an interviewer and debriefing all interviewees: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/03/enough_about_me/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/03/enough_about_me/
- pavs 16y ago
  Holy smokes, how did I never see this one before? As it is I never had high regards for MSFT, but this takes things to a whole different level.

patrickaljord 16y ago

This is gold: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_members_of_the_ie9_product_team_here/c10vmml http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_memb... The MS guy admits that hardware acceleration can be turned off in the config menu after saying IE9 can't run on windows XP because it requires hardware acceleration.

pavs 16y ago
At this point I am starting to feel sorry for the MSFT guys. Its quite obvious that the engineers don't run the show, they just do whatever the profit-making overlords wants them to do.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  I don't feel sorry for them, they are talented engineers, that means they could work for any company on any project they want. They chose to work on IE for MS.
- djacobs 16y ago
  I agree, the MSFT engineers (not the marketers) seem likeable enough. I think they're handling criticism reasonably enough and I think the Reddit crowd should understand exactly how little input these engineers get inside of Microsoft's development model. (Still, I will continue recommending Chrome and Firefox to friends. IE anything is just bad.)
  - sriramk 16y ago
    Disclaimer as usual: I dont speak for MSFT, yada, yada. I rarely get into one of these 'defend-MSFT' threads but I couldn't let one more of these 'MSFT engineers are great but marketing is not' threads go by. I think your characterization of how product managers and devs/PMs/test work at MSFT is way wrong and represents a simplistic 'engineers vs bean counters/marketing' of sorts (apologies if that's a strawman). It's always a tag team effort and it's not always easy to see the boundaries between marketing/biz dev/engineering. All sides take part in collective decisions. If you have any real issues with big product decisions for any product at Microsoft, you need to go to a VP or the executive team. And most Microsoft VPs are from a engineering lineage. On a separate topic, I have nothing to do with IE but in this case, the product managers seem to be working really, really hard with what is a extremely hostile crowd. In some cases, the community has assumed what the real answer should be and even when they get the absolute straight line on why something the way it is, there is disbelief. (the truth as what I would hear if I met Dean Hachamovitch in an elevator and asked him the same question as a Microsoftie).

jfager 16y ago

And it's going really well: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_members_of_the_ie9_product_team_here/c10vfkv http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dkk3l/iama_we_are_memb...

jacobolus 16y ago
Yeah, not so hot: > -55 pts: "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a comment on Reddit" --Carter > 43 pts: You are a smug asshole. --EddieLomax

mikeknoop 16y ago

I could have sworn a member of the IE9 team had a comment thread a few weeks back asking for feedback here on HN. I cannot seem to locate it now however -- any help?