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I agree, I think the marketers failed at their own game (understanding their audience and selling themselves) today/yesterday. They sidestepped questions like p

by djacobs 16y ago

I agree, I think the marketers failed at their own game (understanding their audience and selling themselves) today/yesterday. They sidestepped questions like politicians. If they had understood their audience, they'd have known this would not work, that details and direct answers matter. As it is, they just revealed Microsoft's "feature" model—i.e., we only implement technology that is popular now ... on websites that are built around the lowest common denominator of web technology. IE6. I stand by my statement that the programmers seem well-intentioned and honest (direct, even), where the marketers are clearly avoiding tough questions.

sriramk 16y ago
I have done several customer engagements in past teams from conferences to very private executive engagements where I've been the 'technical guy'. Since most questions flying at me are factual, it is easy to respond with factual responses. But with any hard question which goes outside pure tech, I would deflect it some poor biz-dev/product manager who would have to weigh several things in his or her response - Microsoft's strategy, future plans (both disclosed and secret), competitors and their selling points, what this current customer expects to hear among a host of other things. It is a much harder job and I often came out looking like the 'technical guy who was a straight shooter, not like that other suit' though I had the much easier task. This isn't some Microsoft thing alone. If you parse through any large scale engagement from any big company, you'd almost always see this pattern. Go to any conference and walk up to a large company's booth. If you ask technical questions, you'll often get the engineer to respond. If you ask some roadmap/competitive positioning/touchy question, you'll get directed to someone else. This is usually because the engineer involved doesn't know the answer/strategy/market positioning/whatever. To say that one group is somehow more well-intentioned/honest than the other seems wrong.
- djacobs 16y ago
  I don't think it is wrong. The engineers have even been clearer and more useful when they're talking about policy. Case in point: The question comes up: "Why aren't you bringing IE9 to Windows XP?" Answer from marketing guys: "XP isn't compatible." At best, the answer was "XP doesn't support hardware acceleration" from them. Followup question: "How do you run IE9 in a VM?" Answer from marketing: "Turn off hardware acceleration." Response: "WTF?" Engineer comes in: "Okay, let me clear this up... IE9 runs on top of D2D, which Windows XP hasn't got. D2D supports hardware or software acceleration, therefore you can turn it off for VMs. But the bottom line is that if we were to port IE9 to Windows XP, we'd have to write the lower levels from scratch, and it would become IE8 with a fresh GUI." Response: "Okay. That, I understand." Here's where the marketing guy either a) doesn't defer to the tech guy when it's appropriate or b) underestimates/misunderstands his audience and gives a flawed, unsatisfactory answer.

by djacobs 16y ago

sriramk 16y ago

I have done several customer engagements in past teams from conferences to very private executive engagements where I've been the 'technical guy'. Since most questions flying at me are factual, it is easy to respond with factual responses. But with any hard question which goes outside pure tech, I would deflect it some poor biz-dev/product manager who would have to weigh several things in his or her response - Microsoft's strategy, future plans (both disclosed and secret), competitors and their selling points, what this current customer expects to hear among a host of other things. It is a much harder job and I often came out looking like the 'technical guy who was a straight shooter, not like that other suit' though I had the much easier task. This isn't some Microsoft thing alone. If you parse through any large scale engagement from any big company, you'd almost always see this pattern. Go to any conference and walk up to a large company's booth. If you ask technical questions, you'll often get the engineer to respond. If you ask some roadmap/competitive positioning/touchy question, you'll get directed to someone else. This is usually because the engineer involved doesn't know the answer/strategy/market positioning/whatever. To say that one group is somehow more well-intentioned/honest than the other seems wrong.

djacobs 16y ago
I don't think it is wrong. The engineers have even been clearer and more useful when they're talking about policy. Case in point: The question comes up: "Why aren't you bringing IE9 to Windows XP?" Answer from marketing guys: "XP isn't compatible." At best, the answer was "XP doesn't support hardware acceleration" from them. Followup question: "How do you run IE9 in a VM?" Answer from marketing: "Turn off hardware acceleration." Response: "WTF?" Engineer comes in: "Okay, let me clear this up... IE9 runs on top of D2D, which Windows XP hasn't got. D2D supports hardware or software acceleration, therefore you can turn it off for VMs. But the bottom line is that if we were to port IE9 to Windows XP, we'd have to write the lower levels from scratch, and it would become IE8 with a fresh GUI." Response: "Okay. That, I understand." Here's where the marketing guy either a) doesn't defer to the tech guy when it's appropriate or b) underestimates/misunderstands his audience and gives a flawed, unsatisfactory answer.