4 ms·
When I used to work at Microsoft, my manager (pretty high level person, not a middle-manager) used to tell me: Dave Cutler is one of the biggest assholes in the
by alpb 8y ago
When I used to work at Microsoft, my manager (pretty high level person, not a middle-manager) used to tell me: Dave Cutler is one of the biggest assholes in the company and most people don’t like him but the company has to put up with him because the cost of losing him to another competitor (like Google) would be too much from competition standpoint.
Given the fact that Dave Cutler would basically be peers with Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat who had key contributions to multiple fields in the computer science, this makes sense.
Instead of hearing a story by a random Microsoft press corp reporter, or his management (like Steve Ballmer), I actually would like to hear stories about Dave Cutler from his subordinates.
- kyberias 8y agoWhat could possible be the purpose for you to tell us that your former boss thinks Dave Cutler is "asshole". There is zero people in the world that need that information.
- alpb 8y agoIt was a discussion about how sometimes upper-level engineers can be demeaning to others. I don’t remember the details, it's been many years. This was within the context of the company culture mostly prior to the Satya Nadella era. I think we were discussing that how assholes should not be tolerated, but there are sometimes assholes up in the food chain that are far too risky to lose.
- kyberias 8y agoPlease stop labeling people "assholes". It doesn't contain any useful information. That's the same as saying "I hate that person".
- coldtea 8y agoNo, it says "that person behaves badly". Whether that's true or false is another matter, but it's not the same as saying "I hate that person".
- kyberias 8y agoI think "asshole" tries to say much, much more. It's such a loaded word, you should never use it if you really try to explain how a person behaves. It's very hard to understand why anyone would label Cutler as "biggest asshole". He clearly has a very, very good track record in working in teams.
- chasil 8y agoCutler is famous in his derision of early UNIX. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler#Attitude_towards_Unix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler#Attitude_towards_U... The quote most often heard is that "UNIX is a junk OS designed by a committee of Ph.D.s." Showstoppers goes into some detail about his career goal "to get UNIX." Whether this is is purposeful or not is likely subjective. It is, in my opinion, informative.
- kyberias 8y agoAre you saying that his attitude towards unix is the same as "being asshole"?
- coldtea 8y agoAnd yet, here we are reading about Dave Cutler.
- treebeard901 8y agoIf it's true about Dave Cutler, then it reminds me of a saying I heard recently. Life is as simple as being better than your problems.
- chasil 8y agoDave Cutler is famously reluctant to talk to the press. Any subordinate giving details about him would certainly earn the ire of the entire corporation.
- alpb 8y agoWe've had anonymous Microsoft employees talk here before, so it would not be a surprise. I guess he’s not malicious to the extent that he’s driving people nuts and causing a bunch of other people to leave, otherwise I feel like we would’ve heard it by now.
- coldtea 8y agoBecause there are no retired subordinates after his 40+ years career?
- zellyn 8y agoI was struck by some of the descriptions in the article… “It was probably the scariest meeting of my life,” Multerer said. The team was “scared to death,” Multerer recalls. So I found this comment interesting, because it gave me more information about questions prompted by the article. In contrast, Jeff and Sanjay seem much nicer.
- maxxxxx 8y agothe book "ShowStopper" describes his behavior quite a bit. very difficult to work with.
- fanf2 8y agoHere’s a memory of Cutler from the DEC days https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2019-January/017435.html https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2019-January/017435.h...