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Several MSFT employees I talked to mentioned that they didn't like working with IBM - too much of a culture clash from what I could gather.

by canucker2016 3y ago

EvanAnderson 3y ago
An earlier comment mentioned Gordon Letwin[0] (lead architect of OS/2 at MSFT), and that led me down the rabbit hole to an "infamous" USENET post he made re: OS/2[1]. It sounds like there was acrimony all around: Another problem that came up here was that IBM didn't want us to use the windows API for the graphical environment under OS/2. Many key folks inside IBM had always hated Windows. IBM had this crazy thing called TopView, it was a character oriented windowing scheme and not very good. Bill Gates, myself, and some other folks made several trips to Boca Raton to try to explain to those guys why a character oriented windowing scheme was obsolete before it was even written, but to no avail. One of IBM's most major problems is that although their top guys may be smart, they aren't techically savvy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin [1] http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post
- canucker2016 3y ago
  You cut off the best bits of Letwin's rant: "...although their top guys may be smart, they aren't techically savvy. And their low level guys are often neither. IBM doesn't promote on the basis of your skills and ability; they promote on the basis of seniority and other secondary factors. So the guy who makes these decisions often doesn't know what he's doing. And he doesn't know that he doesn't know, because his peers are equally butt-ignorant too. So these guys can never figure out how other folks, including but not limited to Microsoft, keep doing better! Must be dumb luck, they think. I always agreed that it was dumb luck. If you catch my drift... :-) "

Several MSFT employees I talked to mentioned that they didn't like working with IBM - too much of a culture clash from what I could gather.

EvanAnderson 3y ago

An earlier comment mentioned Gordon Letwin[0] (lead architect of OS/2 at MSFT), and that led me down the rabbit hole to an "infamous" USENET post he made re: OS/2[1]. It sounds like there was acrimony all around: Another problem that came up here was that IBM didn't want us to use the windows API for the graphical environment under OS/2. Many key folks inside IBM had always hated Windows. IBM had this crazy thing called TopView, it was a character oriented windowing scheme and not very good. Bill Gates, myself, and some other folks made several trips to Boca Raton to try to explain to those guys why a character oriented windowing scheme was obsolete before it was even written, but to no avail. One of IBM's most major problems is that although their top guys may be smart, they aren't techically savvy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin [1] http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post

canucker2016 3y ago
You cut off the best bits of Letwin's rant: "...although their top guys may be smart, they aren't techically savvy. And their low level guys are often neither. IBM doesn't promote on the basis of your skills and ability; they promote on the basis of seniority and other secondary factors. So the guy who makes these decisions often doesn't know what he's doing. And he doesn't know that he doesn't know, because his peers are equally butt-ignorant too. So these guys can never figure out how other folks, including but not limited to Microsoft, keep doing better! Must be dumb luck, they think. I always agreed that it was dumb luck. If you catch my drift... :-) "