Sinofski is a revered person at Microsoft. He has been responsible for the last couple of versions of Office, includingthe radical 2007 decision, and was very m

Sinofski is a revered person at Microsoft. He has been responsible for the last couple of versions of Office, includingthe radical 2007 decision, and was very much selected by merit to lead the development of Windows 7. For anyone who tried the Vista beta, you know that traditionally Windows was a mess right up until (and often until after) it shipped. Lack of engineering discipline and talented engineers forced to go into management for raises was really hurting Windows. Sinofski shook up the rules and let the engineers quit management and go back to engineering at the same pay. He also helped shape policies that have substantially improved quality. For example, the main-line Windows 7 branch only contains ship-ready features. Windows 7 won't be late because Ballmer could say "hey, let's ship it tomorrow" and it would be ready. He MCs the excellent Engineering 7 blog http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/ http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/ as well as a popular internal personal blog. His writing style is very long winded, but information rich. After reading his posts, seeing him at the company meeting, and giving a few tech talks, I am quite confident in his ability to turn Windows around. I wish I could say the same for many other teams.