5 ms·

I hope that John Foust had Dr. Whitten's permission to publish this apparently private mail. To the people who say that Whitten is arrogant or bitter, please re

by sfk 18y ago

I hope that John Foust had Dr. Whitten's permission to publish this apparently private mail. To the people who say that Whitten is arrogant or bitter, please read Joel's disrespectful comments first: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles "This seemed to piss off a guy named Greg Whitten who headed up the App Architecture group. Now, Greg was something like Microsoft employee number 6. He had been around forever; nobody could quite point to anything he had done but apparently he had lunch with Bill Gates a lot and GW-BASIC was named after him."

alecco 18y ago
Directory Listing Denied
- old-gregg 18y ago
  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/TwoStories.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/TwoSt...
allenbrunson 18y ago
that link doesn't seem to work. this one might: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html
earl 18y ago
Disrespectful? So what -- Joel's comments sound accurate, particularly after reading the letter. The phrase "architecture astronaut" ran through my head over and over while reading the email. Along with arrogant ass. In particular, this line: "I was a world class expert in graph theory, analysis of algorithms, sparse matrix algorithms for linear systems, numerical analysis, and non-linear multi-variate time series analyis before arriving at Microsoft to write language compilers." Any one of the set {graph theory, algorithm analysis, numerical analysis, linear systems, and non-linear multivariate ts} is a full PhD and a full life on its own. Nobody is an expert in all 5. Frankly, he sounds like the sort of person startups in particular should stay as far away from as humanly possible. I worked for someone like this at my last startup and he was a cancer. But he could hold endless meetings, drop jargon like a master, demean fellow employees, and act as a general barrier to accomplishing useful work.
- jrockway 18y ago
  He does sound arrogant, but being an "architecture astronaut" is exactly his job.

by sfk 18y ago

alecco 18y ago

Directory Listing Denied

old-gregg 18y ago
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/TwoStories.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/TwoSt...

allenbrunson 18y ago

that link doesn't seem to work. this one might: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html

earl 18y ago

Disrespectful? So what -- Joel's comments sound accurate, particularly after reading the letter. The phrase "architecture astronaut" ran through my head over and over while reading the email. Along with arrogant ass. In particular, this line: "I was a world class expert in graph theory, analysis of algorithms, sparse matrix algorithms for linear systems, numerical analysis, and non-linear multi-variate time series analyis before arriving at Microsoft to write language compilers." Any one of the set {graph theory, algorithm analysis, numerical analysis, linear systems, and non-linear multivariate ts} is a full PhD and a full life on its own. Nobody is an expert in all 5. Frankly, he sounds like the sort of person startups in particular should stay as far away from as humanly possible. I worked for someone like this at my last startup and he was a cancer. But he could hold endless meetings, drop jargon like a master, demean fellow employees, and act as a general barrier to accomplishing useful work.

jrockway 18y ago
He does sound arrogant, but being an "architecture astronaut" is exactly his job.