So a Microsoft vendor employee approached ESR, probably because he hasn’t done his homework, and ESR then reacted like a spoiled brat. Read the two emails – I think it’s obvious who’s the bigger fool in this story.
This and Shachar’s entry reminded me that MS tried to recruit me as well a few years ago, before I came to work for IBM at the Haifa Research Lab. I spent a pleasant three hours interviewing at MS for a position as a “full time consultant on the Linux system”, whatever that means (what it probably meant at the time was “how can we learn from Linux and make better products that compete with it?”) . I don’t remember much from the interview, except that I gave an off-the-cuff lecture on the design and implementation of syscalltrack. Hey, they asked 🙂
Eventually I decided that working for MS is not something that I could do with a clean conscience and told them so. Around the same time I accepted IBM’s offer. When MS heard about it, one of the guys who interviewed me, who previously used to work for the lab, called me and passionately tried to get me to change my mind. His main selling point was that IBM research plays, but only at MS do you get to write real software. Considering my usual opinion of MS’s software, I’d say this was an interesting, but less than persuasive, argument…
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