Chris Sells - What's the most suprising thing you've learned since coming to Microsoft? | TheChannel9Team

Chris Sells tells us what the most suprising thing is that he's learned about software development in the year he's been working at Microsoft: that Microsoft is organized chaos. Listen to him explain what he means.

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Jeremy W that blogging guy

Apr 26, 2004 at 2:11 PM

This really isn't helping guys
AdamKinney Agent of Change

Apr 26, 2004 at 11:11 PM

That's very interesting. I wonder how well an environment like that could be duplicated at a smaller company. Maybe some of it has to do with the select group of people that Microsoft hires.

Neat stuff.
alphatesterusa alphatesterusa

Apr 27, 2004 at 4:16 AM

Well, just surf the Internet that there WAS a Longhorn Build 3718 leaked Lab 6. Just wonder how Microsoft organize their build numbers ?

According to my knowledge, it start from 3683..3683, 4008, 4015, 4029 ,4050, 4051, 4053.... and this 3718 ?

Is that a Loop?
The Channel 9 Team 5 guys from Redmond

Apr 27, 2004 at 10:54 AM

3718 is an old build. Not current.
androidi

Apr 27, 2004 at 5:27 PM

If my impression from this and other sources is correct, a huge percentage of the developers time is spent in various meetings. Has there been any studies how this kind of development/work environment could relate to quality of design/pace of bugs coming in etc and performance of the team compared to more traditional approaches for example? I guess measuring that could be a bit challenging. But the coders own feelings of how productive / creative they are and how stressed could have something to tell.
alphatesterusa alphatesterusa

Apr 27, 2004 at 7:40 PM

Thanks 4 info.
by the way what's the different between WMP 9.00.00.3409 & WMP 10.00.00.0109 ?
SKG

Apr 29, 2004 at 7:28 PM

I have to agree with what Chris was saying about this all the hard, frantic work being done for the sake of customers. It really is the reason I get out of bed in the morning...

I may be an employee, but I'm a customer also...
Charles Welcome Change

Apr 29, 2004 at 10:09 PM

androidi wrote:

If my impression from this and other sources is correct, a huge percentage of the developers time is spent in various meetings.

Actually, this is not true for most developers around here. Meetings are mainly the bread and butter of program managers and the like. Development managers are also big time meeting goers. For the developers in the trenches meetings are occasional in nature. Certainly not the norm. Remember, somebody has to write and debug the code that brings our products to life.

One of the great things about Microsoft is that developers are shielded from meeting madness.

Charles
JoeG Smiles everyone, smiles.

May 15, 2004 at 8:36 PM

My favorite line in the interview:

"Who knows what I'm committing Microsoft to?"

The possibilities are endless, aren't they Chris?
daniael

Oct 06, 2004 at 11:41 PM

cool, i love it!!!
daniel
Rossj

Oct 07, 2004 at 4:28 AM

JoeG wrote:

My favorite line in the interview:

"Who knows what I'm committing Microsoft to?"

My favourites lines (paraphrased)...

1. I'd never worked on a functional software development team.
2. I build the best development team I had ever worked on.

Does this mean that Chris *had* worked on development teams before - just bad ones?
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