Kinnect developer Johnny Chung Lee quits Microsoft

…and, unsurprisingly, heads for Google.

The Microsoft brain drain continues.

Sad. I liked his work on the Wii.

He is certainly energinic, going everywhere.

That was fast.

You can call it a brain drain, but he also could have been head-hunted, which means at least they have some desirable individuals.

Remember, most people have more interests than just staying at the same company.  Perhaps this helps him scratch some other itch.

6 hours ago, Bass wrote

That was fast.

 

Wasn't it, though? Seems par for the course these days: the superstars leave MS and head for Google or Apple.

@Ray7: I often hear 'Developer X has left MS for Google\Apple', but then I never seem to hear of them again.  Does anyone have any updates on what any these 'superstars' have been up to since?

Herbie

@Dr Herbie: This is not so surprising in Apple's case: once you go to Apple, you're sealed in the ProjectX bunker until the next keynote.

Google, I'm not so sure about. They have a lot of clever people working on the ChromeOS and I suppose they have their secret projects, too.

In may cases, I suspect that the companies are looking at future potential rather than an immediate plan.

I can't believe anyone creative would want to work for Google. I mean, Microsoft has it's share of dead-end projects, but it also has a lot of interesting projects where you get to be creative *and* make things that people are actually going to use. At Google it seems like you have a few dull-but-worthy things like search, adsense and gmail and the infrastructure behind all that, and then you have a lot of stuff that isn't commercially important and probably never will be. If you do try and be creative (like Wave), the chances are Google will have no idea how to commercialise it and it'll end up killed.

But hey, maybe Johnny Chung's mysterious new role is to do something about that.

But hey, maybe Johnny Chung's mysterious new role is to do something about that.

A few months ago the Word Lens app for iOS came out, the concept is good, but the execution needs work (it uses an offline dictionary for translation, which tends to suck).

What if he's gone over to Google to work on a Google version of this? He's got lots of experience in computer vision. Or what about a kind of unified Google vision augmented-reality application that does everything?

And another VP jumps ship http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/20/microsoft_windows_consumer_boss_goes_to_juniper/

Apple/Google are not accumulating the only people capable of innovating and/or implementing.

New challenges and opportunities come along, sometimes inside sometimes outside, and people make these decisions go/stay all the time.

There is no shortage of clever people in the world, and often such change is good for both employee and employer.

4 hours ago, W3bbo wrote

*snip*

A few months ago the Word Lens app for iOS came out, the concept is good, but the execution needs work (it uses an offline dictionary for translation, which tends to suck).

What if he's gone over to Google to work on a Google version of this? He's got lots of experience in computer vision. Or what about a kind of unified Google vision augmented-reality application that does everything?

Have you used Google Goggles?

13 hours ago, elmer wrote

Apple/Google are not accumulating the only people capable of innovating and/or implementing.

New challenges and opportunities come along, sometimes inside sometimes outside, and people make these decisions go/stay all the time.

There is no shortage of clever people in the world, and often such change is good for both employee and employer.

Very true and, of course, people go to places other than Microsoft. As PerfectPhase pointed out, they have lost another executive the Juniper. I guess it's just the interweb echo chamber that makes it look like Microsoft is bleeding talent from every orifice.