TheArchitect.co.uk - Jorgen Thelin's weblog

Microsoft Plays Hiring Hardball

A very nice ego-boosting article by Darryl Taft on eWeek today about recent hiring at Microsoft, mentioning Don Box, Chris Sells and me.

Here's my favourite excerpt:

Microsoft Plays Hiring Hardball
By Darryl K. Taft

Like baseball's New York Yankees, Microsoft Corp. has been paying top dollar for top talent in an effort to dominate the new playing fields of XML and Web services.

During the past 18 months, the Redmond, Wash., company has gobbled up some of the best-known XML, Web services and application development brains around. Most recently it hired Cape Clear Software Inc. Chief Technology Officer Jorgen Thelin, who last week announced he would be leaving the Web services infrastructure company to join Microsoft. The effort, which runs counter to Microsoft's traditional strategy of scooping up complementary companies, has concerned developers crying foul and claiming the company is only looking to improve its standing among standards groups.

The moves are paying off. Since early last year, Microsoft has co-developed more than a dozen Web services specifications and helped push through the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) 1.2 standard. "This was a barnburner year," said CEO Steve Ballmer at the Microsoft financial analysts conference here last week. "We have hired more great people this year than any time on record. We've hired people from IBM, from Oracle [Corp.], Sun [Microsystems Inc.], from startups, failed startups. We've hired distinguished engineers, fellows, top-level technical talent from the best companies in the business."

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