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Another Microsoft Exec Joins Google
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Jul 02, 2006 10:49 AM
from the just-another-boring-sunday dept.
from the just-another-boring-sunday dept.
SirClicksalot writes "CNN is reporting that Vic Gundotra, a 15-year veteran general manager at Microsoft, has left the company to join Google. Gundotra worked at Microsoft as general manager for platform evangelism to get software developers to use Microsoft's software and online offerings. The function he will perform at Google is not yet known, but he will need to wait one year before starting his new job because of a non-compete clause in his contract."
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Another Microsoft Exec Joins Google
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Was that... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://jrascher.wordpress.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday June 22 2006, @10:09PM)
Only on slashdot... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Only on slashdot... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://kim.biyn.com/)
(Again no offense intended, I am genuinely curious why people do this)
Aside from really racist crap I don't see the point of modding trolls down (or even just humor that some people don't find funny).
Re:Only on slashdot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Only on slashdot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it a vicious cycle? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Was that... (Score:5, Funny)
"And in Redmond..." (Score:4, Funny)
... what? Chair throws you?
Or should that be Soviet Redmond?
/ducks
Re:Was that... (Score:5, Funny)
Great News (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.justdontask.co.uk/)
Re:Great News (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://mp3bat.com/)
Unless of course Microsoft's plan all along was to slowly replace all Google employees with former Microsoft ones. And when the code word is leaked they'll all revolt and start a hostile takeover by Microsoft.
Of course the plan could back fire after the MS employees have their cold hearts melted by Google's love in some sort of 80's carebare-ish type of montage at the last moment.
Re:Great News (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Tuesday January 30 2007, @08:29PM)
Re:Great News (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.justjournal.com/)
ANOTHER exec leaves??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Curious statement (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday February 25 2006, @11:02PM)
Soo... the guy is going to take a year long vacation and then Google might know what job they're giving him?
Either Google is lying or they're poaching MS execs just to be dicks.
Re:Curious statement (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.jameshollingshead.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday June 02 2005, @01:40AM)
1) If they had announced his position now, by the time he actually got the ability to work for them, the landscape may have changed and they will either have to put him somewhere else (to cries of "Google is teh evil" because they said one thing and did another) or keep him in the position which they origionally stated, thus keeping him out of a position in which he may have been even more productive.
2) If they announced his position now, that gives the competition time to plan around him. This is especially true of Microsoft, because they know him best since he worked for them for so long. They know how he thinks and the kind of direction he will attempt to give Google (which will depend on the position he fills). That is not something you want your opponant to know.
Re:Curious statement (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://kim.biyn.com/)
More likely, people will buy Windows Vista for two reasons:
- Windows XP will be phased out of the market and Vista will come preinstalled on 90% of PCs
- the new GUI and Video games (this is a single reason, coming down to essentially eye candy. "Oooh, shiny!")
AFTER that, the content will come.
1 year vacation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:1 year vacation (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a bad deal. I'm sure Google will end up paying him for the 1 year vacation.
It really shouldn't be that way. If a company can stick a no-compete on you, then it is they that should have to pay you during the period that you cannot work in your profession. And if you do not have a job at the end of that period, they still should pay you up to two times the length of the clause.
So if you work for a company, and have a 1 year no compete, they might have to pay you up to two years. The US and Canada being at will employment should work both ways equally.
Google has to watch out though ; (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.webgeekworld.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday April 27 2006, @07:47AM)
Google has to watch out that the microsoft ex'es do not spoil the formation of 'do no evil' they got going on at google.
Eating One's Own Dog Food (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://en.wikipedia....h_invasion_of_Iberia)
What a visionary point of view (Score:2, Informative)
(http://www.karmax.com.ar/)
The link seems down here is the CC Mirror [nyud.net]. I can grab directly from the front page (I use Slashdotter, the firefox extension).
Non-compete? Ugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Friday December 23 2005, @06:30PM)
The Fine Summary sayeth:
That drives me insane. I had an employer once who tried to "get" me regarding a non-compete agreement, to wit he accused me of going after his customers. The problem was that no one could be excluded from that group -- he believed everyone on the planet was his customer. That's what I see when I read this. Google does not make operating systems or desktop software, they are a freakin' search company, and MS is not a search company. Yet MS identifies them as a competitor, just like they identify every company in existence as their competitor.
non-compete? (Score:2)
He'll need that year (Score:4, Funny)
Power doesn't come out of the barrel of a gun (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://kamthaka.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 30 2005, @03:18PM)
No.
Power comes from the perception arising in the brains of others that you've got power.
Even more so, it comes from the perception that you are gaining more of it in the future. It's almost as if the human mind projects the trends outward and tries to jump on the right bandwagon. I experienced this in the 80s and early 90s as people began to abandon other platforms for Windows. There was almost a sense of panic, that if you didn't get in soon enough you would be crushed.
It follows that if the perception starts that you are losing power, you will lose it, and people will think about the consequences of tying themselves to you for too long. Lenin captured an empire pretty with little more than an audacious show of confidence in the face of deflating imperial fortunes.
Microsoft's mind share survived the massive storm of the antitrust suit. But that was easy. But a steady trickle of news of people going over to a competitor with growing mindshare and momentum hurts them far beyond whatever those individuals could posisbly to them working for the competition. In the context of the Vista delays, a trickle of executives jumping ship tends to look the vanguard of the proverbial rats.
1 year non-comp?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Tagged chairthrowing (Score:1, Offtopic)
(http://scwizard.livejournal.com/ | Last Journal: Friday January 13 2006, @08:59PM)
Dear Steve Ballmer... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.evilcon.net/)
At the rate Microsoft is losing executives to Google, you might be wondering how Microsoft is going to fill its ranks in the near future. Have no fear. I represent a client who have decades of managing large scale operations. His track record of coming up with complex plans for achieving great goals and his resiliency after failures speak for themselves. Most importantly, I can guarantee you that he will never, ever join Google because, like Microsoft, he too is inherently evil and hellbent on world domination.
I give you, Dr. Evil.
Best wishes,
-Headhunter Inc.
If he chose to leave... it's his own damn fault. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday September 12 2006, @03:31PM)
They are quite tricky to enforce if it can be shown that the change in careers was not completely voluntary, however. (Either being let go for reasons beyond the employee's control, he was under duress, constructive dismissal, etc...).
I'm gunna ****ing kill (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.dittobox.net/)
POLL: Future career prospects for Steve Ballmer... (Score:3, Funny)
Cast your votes now!
platform evangelism? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.alexandreracine.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday March 08 2005, @11:33PM)
No chairs will be thrown over this departure (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://bonesmoses.org/)
Please Google, for the love of $diety, please hire execs from reputable companies...
The plan is to sabotage Google (Score:3, Funny)
In soviet Russia (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.livejournal.com/users/sinistertim101 | Last Journal: Saturday March 24 2007, @12:32PM)
Seriously, Borland tried to sue MS over this practice of luring all their good people away. Borland could not get anthing done as Microsoft's strategy was to send limo's and free lunches to Borland product managers and offer them lucrative positions at MS with cheap stock option signing bonuses. There products fell behind and Visual Studio took over.
Now the tides have turned.
I think this says alot about Microsoft as well. The people who are attracted to work at MS are hell bent on success and leading changes and being part of something successfull and new. Ms was king in the 90's and led the innovation and set the standards for computers and the future was bright and they were considered the wave of the future.
Today, Google is the new and innovative kid on the block and MS is stagnating. These same kind of people who like to make differences and be powerfull to satisfy their ego's see MS as the legacy company and google as the new innovative one. My, have times changed. This is bad news for Microsoft and morale at the company. They need to focus on something new besides upgrading windows and making yet game console.
So in the 90's MS hires your executives from YOU! Today Google hires MS executives.
I predict... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why? Well MS appears to have serious problems making things happen now, but it didn't used to. So, what's changed? Clearly not the recent defections - until very recently these folks were still at MS. I suspect that the people who actually made things happen left sometime around 2001/2002, and the folks that are leaving now might be the cause of the current problems at Redmond.
severance pay (Score:2)
(http://www.awesomeplay.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday November 10 2005, @04:51PM)
A Microsoft Plot! (Score:2)
(http://www.weintraubworld.net/)
Will Bill Gates stop at nothing to keep Microsoft market dominance!
Google gets MS execs, MS gets Google tech guys (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, Scoble's recent blog regarding this thread's topic says that he's met many former Google employees that now work at Microsoft, but you don't hear about them (I assume because they aren't big fat salary drawing execs, but are instead actual tech guys; and Microsoft doesn't feel the need to alert the media to such hirings like Google does (Google needs to do all it can to justify its inflated stock price)).
Strategic? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.entropicsoftware.com/eve/sd.html | Last Journal: Monday July 10 2006, @07:42PM)
Maybe Google are hiring away Microsofties in strategic positions, deliberately targeting those who have greater worth that their current compensation, partly to gain and partly to hurt Microsoft in a completely legal way?
They do have an advantage over Microsoft that they are probably playing to their advantage; ethically compared to Microsoft, Google are freaking angels.
Was Gates keeping Ballmer in check? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is one person out of seventy thousand... (Score:2)
(http://osrin.net/)
One less (Score:2, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday November 06 2006, @09:08PM)
I guess we won't be needing this anymore... *throws chair*
(One has to be careful to leave the premises before being noticed, otherwise it becomes *throws chair at developer*)
Great job title (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday February 25 2004, @11:29AM)
Re:the announcement (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.mulletsgalore.com/)
I'm thinking 100lb cinderblocks replacing each of the wheels... You definitely don't want the wheels, because you don't want him to be able to roll the now 500lb+ chair at you.
Re:developers (Score:3, Funny)
Three words ... (Score:2)
Re:So thing Gundotra guy thinks ... (Score:2)
(http://markbyers.com/ | Last Journal: Monday July 24 2006, @12:54PM)
Re:the announcement (Score:5, Funny)
No, no. "fsck" is a *nix command. Ballmer wouldn't say that.
Corrected quote:
No, you won't need to move, 'cause I'm going to chkdsking KILL YOU NOW!
Easy questions (Score:2)
(http://markbyers.com/ | Last Journal: Monday July 24 2006, @12:54PM)
Re:Ballmer hits the kill switch (Score:2)
(http://kim.biyn.com/)
That's my guess, anyhow.
Re:developers (Score:1)
(http://neonstream.us/)
"Developers Developers Developers" [google.com]
Off-topic? (Score:1)
After a year of bad news for MS - Vista slipping, Office slipping, poor reviews for Office and Vista, Ballmer called the "most uninfluential" person in business, repeated questions about whether MS can move to Web 2.0....
Petri's comment dead *on topic*. Pithy. Humorous.
Nice post, Petri.