bmajik's Journal: The standard argument against an ABM know-it-all

I read a lot of funny comments about "MS should do this", "MS is stupid", "those people are idiots", "this is the obvious thing to do", etc.

Here's my standard response:

1) We (MS employees) don't know everything

2) Some of us are pretty smart

3) If the "obvious" answer you are parrating were both obvious _and_ satisfactory, wouldn't some of the smart people already have suggested it?

3a)We can safely conclude that your answer is either
3a-1) novel and non-obvious
3a-2) utterly unworkable for reasons that you may never know
3a-3) unattractive for a variety of reasons, which, again, you may never know

4) In the event you can fix whatever large problem you're describing about microsoft (from the tone of your post, it seems that you think you can, i.e. you make a lot of really basic suggestions (which further suggests that we're idiots for not doing the obvious things you point out), please, please come work for us. We want more smart people. We want people that can solve all of the problems we have. If you could solve just the _one_ problem you described to the satisfaction of all relevant parties, and then accomplish nothing else, we'd pay you any realistic amount of money you'd want. Seriously. I don't have the pull to authorize that sort of thing, but Bill and Steve have personally hired people straight out of college.

We suck, you know it, and in just a few sentences you've described completely how to fix it. Problem is, if your suggestions had never occured to us to begin with, what are the odds that you telling us is all the help we need ? It's downright inhumane of you to not help us get better by coming to work for us and showing all of us how wrong we've been and how we've been missing it the whole time.

The ball is squarely in your court.