.
But the other reason programmers are fussy, I think, is that evil begets stupidity. An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work. And it’s not fun for a smart person to work in a place where the best ideas aren’t the ones that win. I think the reason Google embraced “Don’t be evil” so eagerly was not so much to impress the outside world as to inoculate themselves against arrogance.
— Paul Graham
Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a steady exit of its best and brightest.
Not everything that has gone wrong at Microsoft is due to internecine warfare. Part of the problem is a historic preference to develop (highly profitable) software without undertaking (highly risky) hardware.
It’s not an accident that almost all the executives in charge of Microsoft’s music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left.
— Microsoft’s Creative Destruction, By Dick Brass, New York Times
.
.
.
2011.01.14 Friday ACHK