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Comment by smiler | Hacker News Reader

10 years as a PM on Internet Explorer between 1995 and 2005. Not exactly something great to have on your CV is it :)

I'd hire him. It's easy to forget now how completely IE pwned Netscape in 1995-2002. They won by being better. I was a die-hard Netscape loyalist and Microsoft hater. I finally switched in 2000 because Microsoft's offering worked and Netscape's didn't, and I couldn't ignore that anymore.

The fact that Chrome and Firefox are simply better than IE now doesn't change that. People should be evaluated by how well they did with the technology and resources available at the time they did the work, and not by how badly their employer fucked things up after they left.

Dude. Microsoft lost an anti-trust trial, at least partially due to the Extreme Marketing of IE. We're allowed to read some ethically borderline behavior into that period's PM's resume.

I mean, I like Microsoft and Windows as much as the next guy, but geez, as soon as IE had 90%+ marketshare (due, lest we forget, in some measure to illegal behavior) Microsoft just let it stagnate. That alone should clue you in to how Microsoft feels about web browsers.

Again, don't project the sins of Ballmer onto the individual contributors and managers responsible for getting IE out the door. I really doubt that the IE team was responsible for the decision to disband the IE team, or that they made the decision to bundle it in with Windows. Those sort of strategic decisions usually get made by top-level executives.

I actually hate Microsoft. A lot. I work in web UIs, and the bulk of my frustrations come from having to work around IE's shortcomings. My personal computer has been Microsoft-free for the past 2-3 years, as well as a period in college, and in-between was only used as a Windows host for a Linux virtual machine. I try to avoid using Microsoft products whenever possible, I hate the company and would never think of working for them, and I would be rather glad to see them broken up.

But I try not to let my feelings about the company color the way I see the accomplishments of individual employees of the company. And whatever my personal feelings, the IE team accomplished a lot between 1995 and 2002. Netscape was as dominant in 1995 as IE was in 2002; in those 7 years, their positions reversed.

You can claim it was due to extreme marketing, but I was more than capable of downloading Netscape for myself, I was a die-hard Netscape fan up until 2000, and yet eventually I had to admit that they lost because they were stupid and the IE team was better. Netscape 4.7 was slow, it had poor standards compliance, it crashed a lot, and it refused to view a lot of really popular websites. Netscape 6.0 had an incredibly crummy interface that seemed like it was designed to take you to their portal page and trap you there. IE kept getting faster and more stable from IE3 to IE6, and it introduced innovations like XMLHttpRequest that later formed the cornerstone for GMail and Maps.

Thank you nostrademons for giving my soul the benefit of the doubt :)

Yes. Thankyou. We can look at IE now and criticize. But IE 5/Mac was awesome. IE 5.5/6 on Windows were so much better than netscape. MS might have done some dodgy stuff to get them there - but at the same time they delivered the goods technically.

I'm proud of the team I worked on, but have ambivalence for the company.

I was on IE 1.0 thru 5.0 (roughly '95-'99). It was a great team and in many, but not all ways, I think we made a great product. What happened on IE 6.0 was a tragedy. I wasn't there, but neither was most of the team that worked on IE5.

The only bright spot of that tragedy is it helped open the door for Firefox, which I love and have used for years.

That's a common sentiment among the Microsoft alumni I've talked to:

"Ambivalent about the company, loved my team, left at the right time."

I wonder if that's something specific to Microsoft-ish big companies, or common among people that decide to leave any job?

Have you tried Chrome?

IE development was effectively stopped at 2001. After IE6 shipped with XP, IE team was transformed into Avalon project (which, after years of struggle, became WPF). Only IE Sustained Engineering team continued to work on IE6. After some time it became apparent that security challenges are too hard for such a small team and larger effort is required to fix reemerging security issues, so new IE team was created to concentrate on security issues. Some old-timers were transferred from Avalon to found (refound?:) this team.

Couple years later it became clear that Firefox is becoming superior browser and Microsoft needs get back into the game. IE7 was announced and current IE team was expanded to meet the challenge. More old-timers left Avalon to join IE7. Then this team shipped IE7, IE8 and (as you would expect) is working on IE9 now.

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