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Comment by outside1234 | Hacker News Reader

This one does seem to be different. Github is held at arms length from the rest of Microsoft (like LinkedIn) such that all of this sort of interference can't happen currently.

It will be interesting to see if they can keep that up. It is clearly an advantage to have an organization that can think "developers first" and not Azure, Windows, or whatever first.

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Hundreds of developers were moved from Azure teams to the GitHub org about a year or so ago. Several new features they have added are effectively rebranding/built on top of other Azure projects.

GitHub is hardly at arms length from MS.

Let us be straight: they effectively made the Azure DevOps (the leftover from the once might Team Foundation Server) a weak product to further foster GitHub. So when this team brought some tech over, that just means, they are now working for GitHub primarily and no longer on Azure DevOps.

Now I'm REALLY worried. Bringing in a large number of people like that at MS means they brought in A TON of managers, leads, and program managers. At MS these categories of folks get ahead primarily through political warfare, "networking", and stabbing each other in the back, and given large enough critical mass, that's what they'll continue to do, unless organizationally isolated from the rest of GH. Or at least that's how it was a little over a decade ago.

[Citation needed]

We'll see soon enough. If this is what's going on, the process rarely takes more than a year, year and a half.

I guess the post-Gates Ballmer era was prone to these types of acquisition wreckage. My feeling is that under Nadella everything is more nuanced. Still, we'll see soon enough.

Microsoft acquired GitHub around two and a half years ago. GitHub has improved greatly over that period. This CEO was already a Microsoft employee when the acquisition occurred.

Crucially, Nat wasn't a "lifer". Crucially as well, whatever the reason is, he's giving up his $1M+/yr comp package to go work elsewhere. A MS "lifer" wouldn't have done that.

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