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Comment by 1letterunixname | Hacker News Reader

For those who don't remember, Russinovich prior to taking over his boss' job and possible succession as the next MSFT CEO, he owned a software tools and NT kernel consulting company where Redmond sent their engineers to learn NT kernel dev. Also, he found Sony's DRM rootkit, Symantec's rootkit-like file protection, and caught Best Buy pirating ERD Commander.

I'm kind of kicking myself now that I nuked my LinkedIn in 2014 having 2 degrees from the whole Valley and Mark as 1st. Oh well, there's freedom and agility in relative obscurity. What's that reggae song by Desmond Dekker about it's pointless to talk about how much you did, made, or who you used to know? xD

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> he owned a software tools and NT kernel consulting company where Redmond sent their engineers to learn NT kernel dev.

Apple apparently used to do something similar, internal Apple Docs were nothing compared to Jonathan Levin's books[1], so Apple would routinely buy those for their OS engineers.

It's pretty interesting to me that companies of that size can't really do these things themselves, despite being in a much better position by having access to the engineers actual source code. These third parties (or at least Levin) had to rely on reverse-engineering to a large degree.

[1] https://newosxbook.com

It is a matter of priorities, and walls between business units.

Back in my Nokia days it wasn't also that easy to get access to this kind of information about Symbian and what not.

Also because there's no promo or bonus for writing good documentation. It's mostly a thankless task even for internal docs.

Yeah, a consultant can make more than an FTE just by spending a lot of time reading and writing lots of documentation. Especially if they can form a business around it.

How can you mention him and not mention sysinternals? I rely on that suite to do my job every day! Sysinternals have had more of an impact than perhaps even Azure itself considering how basically every company using windows in the world uses at least one sysinternals tool.

The sysinternals tools should be part of any windows installation. They are a must in mine.and are sorely missed whenever I need to fix/debug a friends computer. why else did MSFT acquihire them/Mark Russinovich?

You don't need to miss them. You can run them straight from live.sysinternals.com and even mount it as a network folder.

https://www.nextofwindows.com/tip-having-all-the-sysinternal...

He is a good coder, but having read his books I don't think he would be a good CEO.

My take from the first book was that he has an extremly black and white view of the world.

> My take from the first book was that he has an extremly black and white view of the world.

Things change over age. He might be no longer such.

Apparently it's good for a comment on HN.

The song is Fu Man Chu, by Desmond Dekker and the ACES.

>and possible succession as the next MSFT CEO

wat

That's Live and Learn off of Double Dekker. It's good stuff.

Is he going to be the CEO? That would be fantastic. He was super technical and super knowledgeable about Windows kernel. He was a true hacker.

I don't think I'd want a "true hacker" to be a CEO.

"true hacker" feels good when describing people at the top of engineering career paths like fellows, but for a CEO I'd rather have someone who's mix of decent tech skills and unparalleled business skills. I've had an opportunity to see companies where people didnt know how to do business and that was tragedy. That was way, way worse than non-technical manager trying to push solutions on ya.

How he is doing from business perspective?

Why not? Why can't a true hacker be a CEO? Bill Gates was a hacker. He implemented the Altair Basic language when computer languages were still in their infancy. Timothy Sweeney was a hacker and the creator of the Unreal Engine. He was the CEO of Epic. Eric Schmidt was a hacker. He wrote Lex. He became the CEO of Sun and Google. I would say Elon Musk was a hacker, as he was super technical.

As much as Paul Allen? Would the latter have been as good a CEO?

Assuming you can't be among the best of both, which is a natural if possibly wrong assumption, I think it's clear where Gates excelled and that was obviously great for Microsoft.

The job of a Chief Executive Officer is to run the company, which requires a distinctly different set of skills and talent from people who like getting their hands dirty at the workbench.

> the job of a Chief Executive Officer is to run the company

Thats a very vague job description. Executive's jobs are to make investments that will maximize shareholder return and an executive of an engineering company will only be able to make the best investments if they understand the technology they are selling and their customers. People have been noting how engineers have been running more and more companies, thats because more and more companies rely on technology to drive their growth.

Why can't a hacker poccess both the skill sets?

On the contrast I can show you pure business people failed at the CEO post. E.g. John Sculley ran Apple to the ground.

It depends a lot… Being ”a hacker” does not remove the required skills even if he has used his time for other things in the past.

For software company, it could be useful if the CEO knows what software is and the company might find other business models than trending ”enshittification” route.

What I’m missing in all this.. there’s literally a role in the executive suite for the hacker-leader: CTO.

Absolutely, but we're talking specifically about the CEO role.

I agree he is a true hacker. Have all his books. But he is CTO of Azure and we know what s%#%$$t show that is...

The best kernel hacker is not the best manager for people - which the CEO very much is.

Are you saying the best kernel hacker categorically makes someone not the best manager.

Or are you staying the best kernel hacker does not necessarily make someone the best manager.

I disagree with the former but agree with the latter. But I also want to add that the best leader for a technology company like Microsoft is not just some guy with an MBA but someone with both deep technical expertise and management/business experience.

The CEO's of Intel, Nvidia, and AMD are all engineers by training.

That's just quite presumptuous.

Backed by statistics. Although Google’s example shows that having a non-engineer souled guy is not a recipe for preventing enshittification and rot.

Are you saying that it is backed by statistics that good CEOs need to be good managers of people and also implying that engineers are not good managers of people? I would be interested in seeing that statistics.

It feels wrong to me. In fact, I would argue that in tech the opposite is true. Go watch 'Downfall',the documentary on Netflix about Boeing and what happened when they dropped their engineering ethos and let in the "people persons" there.

Google is a textbook example of both enshittification and rot.

> ... having 2 degrees from the whole Valley and Mark as 1st.

I'm having trouble parsing this. What does this mean?

Degrees of separation in LinkedIn. 1st degree means you've connected with them, 2nd degree means you've connected with one of their connections.

Oooh okay that makes sense.

Thank you.

What kind of benefits do you think you would derive from being “connected” with him on LinkedIn?

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