Hacker News Reader

Comment by ewanmcteagle | Hacker News Reader

I think this deserved pointing out. I'm not sure where this Don Dodge is great stuff comes from or what it's based on but these few posts about him do make him seem coin-operated. The best developer evangelists are able to be sincere, thoughtful and helpful. Without those qualities it's a job that tends to make you into a shill.

View on HN

Agreed on all counts. Never heard of him until the news he was fired from MS, read his goodbye blog post that was pretty Microsoft-friendly, and threw up in my mouth a little when I saw this new one. I'm sure Don's done some good work, but based on the exposure I have to him (the two aforementioned blog posts) I find it hard to respect the guy.

I agree that it looks pretty bad, but for the sake of playing Devil's, er, Don's Advocate: maybe he was feeling down from being unexpectedly let go from MSFT, and is now having a rebound where everything about his new job looks extra rosy? Just saying there's a human/personal element at play here too.

You might be right, but he could've handled this with more professionalism.

I can understand feeling down after being fired. I can't understand magically having opinions opposite to those you held when employed by your new employer's competitor. The flippant and unprofessional tone just exacerbates the problem.

I don't think any of his opinions expressed are actually a turnaround from his previous statements. He used to talk about the good things at Microsoft and not mention the bad things. Now he is talking about the good things at Google (with comparison to bad things at Microsoft), and not mentioning the bad things at Google (which I won't attempt to enumerate, since I work at Yahoo).

I think he is just trying to remain upbeat about his sudden and clearly quite wrenching departure from a job he loved at a company he respected.

"... Agreed on all counts. Never heard of him until the news he was fired from MS, read his goodbye blog post that was pretty Microsoft-friendly, and threw up in my mouth a little when I saw this new one. ..."

Which means you probably didn't look very hard.

"... The companies were much higher quality than I expected. The founders were nearly all coders and hackers but did a surprisingly good job at presenting their idea, target market, and business model ..." ~ Don Dodge

Don was around YC around 2 years ago and while initially thinking the YC model was a joke, he changed his mind by observing. That's what you want isn't it? People think one thing, but change their minds after observing. Fluid thinking instead of fixed mindsets. ~ http://searchyc.com/don+dodge+bootload

>Which means you probably didn't look very hard.

Because I've only seen these two blog posts? I'm not sufficiently interested in Don Dodge to spend time researching him; and even if I were, a lifetime of washing oil off baby seals wouldn't change the issues I have with his blog post.

>Don was around YC around 2 years ago and while initially thinking the YC model was a joke, he changed his mind by observing. That's what you want isn't it? People think one thing, but change their minds after observing. Fluid thinking instead of fixed mindsets.

You can't honestly think that this blog post is the result of a reasonable change of mind after gaining new information. It's a complete and utter reversal of his stances on publicly available products he'd already used.

I've never really known who this guy was, only that he was laid-off from MS and was hired immediately from Google. I checked his blog and his most recent post was glorifying Google and their products as things far superior to Microsoft's. In a matter of hours or days?

Questionable. Unless he's resentful, but even still, be honest.

Agreed. I'd probably be biased towards Google and against Microsoft given my background, but it's even obvious to me how completely transparent this guy is and how little his recent praise of Google matters.

On a personal level Don has been extremely helpful to me and several other startups in the Techstars program. At least in the circles I move in he's earned a lot of respect for being a Microsoft representative who was actually eager to talk to early-stage companies looking to do something on the platform.

Let's say he is being honest, and we believe that he really is actually acting on new information. So working for Microsoft completely blind-sided him to how useful Gmail and Google Docs are? He really didn't know about Gmail's spam filtering and conversation threading? You're not going to be a very good advocate if you don't know your competition.

Developer evangelism is marketing, not development. To view this through any other lens seems silly. You wouldn't think badly of a marketing agency that was effectively able to promote two competing companies -- they're just doing their job well.

"Developer evangelism is marketing, not development. "

I agree. I am just surprised such "marketing" is successful in influencing developers. Maybe I have an (erroneous) image of developers as essentially rational people who are somewhat immune to such empty "buzz" as Mr Dodge seems to put out.

Even marketing - vapid crapola though it often may be - has to try a little bit and maintain at least a superficial veneer of sincerity and substance in order to work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com