Comments on: It Must Suck To Be Ray http://saunderslog.com/2006/03/25/it-must-suck-to-be-ray/ A daily round table on the tech industry with experts and callers from all over the globe. Join us as we pick apart the news and get to the meat of what\'s happening out there. Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:05:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Alec http://saunderslog.com/2006/03/25/it-must-suck-to-be-ray/#comment-4485 Alec Sun, 26 Mar 2006 03:12:59 +0000 http://saunderslog.com/2006/03/25/it-must-suck-to-be-ray/#comment-4485 Haven't seen it pd. Haven’t seen it pd.

]]> By: /pd http://saunderslog.com/2006/03/25/it-must-suck-to-be-ray/#comment-4483 /pd Sun, 26 Mar 2006 01:44:08 +0000 http://saunderslog.com/2006/03/25/it-must-suck-to-be-ray/#comment-4483 Any pointers to a .pdf or screen scrap of the actual email ?? I am searching for the root converstations -nowhere am I seeing this.. its a bundle of strings all put together which camoflogues how the hypthesis of 60% code rewrite is being driven..... Any pointers to a .pdf or screen scrap of the actual email ?? I am searching for the root converstations -nowhere am I seeing this.. its a bundle of strings all put together which camoflogues how the hypthesis of 60% code rewrite is being driven…..

]]> By: Alec http://saunderslog.com/2006/03/25/it-must-suck-to-be-ray/#comment-4481 Alec Sun, 26 Mar 2006 00:05:47 +0000 http://saunderslog.com/2006/03/25/it-must-suck-to-be-ray/#comment-4481 I think you hit the nail on the head, Larry. Someone at Acer head office in Taiwan, I am sure, was formally informed by their OEM account rep in Redmond, about the delay. Citing that person would have made Dave Richards' story more credible. I worked in the Windows group, by the way. Even if we had wanted to know, it would have been impossible to categorically state that x% of the product needed a rewrite. It just didn't get developed that way. Nor have I ever seen any software engineering organization deliver stats like that. I think you hit the nail on the head, Larry. Someone at Acer head office in Taiwan, I am sure, was formally informed by their OEM account rep in Redmond, about the delay. Citing that person would have made Dave Richards’ story more credible.

I worked in the Windows group, by the way. Even if we had wanted to know, it would have been impossible to categorically state that x% of the product needed a rewrite. It just didn’t get developed that way. Nor have I ever seen any software engineering organization deliver stats like that.

]]> By: Larry Borsato http://saunderslog.com/2006/03/25/it-must-suck-to-be-ray/#comment-4480 Larry Borsato Sat, 25 Mar 2006 23:55:34 +0000 http://saunderslog.com/2006/03/25/it-must-suck-to-be-ray/#comment-4480 Actually a better analogy is that the McDonald's has been expecting to sell healthier buns to their customers, when the bun supplier announces that the buns will be late. You wanna bet that every franchise owner is aware of the situation. In every large company I've ever worked with, my customers were exceeedingly well informed, often knowing ahead of me what other divisions of my own company were up to. And it makes sense. The key customers had multiple points of contact and sources of information. It wasn't always perfectly accurate, but it was often better than that which my own company communicated to me. After all, they tell their customers what they need to know about their products, while the they may not pass that information along to other people in other divisions of their own company. And then those customers pass that information around their own companies, where it may lose some of the facts, leading to comments like "60% of Vista is being rewritten", as opposed to a possible 60% of the code has issues that need to be resolved. I'd assume that Acer is a key Vista customer after all. You used to work for Microsoft didn't you? Are you saying that you knew more than Microsoft's key customers about every aspect of Microsoft's products? Actually a better analogy is that the McDonald’s has been expecting to sell healthier buns to their customers, when the bun supplier announces that the buns will be late. You wanna bet that every franchise owner is aware of the situation.

In every large company I’ve ever worked with, my customers were exceeedingly well informed, often knowing ahead of me what other divisions of my own company were up to. And it makes sense. The key customers had multiple points of contact and sources of information. It wasn’t always perfectly accurate, but it was often better than that which my own company communicated to me. After all, they tell their customers what they need to know about their products, while the they may not pass that information along to other people in other divisions of their own company.

And then those customers pass that information around their own companies, where it may lose some of the facts, leading to comments like “60% of Vista is being rewritten”, as opposed to a possible 60% of the code has issues that need to be resolved.

I’d assume that Acer is a key Vista customer after all. You used to work for Microsoft didn’t you? Are you saying that you knew more than Microsoft’s key customers about every aspect of Microsoft’s products?

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