Whenever I bring up Microsoft Research someone usually mouths off about “what have they done that’s improved the products?” Or something along those lines.
I keep going back to Douglas Engelbart and the dinner I had with him about half a year ago. He invented the mouse in the 1960s, but it didn’t get popularized until the Macintosh came out in the 1980s.
Was that research important? I don’t think any human would say it wasn’t.
But if you talked about SRI in the 1970s, you might be able to give it the knock that I hear frequently about Microsoft’s research today. “Where’s the beef?”
Now, if you talk to Kevin Schofield, the guy who is in charge of moving technology from Microsoft Research to products, he has a whole list of beef. The mapper in Biztalk. The rating system in Xbox Live. The graphics engines in DirectX. And a whole bunch of other stuff.
So, why do so few companies do real research? Now, I know that Google thinks they are doing research. They hire platoons of PhDs. And give them 20% of their time to do whatever they want (more on that later). But they don’t share their research and the researchers are mixed into the product teams, so they don’t get to work on problems that don’t have commercial applicability. Why is that? Cause their coworkers get to bug them. At Microsoft the researchers are off in another building. To go bug them you have to take the time to go over to that building.
Now, there’s a downside. Marc Smith, inside MS Research, is doing some killer work on newsgroups and social effects therein. But I wish he’d focus more of his energies on blogs, instead. Those have more commercial applications than newsgroups.
But, this is an important point: research is NOT done because of commercial pressures. It’s done to study something and come up with new approaches.
This is why it’s so important that our industry continues to do real research. Not just product development. You never know what Marc will learn from studying the social behaviors of those who hang out in newsgroups. Maybe he’ll find a new algorithm that’ll prove very useful in a blog search engine.
So, why am I writing this? Well, if we come back in 100 years and talk about Bill Gates we’ll probably remember only two things: 1) that he improved the world with his foundation and 2) That he was a visionary businessperson because he invested his monopoly profits back into research.
We’ll forget about everything else, just like we forget all about everything else Thomas Edison did other than invent things. Or, how we remember John Rockefeller paid for libraries.
We should encourage other geeks who’ve gotten great wealth to do real research as well and share that knowledge with society.
Have you poked around Microsoft’s research site? It’s quite remarkable.
Now, imagine Oracle doing something like that. Or Apple. Or Google. Or Yahoo. Or eBay. Or Amazon.
If there’s one thing I miss about not having my job at Channel 9 anymore it’s my tours around Microsoft Research with Kevin. I still can’t believe they let me hang out in the hallways there with a camcorder. There were things I wasn’t allowed to shoot that were even more remarkable. Hopefully we’ll be able to use those things sooner than 25 years from now, though. It really is too bad it took industry 25 years to understand what Douglas Engelbart was saying.
But, I’m still glad someone paid Doug to do that research.
Update: Googlers point to their 20% time as proof that they are investing in research. I say that’s bullhockey. Why? Most of the Googler’s I know are pulling 70 hour weeks. Saying you get 20% of a 70-hour week to spend on what you want is like telling me I get to spend Saturday doing what I want. Gee, thanks. But, even forgetting that, if you’re on a product group you are still pressured to come up with products. Being on a separate research team removes some of that pressure (not all, cause even at Microsoft the researchers are very aware that things should be aimed into products at some point, but it certainly lets workers take a more long-term approach).
Scobleizer 
Robert,
MS is really starting to come out with some cool things. For instance, I really dig the Windows Live search technology — I use it or Ask.com almost exclusively. I prefer Hotmail over GMail or Yahoo Mail. I really like Windows Live One Care.
People that have or are thinking about writing MS off should really reconsider. History shows it’s a bad move to make. I do think that Bill should be leading MS, however, and not Ballmer. Bill is a visionary whereas Ballmer strikes me as more of a bottom line businessman.
I’m looking forward to more of what MS will come out with. Vista is making me glad I just bought a laptop with a gig of RAM and an AMD 64-bit Turion processor.
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Robert,
MS is really starting to come out with some cool things. For instance, I really dig the Windows Live search technology — I use it or Ask.com almost exclusively. I prefer Hotmail over GMail or Yahoo Mail. I really like Windows Live One Care.
People that have or are thinking about writing MS off should really reconsider. History shows it’s a bad move to make. I do think that Bill should be leading MS, however, and not Ballmer. Bill is a visionary whereas Ballmer strikes me as more of a bottom line businessman.
I’m looking forward to more of what MS will come out with. Vista is making me glad I just bought a laptop with a gig of RAM and an AMD 64-bit Turion processor.
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Robert,
Spot on, I wish there was more pure research from software companies.
Much of the innovation that our companies leverage today derives from government sponsored research, often defence spending. Without this, there would be no Internet…
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was established in 1958 as the first U.S. response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik. Since that time DARPA’s mission has been to assure that the U.S. maintains a lead in applying state-of-the-art technology for military capabilities and to prevent technological surprise from her adversaries.
Telfon and the Internet are essentially byproducts of the cold war….not of the free-market. So much of invention is the result of unintended consequence, not of a quarter on quarter bottomline focus.
Tim Berners-Lee was working in a particle physics research centre when he came up with www, I wonder if would have had the time if he had been working in a “normal business”
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Robert,
Spot on, I wish there was more pure research from software companies.
Much of the innovation that our companies leverage today derives from government sponsored research, often defence spending. Without this, there would be no Internet…
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was established in 1958 as the first U.S. response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik. Since that time DARPA’s mission has been to assure that the U.S. maintains a lead in applying state-of-the-art technology for military capabilities and to prevent technological surprise from her adversaries.
Telfon and the Internet are essentially byproducts of the cold war….not of the free-market. So much of invention is the result of unintended consequence, not of a quarter on quarter bottomline focus.
Tim Berners-Lee was working in a particle physics research centre when he came up with www, I wonder if would have had the time if he had been working in a “normal business”
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Deke: Microsoft is strong BECAUSE it’s led by both a geek and a business person. Get rid of either one and you weaken it.
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Deke: Microsoft is strong BECAUSE it’s led by both a geek and a business person. Get rid of either one and you weaken it.
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I know it’s beside the point, but I think Andrew Carnegie paid for more libraries than John Rockefeller. At least “Carnegie library” has nearly 24 million Google hits, while “Rockefeller library” has 6.5 million.
Funny how we can use Google to compare 19th century industrialists.
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I know it’s beside the point, but I think Andrew Carnegie paid for more libraries than John Rockefeller. At least “Carnegie library” has nearly 24 million Google hits, while “Rockefeller library” has 6.5 million.
Funny how we can use Google to compare 19th century industrialists.
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The Google 20% thing is never pitched as a research effort. It’s always described in terms of product development.
Google may very well have a separate research group. You should ask them, but they probably will not answer.
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The Google 20% thing is never pitched as a research effort. It’s always described in terms of product development.
Google may very well have a separate research group. You should ask them, but they probably will not answer.
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Scoble,
I wouldn’t say Google aren’t doing research. I don’t know if they have a dedicated research group but they sure share the results of their research- http://labs.google.com/papers/index.html
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Scoble,
I wouldn’t say Google aren’t doing research. I don’t know if they have a dedicated research group but they sure share the results of their research- http://labs.google.com/papers/index.html
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How much does any given software company’s research effect the company’s bottom line? How much cash is dumped into research vs. the gain it yields the company? Don’t point to DARPA-funded research. We all know that the gov’t is the source of many money pits for the tax payers that eventually spawn lucrative private companies, but those companies aren’t the ones directly funding the research. Don’t point to Xerox. Sure, we all use interfaces based on those, but Xerox didn’t get the payoff from its researchers. And for heaven’s sake, don’t point at Microsoft. They dump bundles into research, but have a long history of getting into emerging markets by buying other products outright.
As usual, I’m a highly fallible human being. I’m more of a geek than a business-minded guy. Someone please correct me here. I love to learn . . .
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How much does any given software company’s research effect the company’s bottom line? How much cash is dumped into research vs. the gain it yields the company? Don’t point to DARPA-funded research. We all know that the gov’t is the source of many money pits for the tax payers that eventually spawn lucrative private companies, but those companies aren’t the ones directly funding the research. Don’t point to Xerox. Sure, we all use interfaces based on those, but Xerox didn’t get the payoff from its researchers. And for heaven’s sake, don’t point at Microsoft. They dump bundles into research, but have a long history of getting into emerging markets by buying other products outright.
As usual, I’m a highly fallible human being. I’m more of a geek than a business-minded guy. Someone please correct me here. I love to learn . . .
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Thanks for the kind comments Robert. We miss having you come through too — though you’re always welcome back for a video tour. That’s the nice thing about being an open research lab: we have visitors all of the time, and we can talk about a lot of our work.
Hitesh posted a pointer to a list of papers on Google technology; by pretty much all measures, it’s a token gesture on their part. Here’s the place to get the comparable list for MSR: http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/default.aspx — you can search for any particular author or topic, or just hit “search” and you’ll get the complete list. The other thing that drives me crazy is Google’s longer list of “papers written by people at Google — most of which were written by those people before they joined Google, and some of which were co-authored by people at other institutions (including MSR). They’re celebrating (and taking credit for) these people’s past achievements then shutting off the spigot when they get inside.
The real reason why Google’s 20% time doesn’t count as “research” is that it isn’t peer reviewed. It’s really easy to lock up a set of people and let them create stuff, then convince yourself that whatever they created is great research. The only way you know for sure is if you get third parties to evaluate it. That’s why MSR (and other companies, including IBM, HP, Sun, and Xerox) are committed to open research, open collaboration, and peer review.
I don’t think I’d say that MSR work isn’t done because of commercial pressures. MSR researchers are very aware of the customer feedback and market research that MS does, and it certainly influences the projects they take on. But the researchers aren’t working on products — they’re working on technology areas, trying to advance them, knowing full well that if they do a useful job of advancing a particular technology area, Microsoft product groups will be interested in using it. Often times, though, it isn’t in the way that a researcher might have originally envisioned it. A great example is a recent use of classification technology that our researchers originally created for identifying spam (now in use by Hotmail, Outlook, and Exchange), to help design a candidate HIV vaccine.
You invest in research to have a treasure chest of technology (and expertise) that is ready when you need it, and to give you the agility to move quickly and in new directions when an opportunity arises.
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Thanks for the kind comments Robert. We miss having you come through too — though you’re always welcome back for a video tour. That’s the nice thing about being an open research lab: we have visitors all of the time, and we can talk about a lot of our work.
Hitesh posted a pointer to a list of papers on Google technology; by pretty much all measures, it’s a token gesture on their part. Here’s the place to get the comparable list for MSR: http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/default.aspx — you can search for any particular author or topic, or just hit “search” and you’ll get the complete list. The other thing that drives me crazy is Google’s longer list of “papers written by people at Google — most of which were written by those people before they joined Google, and some of which were co-authored by people at other institutions (including MSR). They’re celebrating (and taking credit for) these people’s past achievements then shutting off the spigot when they get inside.
The real reason why Google’s 20% time doesn’t count as “research” is that it isn’t peer reviewed. It’s really easy to lock up a set of people and let them create stuff, then convince yourself that whatever they created is great research. The only way you know for sure is if you get third parties to evaluate it. That’s why MSR (and other companies, including IBM, HP, Sun, and Xerox) are committed to open research, open collaboration, and peer review.
I don’t think I’d say that MSR work isn’t done because of commercial pressures. MSR researchers are very aware of the customer feedback and market research that MS does, and it certainly influences the projects they take on. But the researchers aren’t working on products — they’re working on technology areas, trying to advance them, knowing full well that if they do a useful job of advancing a particular technology area, Microsoft product groups will be interested in using it. Often times, though, it isn’t in the way that a researcher might have originally envisioned it. A great example is a recent use of classification technology that our researchers originally created for identifying spam (now in use by Hotmail, Outlook, and Exchange), to help design a candidate HIV vaccine.
You invest in research to have a treasure chest of technology (and expertise) that is ready when you need it, and to give you the agility to move quickly and in new directions when an opportunity arises.
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Google has never stated that there 20% time is for research. If you had just checked out Google’s blog, you would have found a blog by Google’s Research Department/team or whatever at http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/
In fact one of their papers won a best paper award recently, see here: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/06/interactive-tv-conference-and-best.html
Why would you compare how many papers googlers have compared to MS. MS have been doing research way before Google became a company. Of course MS research department is way ahead Google’s, because MS is an older, wealthier company. In time Google’s research department will grow also.
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Google has never stated that there 20% time is for research. If you had just checked out Google’s blog, you would have found a blog by Google’s Research Department/team or whatever at http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/
In fact one of their papers won a best paper award recently, see here: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/06/interactive-tv-conference-and-best.html
Why would you compare how many papers googlers have compared to MS. MS have been doing research way before Google became a company. Of course MS research department is way ahead Google’s, because MS is an older, wealthier company. In time Google’s research department will grow also.
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…The need for Short term measurable results,
…The unprecedented real-time nature of the competative news media to pick up and spread any financial story with any potential of controversy,
…The popularity of Business Intellegence and Business Performance Management hi-tech ROI Software – among others …
have created a completely different society that the society that just a few decades ago produced:
Xerox Parc
The Internet
The World Wide Web
Many of the Early Nobel Science Prize Winners
Those are arguably Prime examples of long term research benefits without concern for immediate ROI
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…The need for Short term measurable results,
…The unprecedented real-time nature of the competative news media to pick up and spread any financial story with any potential of controversy,
…The popularity of Business Intellegence and Business Performance Management hi-tech ROI Software – among others …
have created a completely different society that the society that just a few decades ago produced:
Xerox Parc
The Internet
The World Wide Web
Many of the Early Nobel Science Prize Winners
Those are arguably Prime examples of long term research benefits without concern for immediate ROI
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Hi Robert:
I fully agree with Kevin. Research is about advancing the state of the art and not always the state of our bank balance.
When we do research, we think what is possible and what is not. In other words, what are the limit of the possibilities.
We do not necessarily think about Microsoft’s profit. We think about how eventually it could be useful for humankind. Our belief is, if something could be valuable for people then a business model around it could be made to make profits too. Whether we (i.e., Microsoft) eventually do that or whether the underline technology fits with Microsoft’s product strategy are mostly secondary questions. The primary goal is always to give back to the communities.
If you see our annual review forms, you would see that a big portion of our review is dependent upon how much we contributed to academic communities. In computer and information sciences, currently Microsoft research is among the biggest contributors of academic knowledge.
You could say that it Microsoft Research is one of the ways Microsoft contribute back to the society. Of course, Microsoft being a commercial entity, use the knowledge gained to make new and/or better products. Eventually the improved state of the art benefits everybody.
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Hi Robert:
I fully agree with Kevin. Research is about advancing the state of the art and not always the state of our bank balance.
When we do research, we think what is possible and what is not. In other words, what are the limit of the possibilities.
We do not necessarily think about Microsoft’s profit. We think about how eventually it could be useful for humankind. Our belief is, if something could be valuable for people then a business model around it could be made to make profits too. Whether we (i.e., Microsoft) eventually do that or whether the underline technology fits with Microsoft’s product strategy are mostly secondary questions. The primary goal is always to give back to the communities.
If you see our annual review forms, you would see that a big portion of our review is dependent upon how much we contributed to academic communities. In computer and information sciences, currently Microsoft research is among the biggest contributors of academic knowledge.
You could say that it Microsoft Research is one of the ways Microsoft contribute back to the society. Of course, Microsoft being a commercial entity, use the knowledge gained to make new and/or better products. Eventually the improved state of the art benefits everybody.
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The problem with basic research isn’t just that it doesn’t have much short-term ROI, but that a lot of it doesn’t even have any long term ROI for the company that funds it.
Fundamentally, the research process is pretty random. You can start out working on one problem and end up making a breakthrough in another area (penicillin, for example). Sometimes things happen accidentally, sometimes thinking about one problem will give you a great insight into another area, etc.
The problem with this randomness is that a lot of the time, the result of basic research comes in areas outside the company’s core competency. If your company makes widgets and your research department makes a breakthrough in social software, it’s not going to be very useful.
Basic reserach is (at least arguably) a good buy for Microsoft for two reasons. First, the company puts out a fairly broad range of products, so its more likely that a discovery will be applicable somewhere in the company. Second, because Microsoft has such a dominant position in the OS (and offfice suite) markets, it makes money anytime the market for desktop computers grows. So even if a discovery never makes it into a Microsoft product, if it increases the market for desktop PCs MS can consider it money well spent.
There’s really no other company in a position like Microsoft’s (at least right now, IBM was once, and some other company could be tomorrow). Microsoft doesn’t spend more on research just because it is altruistic or run by a geek, it spends more money on research because it’s more likely to get a return on that money than anyone else in the industry.
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The problem with basic research isn’t just that it doesn’t have much short-term ROI, but that a lot of it doesn’t even have any long term ROI for the company that funds it.
Fundamentally, the research process is pretty random. You can start out working on one problem and end up making a breakthrough in another area (penicillin, for example). Sometimes things happen accidentally, sometimes thinking about one problem will give you a great insight into another area, etc.
The problem with this randomness is that a lot of the time, the result of basic research comes in areas outside the company’s core competency. If your company makes widgets and your research department makes a breakthrough in social software, it’s not going to be very useful.
Basic reserach is (at least arguably) a good buy for Microsoft for two reasons. First, the company puts out a fairly broad range of products, so its more likely that a discovery will be applicable somewhere in the company. Second, because Microsoft has such a dominant position in the OS (and offfice suite) markets, it makes money anytime the market for desktop computers grows. So even if a discovery never makes it into a Microsoft product, if it increases the market for desktop PCs MS can consider it money well spent.
There’s really no other company in a position like Microsoft’s (at least right now, IBM was once, and some other company could be tomorrow). Microsoft doesn’t spend more on research just because it is altruistic or run by a geek, it spends more money on research because it’s more likely to get a return on that money than anyone else in the industry.
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“Saying you get 20% of a 70-hour week to spend on what you want is like telling me I get to spend Saturday doing what I want.”
Being self employed, spending my Saturday doing what I want is significantly different that a Google employee spending his Saturday with access to Google’s huge base of resources and technology. One or two people could create something like Orkut in their spare time, but very few people have the resources to scale it up without acquiring funding, additional staff, etc.
“The real reason why Google’s 20% time doesn’t count as “research” is that it isn’t peer reviewed. It’s really easy to lock up a set of people and let them create stuff, then convince yourself that whatever they created is great research..”
From a purely academic perspective, I would agree. Google’s research is product driven.
But as a very young company (compared to Microsoft, IBM, HP, Sun, and Xerox) Google is focusing most of its effort into developing services to compete with well established, deep pocketed companies, including giants like Microsoft. Can you blame them? Microsoft didn’t even open it’s research division until 16 years after it was founded in 1975.
As an 8 year old company with revenue based on services instead of established software or hardware sales, Google has wisely chosen to focus on product development with a short ROI. Purely academic research is a luxury that few companies can afford at this early stage of development.
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“Saying you get 20% of a 70-hour week to spend on what you want is like telling me I get to spend Saturday doing what I want.”
Being self employed, spending my Saturday doing what I want is significantly different that a Google employee spending his Saturday with access to Google’s huge base of resources and technology. One or two people could create something like Orkut in their spare time, but very few people have the resources to scale it up without acquiring funding, additional staff, etc.
“The real reason why Google’s 20% time doesn’t count as “research” is that it isn’t peer reviewed. It’s really easy to lock up a set of people and let them create stuff, then convince yourself that whatever they created is great research..”
From a purely academic perspective, I would agree. Google’s research is product driven.
But as a very young company (compared to Microsoft, IBM, HP, Sun, and Xerox) Google is focusing most of its effort into developing services to compete with well established, deep pocketed companies, including giants like Microsoft. Can you blame them? Microsoft didn’t even open it’s research division until 16 years after it was founded in 1975.
As an 8 year old company with revenue based on services instead of established software or hardware sales, Google has wisely chosen to focus on product development with a short ROI. Purely academic research is a luxury that few companies can afford at this early stage of development.
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Robert,
To look for an example of a company that does (or at least used to do) good research, look to 3M. One of the aspects of 3M (at least when I interned there in the early 80’s) was that fact that researchers were on parallel career paths to executives. To have good research in a company means you pay those who are good at research to do research and not convert them to be managers. This is what 3M did.
3M also allowed a certain percent of all employees time to work on their own ideas (back then, I believe it was 15%). This was of normal working hours. Alot of the ideas came from unexpected combination of factors, like Post-It Notes, which came about because a researcher in the adhesives group also sang in a church choir and discovered that this glue which appeared to not hold strong enough actually worked well for holding paper notes on their song sheets (I believe was the story). Without the outside activity, the discover wouldn’t have been put together with what appeared to be a failed product. The original color was to allow for copying to produce a white version of the note (i.e., note blend into the paper).
There are many other famous 3M stories of researchers putting unexpected things together to come up with new ideas. This to me is the beauty of research. Not all ideas work out directly, but when put together with other ideas, they can create great ideas. This is also where I see software companies to really look at research and to hold off shareholders. The shared collaboration of ideas is what excites the Open Source Community. It is, in essence, there reason for being. The FSF foundation is about freely sharing of ideas to come up with better ideas. Unfortunately, it has also become a anyone/anything-but-Microsoft audience, because both sides have went to each end of the spectrum about sharing. At least Ray Ozzie, appears to be changing this culture some. Software can not come up with the truly innovative ideas without research and the sharing of research. There has to be a happy medium for companies.
Let’s hope Microsoft will continue to fund research at a level where it can come up with new ideas and that the researchers are free to share with the greater community. The NDA is a killer to research. No one has all the best ideas, nor the best people. If all the focus is on developing ideas to make new products, to make money, research will fail.
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Robert,
To look for an example of a company that does (or at least used to do) good research, look to 3M. One of the aspects of 3M (at least when I interned there in the early 80’s) was that fact that researchers were on parallel career paths to executives. To have good research in a company means you pay those who are good at research to do research and not convert them to be managers. This is what 3M did.
3M also allowed a certain percent of all employees time to work on their own ideas (back then, I believe it was 15%). This was of normal working hours. Alot of the ideas came from unexpected combination of factors, like Post-It Notes, which came about because a researcher in the adhesives group also sang in a church choir and discovered that this glue which appeared to not hold strong enough actually worked well for holding paper notes on their song sheets (I believe was the story). Without the outside activity, the discover wouldn’t have been put together with what appeared to be a failed product. The original color was to allow for copying to produce a white version of the note (i.e., note blend into the paper).
There are many other famous 3M stories of researchers putting unexpected things together to come up with new ideas. This to me is the beauty of research. Not all ideas work out directly, but when put together with other ideas, they can create great ideas. This is also where I see software companies to really look at research and to hold off shareholders. The shared collaboration of ideas is what excites the Open Source Community. It is, in essence, there reason for being. The FSF foundation is about freely sharing of ideas to come up with better ideas. Unfortunately, it has also become a anyone/anything-but-Microsoft audience, because both sides have went to each end of the spectrum about sharing. At least Ray Ozzie, appears to be changing this culture some. Software can not come up with the truly innovative ideas without research and the sharing of research. There has to be a happy medium for companies.
Let’s hope Microsoft will continue to fund research at a level where it can come up with new ideas and that the researchers are free to share with the greater community. The NDA is a killer to research. No one has all the best ideas, nor the best people. If all the focus is on developing ideas to make new products, to make money, research will fail.
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When I was (briefly) in grad school, my supervisor told me not to worry about whether ideas had a large market or could be commercialized. His advice was to worry about what could be important for the industry in 10 years. It is that long-term thinking that makes research labs so important. And why post-doc researchers don’t always get paid in proportion to the value of their ideas.
At a human-computer interactions conference, I saw a paper from some MS Research guys working on a mobile phone that was aware of its context (sitting on a table, in a pocket, etc.) and would behave accordingly (e.g., vibrate instead of ring). It was rough and cool and they shared it openly.
I always said if I stuck with research I’d want to go work at MS Research instead of a university. But the entrepreneurial itch was too strong…
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When I was (briefly) in grad school, my supervisor told me not to worry about whether ideas had a large market or could be commercialized. His advice was to worry about what could be important for the industry in 10 years. It is that long-term thinking that makes research labs so important. And why post-doc researchers don’t always get paid in proportion to the value of their ideas.
At a human-computer interactions conference, I saw a paper from some MS Research guys working on a mobile phone that was aware of its context (sitting on a table, in a pocket, etc.) and would behave accordingly (e.g., vibrate instead of ring). It was rough and cool and they shared it openly.
I always said if I stuck with research I’d want to go work at MS Research instead of a university. But the entrepreneurial itch was too strong…
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I don’t think anyone has a problem with MSR. But the frustrating thing is that it’s research isn’t implemented in products that we want to use. Most people like MSR.
But it’s also not like this great humanitarian endeavor. Stockholders think you’re flushing money down the toilet without products to show for it. And why did your next CEO come from another company (Groove) when you should have been doing that p2p product to begin with? Xerox stockholders aren’t thrilled about the history of PARC, and MSR has few accolades to recommend it.
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I don’t think anyone has a problem with MSR. But the frustrating thing is that it’s research isn’t implemented in products that we want to use. Most people like MSR.
But it’s also not like this great humanitarian endeavor. Stockholders think you’re flushing money down the toilet without products to show for it. And why did your next CEO come from another company (Groove) when you should have been doing that p2p product to begin with? Xerox stockholders aren’t thrilled about the history of PARC, and MSR has few accolades to recommend it.
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I had a year when I worked between 70-90 hours a week. I can’t really remember what happened in my life at that time.
You have to be able to enjoy life. Work is just work.
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I had a year when I worked between 70-90 hours a week. I can’t really remember what happened in my life at that time.
You have to be able to enjoy life. Work is just work.
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