I was wondering.

We know some of the people working on Microsoft developer teams.

I know most of the people working there before 1995 are not there.

I know most of the people hired after 1995 usually came from some failed dotBomb company.

Let's consider Ken Levy and YAG.

We all know they are brilliant people.

But what did they do between 1995 and Microsoft?

Seems to me they helped companies with a failure of a business plan become failures.

Then, realizing the futility of their dotBombs, went looking for new jobs, and Microsoft hired them.

Am I being too harsh?

Or did Microsoft totally mess up by hiring people that happened to be jumping ship from other mess ups?

Of course, posting this message means I'll probably never work for them. But they should be more worried about that than I am.