Tim Bray’s take on the Microsoft/Wikipedia mess is enlightening but this bit at the end blew my mind:

Netscape hired me to represent their interests, and when I announced this, controversy ensued. Which is a nice way of saying that Microsoft went berserk; tried unsuccessfully to get me fired as co-editor, and then launched a vicious, deeply personal extended attack in which they tried to destroy my career and took lethal action against a small struggling company because my wife worked there. It was a sideshow of a sideshow of the great campaign to bury Netscape and I’m sure the executives have forgotten; but I haven’t.

Wow.

Where I come from we have a word for this kind of stuff: shystie. It’s not a label applied carelessly and once applied it’s almost impossible to shake because it means you cannot be trusted.

You don’t associate with shysters. You don’t try to help or understand them. You stay away.

Shystiness is a terminal disease.

I think this gets to the root of my issue with the recent round of smart and reputable people going to Microsoft. Ozzie, Hugunin, Udell: all insanely smart and respectable individuals. I want to like that company again, I really do, but they’re shystie. It’s a deal breaker.

EDIT: I felt bad after posting this. I’m not sure why because I feel pretty strongly about the sentiment. At any rate, this comment from Mike Champion, one of the folks at MS I have a large amount of respect for, balances out my cynicism a bit:

Finally, on “Which is a nice way of saying that Microsoft went berserk”: To be frank, I watched that episode 10 years ago with horror, and had my own issues with some Microsoft people and the rather arrogant corporate culture back in the ‘90s too. But things change … I guess the perpetrators are now retired and living off their stock options proceeds. Life is unfair, but it goes on, the lawyers move in, and I’m quite sure that that kind of thing wouldn’t happen today. Give MS credit for one thing: they don’t hire dummies (well, maybe I’m an exception) and smart people learn from their mistakes.

Clearly, the shystiness at MS is not a trait shared by everyone. The good guys need to find a way to get out in front of the shysters in a big way.

Bha. I’m breaking my own rules now.

Comments

  1. I think there are two points to be made here:

    1. Don’t humanise corporations; neither equate their staff with the respective corporation.
    2. However: corporate culture tends to reflect the personality(-ies) of the founder(s).

    The concept of shystiness does not apply to anything other than individuals; however if the founders (and generally the upper echelon) of a company are shysters, then as a whole the company will always show shyster tendencies, too.

    — Aristotle Pagaltzis on Monday, February 05, 2007 at 08:41 AM #