• FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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    8 months ago

    Aside from anticompetitive actions, I don’t see much harm having been done by selling an operating system.

    • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Did he code it all by himself? Or give the profits to the programmers in direct proportion to how much they worked on it?

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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        8 months ago

        I’m not saying Wozniak didn’t get fucked by their dealings or that CEO to Worker pay rate is justifiable, but they’re a lot better off than most. Wozniak is working as a US treasury and defence contractor and he likes to sell uncut pages of bills to strangers for fun, man is worth at least 120 Million USD.

          • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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            8 months ago

            Yeah I really fumbled on that one, Woz was with Apple not Microsoft. Can you name anybody who worked at Microsoft before 1990 who didn’t become wildly successful?

            • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I mean, if you can name them, it’s probably because they were successful, right?

              Microsoft is not a paragon of good employee treatment btw. As others pointed out, they had their asses sued to pieces for trying to maintain employees as contractors because it allowed them to save money by not paying benefits.

              • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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                8 months ago

                This might be the pot calling the kettle black, but absence of evidence is not evidence. My lack of information on a group of tech entrepreneurs who existed over 40 years ago doesn’t prove anything, and neither does your lack of ability to present such information.

                • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  So I don’t know what I’m talking about because I didn’t link you to a super well-known and easily found piece of info? Sure bro.

                  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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                    8 months ago

                    Honestly that doesn’t sound all that bad. They even chose temporary staffing agencies that already paid benefits. The lawsuit was basically over whether recurring temp workers could utilize the stock-option plans that permanent employees got. The worst part about this case is that it went on for 8 years before Microsoft settled it.

                    In January, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Microsoft’s appeal of a lower-court ruling that as many as 10,000 workers hired on a temporary basis should have been allowed to take part in the stock-option plan that the company offers its permanent employees. The case was filed by the Seattle law firm of Bendich, Stobaugh and Strong PC.

                    Pilla noted that Microsoft changed its policies for temporary employees earlier this year. It now has a 12-month limit on temporary employment, after which workers have to take a 100-day hiatus, Pilla said, adding that the average length of a temporary employee’s time at Microsoft has dropped to just 10 months. The company also tries to use temporary employment agencies that already pay benefits to the workers.

                    Despite the settlement, Pilla reiterated Microsoft’s contention that it didn’t set a formal policy aimed at keeping temporary workers on as virtually permanent employees in order to avoid having to pay benefits and Social Security taxes.

                    “I don’t think you can look at it as a broad policy,” he said. “A lot of times, it just happened. [Temporary workers] moved from project to project.” But he added that Microsoft executives eventually “did recognize that” and moved to institute the new requirements for temporary workers.

          • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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            8 months ago

            Ah, shit, you’re right. Yeah I’ve never even heard of a disgruntled Microsoft programmer, I guess Paul Allen? But he still got 60-40 split with Gates even after Allen left to deal with cancer. Then there is Charles Simonyi who is also quite affluent after moving on to bigger and better things.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Aside from anticompetitive actions

      “Aside from 95% of the shit he did, I don’t see much harm from the other 5%.”

      Bill Gates’ anticompetitive behavior probably set the entire computing industry back a decade or more.

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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        8 months ago

        Lol, as if. Computing industry limitations are still dictated by Hardware, which has advanced at the same rate it would have without Windows. Plus, the vast majority of servers run Linux, anyways, so all he did was be one of three or four firms that helped bring computing into people’s homes when otherwise it would have required more technical skills than anybody had in that time period.