

Microsoft fires employee who talked to Venturebeat. - rokhayakebe
http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/12/microsoft-fires-game-test-contractor-who-talked-to-venturebeat/

======
palish
His courage is admirable, but unfortunately misplaced. His job was to _test_
next-gen consoles. It shouldn't have been surprising that he'd find bugs. And
since he was a tester, he likely saw far more bugs than most end-users, simply
because he was looking for them.

I empathize with his frustration with Microsoft. He probably felt like they
were not listening to his reports, or if they were, that they were focusing on
problems that he believed to be less important. However, as a game developer,
I understand why it can take a very long time to respond to a playtester's bug
report. In the game industry, you're constantly working on improvements. There
really is no downtime. So, tester identifies bug; tester reports bug; manager
schedules bugfix; developer finishes what he's doing; developer reproduces the
bug; developer fixes the bug; developer does a "programmer test" to verify
that the bug is actually fixed; code is checked in, which is queued to be
deployed; and finally, the bugfix is deployed back to the original tester. It
can take anywhere from two days to two months for certain bugfixes, through no
fault of the process. (A process like that is inevitable for codebases that
are millions of lines of code.) And once you throw in the fact it is probably
difficult to deploy new code to consoles, and also that the testers aren't in
the same building as the developers, that process can probably take quite a
long time from the point of view of the tester.

So that said, I don't understand why he felt it was a good idea to be a
whistleblower in this case. There really is no big scandal. If a console
fails, Microsoft will replace it.

Also, I assume he signed a non-disclosure agreement, which he brazenly
violated.

~~~
pius
Nailed it.

------
jwilliams
Microsoft (or whoever) might want to take a look at the "McLibel" case before
they take legal action: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case>

Whilst McDonalds actually "won" in the end, the case enabled the high-profile
exposure of a lot of internal documents and secrets. Ended up being a massive
embarrassment and not at all worth the small victory.

------
wayne
He wasn't a Microsoft employee.. he was a contractor, who Microsoft finds more
expendable. The Xbox team seems especially secretive and is no stranger to
firing contractors who violate their NDAs:
<http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/146115_blogger30.html>

Google doesn't treat their contractors all that well either:
[http://valleywag.com/375573/some-doubleclick-layoff-
victims-...](http://valleywag.com/375573/some-doubleclick-layoff-victims-now-
foosball+free-google-contractors)

------
ilamont
Corporate America meets honesty. That's rough for this guy, and I hope he
finds another job in this field.

Is it realistic, though? Of the startup founders and established corporate
people who are reading this, would you hire him? Why or why not?

~~~
alaskamiller
honesty isn't respected or appreciated enough

~~~
pius
Neither is discretion.

