IP: More on With Stock as Bait, Microsoft Lures Elite Professors

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> From: Ed Lazowska <lazowska () cs washington edu>
> To: "'farber () cis upenn edu'" <farber () cis upenn edu>
>
> Dave --
>
> I'd like to provide a comment regarding the Washington Post story.
>
> Disclaimer:  I've been a member of the Technical Advisory Board for
> Microsoft Research since its inception in 1991.
>
> With that said, I found the article to be extraordinarily one-sided.  Yes, a
> number of us have lost faculty to MSR, and these were great people who meant
> a lot to our programs and who will be hard to replace.  But overall, MSR
> employs only about 40 people who had once been faculty members, out of a
> total of 400 researchers.  And overall, each of us has lost far more faculty
> members to other academic institutions than to MSR.  (Let s/he who has not
> tried to poach from another academic department cast the first stone!)
>
> Further, the fact is that Microsoft has built one of the world's truly great
> computing research organizations -- an investment that is essentially unique
> among Microsoft's contemporary companies.  Further, the company is helping
> to drive the field forward at a time when these sorts of investments are
> desperately necessary because of the consistent failure of the Federal
> government to invest adequately.
>
> I think many of those quoted in the Post article would tell you that the
> reporter took their remarks out of context, presenting only the negative.
> I'll give you my own experience.  I spent 45 minutes on the phone with the
> guy.  Not a word of it made it into the article.  Nor did he follow up with
> another phone call as he had said he would.  (We were interrupted when he
> got another call.)  Having seen the article, it's clear why I was dropped
> like a hot potato:  what I had to say didn't fit with the reporter's
> pre-conceived notions and agenda.  In retrospect, I was one of the lucky
> ones -- at least I didn't get quoted out of context!
>
> One more comment:  I honestly don't think any truly top flight researcher is
> going to go to a lousy research environment just because of stock.  We're
> all in this business for impact.  There are lots of ways to achieve impact.
> Educating students is one way -- it happens to be the one that I personally
> find most fulfilling and am most effective at.  MSR offers its own form of
> impact and leverage.  People go to MSR because it represents an opportunity
> for impact, not because of the stock.
>
> This sort of unbalanced reporting -- no matter what the subject -- ought to
> be an embarrassment to the Washington Post.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Farber [mailto:farber () cis upenn edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 1999 8:10 AM
> To: ip-sub-1 () admin listbox com
> Subject: IP: With Stock as Bait, Microsoft Lures Elite Professors
>
>
> http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/TUE/FPAGE/micro.2.html
>
> Paris, Tuesday, April 6, 1999 
> With Stock as Bait, Microsoft Lures Elite Professors
>
> By Mark Leibovich Washington Post Service 
>
> REDMOND, Washington - The company well known for its aggressive domination
> of the software world has set itself a new target: the best minds of
> academia. 
> With cash, stock options and the promise of vast resources, Microsoft Corp.
> is luring faculty elites to its research center at a pace so fast that some
> campus departments say they are being picked clean. 
>
> Last month, Microsoft hired Lazlo Lovasz, a mathematician and recent winner
> of his field's prestigious Wolf Prize, away from Yale University. He will
> start in June and will join, among others, Michael Freedman, a Fields
> Medal-winning mathematician from the University of California at San Diego,
> and Jim Blinn, a MacArthur fellow and computer graphics expert from
> California Institute of Technology. 
>
> Microsoft Research, known as MSR, is aiming for a ''faculty'' of 600 people
> by the end of next year. It already is among the biggest computer science
> laboratories in the world, with 350 researchers.