Comment by stickac
4 years ago
This might provide some hints (or not): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg#At_Microsoft
"In 1996, Hejlsberg left Borland and joined Microsoft. One of his first achievements was the J++ programming language and the Windows Foundation Classes; he also became a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and Technical Fellow. Since 2000, he has been the lead architect of the team developing the C# language. In 2012 Hejlsberg announced a new Microsoft project, TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript."
I can only speculate that lots of skilled Borland developers followed Hejlsberg and participated in creation of C# and later TypeScript.
The story I heard (I worked at Borland briefly in 1999): Microsoft would send a limo to the Borland HQ to pick up engineers for interviews on their lunch breaks. Borland sued, Microsoft settled for many millions, but basically instead of buying their rival outright (for assimilation into the Borg, lol), they just bought the talent. Last I knew Borland had changed names at least twice (Inprise, Embarcadero) and still existed, in some remnant form.
Amusingly Steve Ballmer got the hump when MS engineers started leaving for Google
As did Google when Google engineers started leaving for Facebook, and FB when their engineers started leaving for Uber/Lyft/AirBnB/Stripe/Coinbase/etc, and so on. It's pretty much a revolving door now, where many engineers have worked at all these companies and sometimes even come back to their home base.
CA's prohibition against non-competes and the DoJ's lawsuit against anti-poaching agreements is basically what makes Silicon Valley work.
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Borland sold their software division to Embarcadero, which appears to have been a big payday for top execs as they jumped out. However, Embarcadero did do a decent job of keeping the ship afloat and running things, though Delphi got very expensive. Idera then bought Embarcadero, but appears to allow it to have a high level of autonomy.
Another maybe interesting detail:
At some point there was an attempted pivot as well or maybe it was just what Embarcadero always had focused on.
I wasn't yet working in software then I think but there was an interview or paid article or something I think were someone told that the future of software laid not in languages and IDEs but in Software Lifecycle Management.
In a way they were right:
Today all major languages have free and open source implementations and Atlassian and a few others seems to have found larger or smaller sweet spots in what I think is Software Lifecycle Management or something.
That said what could Borland do at that point? It probably felt worse for them to bet the farm but in my opinion it absolutely isn't the most bone headed moveI have seen.
That said: The ads not so long after for "Delphi con" or something similar with large "No toothbrush required", that didn't exactly seem smart to me. I think by then everyone who used their products were grown up serious business programmers.
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I remember I started getting a bunch of emails from an "Embarcadero." I didn't remember subscribing, and the unsubscribe didn't work, so I just wrote a filter to skip the inbox and send them all to spam. I must have subscribed to something from Borland at some point.
Interesting, do they make a similar effort to hire IntelliJ staff? I mean they could offer a much higher sallary than what they would get in Russia. Or is it all due to having the top guy, who is in the know on who-is-who?
What was the basis of the lawsuit?
"In the past 30 months, Microsoft has hired at least 34 of Borland's top software architects, engineers, and marketing managers", according to a complaint prepared by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. These actions have been undertaken “for wrongful purposes: to acquire Borland confidential information and to inhibit Borland's competitive position,” the filing states.
Borland's lawsuit seeks unspecified financial damages and an immediate end to Microsoft's unfair practice of targeting Borland employees in order to hamper the company's ability to compete. The suit claims that Microsoft's activities are illegal under California Business & Professions Code Section 17200.
https://www.eetimes.com/borland-sues-microsoft-for-unfair-co...
> Saying that he "just wants Microsoft to leave us alone," Borland International (BORL) CEO Delbert Yocam today filed a lawsuit against Microsoft (MSFT), claiming that the software giant is hiring away Borland's key employees to put it out of business.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/borland-sues...
Ruthless. Just pure evil to target one specific company like that!
Not really. Borland could have issued attractive stock based retention packages to the employees they wanted to keep, and forced Microsoft to acquire the company or go away.
This was on Borland for not adequately valuing their staff.
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You're acting like the employees were forced into the limos at gunpoint. People have free volition. Offering someone a better opportunity is not remotely 'evil'.
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It's not ruthless -- it's business.
If the fault lies on anyone, it's the employees who accepted the offers. If they really thought it was "evil", they would have denied the offer on moral grounds or in loyalty to their employer.
Do you not frequently get offers for more money than you are currently making at your employer? I would be a massive asshole if I accepted and left a job every time I got one of those -- especially in this market!
Since they succeeded in hiring so much of their company away, it seems none of them felt particularly attached to Borland or their work there, compared to a salary.
The only "evil" in the situation is how easily some (most?) people will abandon you the moment they get a better opportunity.
I suppose Borland could have matched salaries or tried to keep their employees in whatever way (maybe they did, who knows?) but at the end of the day either they didn't, or it wasn't enough for those engineers.
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Why do you think they only targeted Borland like that?
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No. One man's departure did not bring down Borland. Years after this guy left JBuilder was a great product that made them tons of money in the early 2000s. Java's popularity explosion (think J2EE) came years after the J++ debacle and JBuilder cashed in.
They disappeared because they weren't able to compete with the commoditization of Java IDE's (Eclipse) and Microsoft's integrated sales channel on Windows (Visual Studio). These two things killed their two biggest products.
Borland staff also disappeared because M$ made them offers that they couldn't refuse. Departing engineers were offered megabucks salaries which lasted only a year or two, but were enough to decimate the ranks of Borland's talent and wipe out the company's skillbase. Of course, Borland wasn't the only competitor to receive this kind of attention from M$.
In the 1999 federal prosecution of M$ for antitrust, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson found that 'Microsoft used its "market power" to unlawfully "maintain its monopoly in the operating system market," violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. Microsoft, the Appeals Court found, unfairly used its monopoly power to strongarm computer manufacturers, Internet access providers, Internet content providers, independent software vendors, and companies like AOL, Apple, Intel, and Sun Microsystems.'
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/07/09/the-microsoft-...
They weren't able to compete with those things in the early-2000's, yet JetBrains was founded in 2000 and has had nothing but growth and success ever since.
The quality of leadership at Borland fell off, and the organization lost its vision and ability to execute. Simple as that.
I suspect JetBrains location in Eastern Europe helped a great deal talent-wise.
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> They disappeared because they weren't able to compete with the commoditization of Java IDE's (Eclipse) and Microsoft's integrated sales channel on Windows (Visual Studio).
That, plus their weird and (IMO obviously even at the time) misguided pivot to emphasise SLM systems over dev tools. Well, it may be the same thing: seems likely this pivot was what led to them not being able to keep up with Microsoft on dev tools.
It's important to understand that in the 90s Microsoft was one of the few software companies that took "software talent" seriously, and would aggressively poach talent from competitors. They offered better pay, better working environments (private offices instead of cube farms). Often times their competitors wouldn't realize this until it was too late.
I can die for a private office :(
Hell even a cubicle would be a step up from the last few office environments I've had.
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What incredible impact.
Still Delphi was better.
- DSL for UI (Forms) - fast native compiler that produced self sufficient binaries - great component library and many open source libraries - Object Pascal was extended to fit perfectly the needs of UI programming
Building things that have no real-world constraints does often result in great beauty. Unfortunately, the web and all its ugliness became the dominant platform because it enabled no-download no-install information & application interaction
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It was the pinnacle of an era that was gone with the rise of the Internet.
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Shit, I never thought I’d ever be a fan of any given programmer, but if one guy made both C# and Typescript I’m prepared to change my mind.