Here I am, working for what many of you consider to be the essence of pure evil. Personally, I’ve found more essence of not-so-bright-ness than evil. Like they say, never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity.
I’m lucky enough to work on a smaller team (of smart guys/girl), but even within my team there is some serious NIH. You would think that, in order to make a product better, you would make sure to explore competing products, historial technologies, and anything and everything that could help you in improving a product.
On my first day, my mentor was showing me a bit of “the ropes”. I asked him about installing software (firefox), since I wanted to be as productive as possible. His response was, “You should take this opportunity to immerse yourself in Microsoft software.” A very understandable position, but it only gets better from there.
Later on, he asks me what editor I use. I respond that I mostly use vim, except where it isn’t available. His response? “Ah, you are gonna be one of those college kids who thinks that everything he knows is the shit and everything else sucks.”
My response?
“Ah, you are gonna be one of those Microsoft guys who thinks that everything your company creates is the shit and that there is no reason to ever use anything else.”
We have an understanding.