A top Microsoft engineer has thrown out a weekend challenge to the Windows Vista team: find and fix a bug in the current code and earn US$100. The employee who installs the latest Vista build at home and squashes the most bugs before Monday will get an extra US$500. Brian Valentine issued the challenge Friday in an e-mail to members of the team working on Vista, the next update of the company’s Windows operating system.
You can’t throw money at problems. Whilst this may help in the short run, it:
a) Doesn’t fix your severe management problems
b) Makes Microsoft look like a bunch of clowns. Whilst most companies are serious about their products, Microsoft holds competitions to guess the launch date because it’s as much a mystery to them as it is to you.
b) Makes Microsoft look like a bunch of clowns.
FTA: “And Mozilla offers US$500 and a Mozilla T-shirt to those who find critical security flaws in its products, which include the Firefox Web browser.”
By your own reasoning, that means Mozilla look like a bunch of clowns.
Probably not what you had in mind, but there it is.
Mozilla is an open source project that does not employ hundreds of very already well paid programmers. They give bounties in order to encourage volunteers to the code base.
It’s like giving kids (amateur programmers) prizes for tidying up the room. Doing the same for adults (paid 30-something professionals) shows bad management, and a lack of seriousness regarding your product that is used on 90% of all desktops in the world. This childish behaviour regarding a massively deployed corporate product (whereas Firefox is a consumer product) just reflects on Microsoft.
Windows Vista is not an “anyone can jump in and help” project, there should be proper management for finding bugs and processing them with correct time and resources given to both find and fix them, and avoid them in the first place.
Edited 2006-05-15 10:45
Windows Vista is not an “anyone can jump in and help” project, there should be proper management for finding bugs and processing them with correct time and resources given to both find and fix them, and avoid them in the first place.
Yes, but what’s wrong with giving some extra incentive? EVERY company does that. It can be in the form of a pat on the back, extra stocks, salary raise, bonus, etc. It’s perfectly normal, and an accepted behaviour all throughout the western world.
Some people will find ANYTHING to pick on Microsoft.
Every other company keeps it within their walls.
And this was meant to be kept within MS’s walls. It’s not their fault that an internal email become such a big story.
I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it: these guys are ALREADY working on Vista fulltime! This is just a way for management to get them to give up their weekends. I wouldn’t bite.
How productive can you be working on a codebase during the weekend that you’ve already been feverishly working on during the week? Those that do go for this minute carrot could see themselves burning out – which obviously harms productivity.
This is simply bad management. And the prize? From Microsoft with billions in the bank? Please. If I worked on the Vista team I’d feel seriously insulted.
Yes, but what’s wrong
This is BS all over. I’ll tell you what smell wrong: here’s a company that developes a closed source, highly priced OS with hundreds of fairly well-paid developers. And yet, they seek the “help” of volunteers to correct their code (which is, again, not freely checkable), for some bait-cash.
Some people will find ANYTHING to pick on Microsoft.
Just as you seem to find ANYTHING so as not to pick on them.
Ok, my wrong, mod me down, for this is a call for Vista devs, not ordinary mortals. Mea culpa.
Mozilla is a corporation who recently admitted having had close to 70 million USD in profit last year. And yes, they have hundreds of employees.
“This childish behaviour regarding a massively deployed corporate product (whereas Firefox is a consumer product) just reflects on Microsoft.”
While I agree that it’s childish, there is no way that Vista is a corporate product. It’s a consumer product, because no corporation in their right mind would upgrade to something that requires a lot more hardware, just for some pretty transparency.
Microsoft is using more and more of the Open Source development model. They do not view their community as merely end-users, but testers and low-level developers now.
Learn to read first, then shut up.
Who would want to waste their weekend fighting with Windows bugs????
well.. I use XP, so I fight bugs every weekend
Well, they offer five times more money, at least
Easy money 🙂
Seriously though, shouldn’t they have a gold master by now instead of organising bug hunts ? I shudder to think how many new bugs the workarounds and fixes to the bugs found could potentially cause.
@Thom: ok, but $100? I mean, this is Windows & Microsoft, not a part-time project. And I thought developers had restricted access to the Windows code. how are they going to fix the bugs?
Best way to earn some cash ever!!
you submit a couple of bits of bug ridden code during the day at work, get home, ‘fix them’, and your a chunk of cash happier :-p
Best way to earn some cash ever!!
you submit a couple of bits of bug ridden code during the day at work, get home, ‘fix them’, and your a chunk of cash happier :-p
Except that their source control/issue tracking system would track your check-ins and bugs. It’d be really easy for them to see what you did.
“I’m gonna write me a new minivan this afternoon.” — Wally
If i wanted to get payed for fixing bugs.. $100 will not do. Especially from THAT company, considering the easy/most bugs will be fixed already by their top notch programmers. (an assumption, but not unreasonable)
This seems to be more like a media stunt so they can say, “Hey look, we have a community code project for Windows too!”.
Bleh.
Edited 2006-05-15 11:13
This seems to be more like a media stunt so they can say, “Hey look, we have a community code project for Windows too!”.
Considering that the bounty was announced in email to Vista devs, and then got leaked into public by someone on the recepient list, I don’t see how you can call it media stunt.
You dont have that option anyway. The email is to their top notch programmers, not to you or anyone else, unless they work at Microsoft, on Vista project.
Maybe it’s my reluctance to any program MS related.
But that it is announced to the dev list first does not say it will not be (ab)used for pr purposes.
Hopefully i’m wrong though
The media is making it look as if it’s something new.
I see it as overtime. They optionally offer it to their employees to get the work done with a very good price.
Strange, if Microsoft didn’t take this action some would have suggested it is another reason why Vista will suck.
Lighten up folks.
You anti-windows people are harsh.
Good on MS for giving some more incentive to their workers, tell me if your company offered you 100 dollars to fix a bug you wouldnt jump at it.
Its funny the whole holier than thou bs that comes outta the community sometimes.
Folks at Microsoft already work on weekends… Because they:
1- love what they do;
2- generally have a good workplace;
3- need to, because it’s hard anyway;
4- lose time with errands and they need to get the real job done;
This “bounty” can help very little.
How could someone fix a bug in Vista w/o the source?
I don’t get it.
This bounty is for the Vista developers at Microsoft. They are writing the source code and probably the few that have access to it. The bounty is way for them to have an incentive to fix any bugs that may appear in their source.
Thank you for the answer.
And this finally proves, without a doubt, that people will bitch about Microsoft over anything.
<puts on flamesuit>
People bitch about every company here, you are right though, Microsoft ususally get it more than others.
However, there is good reason for this. Can you honestly say that every Microsoft product you have bought does everything it was advertised to do. Without flaws, and without errors, and never crashed or froze the machine ?
If you say yes, then good for you, however, one persons experience is totally different from anothers, who might have crashes every few hours on the same software.
People expect to use their computers as tools, just another thing on the desk to get their work done, and as such, they expect it to work.
Mostly, around OS sites such as this it is a slanging match of “my OS is better than yours”, it has been so for as long as I can remember, (BTW – My Spectrum IS better than your C64), but also, there is a lot people here who come online and are very anti the very OS they use themselves. Instead of sharing the bad experiences and getting help fixing them they just say “Windows XP is crap/ Linux is crap/ Mac OSX is crap”.
There is an old saying, “a bad workman always blames his tools”, however, this is different, in that the blame is aimed not at the tools, (usually !), but at the toolmaker.
I use various versions of Linux, however, I will be the first to shout down Ubuntu, as it is overhyped, and slow.
I have installed software from the Ubuntu repositories, and the software has frozen X a few times. Software in a distros repositories are supposed to be build specifically for that distro. Of course, I submit the bug reports, but also, I am verbal about the errors on forums where people are praising Ubuntu unfoundedly.
Mandriva, used to be one of my favourite distros, however, in their efforts to make Mandriva the ultimate desktop, they made it look completely silly. The crow with the stars for eyes looked too “drugged up”, and the penguin bust looking skyward was too arty-farty for my tastes.
Hopefully, you will get the meaning of my post…… but, there is also muppets around here who just post up/down any post they see that praises/abuses the OS they use, without any merit on the post itself.
Rant over, raver
Why is this public news anyway. So they are paying overtime incentives to fix extra bugs on the weekend. SOOOOO.
Why should I care? I cannot access to the sourceode so I can’t fix any bugs.
LOL.
These seems like more of that ‘balanced journalism’ stuff.
I love hammering on this site.
if thats $100 per bug some developer is gonna make a mint. if they done this with earlier versions i reckon MS would have forked out well over a million dollars.. makes ya think eh
It’s not that anything is wrong here. It’s just funny how MS throws up these news items to say like: Hey guys look over here, we are pumping away.
Except Microsoft didn’t “throw up” this news. It was an email sent to employees, not meant for the media. But with a company the size of MS, stuff gets leaked easily.
Well, this bounty may be the opposite: Microsoft offers $100 per bug, and nobody finds anything! They declare that even with hundreds of interested beta-testers, all of whom want $100, couldn’t find a single flaw => Vista has zero bugs. And look at Linux, they get hundreds of patches a day that are obviously bugfixes.
Microsoft may be able to do this, as in my university they held a competition something like “try breaking into Windows Server 2003”, with obviously no winners.
If they aren’t careful they might go broke. LOL
If the programmers spent two 8h days (Sat & Sun) over the weekend trying to fix the most bugs, that $500 would probably end up to less than their normal gross pay for 2 weekdays… woot… er.. no..
I wonder how many guys are going to be looking for new jobs after they decided not to even give this a token participation effort?
l3v1, I tell ya whats wrong mate… You not reading the article…
And yet, they seek the “help” of volunteers to correct their code (which is, again, not freely checkable), for some bait-cash.
The article clearly states…
A top Microsoft engineer has thrown out a weekend challenge to the Windows Vista team: find and fix a bug in the current code and earn US$100.
oops!
I missed your follow up
Rock on mate!
I find it kinda strange actually. I’m a programmer = I get paid, if I work at the weekend I get paid even better (overtime bonus). I guess MS pays very well, so $500 seem just rediculous to me. Those ones who worked at the weekend, but didn’t find any bugs won’t get paid?
The only problem I see with this is that the developers may either 1) plant bugs or 2) save a long list of bugs (ie putting off fixing them), all to be fixed later to get the rewards. This, of course, seems pretty unethical and pretty sleazy.
Unfounded allegation? Not really. The Microsoft representatives (including program managers) that came to my school to recruit new employees TOLD us this is what they did. Sometimes they offer individuals money, sometimes they offer teams XBOX 360s. Usually, when a contest is about to happen, employees would horde up fixes to win. The program manager that talked to me lamented how his team saved up to 100 fixes for a week and still only came in second.
Oh well. They did, in fact, seemed very happy to work at Microsoft and happy to do what they do. If this type of incentive works for them, so be it.
Personally, I find the behavior (saving or planting bugs to get rewards later) appalling, but, then again, I don’t use Microsoft products. (Note, I’m not necessarily saying ALL MS employees do this, but from what I was told, it seemed pretty widespread. If the program managers that came to my school were misrepresenting the company, then shame on them.)
Are those bounties tax-able? Or will they be distributed as a “gift?”
“Are those bounties tax-able? Or will they be distributed as a ‘gift?’ ”
– Probably only for those that make over $300,000.00 a year and have clever accountants.
Seriously, is it just me or does $100 sound kinda cheap? MS is worth a heck of a lot, and if they’re SO concerned about debugging Vista – wouldn’t that be worth more than a chincy little C-note?
And one wonders whether or not the type of bug you find will effect the payment. Does a video rendering bug count as much as a filesystem bug?
Not that any of us in the outside-MS world can participate, but this sounds a lot like the Bush administration’s “hundred dollar rebate” scheme to ‘compensate’ for rediculous gas prices. I try to stay away from political comments as much as possible, but there’s some parallel in that.
Article: “VeriSign’s iDefense offered to pay US$10,000 for reports of flaws that end up with a “critical” severity rating in a Microsoft Security Bulletin”
– Now THAT’S more like it…
It seems like there is a lot of hostility towards this from the oss community but I think such hostility is not warranted. I would consider myself part of the oss community but I am not a zealot, I also think that while Windows is not an OS that I would use, I have to say that this is by no means an uncommon practice in business, many companies give bonuses for above average production, this is no different.
While I really do not like Microsoft, I see no fault in this. Honestly, it is a good proactice to give bonuses to employees who go above and beyond what is required of them.
Come on guys, if you worked there (or any company that had these practices) you would be singing a different tune, especially if you were one of the more devoted and skilled employees that is capable of getting these bonuses.
Edited 2006-05-15 21:27
One of the ‘jokes’ around the office here is that the IT worker who takes the pager with them for a few days gets an extra $50. You know how many takers there are? Just one: the guy whose turn it was in the rotation anyway. I can’t imagine someone on a full salary from MS that spends their whole day working on the OS would waste an entire weekend looking for bugs for $100. What would that come down to per hour, anyway?
You typically don’t want your only debuggers to be the core developers for several reasons…obviously they don’t write code with bugs in mind. What’s more is, they now have incentive to leave bugs in their code during the week and play clean up on the weekends. Seems like a much better time-to-pay ratio.
Just my $.02
Is the $100 not just IF the dev finds a verifiable bug ? If he finds none, then does he get any cash for essentially working his weekends ?
It’s $100 EACH bug they fix. Not $100 flat for the weekend. Plus, it’s also a race. They tally up the numbers and whoever fixed the most bugs in that weekend earns an extra $500 on top of N * $100 where N = number of bugs fixed.
http://www.activewin.com/awin/comments.asp?HeadlineIndex=34927
The original article was actually posted on ActiveWin and the info is more cut-and-dry on that page. Less fluff than the ZDNet article.
Those guys could make a lot of money in a short amount of time, depending on how long it takes to fix a particular bug, number of hours worked, etc.
Yeah, it’s quite the gamble though. If you fix no bugs, or fix them after the other devs, you’ve spent your weekend working for free. Score.
Aside from this, I find it hard to believe Microsoft OS developers are paid so mildly that a few hundred here or there is that big of an incentive. If you do a lot of investing (i.e. any of them watching their retirement accounts or other investments) probably have financial swings much bigger than that in various 3 day stretches anyway.
However, based on the responses I’m reading here, clearly my “screw you, it’s my weekend, and I’ll spend it how I want” attitude is in the minority.
To each their own.
Today on OSNews, we learn, in this thread, that most OSNews contributors seem not to work in the industry.
Microsoft’s professional staff, for the most part, is exempt meaning they don’t get paid overtime.
The challenge appears to come from a member of the team. It’s not clear, but it looks like it’s coming from his own pocket.
It’s symbolic. Most such gestures are.
Companies often give away trinkets as morale boosters during “crunch” time. SGI started a custom in the industry decades ago, in which managers brought in meals for developers during crunch, for example. Bug-a-thons are held, Prizes, usually facetious are given, teams go to movies on the company, “Sun is more than a company, it’s a wardrobe”…
Still has to be one of the least dignified moves in commercial software I’ve ever heard. Foss begging on the streets is, well how it gets started but commercial I mean really…
This makes sense to me. MS wants to squash bugs they provide incentive for their coders to do that and at the same time end up with a better product. Whats the big deal? No one is forcing the employees to do this its going to be of their own will. Hell I would do it if I worked there. Shocking as it may be to some people here, some people do enjoy their work and some people do enjoy working for Microsoft. Where-as maybe they were not approved to work overtime they can instead earn extra cash this way instead.
I don’t see the problem with this. Its a deal that works out for both parties. Its not abusing the employees they can control how long they spend doing this, whether they do it at all, and they get money to boot. And Microsoft kills a bunch of bugs in the process. It may not be cheaper for them either. If say it only takes 2 hours for someone to find and fix the bug for $100 thats liek $50/hr. Not exactly a “cheap” salary.