I read this NYT article about Google's research efforts a couple of days ago and was wondering what someone inside Microsoft Research would say about some of the comments. Basically the article contrasts Google's practice of hiring a bunch of PhDs and letting them do whatever they want for 20% of their time (which I believe applies to all employees) with Microsoft's separate research division.
Now I just ran across a post from Kevin Schofield at Microsoft. He mentions the article and comments on it:
So what do they have? A bunch of very smart people (truly -- there is no doubt of that) with advanced degrees, scattered throughout the organization, splitting their time, and telling themselves that they are doing good research work without any real evidence. We have a critical mass of researchers, focused fulltime on research, publishing papers and getting tons of tech transfers (some of which we're showing at the roadshows tomorrow). Maybe they are on to something, but I doubt it and there isn't a lot of evidence to show so far. I'll take our model, thank you. And I hope for their sake that there isn't a mass exodus after the IPO.
Very interesting. Its amazing how Google and Microsoft are being compared more and more in all aspects of their business and practices. We'll see if this does turn out to be the tech/business battle of the coming decade, or if it will just fizzle away.
Blogs are great. How else would you be able to get the perspective of a guy like Schofield on this??
(By the way, I just used Seruku to find the NYT article. I knew I had read it, but didnt remember where or when - and I knew I hadnt bookmarked it. So I put in "Google Phd research" into the search bar and got exactly what I was looking for. Beautiful.)
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