Dean Hachamovitch is a Microsoft corporate vice president, and is the head of the Internet Explorer team. I have never met him, and he’s probably a very nice guy, but in my opinion he is an obstacle to Microsoft’s efforts to re-establish their reputation amongst web developers.
As the IE head honcho, Hachamovitch is the guy who presents keynotes announcing new versions, most recently IE10 at Mix 2011. He also talks to the press, writes the really important blog posts, and generally acts as the public face of Internet Explorer. The problem is, he’s pretty terrible at all that stuff. He’s awkward, lacking in charisma, and comes across like a miscast actor, trying to perform a role he doesn’t understand. He’s also seems to be a through-and-through corporate guy and manager, mealy-mouthed and never deviating an inch from the company line. He doesn’t talk, write or look like an engineer, and that makes him a bad choice to talk to an audience of engineers.
Contrast Hachamovitch with Scott Guthrie, Microsoft vice president and head of the developer division. Guthrie’s a brilliant public face for the products his team produces. He’s a prolific blogger and public speaker, and he exudes technical knowledge and a friendly, good-humoured air. When he speaks, he seems comfortable doing it, like it’s a part of his job he enjoys, rather than something he has to do. This is not the case for Hachamovitch; the role of IE emissary never seems to rest well on his shoulders. Indeed, the IE gig in general seems like it’s a step on a career ladder, one he’ll gladly get off when one of the bigger boys above him makes room. Keynotes and blog posts are just a part of that job, one he wouldn’t do if had any choice.
In fact, Hachamovitch’s reluctance to engage with developers is pretty much a matter of public record. The most notorious example, and one where it backfired on him spectacularly, was in the run up to IE 8. At the time, Microsoft was just starting to get IE development back up to speed, after neglecting it in the years following IE 6. They had released IE 7 which, while far from perfect, was a welcome step in the right direction, and they had begun slowly to improve their communication. IE team members began posting on the team’s blog more frequently, and engaging with the community. But then things went quiet again. Information coming out of Redmond about the next version of IE slowed to a trickle and then stopped. Web developers, already not Microsoft’s biggest fans due to IE 6, became increasingly agitated.
Things came to a head when Molly Holzschlag, a blogger and web standards activist, had a meeting with Bill Gates where she raised the lack of communication from the IE team. Gates’ own instincts would probably tie with those of Hachamovitch regarding openness towards outside developers, but he understood that Microsoft had made enemies of web developers, and badly needed to do whatever was necessary to repair relations. In transcripts of the conversation with Holzschlag, Gates’ surprise, and anger, are obvious, as he promises to “ask Dean what the hell is going on”. Shortly thereafter, a contrite Hachamovitch posted on the IE blog, confirming that the team was working on IE 8, and promising more details and better communication in future.
Since that debacle, the IE team have become much more communicative and forthcoming. They post very regularly on the IE blog, release developer previews of upcoming IE versions, and they’re much more active in standards working groups. Yet Hachamovitch is still in charge, still awkwardly representing IE at conferences, and while communication from the team is much more frequent, it is often tainted with an unbecoming duplicity and focus on attacking their competitors, Google in particular, that has his fingerprints all over it.
This years Mix keynote was a prime example of this. Hachamovitch took to the stage to debut the work his team have been doing on IE 10, in particular adding substantial new support for CSS 3. And it was impressive stuff, as a web browser nerd I was very pleased with what I saw, and immediately raced off to download the IE 10 developer preview. If the whole keynote had been based on revealing new features and showing cool demos using them, it would have been great, but unfortunately that wasn’t all. Instead, large portions were given over to performance comparisons with ‘competing browsers’, which apparently just meant Google’s Chrome, and to pushing a message about ‘Native HTML5′. The idea behind this marketing phrase is the simple technical observation that a team developing a browser solely for a single, recent operating system, like Windows 7, has more scope to build upon the APIs and features of that OS, and so produce a better browser. In contrast, a team developing a browser to run on multiple platforms, like Chrome, has to build everything upon layers of abstraction and cannot always take advantage of the latest APIs due to requirement to stay compatible with older OS versions.
This is a certainly a legitimate argument in theory. In practice, I expect it comes down to the skill of the development teams involved, and I’m sure the Chrome and Firefox teams would argue strongly that they’re more than capable of matching anything the IE team can do. But the truth or falsehood isn’t really the point, the point is that it isn’t something to stand up and talk about at a keynote. It certainly isn’t something to build a negative campaign, based around spurious terms like ‘Native HTML5′, on. Yeah, you guys don’t like Chrome, and you think IE is better, we get it. But we don’t care, and even if we did, we wouldn’t take your word as to which was better, because you have a vested interest in saying that it’s IE. It’s reminded me of the moment during the iPad 2 keynote when Steve Jobs stopped to snipe at Android. It was petulant, seemed borne out of fear of the competition, and was just plain unnecessary. At least in Jobs’ case it was only one moment, in a keynote mostly devoted to expounding the virtues of the iPad 2, not the entire thrust of the message.
Another recent example of this behaviour was posts made to the team blog in which the addition of hardware acceleration to IE 9 was discussed. The team is clearly proud of this enhancement, and rightly so as it is a major improvement. But at the same time they attacked other browsers, Firefox in particular, who they said did not implement ‘full’ hardware acceleration, instead only accelerating parts of the rendering process. These comments brought strong rebuke from Mozilla, who demonstrated that their hardware acceleration implementation performed roughly on par with Microsoft’s. They also argued that the notion of ‘full’ hardware acceleration was nonsensical, as many parts of the process of rending HTML, such as parsing, cannot be accelerated, and of those that can, there are different approaches to accelerating them, each with its own trade-offs.
This kind of FUD and negative-campaigning does nothing to build Microsoft’s reputation. Instead, it feels like a throw-back to the most arrogant and mendacious Microsoft tendencies of old. Again, contrast this behaviour with that of the developer division. They are developing Silverlight, a Microsoft competitor to Flash, but it’s inconceivable that Scott Guthrie or one of his team would post a diatribe about how much better performing Silverlight was than Flash, or promote ASP.NET by disparaging Ruby on Rails. Instead, the focus is always on just talking positively and enthusiastically about their products, enumerating new features, providing technical detail and running through tutorials.
Internet Explorer needs that kind of energy behind it. It needs people, engineers, who are real, recognisable people, who live and breathe the web, who love their work, and who visible in the development commnity. It desperately needs a figurehead who actually enjoys talking about their product, who can admit its faults and past mistakes, and who can engage with a technical audience. Whether he likes it or not, it isn’t Dean Hachamovitch, and Microsoft should recognise that and move him aside. One of the few really recognisable web guys at Microsoft was Chris Wilson, but he recently left to go and work for Google. It’ll be interesting to hear what he does and says regarding IE when his non-compete expires.
Unfortunately, I don’t actually see a change at the top happening any time soon. Hachamovitch has climbed the greasy pole of Microsoft this far, and probably has good enough connections inside the company to keep him safe. And hey, maybe he’s a great manager when it comes to the internal stuff, we only get an incomplete picture from the outside. But regardless, I’d say it is a picture that needs to change.
The problem with Microsoft Internet Explorer is in this picture
Dean Hachamovitch is a Microsoft corporate vice president, and is the head of the Internet Explorer team. I have never met him, and he’s probably a very nice guy, but in my opinion he is an obstacle to Microsoft’s efforts to re-establish their reputation amongst web developers.
As the IE head honcho, Hachamovitch is the guy who presents keynotes announcing new versions, most recently IE10 at Mix 2011. He also talks to the press, writes the really important blog posts, and generally acts as the public face of Internet Explorer. The problem is, he’s pretty terrible at all that stuff. He’s awkward, lacking in charisma, and comes across like a miscast actor, trying to perform a role he doesn’t understand. He’s also seems to be a through-and-through corporate guy and manager, mealy-mouthed and never deviating an inch from the company line. He doesn’t talk, write or look like an engineer, and that makes him a bad choice to talk to an audience of engineers.
Contrast Hachamovitch with Scott Guthrie, Microsoft vice president and head of the developer division. Guthrie’s a brilliant public face for the products his team produces. He’s a prolific blogger and public speaker, and he exudes technical knowledge and a friendly, good-humoured air. When he speaks, he seems comfortable doing it, like it’s a part of his job he enjoys, rather than something he has to do. This is not the case for Hachamovitch; the role of IE emissary never seems to rest well on his shoulders. Indeed, the IE gig in general seems like it’s a step on a career ladder, one he’ll gladly get off when one of the bigger boys above him makes room. Keynotes and blog posts are just a part of that job, one he wouldn’t do if had any choice.
In fact, Hachamovitch’s reluctance to engage with developers is pretty much a matter of public record. The most notorious example, and one where it backfired on him spectacularly, was in the run up to IE 8. At the time, Microsoft was just starting to get IE development back up to speed, after neglecting it in the years following IE 6. They had released IE 7 which, while far from perfect, was a welcome step in the right direction, and they had begun slowly to improve their communication. IE team members began posting on the team’s blog more frequently, and engaging with the community. But then things went quiet again. Information coming out of Redmond about the next version of IE slowed to a trickle and then stopped. Web developers, already not Microsoft’s biggest fans due to IE 6, became increasingly agitated.
Things came to a head when Molly Holzschlag, a blogger and web standards activist, had a meeting with Bill Gates where she raised the lack of communication from the IE team. Gates’ own instincts would probably tie with those of Hachamovitch regarding openness towards outside developers, but he understood that Microsoft had made enemies of web developers, and badly needed to do whatever was necessary to repair relations. In transcripts of the conversation with Holzschlag, Gates’ surprise, and anger, are obvious, as he promises to “ask Dean what the hell is going on”. Shortly thereafter, a contrite Hachamovitch posted on the IE blog, confirming that the team was working on IE 8, and promising more details and better communication in future.
Since that debacle, the IE team have become much more communicative and forthcoming. They post very regularly on the IE blog, release developer previews of upcoming IE versions, and they’re much more active in standards working groups. Yet Hachamovitch is still in charge, still awkwardly representing IE at conferences, and while communication from the team is much more frequent, it is often tainted with an unbecoming duplicity and focus on attacking their competitors, Google in particular, that has his fingerprints all over it.
This years Mix keynote was a prime example of this. Hachamovitch took to the stage to debut the work his team have been doing on IE 10, in particular adding substantial new support for CSS 3. And it was impressive stuff, as a web browser nerd I was very pleased with what I saw, and immediately raced off to download the IE 10 developer preview. If the whole keynote had been based on revealing new features and showing cool demos using them, it would have been great, but unfortunately that wasn’t all. Instead, large portions were given over to performance comparisons with ‘competing browsers’, which apparently just meant Google’s Chrome, and to pushing a message about ‘Native HTML5′. The idea behind this marketing phrase is the simple technical observation that a team developing a browser solely for a single, recent operating system, like Windows 7, has more scope to build upon the APIs and features of that OS, and so produce a better browser. In contrast, a team developing a browser to run on multiple platforms, like Chrome, has to build everything upon layers of abstraction and cannot always take advantage of the latest APIs due to requirement to stay compatible with older OS versions.
This is a certainly a legitimate argument in theory. In practice, I expect it comes down to the skill of the development teams involved, and I’m sure the Chrome and Firefox teams would argue strongly that they’re more than capable of matching anything the IE team can do. But the truth or falsehood isn’t really the point, the point is that it isn’t something to stand up and talk about at a keynote. It certainly isn’t something to build a negative campaign, based around spurious terms like ‘Native HTML5′, on. Yeah, you guys don’t like Chrome, and you think IE is better, we get it. But we don’t care, and even if we did, we wouldn’t take your word as to which was better, because you have a vested interest in saying that it’s IE. It’s reminded me of the moment during the iPad 2 keynote when Steve Jobs stopped to snipe at Android. It was petulant, seemed borne out of fear of the competition, and was just plain unnecessary. At least in Jobs’ case it was only one moment, in a keynote mostly devoted to expounding the virtues of the iPad 2, not the entire thrust of the message.
Another recent example of this behaviour was posts made to the team blog in which the addition of hardware acceleration to IE 9 was discussed. The team is clearly proud of this enhancement, and rightly so as it is a major improvement. But at the same time they attacked other browsers, Firefox in particular, who they said did not implement ‘full’ hardware acceleration, instead only accelerating parts of the rendering process. These comments brought strong rebuke from Mozilla, who demonstrated that their hardware acceleration implementation performed roughly on par with Microsoft’s. They also argued that the notion of ‘full’ hardware acceleration was nonsensical, as many parts of the process of rending HTML, such as parsing, cannot be accelerated, and of those that can, there are different approaches to accelerating them, each with its own trade-offs.
This kind of FUD and negative-campaigning does nothing to build Microsoft’s reputation. Instead, it feels like a throw-back to the most arrogant and mendacious Microsoft tendencies of old. Again, contrast this behaviour with that of the developer division. They are developing Silverlight, a Microsoft competitor to Flash, but it’s inconceivable that Scott Guthrie or one of his team would post a diatribe about how much better performing Silverlight was than Flash, or promote ASP.NET by disparaging Ruby on Rails. Instead, the focus is always on just talking positively and enthusiastically about their products, enumerating new features, providing technical detail and running through tutorials.
Internet Explorer needs that kind of energy behind it. It needs people, engineers, who are real, recognisable people, who live and breathe the web, who love their work, and who visible in the development commnity. It desperately needs a figurehead who actually enjoys talking about their product, who can admit its faults and past mistakes, and who can engage with a technical audience. Whether he likes it or not, it isn’t Dean Hachamovitch, and Microsoft should recognise that and move him aside. One of the few really recognisable web guys at Microsoft was Chris Wilson, but he recently left to go and work for Google. It’ll be interesting to hear what he does and says regarding IE when his non-compete expires.
Unfortunately, I don’t actually see a change at the top happening any time soon. Hachamovitch has climbed the greasy pole of Microsoft this far, and probably has good enough connections inside the company to keep him safe. And hey, maybe he’s a great manager when it comes to the internal stuff, we only get an incomplete picture from the outside. But regardless, I’d say it is a picture that needs to change.
