Sunday, December 18, 2011 1:01 AM
When Rob Conery left Microsoft I gave a blog retrospective on possible reasons behind his exit. Today I’m happy to reload the cannon and aim it square at the latest Microsoftie to hand in his blue badge – Phil Haack.
Phil has been a huge part of why Microsoft MVC is a success, and his contributions have changed the way web development is done on the Microsoft platform.
So why leave, and why leave to Github? Couldn’t he have just switched to the TFS team if he liked code repositories so much? Well, here’s some thoughts on what could be behind his leaving.
He Likes the GitHub Logo Better than Microsoft’s
Sure, sure, Github is all kewl and they do some awesome things and you can check in code and stuff, but let me tell you something – Phil Haack moving to Github has less to do with all that and EVERYTHING to do with his fascination with cute anime-ish cats.
Knowing that he gets an unlimited number of stickers with that cat with the weird octopus tentacles on them was part of his signing bonus.
That Bromance with Hanselman Didn’t Go Anywhere
Unfortunately the HaHaa Brothers never turned into the HaHaa Bromance Phil may have hoped for. After delivering numerous versions of the MVC framework (which actually stands for “My Valentine for sCott”) in hopes of displaying his adoration, Phil saw the writing on the wall when Scott started doing presentations with other members of the ASP.NET team.
The final realization came when Scott started ditching his lunch appointments with Phil for members from the Access team. I mean c’mon, nobody *willingly* meets with the Access team!
Phil Failed to Fix the Past to Preserve the Present
Phil never actually worked at Microsoft, that all happened in a different reality thanks to his *EPIC FAIL* in ensuring the past happened correctly…
Unfortunately Phil faded from the cover and thus his career path simply led him to Github.
But Seriously…
Phil moving on is a huge loss to those of us in the Microsoft web world. But as we’ve seen with others, moving away from Microsoft rarely means moving out of the community spotlight altogether. I’m looking forward to seeing how Phil helps Github move forward the same way he moved the ASP.NET team. Good luck Phil in all your future endeavours!
For Rob, I posted a link to Michael W. Smith’s “Friends”, but for you I’ve selected Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”. ‘Cause when you’re lost you can look and code in MVC, time after time…