Handling the bad headlines

Geertjan Wielenga: What do you say on stage when the predictable questions are asked about something in the news?

Scott Hanselman: I do the best I can to be super straight with people. I say, "Listen, there are jerks at every company. Microsoft does some dumb stuff but we, as a whole, are always trying to do the right thing."

I also point out that we're not nearly as organized as we would need to be to be as evil as some people think we are. I've been at Microsoft for over 11 years and no one has ever been in a meeting and twirled their mustache and made a diabolical speech! We sometimes do dumb stuff but we're not evil; there's a difference. I just tell the audience that "incompetent isn't evil."

Geertjan Wielenga: There's this perception that large vendors are seamless monolithic wholes where everyone is aligned. Typically, the employees at large vendors have no clue what the people in...