25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#21

Post by sbarre » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

earthscienceman wrote: post #9

I don't think people indoctrinated in tech culture can understand just how weird something like this reads. All I could comprehend when I finished was "100 people work themselves to emotional exhaustion so American mega corp can retain monopoly status". I see nothing of valor, just a strange subculture that people are willing to sacrifice themselves to for reasons that make no sense to me. I can't imagine ruining my…

I'll say one thing, and I know it will come off as cliche: If you weren't there, you may not understand.

In the early days of the consumer Internet (mid/late 90s) there was a real wild west / gold rush feeling to things and it did feel like we were changing the world (spoiler: most of us weren't).

I am not defending or excusing anything here, just saying that I'm sure it was a lot easier for some people, perhaps already predisposed to such behaviours, to become unhealthily obsessed with working on new Internet tech at the time because it was incredibly exciting to be working on what was genuinely a new frontier back then.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#22

Post by GrumpyNl » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

linguae wrote: post #8

From Hadi Partovi's thread: "The Internet Explorer team was the hardest-working team I’ve ever been on. And I’ve worked at multiple start-ups. It was a sprint, not a marathon. We ate every meal at the office. We often held foosball tournaments at 2 am, just to get the team energy back up to continue working! "Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that…

He forgot to mention that it wasnt a "great" product, they left us frontend developers with several headaches.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#23

Post by throwawaysea » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

piker wrote: post #4

> Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that even at a 20,000-person company, you can get a team of 100 people to work like their lives depend on it. Just curious if anyone has any idea what the financial reward was for these approx 100 folks? Presumably options worth a few millions today, but that's some price.

Given it was 25 years ago this would have been the mid 90s. They are probably multi millionaires but more so for simply getting MS stock rather than being personally rewarded for their efforts. After all this was already a big company with a lot of structure. Your compensation was likely based mostly on your role and level rather than the personal contribution you made to the company, and a lot of the gain you realized would have been from the general growth of Microsoft share price.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#24

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

whoisthemachine wrote: post #12

earthscienceman wrote: post #9

I don't think people indoctrinated in tech culture can understand just how weird something like this reads. All I could comprehend when I finished was "100 people work themselves to emotional exhaustion so American mega corp can retain monopoly status". I see nothing of valor, just a strange subculture that people are willing to sacrifice themselves to for reasons that make no sense to me. I can't imagine ruining my…

Agreed. As I read the lines on the long hours and resultant divorces, all I could think of was "...and for what? A better browser?". Certainly IE advanced the state of the art at the time, but if Microsoft hadn't won the browser wars and Netscape had remained dominant and inched along with incremental improvements, we still would have reached the point where we are today, but maybe a little later.

> we still would have reached the point where we are today, but maybe a little later.

or maybe a bit earlier if MS hadn't won but just been a credible competitor and then something like Opera came along - a 3 way race would probably have evolved things quicker.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#25

Post by TimTheTinker » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

tdeck wrote: post #19

earthscienceman wrote: post #9

I don't think people indoctrinated in tech culture can understand just how weird something like this reads. All I could comprehend when I finished was "100 people work themselves to emotional exhaustion so American mega corp can retain monopoly status". I see nothing of valor, just a strange subculture that people are willing to sacrifice themselves to for reasons that make no sense to me. I can't imagine ruining my…

It's very reminiscent of "The Soul of a New Machine" which is an early example of the genre.

^ Underrated comment. If you want to gain a real sense of how people thought and felt during the computer revolution, read this book.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#26

Post by TimTheTinker » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

LanceJones wrote: post #15

earthscienceman wrote: post #9

I don't think people indoctrinated in tech culture can understand just how weird something like this reads. All I could comprehend when I finished was "100 people work themselves to emotional exhaustion so American mega corp can retain monopoly status". I see nothing of valor, just a strange subculture that people are willing to sacrifice themselves to for reasons that make no sense to me. I can't imagine ruining my…

It's entirely possible that for some of those marriages, the additional strain of the project simple accelerated the divorce timing (versus causing it).

It's well-known that given enough stress, many marriages that would have otherwise been relatively healthy can be pushed into insolvency.

For example: controlling for other factors, the divorce rate among married parents who have a child with autism is measurably higher.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#27

Post by vvanders » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

tdeck wrote: post #19

earthscienceman wrote: post #9

I don't think people indoctrinated in tech culture can understand just how weird something like this reads. All I could comprehend when I finished was "100 people work themselves to emotional exhaustion so American mega corp can retain monopoly status". I see nothing of valor, just a strange subculture that people are willing to sacrifice themselves to for reasons that make no sense to me. I can't imagine ruining my…

It's very reminiscent of "The Soul of a New Machine" which is an early example of the genre.

Showstopper![1] covers Windows NT in a similar vein and Dealers of Lightning[2] is another good read that goes into some if the really interesting history of Xerox PARC.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Showstopper-Breakneck-Windows-Generat...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer...

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#28

Post by x0x0 » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

GrumpyNl wrote: post #22

linguae wrote: post #8

From Hadi Partovi's thread: "The Internet Explorer team was the hardest-working team I’ve ever been on. And I’ve worked at multiple start-ups. It was a sprint, not a marathon. We ate every meal at the office. We often held foosball tournaments at 2 am, just to get the team energy back up to continue working! "Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that…

He forgot to mention that it wasnt a "great" product, they left us frontend developers with several headaches.

ie quickly became revolutionarily better than the alternatives at the time.

My team at the time held contests to find the shortest html that would crash Netscape. There was a hallway at the office with over 100 Netscape crashers printed out and pinned to the wall.

By the time ie5 was released, almost 1/3 of the frontend code existed to work around netscape bugs. It was standard for us to fingerprint point releases of netscape to work around bugs.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#29

Post by splatzone » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

brundolf wrote: post #14

earthscienceman wrote: post #9

I don't think people indoctrinated in tech culture can understand just how weird something like this reads. All I could comprehend when I finished was "100 people work themselves to emotional exhaustion so American mega corp can retain monopoly status". I see nothing of valor, just a strange subculture that people are willing to sacrifice themselves to for reasons that make no sense to me. I can't imagine ruining my…

Without making a value judgement, there's an aspect of the human psychology that revels in certain challenges simply because they are hard and impactful. This can be a good thing, and it can be a bad thing. It can separately be good or bad for the people involved, and for the world that they impact. But it is a normal and recurring part of human nature.

To give an example from another industry altogether, James Lapine just released a book detailing the process of creating the American musical Sunday in the Park with George.

The experience described in that book matches what you’re saying very closely, it sounds absolutely excruciating for all involved, but the director and composer’s belief that they were making something worthy carried them through.[0]

[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Putting-Together-Stephen-Sondheim-C...

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#30

Post by adventured » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

earthscienceman wrote: post #9

I don't think people indoctrinated in tech culture can understand just how weird something like this reads. All I could comprehend when I finished was "100 people work themselves to emotional exhaustion so American mega corp can retain monopoly status". I see nothing of valor, just a strange subculture that people are willing to sacrifice themselves to for reasons that make no sense to me. I can't imagine ruining my…

> All I could comprehend when I finished was "100 people work themselves to emotional exhaustion so American mega corp can retain monopoly status". I see nothing of valor, just a strange subculture that people are willing to sacrifice themselves to for reasons that make no sense to me.

Or so those people could work hard for 5-10 years instead of working hard for 40+ years like most people do. Microsoft employees have been paid very well for a long time and the stock compensation they received in the early to mid 1990s was exceptionally lucrative.

The most important part of what you said, is "make no sense to me." It's tremendously wonderful that we don't get to dictate what other people choose to do with their lives and time.

It's perfectly ok to be enamored with something like new Internet tech circa 1995, want to work in a segment that excites you, work exceptionally hard for three or five years, and then change out of that work to something more routine and less demanding.