Bonum Certa Men Certa

Robotics Chief Tandy Trower Left Microsoft, Entryism Still Eyed at Cisco, AOL (Updated)

US Navy - The ex-Oriskany, a decommissioned aircraft carrier



Summary: Another missing piece of the Microsoft exodus (almost everyone with a long history at a high-level rank has left in recent years, except Ballmer)

WE are gradually compiling this large page and an increasingly-long list of major departures from Microsoft. We started doing this in late 2008 and a departure we did not notice at the time it happened is that of Microsoft's Robotics chief. Mary Jo Foley brought it up some days ago:



Given last year’s departure of Robotics chief Tandy Trower, I’m wondering about Microsoft’s future intentions and directions in the robotics space…


Mary Jo Foley can only hope that Microsoft will appeal to professionals in robotics (she also promotes vapourware at the moment, despite similar fluff to this, never mind if nothing ever came out of it). In this one particular area they are losing to Linux big time. No wonder the managers are leaving, which is never a good sign because it's statistically correlated to failure. Departures from Microsoft are not necessarily good news however. On the one hand they are a sign that Microsoft is losing, but on the other hand, those who depart can actually cause damage to companies other than Microsoft by twisting and bending those companies in Microsoft's direction. It's mostly an HR issue. One failed unit of Microsoft was responsible for phones, devices, and the likes of these. Prior to the departure of J Allard and Robbie Bach [1, 2, 3] it was Enrique Rodriguez who left this team [1, 2]. He was a Vice President. Guess where he ends up? Cisco (see background [1, 2, 3]). He won't be alone.

Enrique Rodriguez, a former exec at Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s video and music division, is joining Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) to take on a key role at the tech giant's Service Provider Video Technology Group (SPVTG), Light Reading Cable has learned.


Another recent departure from Microsoft is Alex Gounares [1, 2] and finally he explains how or why he left Microsoft to join AOL. He becomes a CTO there.

Why did you decide to move to AOL after so many years with Microsoft?

It really was the opportunity that attracted me here, and it started with a phone call that I got a couple months ago. I started doing my homework, and of course I knew about AOL, obviously being in the industry I had tracked it somewhat, but I hadn't tracked it in depth. And the company that I saw was an amazing company; it was not the AOL that maybe I had thought of before.


We have already shown (some time earlier this month) the role of Gounares in Microsoft's abuses at least as a quiet observer.

Update (02/07/10): Tandy Trower contacted us and offered clarifications regarding his departure. With his kind permission, we add these below.

Not certain if this will get through your spam filter, but someone passed on your blog mention of my departure. You may not be interested, but I thought I would provide you with some information regarding my departure.

First, you are correct that robotics development is mostly done on Linux, some on VXWorks or other proprietary OSes. This was actually the case when I proposed to Gates that we develop a robotics toolkit. However, that recommendation came directly from many of the leaders from diverse parts of the robotics community including people using robotics in education, academic research, industrial automation, and even innovators like Helen Greiner of iRobot.

The invitation/encouragement for Microsoft to participate came from people like Red Whittaker, long time robotics veteran and leader of the CMU robotics department and organizer/founder of the CMU DARPA Challenge teams. When Red encouraged Microsoft to get involved, one of the first questions I asked him was why since it was obvious he and other key researchers were not using Microsoft technology and I highly doubted with their investment in Linux based development that they would switch. Red was very clear. It was not to help him or other experts already in the field but the broaden the market. From his perspective (and this was shared by the people I talked to) for robotics to really emerge into its potential required not just the experts to participate but as wide and diverse a community as possible to contribute their creativity. And there simply were not enough tools out there and plenty of room for other alternatives.

While it is true that the toolkit my team created was based on Microsoft OS and tools, we very much tried to build bridges to other toolkits and technologies. For example, the interprocess communication library we defined we published as part of Microsoft's Open Software Licensing that would enable anyone to create a compatible interface on Linux or other OS. In fact we did have developers who used our libraries to interact with code run on other OSes including Mac and Linux. I even explored doing versions of our core libraries for Linux. I'd be the first to admit we had a long way to go, and never proposed that developers already invested on other platforms convert to using our toolkit. As you might know robots often have multiple processors and so multi-OS solutions are not uncommon. Windows never was a very good OS for real-time programming. Few, including Linux, are. Often very tight processing scenarios an OS isn't even used but driven by FPGAs as was the case with the UBot-5 created by students in Rod Grupen's department at UMass Amherst. FPGAs drove the two-wheel dynamic balancing, but they found Windows with the Microsoft robotics layer as a compatible solution.

You are welcome to your own opinion, but my departure from Microsoft was not a failure at my job, unless you want to consider that after Gates' departure (my original and primary exec sponsor) I was unsuccessful in convincing the executive management that took his place of my next steps in strategy. Given the directive to take the next step beyond the toolkit and define a compelling application solution (since outside industrial applications, entertainment, education, and simple cleaning) robotics still lacks "killer applications". This is pretty much universally acknowledged by all in or observing the state of the current industry. After looking at several application areas (automotive, military, education, consumer, etc.) I decided that assistive care was not only the best opportunity, but where the technology could applied to the growing number of people needing help in performing normal daily activities. Already according to the reports on disabilities in the US, 25% of the population falls into this category and incurable chronic diseases like autism and Alzheimer's are actually on the rise. When you add to this that the boomer generation will almost double the number of seniors over the next 20 years, while we are facing an increasing shortage of care providers, I was able to imagine scenarios where a self-mobile PC (aka robot) could be used to make up for the inevitable reduction in cognitive and physical abilities.

For the first time in my 28 years at Microsoft, my proposal wasn't funded, due in part to the economic conditions that allowed for little new investment. However, I felt so strongly about what many observers characterize as a potential coming care tsunami that I decided to leave and try to do this by creating my own company. Further, despite my 28 years at Microsoft I am open-minded to what tools and platform I build on. The people at Willow Garage will confirm that I have been to visit them and explore their ROS work. To me its a practical matter of determining where the best enabling technologies are. The task of creating a semi-autonomous robot that can enable people to compensate for the deficits of aging, chronic disease, or other severe disabilities will be hard enough without having to develop everything from scratch. As I had done at Microsoft, my intent is to find the best of breed technologies I can license and combine for building this.

What all this means about Microsoft, I'll leave to your own opinion, but I did want to clarify that I didn't leave because I had failed in my efforts to start the robotics at Microsoft. The group continues there and has actually grown in number since I left. There's important work going on. Where they go from here is no longer my concern. I have a new mission and my experience at Microsoft will help me in what I do, though since it has yet to be done by anyone, my chances of success may be remote, but considering the potential impact on addressing the challenges we will be facing not only in this country but around the world (in Asia, EU, and China assistive care ranks as one of the top motivators for robotics research), I do not think my efforts will be wasted.

Best regards,

Tandy Trower CEO/Founder Hoaloha Robotics (btw Hoaloha is Hawaiian for compassionate friend)

[...]

You are welcome to post provided you don't do it in a mean spirited way and take sound bytes to flail with me with. (I am trusting that if that was your purpose, you likely wouldn't ask for permission to use.)

However, again my departure was no so much triggered by a reduction in the investment in robotics. As mentioned, I believe the organization I founded has actually grown in size since I left. But the primary reason I resigned was to pursue an application scenario that execs there did not wish to invest in (at least for the present). Microsoft is obviously already invested in many different areas already, so it is unclear that management can be faulted for not wanting to invest in the strategy I feel compelled to pursue. Perhaps that may be analogous to J Allard's departure, but I do not know since I haven't sat down with J to understand the circumstances of his departure.

I spent 28 years at Microsoft and had the opportunity to help start a number of new things for the company. This is one where we had to part ways.

Recent Techrights' Posts

New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
 
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025