Recently I had the distinct displeasure of being chastised for comments I had made in this blog by one of the few men with whom I hold the utmost respect.

The actual text of the entry is irrelevant.  What is relevant is that I had offended and severely undermined the ability of others to perform their jobs efficiently and effectively.  Obviously when this matter was first brought to my attention my immediate reaction was one of righteous indignation, especially when it places my manager and my group manager in the untenable position of having to defend my words and deeds.

However, after taking considerable time to weigh the issue I have come to only one conclusion.  What wanton hubris must I have been feeling at the moment of that writing?

The simple truth is that I did not conduct myself in a manner befitting a representative of this great company.  Indeed, whether through arrogance or ignorance, that post displayed nothing short of complete disrespect.  In one moment of inconsiderate action I somehow managed to violate my personal code, generated animosity between teams that had made good progress on collaboration, alienated my management chain and completely discarded all of the hard work and diligence of far too many people to recount here.

Disrespect was shown not only to the many fine developers, product managers and testers who are active working on the product but also to the many support personnel who are already deploying this product to our customers, to our customers who have adopted the product, to the early adopters within Microsoft who work hard to deploy our products early in an effort to provide the best feedback possible to the product teams, and to my own team who has shown such extraordinary support of our effort to early adopt the product.

To any, and all, I offer my sincerest apologies.

Will