>>Microsoft hired him away with a $1.5 million signing bonus
Correctomundo. MS couldn’t produce anything better than VB, so they had to pirate the competition’s talent.
Everybody lures talent. JC Penney and Google recently hired two of Apple's top execs. But even Microsoft has internal successes. Alex St. John, the father of DirectX, was an internal success (he pissed off management too, but Bill Gates took his side). And don't knock DirectX, even John Carmack says it's superior to OpenGL these days for gaming.