He must be a shitty dev if it's accepting 22 bucks per hour.

@1, the article states that he is self-taught. Without a formal education or some other programing credentials on his resume, he's not exactly top of the list of candidates for Microsoft. That, and this is for a trial basis. I'd guess that if they keep him on permanently, he'll get a pay raise. Or, with this gig behind him, this will look good on his resume for future jobs. Either way, I doubt he'll be working for $22 an hour for very long.

This sort of thing didn't work out well for that Gavin guy (with the computers and the guinea pigs) in House of Cards.

Jesus that photo is jarring

This is a smart move. Basically, "you want to see all the records? Great, we'll hire you to do all the work!". It's actually very progressive. I like it.

First, they are hiring the guy to get him off their back, it's the least cost scenario.

@2: I worked as a dev at a fairly high level on the SQL Server team @ Microsoft for a few years, making a very nice chunk of change north of $70k, and this was 15 years ago when $70k meant something. I do not have formal dev or DB training (though I do have a masters in math, so maybe it was that...)

Tim is a very intelligent person who suffers from a problem that makes it Hurd to socialize with people or the public. Very smart and intelligent man when focused on a particular thing can be a genious. If he is put into a situation were he is comfortable he could do some amazing things