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Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
11–20 of 117 posts
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#12It took all my discipline NOT to write an angry resignation letter. In the end, I didn't write any at all. No good can come from them unless they are the most vapid and empty of sentiments.
Microsoft employees can be broadly classified in two current states of mind: people who can't wait to leave and people who can't imagine leaving. I almost never encountered someone that was in-between these extremes. As such, you pretty much can't write a resignation letter that expresses meaningful sentiment that doesn't offend one of these large groups.
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#13I worked with Philip some, he's a really smart, interesting guy - I was definitely bummed when I heard he was leaving. His internal blog at MS had a lot of great advice for younger developers and managers, I managed to save it off before he left and the IT folks ate it
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#14Really needs a TL;DR
Does the "TL;DR" sentiment really belong at HN at all? I'd like to think this community is above that. The whole thrust of the site is about/for people who aren't interested in taking the easy way out.
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#15Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Great ideas are usually laughed at. Neither sees the light of day without you taking action.
While there were good stories and takeaways from his post, I keep hearing this same mantra coming across so many would-be entrepreneur stories. Why do people doubt themselves so much and not listen to their own ideas?
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#16I didn't read the whole thing... After I realized how stuck on himself he was, I just skimmed it. Do quirky people really brag about how quirky they are? Do they write essays and call them farewell letters? I've never yet met a fun person who goes around telling people how much fun they are.
He lost me at the bit about it being impossible not to get promoted just by doing good work. Doesn't work that that in any organization, because to be a manager you have to want to be a manager, and you have to want it more than you want to be "just" a programmer, and you have to think being a manager is better than being a programmer. Getting a promotion is a full-time job in itself. No time left for coding...
There's ways to be promoted without being a manager. If that isn't the case in your organization (even if you _do_ want to be a manager), leave.
Ideally, there should be two ladders: technical and management. Every management rank should have an equivalent technical rank, with salary to match (fellow being equivalent to a VP, CTO being equivalent to CEO). That's the case at Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and many other technology companies (as opposed to enterprises that merely _use_ technology or sales/marketing companies masquerading as technology companies). Technical talent should be appreciated; at the mean time, being a manager is quite different from being an IC and requires a different skill-set -- one shouldn't become a manager only if they want a raise.
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#17Really needs a TL;DR
Does the "TL;DR" sentiment really belong at HN at all? I'd like to think this community is above that. The whole thrust of the site is about/for people who aren't interested in taking the easy way out.
I always appreciate the efforts of HN'ers who post a TL;DR summary. It's less about taking the easy way out, and more about saving time.
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#18Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Great ideas are usually laughed at. Neither sees the light of day without you taking action. While there were good stories and takeaways from his post, I keep hearing this same mantra coming across so many would-be entrepreneur stories. Why do people doubt themselves so much and not listen to their own ideas?
I think working in a corporation kills that confidence in yourself. It numbs you somehow.
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#19Two things struck me, one kind of minor - a Pentium 66? In 1997 my desktop machine at my new startup job was a Pentium Pro 200. It replaced the SGI Indy R4400 200 from my previous startup job. No offices with doors, though, of course.
The other thing was, and I don't mean these questions in a derogatory way, how do you start working for Microsoft in 1997, of all years. And how do you stay there for 12 years running? What kind of startup employee will you be when the only professional environment you have known is Microsoft? I'm not suggesting that there aren't perfectly excellent, sensible answers to all of these, and obviously his new employer thinks so. I just can't personally conceive what they are.
Re: Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee
#20Turns out that there’s a strong correlation between a student’s grade and their assessment of the professor’s abilities.
Very interesting.
I don’t listen too carefully when a poor performer tells me how awful their previous manager was.
Wait, what? Are we confusing correlation with causation here? Let's say, for example, that a manager tends to give female employees poor ratings (or whatever BigCo calls a grade). Do we discount their negative assessment of the manager? If there's a poor relationship between an employee and a manager, I'm not surprised when there is negative performance and a negative assessment.
Aren't we extremely interested in negative performers? We need to triage. Some employees are stars and will be stars no matter how you manage them. Ignore them, keep the kitchen stocked with whatever they drink. Some employees are poor performers no matter what you do. Identify them and fire them immediately, or better still leak their résumé to competitors, you get a 2-for-1.
The area of management opportunity are the "swing performers," those whose performance can be influenced by management practice. Some of the negative performers will be irredeemable, but some will be swing performers and it's worth listening to disgruntled poor performers if you can find a way to filter for swing performers in the hope that you can identify opportunities to turn them into good performers.