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Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

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Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#61

Post by loarabia »

jdietrich wrote: post #34
keithwarren wrote: post #7

Almost every person I have ever met who hates Microsoft was either ignorant of the matters (meaning they just read what other people said and never had original thoughts) or had a specific beef in one area that they let inform their thoughts about the company as a whole. Lots of web developers, especially those who were not professional developers in the 90s see and hear this horror story of a big mean monopolist who…

> It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. Microsoft treat developers like cattle. You've just got to look at their corporate structure, where senior developers might be reporting to a dozen different managers. Companies that respect developers give them freedom and autonomy, they trust in their…

> You've just got to look at their corporate structure, where senior developers might be reporting to a dozen different managers.

I dunno where you get your data. It is completely untrue.

The org structure is a single linear path in a tree -- not an inverted tree.

The only way to even get close to a dozen managers would be to count from the most junior entry level dev and count their manager and their manager's manager through the VPs all the way up to Steve. Even at that, the deepest org structures aren't quite a dozen people deep.

Also, How to Lie with Statistics -- The article on iPhone usage at MSFT and its source from WSJ doesn't quite hold water. This looks like a Post Hoc. 10% of employees (which I'm not sure is believable in the first place) have iPhones and some people hide them in front of their execs or Steve. Therefore, all employees are keeping iPhone usage hidden in front of executives -- the implication being that Microsoft is trampling on its employees because they love non-MSFT gadgets and that something bad will happen to an employee because they are "caught" using a competitor's product.

There are plenty of things genuinely wrong with Microsoft internally but both of these points are sensationalism.

[edited for grammar]

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#62

Post by jdietrich »

elblanco wrote: post #56
jdietrich wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. Microsoft treat developers like cattle. You've just got to look at their corporate structure, where senior developers might be reporting to a dozen different managers. Companies that respect developers give them freedom and autonomy, they trust in their…

Don't forget that Ive languished for a long time at Apple until Steve talent scouted him and promoted him up after he returned.

Exactly - Ive was planning to resign until Jobs made him VP. Apple were literally days away from losing him. Were it not for Jobs' insight, taste and autocratic approach, we probably would never have heard of Ive. Nokia lost their top designer last month, for fairly obvious reasons[1]. Google's "20% time" led to Gmail, Google News, Adsense and Orkut - you have to wonder how many products Microsoft engineers might have developed given half the chance.

[1] http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/09/13/anssi-vanjoki-nokias-sma...

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#64

Post by contextfree »

beagle3 wrote: post #57
contextfree wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know who Buchheit is, but Microsoft Research has employed three Turing Award winners (Tony Hoare, Butler Lampson and Chuck Thacker) for a decade or so. I doubt they'd have stayed if they felt mistreated. In general I wouldn't put much stock in media anecdotes, as the media (or maybe just humanity in general, sadly) seems to love reinforcing preconceived narratives.

Microsoft Research != Microsoft in general. It's not even 1% of Microsoft, and everywhere there is different. Some of the research there has practical use, but a lot of it is just PR for Microsoft.

true, but that just shows how useless "would my mental caricature of celebrity figure x have been able to survive in my mental caricature of vast heterogeneous institution y?" is as an aid for anyone's understanding of the world.

I could've pointed to Erik Meijer as an innovative rock star developer who appears to have done well in the MSFT environment, being largely responsible for the major additions to a shipping version of their flagship application framework. How much does that tell me about the internal MSFT culture as a whole? Not much, any more than this WSJ anecdote does.

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#65

Post by Tamerlin »

jdietrich wrote: post #62
elblanco wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that Ive languished for a long time at Apple until Steve talent scouted him and promoted him up after he returned.

Exactly - Ive was planning to resign until Jobs made him VP. Apple were literally days away from losing him. Were it not for Jobs' insight, taste and autocratic approach, we probably would never have heard of Ive. Nokia lost their top designer last month, for fairly obvious reasons[1]. Google's "20% time" led to Gmail, Google News, Adsense and Orkut - you have to wonder how many products Microsoft engineers might hav…

I think Microsoft's situation is even more sad than that.

How much cool new stuff as Microsoft Research dreamed up that got snuffed out when the management got wind of it but didn't think that it was worth productizing?

IBM had the same problem -- an amazing think tank, laden with talent (probably all of IBM's worthwhile talent), churning out amazing R&D projects... very few of which ever went beyond prototypes. Like IBM's PDA, for example...

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#66

Post by known »

keithwarren wrote: post #7

Almost every person I have ever met who hates Microsoft was either ignorant of the matters (meaning they just read what other people said and never had original thoughts) or had a specific beef in one area that they let inform their thoughts about the company as a whole. Lots of web developers, especially those who were not professional developers in the 90s see and hear this horror story of a big mean monopolist who…

I agree. Visual Studio is an excellent product. Now may I know the names of Programmers that developed Visual Studio?

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#67

Post by namekuseijin »

contextfree wrote: post #51
jdietrich wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. Microsoft treat developers like cattle. You've just got to look at their corporate structure, where senior developers might be reporting to a dozen different managers. Companies that respect developers give them freedom and autonomy, they trust in their…

I don't know who Buchheit is, but Microsoft Research has employed three Turing Award winners (Tony Hoare, Butler Lampson and Chuck Thacker) for a decade or so. I doubt they'd have stayed if they felt mistreated. In general I wouldn't put much stock in media anecdotes, as the media (or maybe just humanity in general, sadly) seems to love reinforcing preconceived narratives.

Microsoft Research is kinda like a country club for retired compsci laureates...

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#68

Post by namekuseijin »

it's actually a very small vocal minority who hates microsoft. They hate microsoft because microsoft means ubiquitous standardized flatten programming environments the way managers like, with sheeple programmers properly strapped and assembling programs from paid frameworks.

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#69

Post by contextfree »

known wrote: post #66
keithwarren wrote: post #7

Almost every person I have ever met who hates Microsoft was either ignorant of the matters (meaning they just read what other people said and never had original thoughts) or had a specific beef in one area that they let inform their thoughts about the company as a whole. Lots of web developers, especially those who were not professional developers in the 90s see and hear this horror story of a big mean monopolist who…

I agree. Visual Studio is an excellent product. Now may I know the names of Programmers that developed Visual Studio?

Here's a blog from one of them: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ricom/

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#70

Post by bvge »

jeroen wrote: post #53
bvge wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. You are obviously not referring to Visual Studio 2005 here. It is a half-baked unstable mess, that I still have to use every day. It's the Vista of IDEs. Microsoft also has a tendency to release frameworks before they are stable, or well thought through.…

What's keeping you from upgrading to VS2008 or VS2010 and targeting the 2.0 framework?

The web services use WSE3, and there is a lack of will on the part of management to have them ported to WCF.
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