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What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

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Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

#91

Post by sumedh »

RangerScience wrote: post #90
overgard wrote: post #68

> The people I worked with were extremely closed minded. Most of them with many years of experience working in a corporation, so even more closed minded, only caring about their manager’s approval. I was devastated. My team members were the most fake people I have met still to this day. I cannot even explain how terrible it was for me to have to help them, show interest and pretend that I support what they’re doing.…

> more likely Both? A coworker at a former job comes to mind. He kept pointing out a problem that everyone else was ignoring, and they kept ignoring it. He gradually got minimized until he left on his own, and the problem remained. He definitely rubbed people the wrong way. The problem definitely existed.

What kind of problem was it, did he/she try to fix it on their own, did others acknowledge that was a problem and needed to be fixed?

Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

#92

Post by PorterDuff »

neilv wrote: post #21

College students are falling all over themselves, learning each FAANG's interview process, drilling large numbers of problems for the whiteboard tests/hazings, being frontloaded with a bunch of VC dogma about startups, learning lousy frameworks before they have to, etc. But I'm not sure they have much idea what industry and particular companies are actually like.

I admit that it does sound crazy. My only knowledge of that kind of situation is anecdotal via places like the reddit careers group, so who knows...

A strongish opinion I'm starting to hold is that we are hitting peak software engineer and that with all the weirdness going on in terms of interviews, ageism, lotsa people getting pushed through college, lotsa general buzz, it's probably time for people to look elsewhere.

The tricky thing is to ferret out the business and skill set that is still young and getting ready to take off...or become a plumber instead.

Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

#93

Post by majos »

alexashka wrote: post #87

Attractive women who know how to use their appeal are not shaken by awkward men and their attempts to display affection. You may be living in a justice warrior bubble, while the rest of the world is living among men and women who use tinder, post pictures of their butt on instagram and watch The Kardashians. What did the most famous Kardashian do to become famous again? That's not a problem at all, for most women who…

There are a remarkable number of unsupported assertions in this comment.

Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

#94

Post by majos »

parabiii wrote: post #67
airnomad wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what is so wrong with politely telling someone that you want to have sex with her or him. I mean I want many things but that doesn't mean I'll get them.

It is a very human want. I am also not sure what is wrong with it, when it is off-site, it is not your boss, and you are getting socially drunk together and without pressure. And if it is wrong, then so is wearing make-up at work. Give and take. Extending professional work ethics and norms to off-work social gatherings is toxic. Using social gatherings to "work" is sly. If you do not shoot, you'll always miss.

> And if it is wrong, then so is wearing make-up at work.

Women I know wear makeup at work because many people view makeup as a "professional" or "put together" look, the same way a man might neatly comb their hair, not because they want to look sexy.

Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

#95

Post by dang »

alexashka wrote: post #87

Attractive women who know how to use their appeal are not shaken by awkward men and their attempts to display affection. You may be living in a justice warrior bubble, while the rest of the world is living among men and women who use tinder, post pictures of their butt on instagram and watch The Kardashians. What did the most famous Kardashian do to become famous again? That's not a problem at all, for most women who…

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19888683 and marked it off-topic.

Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

#96

Post by thereisnospork »

task_queue wrote: post #78
unreal37 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talented and ambitious people would hate being in a labor union. It's a place where doing more than what is expected is actively shunned, and knowing how little work you can do is the optimization.

> Talented and ambitious people would hate being in a labor union Doubt it. Mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities are abound. Unions provide a floor for negotiations from which you can up-negotiate. If your categorization was true, actors would never have breakout opportunities despite their union representation. Reality disagrees with your assertion and any movie star ever acts as evidence contrary to your cla…

Movie stars are in a guild, not a union. Much like doctors.

Unions have personally screwed me out of hundreds of dollars of month in payment for pensions I'll never see because they've forced me into inappropriate position titles to the benefit of legacy members.

Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

#97

Post by adamsea »

unreal37 wrote: post #74
j2kun wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having work life balance is somewhat of a luxury, Tell that to the history of labor unions

Talented and ambitious people would hate being in a labor union. It's a place where doing more than what is expected is actively shunned, and knowing how little work you can do is the optimization.

Phd Graduate students seem to like labor unions - they have been organizing and striking for them a lot recently. And classical musicians (The Chicago Symphony Orchestra recently went on strike). Are they all stupid and listless?

Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

#98

Post by tracer4201 »

akersten wrote: post #80
tracer4201 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who’s worked at multiple big tech companies, I don’t think this was true, at least not on the teams I worked on. I probably averaged 50 hour weeks. I also earned enough to max out retirement accounts and make substantial investments in my post-tax accounts. I had enough to where I could start taking bigger risks. I had two vacations per year while building wealth. I also got married during this time. I rea…

> I probably averaged 50 hour weeks. I also earned enough to max out retirement accounts and make substantial investments in my post-tax accounts. I had enough to where I could start taking bigger risks. I'm in a similar situation, and feel sad that a "bigger risk" for me - and probably a lot of employees in tech - is putting my foot down and working only 40 hours a week. Without having money saved, I'd have a much w…

Do you really need to? Or do you think you need to?

I left my first company after college only after 3 years, despite the pay being great. I moved to a tech company, which longer term ended up being absolutely the right decision. At the time, I only left because I felt burned out. In retrospect, I worked nights and weekend, pulling in closer to 60 hours, but it was never expected of me. If anything, I set that expectation, and it wasn’t fair to my colleagues who couldn’t work more than 40 hours a week because they had a spouse, kids, or other responsibilities that I didn’t have outside of work.

If you do feel like you have no other way, my suggestion would be to find a different team or different org at your company if possible. Otherwise, time to move on elsewhere.

Keep your skills sharp - changing jobs is stressful and can suck, but never end up in a position where you absolutely rely on the job you have now. Build your nest egg early.

This is especially true if you’re young. I only wish I had someone give me this advice but my parents both worked their entire lives, and I saw them both work sometimes two jobs at a time. I didn’t know better having grown up in a home where that was the norm (they didn’t have a choice because they were trying to support 3 children, pay rent, car payment, etc).

Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

#99

Post by PorterDuff »

pinewurst wrote: post #37
PorterDuff wrote: post #12

Lots of fuss and fury about what is basically just another large company. They're not your friends and never will be. Dunno why there's so much surprise here, I guess it's just another youngster hitting the immovable object of the working world. A friend of mine who went and got a job at Microsoft (a rarity in my circle, they don't seem to be heavyweights in the graphics or video world) and made a smart move. His dea…

The Microsoft interview experience remains awful, Satya or not. I’ve tried a few times but with one exception I was treated like dirt every time by recruiters and interviewers. (Edit) One interviewer blew cigarette smoke in my face, for example. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of decent people there.

"One interviewer blew cigarette smoke in my face, for example"

lol. Usually that costs extra.

Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft

#100

Post by wolco »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #34
stevebmark wrote: post #4

I'm not sure what the takeaways are from this article, if anything concrete. It sounds sad and frustrating that some supposed friends inside the company didn't say goodbye when she was let go, but I guess I don't see that as surprising or noteworthy at a large company. Maybe there's a warning sign to not go all-in on a company, but she doesn't sound remorseful for having done it? I hope she finds satisfying and balan…

The key takeaway is to be wary of cognitive dissonance. She just casually got into an affair at the office, while claiming to want to build a relationship with her existing boyfriend, for example.

The key part was when she called everyone at Richman fake then said proceeded to tell us she was pretending to be nice.

It sounds like others more experienced actual developerd wanted her job with the perks. Microsoft wanted a different face, younger/well spoken/diverse gender/etc. Because she drank the cool-aid she was able to do great at her job without being a developer. The social aspects that supported her start changing. Meanwhile Microsoft responds to the public outcry and makes everyone like her learn to code and things aren't fun anymore. She quits and finds out her support system is gone and thinks everyone is fake.

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