"...focusing on politics, I would do great there". The story of too many workplaces.
What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft
141–150 of 258 posts
Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft
#142In many ways, the piece is basically a story about someone young and naive becoming an adult, so to speak. That process gets conflated with "working for Microsoft." I'm a former military wife. The military does a lot of moving around. Affairs are common when spouses are separated. Etc. So that kind of thing is hardly something peculiar to Microsoft. It also sounds like she is European and speaks English as a second l…
Seems to me it's a story about someone who's too impressed with a lot of superficial stuff. The appearance of a "perfect life", business travel, expensive hotels, uber rides (?), overpriced seattle apartments with a great view that you can't actually afford, etc. The irony is that these things are all rather unimpressive to those that actually have them within reach, so citing them as evidence of your lavish lifestyl…
It's all relative. I spent six years at university without ever taking a single taxi and I still consider Uber rides a luxury, because I can also take the bus for a quarter of the price or bike for free.
Also, as the OP mentions, the trap of getting used to nice things is that while you soon stop appreciating them, you will feel their loss quite painfully.
Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yuk. What a horrid pair of comments!
I know, right? Holding women accountable for their actions is, like, super misogynist. Everybody knows it's some man's fault!
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Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft
#144Reading articles like this always makes me wonder where all this crazy drama is going on. I work at one of FAANG, and I go in each day, code/analyze things from 8-5, chat with some people about their cycling or cooking hobbies, then go home. If people are having affairs and flying to resorts, then I'm just totally oblivious to it. Either that, or I'm the most boring 28 year old that works there.
> Either that, or I'm the most boring 28 year old that works there. You are, presumably, male and doing technical tasks. It's much easier to get into drama when you are a 1) young female, whom lots of people want to interact with, hired to do 2) marketing, where your job is to be extremely social with semi-strangers. This is simply the way of the world.
Spot on, different roles and different "reasons" let's say
Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft
#145I find her story fascinating as many glimpses into big corporates are for me. I've spent my 20s constantly oscillating between going broke trying to build a scalable startup and earning good money by working freelance. I was breaking my back getting things off the ground but also managing the freelancing projects, the effort left little place for holidays/friends or parties. I basically never went to conferences as i…
> I've spent my 20s constantly oscillating between going broke trying to build a scalable startup and earning good money by working freelance.
I think the "scalable startup" fixation is the worst legacy of our industry.
There has always been an enormous professional world of people in many fields start either a solo consultancy or an agency/firm/practice and by their 40s they are paying themselves somewhere in the six figures.
"Will it scale" in the VC sense is not one of their concerns. They still get rich.
Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a cult and they deliberately want to make it a cult. This is one of the reasons they provide free food, corporate vacations, team building exercises, etc. They want you completely dedicated.
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…
>> if it’s just resentment.
Ah, there it comes.
Having been around lots of employees of one of the tech giants, I think the cult mentality is actually very strong.
You can observe this in two specific ways:
1 Adding in a gratuitous note at every possible chance about those who are resentful because they didn't "make the cut". Now, you could have made your point without the gratuitous note, and the fact that you still had to add it does make you part of the cult, de-facto. Interestingly, you observe this attitude in a lot of ways when you interact with them in real life too, and especially when you say something critical but factual about their software (e.g. that it is bug ridden despite an entire army of folks working on it)
2 The general idea that unlike the schmucks who need to comply with laws, a tech giant is not only above the law, but rather deservingly so (Facebook being the very obvious example with its friendly fraud case, but every tech giant has a pretty shady history in this regard). If someone disagrees, "it's just resentment". Even more tellingly, almost none of these folks actually take a stand on clearly unethical practices well after "earning enough to max out retirement accounts".
Instead of bristling at such comments, you should probably introspect a little more.
Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a cautionary tale, don't get too excited and in love with your job or company.
Am I not jaded enough to believe this? "in love" is perhaps extreme but I have made meaningful and lasting friendships by being "excited" about my job, moreover earned people's respect by having a positive attitude.
If that excitement stems from the relationships you have with your colleagues then that is a good thing. Keeping in mind that those relationships might unexpectedly end when you leave the company, which gives some indication as to their quality.
I do think that people should more highly value positions in which they will have better professional relationships with their coworkers. It's a force multiplier to growth and productivity.
Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of people learn this the hard way, yes. But I kinda don't see what is wrong with this. Having work life balance is somewhat of a luxury, and it's a luxury to be able to say "money doesn't make me happy". It's a luxury to come to that conclusion. How do you arrive at that conclusion without going through the ringer first?
> Having work life balance is somewhat of a luxury, and it's a luxury to be able to say "money doesn't make me happy". It's a luxury to come to that conclusion. Exactly. Any time anyone says "money doesn't make me happy" what they really mean is "I already have enough money that it's no longer the limiting factor in my happiness." The vast majority of peoples' lives and happiness could be markedly improved by giving…
This isn’t at all what people by money not buying happiness. Even if your life objectively improves, it’s just a matter of time until your brain adjusts to the new normal and you’re back to the same levels of happiness you were at before the money. It’s pretty much the crowning “feature” of our biological wiring - because if an animal like us in ancient times was blissfully content the moment their lot in life improved, they would stop trying and not end up spreading their genes. So we’re pretty much doomed to never be truly happy/content because of how natural selection works.
Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft
#149I've worked for both startups and corporations. Corporate jobs are soul-crushing because everything about the environment seems to hinder you from producing real value and from learning new useful things. Corporate jobs hurt your inner creator and they destroy your sense of pragmatism.
Most of the stuff you learn in corporations are anti-patterns that you have to unlearn after you leave.
The reason why corporate jobs feel so meaningless is because most tech corporations have had a long term monopoly over their respective markets. They haven't had to really struggle on the market for several decades in some cases... Inside a corporation, mediocrity is the definition of success. If employees can produce something mediocre that only just works, it will translate into disproportionate revenue gains due to centralizing and monopolistic market forces. I think that this is what is meant when people talk about the "golden cage".
That's why I try to avoid corporate jobs. They pay well and you do learn some stuff in the first few months but after that your skills start degenerating and a lot of people don't notice it when it happens to them; then they get stuck in that job (or other corporate jobs) because no efficient company exposed to normal market forces will hire them.
Also note that the definition of 'normal market forces' is relative. Most startups which don't go through the normal corporation-controlled VC funnel (e.g. bootstraped startups) have a really tough time working against centralizing and monopolizing market forces.
Re: What I gained, lost and learned while working for Microsoft
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of the engineering teams I was on at MS had any of this stuff going on. Heck I was surprised she was being flown first class, with all the cutbacks everyone I know at MS for the last ~4 years has been flying coach even for their first N international flights each year! (I forget what N is.)
Sales people often fly biz class because their customers are. I don't know if it is the same here, and overseas offices have different rules than Redmond (MS China we never got biz class even though many of us flew way more than N times a year on 12 hour flights).
Friend of mine in auditing had her pre-arrivial days to resolve jetlag cut.
Because that's who you want reviewing the books, someone who can barely keep their head up...
Penny wise and all that.
(My info is several years old, hopefully that policy was changed back!)