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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

#161

Post by hamburglar »

jpatokal wrote: post #160
hamburglar wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge difference between a luxury and something that indicates you have achieved a lavish and impressive lifestyle. A cup of coffee at starbucks is a luxury.

Lavish and impressive is also relative. Your original statement about "these things are all rather unimpressive to those that actually have them within reach" is tautological: having a yacht with a helipad is not going to be particularly impressive to anyone else docked next to me in St Tropez, even if it puts all of us in the global 0.01%.

I think there's a subtlety in my point that you're missing. When you can just barely manage a yacht with a helipad, you're impressed with yourself for being that successful. When you can comfortably afford it, you cease to consider it something to boast about.

But yes, your point is valid: it's all relative.

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

#162

Post by lozenge »

hamburglar wrote: post #140
DoreenMichele wrote: post #101

In 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…

I think you are missing the perspective of somebody in a relatively low salary country where the US is almost out of reach and visiting it /regularly/ is almost unheard of.

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

#163

Post by negamax »

It's strange to see this story on HN (I read the post). If anything, this shows HN's bias against MS. If there was no MS, it would still have panned out in similar fashion. Young person's first job, leaving home and relationships, realizing there's more to life. There was no reason to mention MS

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

#164

Post by projektir »

aliteralrobot wrote: post #148
taneq wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 improv…

According to what? There are plenty of fairly trivial counterexamples to this. If what you say here is correct, what is mental illness? What is a solid marriage vs a terrible one? What is a good job vs a bad job?

For instance, lots of peoples' mental states improve when they are able to not live with their parents, for various reasons. That requires money.

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

#165

Post by AmericanChopper »

taneq wrote: post #86
yuy910616 wrote: post #43

Earlier 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…

I think this is unnecessarily cynical. I’ve been through multiple periods of both success and extreme hardship in my life. I can confidently say that money doesn’t make me happy, because I’ve managed to be happy at my lowest points of financial stability. If losing financial stability robs somebody of all their happiness, then I’d say they should question whether they were really happy to begin with, or just comfortable. But to say that anybody who has financial stability can’t say ‘money doesn’t make me happy’ denies the possibility that they’ve lived experiences that genuinely brought them to that conclusion.

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

#166

Post by iforgotpassword »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #101

In 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…

I didn't particularly read this as blaming Microsoft, but rather big corps in general. I never worked for a company with more than a couple thousand employees, so I can't really relate to anything she wrote.

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

#167

Post by maccard »

brogrammernot wrote: post #120
kerng wrote: post #27

I'm not sure what to make of this post. 3.5 years of which 2 years or so are in dedicated program to rotate jobs across the world seems like an amazing deal to kick off a career many would dream of. Not much responsibility but a lot to learn and observe! More objectively reflecting ones own performance and actions might good to understand reasons for what happened. This is business and work, not family and friends. I…

That’s not even close to fair to put the “family and friends” mentality onto young employees. Tech companies are notorious for baking this into the culture to churn more hours out of employees. The usage of company values, tons of on-site perks to keep people there longer and of course if you’re going to spend the vast majority of your waking hours at/around the “campus” you’re going to consider co-workers friends.

> you’re going to consider co-workers friends.

Why is that a bad thing? In a normal 9-5, you spend 1/3 of your waking time with those people.

I'm a few years out of University, and I've now spent more time with co workers than I did with most of the people I went to university or school with. I don't know what's going on in their lives for the most part, we catch up a few times a year and that's that.

You're probably interested in some of the same things outside of work as many of your colleague, and may have more in common with them than other friends You don't need to consider every co worker a friend, and it's definitely sensible to draw the line between working and personal life, but it seems like a total waste to spend a huge amount of your waking time with people and actively refuse to be friends with any of them.

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

#168

Post by phs318u »

hamburglar wrote: post #157
_0nac wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a huge difference between a luxury and something that indicates you have achieved a lavish and impressive lifestyle. A cup of coffee at starbucks is a luxury.

Off topic warning.

> A cup of coffee are starbucks is a luxury.

In Melbourne, Australia a coffee at Starbucks is considered:

1. A sign that you’re a tourist.

2. A sign that you’re a masochist.

3. A cry for help.

4. All of the above.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself :)

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

#169

Post by mettamage »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #101

In 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…

She definitely seems European. And I can see that some of it is a becoming an adult story but a part of it isn't. A part of it really is about the corporate culture in Microsoft.

I've worked at startups and universities and I never had to deal with:

> The people I had on my team, 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 actually cared about my role, I cared about the people we were doing the Connect event for more than for my career and no one seemed to understand that.

> I found a job fairly easily with a similar salary, where they didn’t expect me to work 24/7.

I've worked long hours at a startup, but not like she is describing. The startup wasn't part of my identity, I didn't need to play politics. All I did was dev dev dev and some more dev. The communication overhead was low. Compared to her story, I had a dream job. Except that I didn't, it had good parts, and it had frustrating parts. Teaching at a coding school is more like a dream job since it doesn't feel like work and people pay you for it, except that it stifles career growth.

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

#170

Post by cc81 »

cbsks wrote: post #23
ljiljana wrote: post #15

> A few guys working both for Microsoft and Partners were treating me like a cute puppy or telling me they wanted to have sex with me while drunk, but all of it seemed minor and acceptable — I was getting so much in return. jesus, how is this minor and acceptable? i'm a woman in engineering and I can not even imagine having to deal with something like this. Is it that Marketing is that much different? Or am I just lu…

I’m a man and don’t have direct experience with this, but a few female friends, my wife, and both of my younger sisters have had unwanted sexual experiences at work. It was a sobering moment when I realized this. I’ve been in the tech industry for over 10 years and I don’t think that anything similar has happened to any of the people I have worked with, but honestly, I have no idea. I’m not sure if I’m oblivious or j…

I know there are a lot of shitty people out there but one should also note that the workplace is one of the places where people tend to meet their partner. There is a lot of flirting going on in general and some of that by nature will be unwanted.

As an example early in my career I used to work with a woman that was also pretty new and we had some chemistry. Nothing really came out of it but we did spend some time together at work and outside work. But that started as professional attitude -> friendly -> flirty. She was the one that pushed flirty at first and for example after a while when I sent her a message that she forgot an attachment I could get a "Oops, sorry! You will have to spank me!" or something similar.

I'm not trying to defend that 45 year old married guy that drunk walks up to the new 20 something hire and tells her that she has a hot body but at the same time you will have people looking for a partner spending a lot of time together. And if you also add in office parties with alcohol you are bound to also have a few misunderstandings where Guy/Girl thinks that they are hitting it off with other Guy/Girl and wants to try to take to the next level while the other person only thought they were friendly co-workers and wants to stay that way.

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