Reflections on My Career at Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#61

Post by georgeecollins » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

vezycash wrote: post #18

duaoebg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ballmer is a buffoon. Even if we are to accept that MS was caged. I remember being at a launch party during an internship. Suddenly half the people ran out of the massive tent. I thought it must have been a fire, I ran out too, grabbed someone and asked why the mass exodus. Their reply was that Ballmer just went on stage. With that response I figured I have to see this. I went back in and recorded it. I was not disap…

Well that "buffoon" trippled Microsoft's earnings and doubled profits. But let these new growth areas slide because of the antitrust suit. If the market judged Microsoft by its earnings, it's stock would have been up. The internet, mobile was the blockchain and AI of the era.

Yeah, but the stock didn't go up from when he started to when he finished, which is evidence that the growth that happened during his tenure was all anticipated before he began. Good decisions can reap benefits years in the future, bad ones can take a decade to come to roost. You can say that Apple sales grew during John Scully's tenure. But it is kind of obvious that the company was exploiting a prior period of innovation while failing to innovate (Newton, Pink etc.).

He inherited a company that was incredibly powerful and that power only diminished during his tenure.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#62

Post by munchbunny » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #19

didibus wrote: post #13

> At its core, Microsoft is a company that makes its money the old fashioned way: by creating products of value that people willingly part with their money to use. Call me skeptical, but there's not a whole lot of products I willfully pay Microsoft for. Most of them I pay for with a strong feeling of resentment that I have simply no other choice, since there are no competitors to the market or the lock in is too stro…

Good point, I have never once felt "Wow, a new Microsoft product, can't wait to buy it!". Instead it is usually more like "Oh shit, a new Mirosoft product, I hope I wont be forced to buy it to stay compatible".

The Surface line (Surface Pro, Surface Laptop, and Surface Book) have hit that category lately, IMO. The specific value proposition is "it's a well designed device at a reasonable price and it doesn't come with a giant pile of OEM crapware."

I've been using a dedicated GPU (switchable) model of the gen 1 Surface Book for four years, and (other than that gigantic hiccup where Intel screwed up the power management on their chips) I've loved it. Plays many of the fancier video games, battery life on the scale of 5-7 hours under web browsing workloads, great screen, and with WSL2 I get most of my Linux development needs covered as well. I can detach the screen and use it while I'm flying. I can break out the stylus when I need to draw diagrams in meetings (or... when I'm dungeon-mastering for D&D).

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#63

Post by mieseratte » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #60

anon1m0us wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get your employer to hear you? I don't think these problems are isolated to women. I think women just don't understand that there's an "old boys club" that attacks other men too. I know lots of men who say the same things. Pitting employees against each other. The masters recruiting spies from among the ranks to report dissenting comments from the servants. Cutting back on coffee breaks. Not being allowed…

I'm sorry but you are just wrong. We can't go on our individual experience, the only way to understand women's perspective is to listen to what they're saying and how they're treated. The past few years has made it pretty clear (although there were certainly reports even before then) that women have faced, and continue to face abuse and discrimination to a degree that men don't. What you're saying sounds to me like t…

So... uncritically take everything someone says at face value and ignore possible alternative explanations, assuming the worst about the person being discussed that isn't there to defend themselves or otherwise offer any possible context?

Sounds like a poor recipe for civic cohesion.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#64

Post by bitwize » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #42

vezycash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that "buffoon" trippled Microsoft's earnings and doubled profits. But let these new growth areas slide because of the antitrust suit. If the market judged Microsoft by its earnings, it's stock would have been up. The internet, mobile was the blockchain and AI of the era.

I can’t judge whether he was a good CEO or not, but, goodness, that dude lived the company. He was an exuberant uninhibited promoter. More than Evangelizer. The guy didn’t care what people said behind his back when he got all sweaty, nope, he was there to promote the company. A great cheerleader for the team.

"I've got just four words: I. Love. This. Company. YEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!"

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#65

Post by Someone1234 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #40

didibus wrote: post #13

> At its core, Microsoft is a company that makes its money the old fashioned way: by creating products of value that people willingly part with their money to use. Call me skeptical, but there's not a whole lot of products I willfully pay Microsoft for. Most of them I pay for with a strong feeling of resentment that I have simply no other choice, since there are no competitors to the market or the lock in is too stro…

> Call me skeptical, but there's not a whole lot of products I willfully pay Microsoft for. I have met many, many people who gladly pay for Office (specifically, Excel) or Visual Studio, so much does it increase their productivity. I'm not one of them, but I'm not an accountant and the code bases I work with are small and don't require VS's incredible tooling. There are also adherents of the cult of Visio, but I hone…

I strongly agree on Office/Excel. Fantastic product suite (except maybe Outlook which is long in the tooth/essentially unimproved for the last ten years).

Visual Studio I'll slightly disagree on. I resent it. When VSCode, an electron application, can run lag/stutter/micro-freeze free and Visual Studio an IDE written in C++ cannot you know the codebase has become unmaintainable. This isn't a recent phenomenon either. This has been a nuisance in VS 2015, 17, and now 19 (16.4 Preview).

I'd love to switch to VSCode but the csprojec/C# support isn't there yet. I don't need a forms builder, server explorer, EDMX designer, test explorer, and all the other bells and whistles VS offers. I use VS strictly to write code (C# MVC/Web), run, and repeat. The refactoring tools/Intellisense/IntelliCode/QuickFixes are awesome but if I could trade them all for a lag free experience I would in a second.

I'm using a i7 (6th gen)/16 GB of RAM/SSD. I have no extensions except the built-in ones and Web Compiler/Bundler & Minifier. It doesn't help.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#66

Post by d23 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

This was my experience of Ballmer-era Microsoft management hires at my previous company. They were the perfect combination of narcissism, manipulativeness, toxicity, and above all else, idiocy. They did a lot of damage, probably irrevocably. They were know-nothing bullies who liked to yell if you ever questioned them, completely convinced of their own superiority. I've heard a lot of similar stories about these people at other companies. It's a shame what people like this get away with.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#67

Post by Infinitesimus » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

mieseratte wrote: post #59

anon1m0us wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get your employer to hear you? I don't think these problems are isolated to women. I think women just don't understand that there's an "old boys club" that attacks other men too. I know lots of men who say the same things. Pitting employees against each other. The masters recruiting spies from among the ranks to report dissenting comments from the servants. Cutting back on coffee breaks. Not being allowed…

> How do you get your employer to hear you? I don't think these problems are isolated to women. I think women just don't understand that there's an "old boys club" that attacks other men too. I know lots of men who say the same things. If anyone thinks this is a problem exclusive to men, conservatives, or whatever group it's en vogue to pillory they're flat-out ignorant. I've seen women in power be utterly despicable…

A lot of people do not realize this.

The reality is that corporate culture has incentivized and rewarded certain behaviors (manifesting as sexism, racism, bullying, extroversion, whatever ) over and over again and people are slowly pushing back.

It took a while for 'executive' to not only mean "older caucasian male in a suit".

For all its thorny parts, the increase in exposure of these issues will help more employees realize the power imbalance and try to define a better and more inclusive corporate culture

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#68

Post by Kapura » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:03 PM UTC

anon1m0us wrote: post #55

cbanek wrote: post #4

As a woman who worked at MSFT through the Ballmer era, I have to agree with this whole article. It really nailed it. Especially this part near the end where I never felt it would get better: "But my former female colleagues who reviewed this document in advance of its publication are unconvinced. None of them report feeling emboldened by the new Microsoft. They continue to withhold reports of discriminatory managemen…

How do you get your employer to hear you? I don't think these problems are isolated to women. I think women just don't understand that there's an "old boys club" that attacks other men too. I know lots of men who say the same things. Pitting employees against each other. The masters recruiting spies from among the ranks to report dissenting comments from the servants. Cutting back on coffee breaks. Not being allowed…

I understand that you want to unite workers in solidarity (which I think is a good thing!) but I'm not sure if you're hearing that men and women experience issues with bad bosses in very different ways, and the channels through which they can respond are also divergent.

The author of the original post believes that MS under Nadella is starting to turn itself around, but he was rebuffed by the people who would know best who have told him that the entrenched culture of sexism hasn't made as much progress as one would hope. And then the comment you have responded to calls out that quote as especially true.

Your response is to invalidate their experiences by claiming that hey, everybody is going through some stuff. But if you cannot recognise that maybe some less-privileged groups have it worse in some ways, you will find it difficult to find allies among them.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#69

Post by chance_state » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #60

anon1m0us wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get your employer to hear you? I don't think these problems are isolated to women. I think women just don't understand that there's an "old boys club" that attacks other men too. I know lots of men who say the same things. Pitting employees against each other. The masters recruiting spies from among the ranks to report dissenting comments from the servants. Cutting back on coffee breaks. Not being allowed…

I'm sorry but you are just wrong. We can't go on our individual experience, the only way to understand women's perspective is to listen to what they're saying and how they're treated. The past few years has made it pretty clear (although there were certainly reports even before then) that women have faced, and continue to face abuse and discrimination to a degree that men don't. What you're saying sounds to me like t…

>I'm sorry but you are just wrong.

>The past few years has made it pretty clear (although there were certainly reports even before then) that women have faced, and continue to face abuse and discrimination to a degree that men don't.

Do you have anything to add besides "you are wrong" and (paraphrasing) "women are right"?

The point GP makes about an old boys club that attacks men and women equally rings painfully true to me also.

Re: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft

#70

Post by JohnFen » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #65

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Call me skeptical, but there's not a whole lot of products I willfully pay Microsoft for. I have met many, many people who gladly pay for Office (specifically, Excel) or Visual Studio, so much does it increase their productivity. I'm not one of them, but I'm not an accountant and the code bases I work with are small and don't require VS's incredible tooling. There are also adherents of the cult of Visio, but I hone…

I strongly agree on Office/Excel. Fantastic product suite (except maybe Outlook which is long in the tooth/essentially unimproved for the last ten years). Visual Studio I'll slightly disagree on. I resent it. When VSCode, an electron application, can run lag/stutter/micro-freeze free and Visual Studio an IDE written in C++ cannot you know the codebase has become unmaintainable. This isn't a recent phenomenon either.…

> Visual Studio I'll slightly disagree on. I resent it.

I agree. Visual Studio has a tendency to make me actively angry.