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In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things

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Re: In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things

#101

Post by JonFish85 »

ownagefool wrote: post #73
jmduke wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although things were done differently than they are done in Silicon Valley, the difference is not necessarily bad, perhaps more eye-opening. This is how MOST computer science majors spend their careers. Not mastering MongoDB, collaborating on Google Spreadsheets, or posting things to HN, but using Windows XP, Visual Studio, and Microsoft Word 2003 on a 2008 Lenovo laptop. And MS is perfectly happy taking their money.…

There's a ton of wrong with that statements tone, not that I think the author meant it that way, but I'll point it out regardless: #1 - The majority of HN seems to involve typical latests web crud app fads. It's probably also not that interesting to *nix system developers either, though many might read it for the apps being created as opposed to the how. #2 - Having MongoDB on your CV generally means you're developin…

Microsoft is the complete opposite of Facebook's "Move fast and break things". And that's a good thing, in a lot of ways. When entire companies (industries?) are dependent on you: slow & steady to get it right is much, much better than moving quickly to integrate the newest technology.

Re: In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things

#103

Post by rlu »

ngoel36 wrote: post #32
venomsnake wrote: post #19

Publishing something that HR/PR can consider slander under your real name while being junior developer is not a recipe for stable employment. These guys tend to freak out over minor stuff like that. Lets hope it does not have negative consequences. Otherwise familiar - these companies are like supertankers - move slowly and few people are empowered to make meaningful decisions and contributions. Worked for a few year…

I spent two summers interning as a Program Manager at Microsoft (Xbox and Office), and his statements are nearly 100% accurate: - Literally any piece of documentation was always 1+ years out of date. Setting up a dev environment could take days when it should have only taken hours. - A lot of my coworkers were over 35. Starkly different from my experience later at Google. Working past 6 was considered absurd, and a l…

On the other hand, I had different experiences both times when interning at Microsoft.

Anyone that works or has worked at Microsoft should all end any "my experience" post with one sentence: your mileage may vary.

Microsoft is a gigantic company where team culture varies widely. Some may consider this a good thing, others a bad thing. I don't really care. I just call it a fact and as such "my experience at MS" posts are usually pretty meh unless the author him/herself realizes that their team's culture is probably extremely different (for better or for worse) from other teams' culture.

I think it's a pretty important footnote to include, that's all.

Re: In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things

#105

Post by infinitone »

JonFish85 wrote: post #101
ownagefool wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a ton of wrong with that statements tone, not that I think the author meant it that way, but I'll point it out regardless: #1 - The majority of HN seems to involve typical latests web crud app fads. It's probably also not that interesting to *nix system developers either, though many might read it for the apps being created as opposed to the how. #2 - Having MongoDB on your CV generally means you're developin…

Microsoft is the complete opposite of Facebook's "Move fast and break things". And that's a good thing, in a lot of ways. When entire companies (industries?) are dependent on you: slow & steady to get it right is much, much better than moving quickly to integrate the newest technology.

How is Microsoft slow and steady when he just told you they have poor code quality, no docs, etc.

Re: In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things

#106

Post by jonrimmer »

papercruncher wrote: post #42
snth wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long ago? Do you think it was different when you were there, that it was better in your group specifically, or that it's better in most other groups?

I was in Online Services (aka Windows Live) about two years ago. Some groups are obviously better than others, that can be said for any company. I think the problem here is that the author does not realize that unlike college, corporate world requires you to be a bit more proactive. Large companies may suffer from bureaucracy but on the upside, they have vast resources and smart/accomplished people you can tap into i…

This seems extraordinarily unfair to the author. Being "proactive" can't retroactively make your team write documentation, make them care about engineering quality, or stop them wasting time in meetings, it's just a lame, corporate-speak, equivocation; the kind used by managers in reviews, and nowhere in the real world.

Kids fresh out of college may need to adjust their expectations to the real world, but most of his complaints are legitimate problems if true, and accusing him of having a "poisonous attitude" for raising them is exactly the kind of oppressive, censorious behaviour that allows such mediocrity to exist.

Re: In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things

#107

Post by spiderPig »

papercruncher wrote: post #27

I spent 5 years at Microsoft as a dev and share almost none of the author's sentiments. I had very few meetings, my manager went out of his way to make sure that I was not blocked, code reviews were mandatory, blogging on technical aspects was ok, had ample free time to work on any side project I wanted (even encouraged to work with MSR on things that were more researchy), etc etc... I could go on for a while. Sure,…

Also, worthwhile to note that this guy is an SDET and not an SDE at Microsoft.

VAST difference in quality between the two disciplines.

Re: In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things

#108

Post by wisty »

kayoone wrote: post #65
nealabq wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you love what you're doing.

I totally love what im doing, but forgive me, i love my family more.

I also love debugging the code I wrote yesterday (or last month) without wondering what could possibly have made me do something so damn stupid.

Re: In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things

#109

Post by matwood »

Expect no documentation in corporations.

True anywhere. Lots of OSS is horribly documented. Documentation is not only hard, but adds debt that now must be maintained. No documentation is better than wrong documentation.

It is not what you do, it is what you sell.

Welcome to business (and life really). While selling styling changes is going to be hard, selling bug fixing, code changes to be more robust and easier to manage are easy sells. If changes will make it easier (aka cheaper) to add new features even the least technical business person will get it.

Not everybody is passionate for engineering.

Not everyone has the same engineering passion. I don't care that my new router with IPV6 gives me some large number of IPs, but I do get excited when I can integrate a new framework which makes my job easier.

It is all about getting shit done

This is life. Do you really think the small companies of the world don't care about getting shit done? The small companies of the world are often more concerned because they don't have MS Office level cash cows keeping them afloat.

Latest software, meh.

Because it often breaks shit and gets in the way of getting shit done.

* I spend most of my time trying to figure out how others’ uncommented/undoumented code work, debugging strange things*

Programming is mostly reading code. I don't feel like looking it up right now, but Clean Code references the study. Reading code is coding.

Re: In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things

#110

Post by nabnob »

vowelless wrote: post #6

He sounds like someone who is significantly lowering his standards. Seems like working at a big corporation is killing his spirit and energy. That is just sad. Edit: Unless he is being sarcastic?

I'm another one-year-out-of-college developer working at Amazon. This article describes how I feel almost exactly.
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