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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

#151

Post by grannyg00se »

rmah wrote: post #119

I'm not sure where to start. This is a person at his first job out of college and he's been there for less than a year (two if we're being generous). And yet he has the audacity to say "I learned that one will see this sort of problems in all large scale companies."? Really? This is absurd. I can't wrap my head around the sort of arrogance and myopia that makes a 21 or 22 yr old think that he can describe an entire w…

"I learned that one will see this sort of problems in all large scale companies. "

The way that reads in the paragraph makes it seem as though it was thrown in as an afterthought and that it applies as a separate statement on its own - unrelated from the 8 months. It's the only line that says anything about other companies. Maybe someone read his post, and said "hey, you know it's like that everywhere right?" Or, "Hey you know higher ups might not like you hating on us like that." And so he throws in a sentence to solidify the fact that he's not trying to single out Microsoft.

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

#152

Post by YZF »

VLM wrote: post #145

"Everybody loves finding Stack Overflow answers on search results, but nobody contributes those answers." Nobody OFFICIALLY does that. Probably because subsection 89 paragraph 12 clause 9 specifically prohibits that kind of activity on company time, and the company owns everything you produce or think of outside work blah blah blah, only company officers may speak for the company and you're not an officer, and you ar…

There are quite a few people from Microsoft answering questions on SO with their full name. I don't think this one is a real issue. The % of people who participate in SO is probably small in the total dev population in general.

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

#153

Post by mmmelissa »

rmah wrote: post #119

I'm not sure where to start. This is a person at his first job out of college and he's been there for less than a year (two if we're being generous). And yet he has the audacity to say "I learned that one will see this sort of problems in all large scale companies."? Really? This is absurd. I can't wrap my head around the sort of arrogance and myopia that makes a 21 or 22 yr old think that he can describe an entire w…

He probably got fed that idea day in and day out while there.

I have worked for a few different large organizations and have often faced the size excuse for being unorganized and ineffective. I personally feel it is a cop out, and self fulfilling prophesy once it becomes an accepted perspective, because then people stop trying to be better.

I have also worked in big organizations on kick-ass teams who are willing to fight uphill battles against "we are too big to change" attitude. Thats what made them awesome teams.

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

#154

Post by sidww2 »

gohrt wrote: post #131
sidww2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the job of the academia is to do research. Coding is just a means to an end. If on the other hand, you're distributing your code or it's intended as an ongoing project, then good comments and architecture are important (Disclaimer: I'm a PhD student).

The job of the engineer is to ship products, not code. (Unless you sell code or maybe library-components) See, it's easy to ship responsibility on either side, with the exact same line of reasoning.

Usually though that product code will be worked on by many other people. The same is often not true of academic projects.

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

#155

Post by dnautics »

rmah wrote: post #119

I'm not sure where to start. This is a person at his first job out of college and he's been there for less than a year (two if we're being generous). And yet he has the audacity to say "I learned that one will see this sort of problems in all large scale companies."? Really? This is absurd. I can't wrap my head around the sort of arrogance and myopia that makes a 21 or 22 yr old think that he can describe an entire w…

Not knowing anything about large team programming (I'm doing a biology startup) I took it to mean "you well see at least one of these problems at any given large scale company [fill in the rest]."

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

#156

Post by venomsnake »

coldtea wrote: post #124
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…

> 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. That's to me the equivalent of saying: "sitting on the front of the bus, as a black person, is a recipe for trouble". Not in the sense that it's racist, of course. But that it trivialises a problematic situation, and as…

Okay - I will elaborate a bit. Fortune 500 companies tend to be trigger happy lately and not backing their employees. You saw what happened with the #dealwithit guy. And that was for sentiment the whole company backs because it just happened to be true.

If Snowden did not leave the US so fast we would all agree that this would have been stupid. Not the leak but not taking the basic precautions.

Also he is not having personal issues or being harassed from what I read - so the situation is not a civil or worker's right problem that would require that kind of whistleblowing.

It is a rant with proper place on thedailywtf with good privacy protection.

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

#157

Post by nrubin »

I think it's weird that this person complains about people going home to live their lives. You know what's awesome about big companies? They know you have a life and they don't try to get in your way for that. There is life beyond the work and the office.

Also, Microsoft is a massive company, and this person thinks a single team reflects the entire company culture? It's a huge company with hundreds of teams. One team does not define the organization.

This post should be titled "I worked at Azure 8 months out of college and here's what I learned." That would be a more accurate title.

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

#158

Post by mmmelissa »

silverbax88 wrote: post #86
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.…

This is a very accurate statement. Only developers with several years of battle-tested, crunch-time experience know the dangers and headaches of trying to fix something that was implemented because it was 'new' and 'cool'. Sometimes new stuff is awesome. Most of the time, it's just new.

I agree.

I like to avoid being an early adopter for anything business or work related because it is so much easier to use things when there is an already established user community who has found and fixed/worked around most the major bugs.

Time is money.

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

#159

Post by vbv »

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,…

I have a gut feeling that he works as an SDE in Test (SDET). I have been through the same experience in my first 2 years. SDETs go through a very different experience as compared to a PM or SDE at Microsoft.

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

#160

Post by kryten »

DrJokepu wrote: post #132
kryten wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Joy to the European work ethic. I haven't worked past 5 for the last 10 years. I refuse to do unpaid work and overtime. Would your employer bill you out for free? Nope.

Actually yes, it's called a bonus.

I get a hefty one of them as well. What's your point?

I don't expect one. My basic salary is what I expect.

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