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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

#221

Post by bodegajed »

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 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 world from such limited experience.

I like him already, If were Microsoft I _will_ hire him asap. He's the type of person who wants to make things better.

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

#222

Post by wololo »

venomsnake wrote: post #121
mbell wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Publishing something that HR/PR can consider slander The truth can not under any reasonable definition be considered slander.

And HR and PR departments in any company have always been the pinnacle of reasonableness

http://injury.findlaw.com/torts-and-personal-injuries/defens...

"truth serves as an affirmative defense to an action for libel or slander"

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

#223

Post by sidww2 »

nostrademons wrote: post #190
sidww2 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's still an opportunity cost to writing documentation. How many other people will work on that code? 2-3? 12? 100? 2000? If it's 2-3 or even a dozen, you're better off explaining in person how it works, while if it's 2000 there better be some persistent written documentation. It probably also doesn't help that the number of people who look at a given piece of code follows a power law, which means that when you'r…

If the product you're working on is a long term project of the company, it's likely you'll leave before it's over in which case there will be a future person who'll have to figure out your code. In such a case, documentation is essential as otherwise this person would have to contact you after you've moved onto other projects and may have forgotten the intimate details of the code making things tricky.

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

#224

Post by michaelochurch »

iknight wrote: post #2

Welcome to the corporate world, where the grass isn't always greener on the other side. There is always being an intrapreneur. People are people and can be influenced. It isn't easy.

There is always being an intrapreneur.

No there is not, in most companies. In most firms, if you try to be an "intrapreneur" while the middle manager to whom you report has to deal with typical corporate dreck, you'll break this "Law of Power" (Never Outshine the Master): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMy8Tf-zCag Then you get fired for being "distracted" because the perception is that you care more about your career goals than your manager's. (Of course, this is usually true for most people and there's nothing wrong with that, but one can't be brazen about it.)

There are benefits to working in larger companies, but the idea that one can just decide one day to recast his job description to "intrapreneur" is laughable for most people. The people who have jobs that would allow that (in small or large companies) don't need to fall back on some templated concept.

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

#225

Post by cmbaus »

jmduke wrote: post #36
ngoel36 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.…

Referring to comments as dangerous is dangerous.

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

#226

Post by michaelochurch »

I am going to be really curious to find out how this plays out for OP. I don't know anything about MSFT, but it's a courageous and insightful post that underlines many of the awful truths about typical corporate programming.

The nonsense (endless meetings, anti-intellectualism, lack of passion) is why so many people check out for good around 40. I really hate the stereotype that that's normal, though; I go to Lisp meetups and fairly often run into people in their 50s to 70s who are still passionate about technology.

I want to know, now and in 6 months, where the OP ends up. I'm not going to get into more detail than this, but one learns a lot (about others, organizations, and oneself) through whistleblowing.

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

#227

Post by taude »

He's probably right about some things; but he's wrong about people having life outside of work, but that's OK, he's young and his only passion is his code and growing his career. However, there's something about the tone of this posting and the sarcastic overtones that I'd probably fire him....if at least to free him from his corporate shackles so he can go find himself.

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

#228

Post by bproctor »

dap wrote: post #206
alpb wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, author of the post here. I thought I may justify what I said. I have friends in almost all big companies and I discuss them about these issues a lot. Almost all of them agree that they are in a similar situation. I know that even Microsoft is a huge world and NOT all organizations are the same. All organizations have their own culture so there's no common culture in the company I can describe. In a way thi…

> I have friends in almost all big companies and I discuss them about these issues a lot. Almost all of them agree that they are in a similar situation. Really? You have friends in almost all big companies? There's a lot of truth in the points you mention, but even in my limited experience (six years at two companies, one very large and one pretty small), it's much more complex than you suggest. Many of these things…

I pretty sure he meant most of his friends work at big companies.

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

#229

Post by ngoel36 »

jes5199 wrote: post #47
ngoel36 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> A lot of my coworkers were over 35. ... Working past 6 was considered absurd It is absurd. Experience teaches you that.

I agree. I do think, however, that a 10am-8pm work day (or later) is not at all uncommon in Silicon Valley

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

#230

Post by ngoel36 »

albertyw wrote: post #31
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,…

Out of curiosity, which division were you in? Given the size of Microsoft, I'm not surprised there would be some major differences between different teams.

He said Azure.
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