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Working at Microsoft (2004)

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Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#31

Post by markjbrown »

serve_yay wrote: post #10
dsmitchell1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears to be 2004. He indicates that he was hired in 1999, and elsewhere he talks about the number of managers he's had in five years.

Well. I may not have any inside info but I'd wager that 2004 MS and 2015 MS are very different workplaces indeed.

They are/were. I worked there from Feb 2000 until Dec 2014. The company changed a great deal over that time. Without commenting directly on Ballmer I will say Satya Nadella is a great CEO and he is doing a great job transforming the company.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#32

Post by rwallace »

jjcm wrote: post #9

Since this blog is a bit dated, here are some things that have changed in the last 10 years from the perspective of someone who works here now. First some background to fill in the time between when he wrote this and now: When Vista dropped, public opinion of Microsoft started to go out the door. That was right around the same time that Apple released its first iphone (2007), and with a failed OS and a hugely success…

At the moment I'm looking at trying to compile some stuff on Windows, that has Visual Studio project files, with clang instead of Microsoft C++. This would involve making msbuild do things it wasn't exactly designed to do (assuming I don't want to spend a lot of time duplicating what it does from scratch). It occurred to me maybe what I really need to do is modify msbuild, but of course that's out of the question, right? But just for the heck of it I ran a Google search...

... and msbuild was recently open sourced. The code is right there on Github.

Yeah, Microsoft of 2015 is very different from Microsoft of 1995, in good ways.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#33

Post by dpark »

smacktoward wrote: post #18
tdicola wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, that's kinda greatly simplifying things. I'd say the last 10 years can be described as: - ~2005 to ~2009 was the Ray Ozzie era. Ozzie took over the role of Chief Software Architect from Bill Gates in 2006 and the company, internally and externally, was focused on very ambitious projects. Software 'architects' were common on every team and usually doing something the 'right' way trumped shipping quickly and itera…

> 2009 to 2013 was the Steven Sinofsky era... There was much less focus on building platforms, ideas, or other intangible things vs. shipping to customers in controlled and predictable ways. For certain definitions of "controlled and predictable," yes. For others not so much. Sinofsky's tenure was also the era of the great push to turn Windows 8 into the one Windows to rule all devices, which resulted in it being the…

From my perspective, "controlled and predictable" with Sinofsky was about managing the release cycle, hitting the dates. e.g. We said we're shipping in May, so we're shipping in May. That means careful planning and aggressive feature cuts if necessary. The goal was on time with high quality, where quality is measured in metrics like crash rate and bug count, not public opinion surveys.

Incremental releases and minimizing controversial changes might make releases more "controlled" in different ways, but those weren't the target.

[Edited for clarity]

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#34

Post by DubiousPusher »

My 2 cents working here.

Focus: Yes, this place still is 100% about making software. Yes, sometimes the company still pushes hard for really stupid things. That's getting better.

Unreality: I have no idea what he's talking about. Maybe upper management but everyone I work with is a real person with real financial concerns and life goals. I've had many conversations about poverty and its effects on people. Most people I talk to wonder how people making median salaries get by in the area.

Personal Freedom: Yeah right. It's not like anyone's got you at the point of a gun but most of the time you're being payed to work on some project that has a pretty obvious route forward. The tyranny of the immediate rules here.

Company Leadership: A wash but better now.

Source Code: Plenty of that. And open source is being embraced more and more every day.

Benefits: Nice salary. The yearly company performance raise has been beating inflation. The health insurance is good but it's now a capitalist ploy. There's a bunch of stuff they pay for that I'd rather have money for instead. The retirement is kind of hilariously weak but that's the trend everywhere I think.

Free Soft Drinks: I'm a curmudgeon. I don't like my "overhead" subsidizing others' pathway to diabetes but whatever.

Work Life Balance: You have to fight for this. And I mean really fight. You basically have to be willing to lose your job. But if you stick to your guns and find the right place, you can achieve this.

Microsoft is Not Evil: Oh, they probably are. But so are most the places you all work for too.

Influence: I integrate tools into games, which really overall isn't that important. That's also how I maintain my "Work Life Balance."

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#35

Post by MichaelGG »

markjbrown wrote: post #31
serve_yay wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. I may not have any inside info but I'd wager that 2004 MS and 2015 MS are very different workplaces indeed.

They are/were. I worked there from Feb 2000 until Dec 2014. The company changed a great deal over that time. Without commenting directly on Ballmer I will say Satya Nadella is a great CEO and he is doing a great job transforming the company.

Hopefully he will take responsibility for cleaning up the app store and stop focusing on app count. I wrote Satya, the GM of the Windows Store, and various PMs on that team, but nothing.

Countless tons of crap on the store. MS paying for shovelware. CSRs defending fake versions of Dropbox. Fake Windows Updates on the store. Publishers pretending to be Microsoft or other big vendors. Smaller ISVs unable to get scam versions of their software removed. Hell, even Netflix had s tough time getting rid of fake Netflix apps.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#36

Post by arebop »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #26
nemo44x wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to hear the culture at your company has improved but I don't know if Microsoft is considered "cool" - or whatever that means. Anyone who has been around long enough (and not really that long all things considered) knows better than to ever trust Microsoft. Their whole model has been, and always will be: "Embrace, extend, extinguish". So Microsoft is opening some things up? They've had no choice as they are…

Anyone who has been around long enough knows not to trust Google, Apple, Facebook, Oracle, ... Microsoft is not uniquely untrustworthy when it comes to big multi-faceted companies. As for DNA, I haven't seen any dodgy behavior in the OSS area for 5+ years, and nothing like EEE since I started working here in 2007.

No, Microsoft is a special case because they have always been at best amoral; they have been a cutthroat, even malicious company. Recently they've softened their behavior and image, but it's really a very recent shift and given their past treachery it's hard to trust them.

These other companies may not always work together in harmony, but at least they aren't preoccupied with extinguishing their competitors and dominating ("owning") their users.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#37

Post by joshuapants »

arebop wrote: post #36
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who has been around long enough knows not to trust Google, Apple, Facebook, Oracle, ... Microsoft is not uniquely untrustworthy when it comes to big multi-faceted companies. As for DNA, I haven't seen any dodgy behavior in the OSS area for 5+ years, and nothing like EEE since I started working here in 2007.

No, Microsoft is a special case because they have always been at best amoral; they have been a cutthroat, even malicious company. Recently they've softened their behavior and image, but it's really a very recent shift and given their past treachery it's hard to trust them. These other companies may not always work together in harmony, but at least they aren't preoccupied with extinguishing their competitors and domin…

> at least they aren't preoccupied with extinguishing their competitors and dominating ("owning") their users.

That's weird, because my perception of the companies listed above is that they are exactly preoccupied with that.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#38

Post by grokys »

nemo44x wrote: post #23
jjcm wrote: post #9

Since this blog is a bit dated, here are some things that have changed in the last 10 years from the perspective of someone who works here now. First some background to fill in the time between when he wrote this and now: When Vista dropped, public opinion of Microsoft started to go out the door. That was right around the same time that Apple released its first iphone (2007), and with a failed OS and a hugely success…

I'm happy to hear the culture at your company has improved but I don't know if Microsoft is considered "cool" - or whatever that means. Anyone who has been around long enough (and not really that long all things considered) knows better than to ever trust Microsoft. Their whole model has been, and always will be: "Embrace, extend, extinguish". So Microsoft is opening some things up? They've had no choice as they are…

I am really tempted to set up a new account just so that I can post "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" to each MS article. Just that. Three words. Each article.

The only reason I don't do it is that I'm afraid it won't be distinguishable from a small percentage of the HN readership who do so seriously.

Really, it gets boring.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#39

Post by dottrap »

arebop wrote: post #36
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who has been around long enough knows not to trust Google, Apple, Facebook, Oracle, ... Microsoft is not uniquely untrustworthy when it comes to big multi-faceted companies. As for DNA, I haven't seen any dodgy behavior in the OSS area for 5+ years, and nothing like EEE since I started working here in 2007.

No, Microsoft is a special case because they have always been at best amoral; they have been a cutthroat, even malicious company. Recently they've softened their behavior and image, but it's really a very recent shift and given their past treachery it's hard to trust them. These other companies may not always work together in harmony, but at least they aren't preoccupied with extinguishing their competitors and domin…

Microsoft is a special case, but not for that reason.

Microsoft is a special case because they had a zero-sum game/scorched Earth mindset, and the ability to lose billions of dollars per year, indefinitely, achieving it.

Microsoft was not content at allowing potential new ideas/technologies develop which might grow the market and improve things because they saw everything as a potential threat to their position. So they would do everything from trying to poison the market, to pouring (losing) tons of money into competing products, and sometimes just buying up companies and let it rot.

The very special part is as long as Windows and Office were cash cows, stock holders weren't willing to lead a revolt for Microsoft losing billions on everything else.

Not all companies are not scorched earth (SGI gave away serious resources to Nvidia, Valve recently gave away their VR tech in the highly publicized layoffs a few years ago).

Other companies might like to play scorched earth, but they don't have the ability to piss away money like Microsoft. This is why Microsoft is a special case.

Microsoft still has tons of cash and Windows/Office is still a cash cow. And it is generally accepted that company culture is hard to change once established (especially here on HN). This is why people with historical context do not trust Microsoft, with good reason.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#40

Post by douche »

nemo44x wrote: post #23
jjcm wrote: post #9

Since this blog is a bit dated, here are some things that have changed in the last 10 years from the perspective of someone who works here now. First some background to fill in the time between when he wrote this and now: When Vista dropped, public opinion of Microsoft started to go out the door. That was right around the same time that Apple released its first iphone (2007), and with a failed OS and a hugely success…

I'm happy to hear the culture at your company has improved but I don't know if Microsoft is considered "cool" - or whatever that means. Anyone who has been around long enough (and not really that long all things considered) knows better than to ever trust Microsoft. Their whole model has been, and always will be: "Embrace, extend, extinguish". So Microsoft is opening some things up? They've had no choice as they are…

By going cross-platform on C#, Microsoft is coming to eat Java's lunch. Throwing their weight behind .NET Core ASP.NET on Linux is a clear shot across the bow at server-side Java, which, let's face it, is a shit-show compared to developing in C# these days.
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