Working at Microsoft (2004) • Hacker News Board

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#41

Post by jacalata » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 4:58 AM UTC

DubiousPusher wrote: post #34

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 quit earlier this year and the unreality is huge. I cringed every time minimum wage came up for the last year or more because of the libertarian "they should just get better jobs!" crap that followed, or explanations of how people on low incomes are really making a ton of money off welfare payments. More work-specifically, I was constantly arguing over design decisions that treated bandwidth and connectivity as unlimited. I was in a meeting where someone suggested that since everyone in the room knew how x worked, we could assume it was general knowledge. Some of these people walked out of college 5 or 20 years ago straight into a job making six figures in Redmond, and that's not just all they know, its all they care about.

Also, I agree with his whole section on managers. In my six years there, I officially had maybe 15 managers? Four of them were great and if I went back, it would probably be under one of them. It wouldn't be worth the risk to go back and work for a new manager unless they came highly recommended by a friend. The personality cult effect is still real - I'm even doing it myslef above, but for a high level example look at the people who have followed Terry Myerson for years. I'm not sure I see this as negatively as he does - a good manager is hugely important in making the job worth having, so once you find one, you try and stay with them if it works for you.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#42

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 5:43 AM UTC

dottrap wrote: post #39

arebop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

[deleted]

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#43

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 5:43 AM UTC

dottrap wrote: post #39

arebop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

So how was MSR part of a scorched earth strategy?

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#44

Post by serge2k » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 6:13 AM UTC

dpark wrote: post #33

smacktoward wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 minimi…

That sounds wonderful to me right now.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#45

Post by serge2k » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 6:15 AM UTC

eva1984 wrote: post #28

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…

Microsoft is definitely, under the lead of Satya, becoming more open and friendly. But does it necessarily make it cooler? That is very much left to debate. The following claim might be a little generalized, but I believe Microsoft is still largely considered as an software company, who sells licenses and units of products for a living, and very much enterprise focused. This is quite different from the image that you…

Yes, Microsoft is cool again.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#46

Post by serge2k » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 6:18 AM UTC

superiortoyou wrote: post #20

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…

>Four or Five years ago, if you'd asked me what tech company I worked for, my answer would have probably been, "Microsoft, I know, it's a bummer. I'm trying to move to google". Now though people actually think MS is cool again. The stuff we're working on is exciting and the corporate culture is starting to get healthy. It's embarrassing how fickle the technology industry is... so much reliance on hype and trend-hoppi…

yeah, embarassing to want to work at companies doing innovative and interesting work. The whole side effect of probably getting a raise to go with a new job is terrible too.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#47

Post by com2kid » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 7:06 AM UTC

rwallace wrote: post #32

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, ri…

You actually can extend out MSBuild to use alternative compilers.

It already comes with rules for C#, VB, C++, F#, etc. Replacing the rules for C++ with another command line and set of parameters of quite doable! :)

(I happen to be using such a build system, unfortunately I wasn't the one who wrote it so I cannot provide any direct help, just encouragement!)

It can actually all work from within VS as well.

Re: Working at Microsoft (2004)

#48

Post by DubiousPusher » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 7:10 PM UTC

jacalata wrote: post #41

DubiousPusher wrote: post #34

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 quit earlier this year and the unreality is huge. I cringed every time minimum wage came up for the last year or more because of the libertarian "they should just get better jobs!" crap that followed, or explanations of how people on low incomes are really making a ton of money off welfare payments. More work-specifically, I was constantly arguing over design decisions that treated bandwidth and connectivity as unl…

That's fair. I guess I'm just lucky in the people I've found to work with. Most seem pretty socially conscious and well aware of how lucky they are to be where they are.

I accidentally skipped the "managers" section. And I completely agree. Of the 5 teams I've worked on there, I've only had one truly great manager and he was a recent hire from outside.

This is especially frustrating for me as a junior engineer. Microsoft has utterly failed to help develop not just myself as a young engineer but most the young people hired with me. What is more, most teams barely take experience into account at all. I've always felt as though I'm expected to operate at the same level as people with 20 years of industry experience.