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Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

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Re: Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

#101

Post by DanBC »

mtrimpe wrote: post #17
jsnell wrote: post #8

So these kinds of peeks inside a large company are fascinating in a voyeuristic sense, but it's best to not to take them too seriously. Even somebody with no ulterior motives will only have a experience of a narrow slice of the company. And it's even worse when there is an obvious reason for bias. Certainly much of what I've seen written about Google had little to with the reality I observed there, regardless of whet…

Could we please somehow make these incessant ad-hominem attacks against michaelochurch stop? I know it's backed up by 'a story only us Googlers know' that explains it all, but the whole thing is starting to get rather childish.

> Could we please somehow make these incessant ad-hominem attacks against michaelochurch stop?

Could we please somehow make these incessant off-topic google baiting posts from michaelochurch stop?

This thread about MS has like many other threads been hi-jacked. He knows it's going to happen; he's seen it happen before; he knows it's off topic, yet still he posts.

I happily accept that Googlers should spit the fucking hook.

IHBT.

Re: Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

#102

Post by DanBC »

endtime wrote: post #99
danssig wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, what "great products" has MS produced? From my perspective, MS has always been vastly better at winning the market because they're nearly always competing with inferior products.

A non-exhaustive list of great MSFT products (I work for Google, no pro-MSFT bias here beyond a dash of meta-contrarianism): * Windows 95 * Windows XP * Windows 7 * Office 2010 * Zune HD * Windows Phone 7 * XBox * XBox 360 * Mice and keyboards I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of stuff. Before you start pointing out minor bugs or flaws in these products, or making irrelevant arguments (e.g. "Zune HD had low market share")…

Win 95? Really? Not Windows 98 with the plus pack? Not Windows 2000?

The Office suite collectively is impressive, and I've loved some features. Getting a better replacement for Excel and some of the other features is important, and I'm pleased to see Libre Office moving towards that.

You don't mention the killer combination of Exchange and Outlook. As far as I know[1] there's no real competitor to that combination, and that's something that has kept many offices[2] locked into an MS ecosystem.

[1] Happy to be shown wrong. Last time I really looked was several years ago. It's have to include calendaring / scheduling like Outlook. Yes, I know that having Exchange facing the Internet has been disastrous for some versions.

[2] Rightly or wrongly, many people did get locked into MS Small Business Server because of the Exchange / Outlook combo, and because they didn't know any better. There's a solid niche for a similar but better and cheaper setup. You'd monetise by selling cheaper than MS and selling support, but having decent customer led support too.

Re: Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

#103

Post by RandallBrown »

spodek wrote: post #43

The writer didn't mention any drive of his own except to work at a company whose products he liked, but didn't learn about the company culture before joining. If you want a great job, you have to take responsibility for making it great. If you don't take that responsibility, blaming the employer won't help. The company had a strategy long before you joined you can learn about before joining. If you didn't learn about…

How do you change the culture at a company like Microsoft though? I think in this case he tried to change it and found it too daunting. He got jaded and burned out. Sure, he should have handled it differently but sometimes stuff happens.

Re: Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

#104

Post by RandallBrown »

robryan wrote: post #56

Not sure I'd feel comfortable working at a place where you can be fired and escorted from the building after 5 years because you voiced your concerns about company direction.

He was fired for not doing his work. He had recieved several HR notices before being fired. This was just the straw that broke the camels back.

Re: Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

#105

Post by endtime »

DanBC wrote: post #102
endtime wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A non-exhaustive list of great MSFT products (I work for Google, no pro-MSFT bias here beyond a dash of meta-contrarianism): * Windows 95 * Windows XP * Windows 7 * Office 2010 * Zune HD * Windows Phone 7 * XBox * XBox 360 * Mice and keyboards I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of stuff. Before you start pointing out minor bugs or flaws in these products, or making irrelevant arguments (e.g. "Zune HD had low market share")…

Win 95? Really? Not Windows 98 with the plus pack? Not Windows 2000? The Office suite collectively is impressive, and I've loved some features. Getting a better replacement for Excel and some of the other features is important, and I'm pleased to see Libre Office moving towards that. You don't mention the killer combination of Exchange and Outlook. As far as I know[1] there's no real competitor to that combination, a…

>Win 95? Really? Not Windows 98 with the plus pack? Not Windows 2000?

I was thinking of the OSes they released that were big leaps forward for their vast numbers of users. IIRC Win 98 was only an incremental improvement on 95. But I could be wrong; in 1998 I was 12 years old.

Re: Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

#106

Post by DanBC »

endtime wrote: post #105
DanBC wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Win 95? Really? Not Windows 98 with the plus pack? Not Windows 2000? The Office suite collectively is impressive, and I've loved some features. Getting a better replacement for Excel and some of the other features is important, and I'm pleased to see Libre Office moving towards that. You don't mention the killer combination of Exchange and Outlook. As far as I know[1] there's no real competitor to that combination, a…

>Win 95? Really? Not Windows 98 with the plus pack? Not Windows 2000? I was thinking of the OSes they released that were big leaps forward for their vast numbers of users. IIRC Win 98 was only an incremental improvement on 95. But I could be wrong; in 1998 I was 12 years old.

No, you're right. People were queuing at midnight to get Windows 95. It was a huge thing for many people.

Re: Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

#107

Post by quadhome »

mattmanser wrote: post #62
latch wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talking about small projects, which, in the scale of things, are insignificant. They are all DevDiv projects, and even within DevDiv, they are fairly small. It's a company of 92000 employees, with some of their projects worth billions quarterly. Your perspective, from your examples, is completely skewed.

Other examples include Windows Phone and XBox both of which seemingly came from nowhere in a 'just get it done' style. There's some real love and skill that's been put into the XBox for example, just browse around it some time. My perspective is coloured by the developer stuff as that's what I'm most interested in.

Windows Phone definitely didn't come out of nowhere. A good friend of mine was one of the PM leads there. We used to have conversations on the bus every evening— him sweating decisions, fighting for inches, and showing off slow weekly progress on his debug unit.

Windows Phone was a lot of hard yards by some talented people working too late for too little. I long since left, but I expect it was the typical herculean project where 80% of the team left after it was out the door.

Re: Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

#108

Post by ehdv »

Something about this struck me as odd – having interned in the Windows org in Redmond, there are no such things as “business managers” – this may be a byproduct of Sinofsky’s leadership, but up to the VP level core product teams only have SDEs (devs), SDETs (tests), and PMs (program managers). GPMs and others above the manager level were busy with meetings for much of their days, but the ICs were not expected to be at all of those, so the obsession with colorful boxes he describes wasn’t something I ever witnessed. Maybe his experience was with a different product, but Windows and Office are certainly quite different from this.

Re: Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

#109

Post by antihero »

gaius wrote: post #79
antihero wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave that up to us, please, and do not spoil.

Sorry, but the event referred to was in the book published in 1996 . There has to be a statute of limitation on "spoilers". PS Titanic sinks.

It's being aired NOW though.

Re: Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

#110

Post by gaius »

antihero wrote: post #109
gaius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but the event referred to was in the book published in 1996 . There has to be a statute of limitation on "spoilers". PS Titanic sinks.

It's being aired NOW though.

Frodo reaches Mount Doom and destroys the Ring.
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