Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by latch » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 12:38 AM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #18

Animus7 wrote: post #10

My story is similar. I was looking to get a tech job out of college a couple of years back, and Microsoft picked me up first (Google was also interested with talks of similar offers but they moved much slower). It was all interesting and new for the first few months. The team was going through chaotic transitions at the time, so I was shuffled around many challenging projects, all with tight deadlines and technical b…

I was chatting with a friend of mine on Thursday that MS seem to have a 'get shit done' team that magically pops up every now and again. Like the EF migrations project was looking really, really awful[1] and someone's managed to turn it around and it's ended up lookig like it might be great[2]. Or like when Rails/Django were the talk out of the town and a new MVC PHP framework came out every day and ASP.Net was looki…

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.

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

#42

Post by jay_kyburz » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:24 AM UTC

sudoscience wrote: post #38

michaelochurch wrote: post #28

OP's story is unfortunate, but this is tame compared to some of the things I've seen or heard of in the past five years. If this is TC-worthy, I've seen enough dirt to fertilize the Sahara. This is a case of company and person who didn't work out, but it doesn't leave me feeling that Microsoft was unethical or mean-spirited about it (which is more than I can say of many, many companies). Badly run, sure, but not evil…

No Game of Thrones spoilers, please!

Arg, read the books. Don't wait for the TV version. There is so much more to enjoy in the longer format.

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

#43

Post by spodek » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:30 AM UTC

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 it before joining, how can you complain about it?

The email to the VP he closed with didn't help the company. He just vented. Who wants a petulant employee?

We can learn from his experience to find out before joining a team if we can create the environment for ourselves we want, then to do so.

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

#44

Post by anthonyb » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:49 AM UTC

calibraxis wrote: post #26

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…

Yes, rationality means that we don't believe everything we read 100%. That said, critical "insider" pieces are far in the minority, which means overly rosy stuff dominates. Take for example Steve Yegge's accidentally public Amazon rant. He later said it was a mistake because it was "unprofessional"; it would be more professional to focus on positive aspects rather than negative. ( https://plus.google.com/110981030061…

A sidenote, but over the top of that Steve Yegge post is an ad:

Join Google+: Share the right things with just the right people.

Made me snigger, anyway...

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

#45

Post by chj » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 2:13 AM UTC

Been there. I can't express how I hate those meetings. The problem is deep. I mean they would have to change the culture, and therefore have to fire off a lot of top managers. Of course, that is never going to happen.

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

#46

Post by meric » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 2:13 AM UTC

gouranga wrote: post #14

VMG wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a fitting comparison because McDonalds is also wildly successful.

Spot on. Also McDonalds just works how you expect it to.

Here's my experience working at McDonald's back when I was in high school:

There were two types of managers. Those who really cared about the customer experience, and those who just want to get paid. I was lucky enough to work under a manager who really, really cared. The manager was not the store manager but the assistant manager. Store managers would move into our McDonald's, and 6 months later they'll be promoted, all because of the effort of the assistant manager. Sometimes I would make a salad, tossing all the ingredients inside, the assistant manager would look at it and say: "That looks like shit. I know it's really busy right now but the customer paid EIGHT DOLLARS for it. Go take your time and make another one. I'll come around to help while you're doing that". He spends a lot of time trying to make the restaurant as good as possible, and follows all guidelines to the letter. He really worked us hard, but I loved it.

One day, he finally got promoted, and left our store. The managers after that did not care. Using wrong gloves? Go ahead. Really busy and the food looks like crap? Who cares. You want free food? Take it. Oh and don't worry about cleaning the back of the grill today, I want to go home early.

I quit soon after.

I was trying to make a point of McDonald's being different to Microsoft, but they now seem to me more same than different...

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

#47

Post by uzair88 » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 2:27 AM UTC

jxi wrote: post #15

AznHisoka wrote: post #12

I can empathize with the OP, but why go through the hassle of causing a commotion, and making it a Techcrunch story? Just leave amicably - they're NOT forcing you to work. You can get up and leave anytime you want, which is the mature thing to do.

What's wrong about ranting about it? If it's interesting and useful, people can learn from it and not make the same mistakes? I don't think you should have to leave amicably if you felt like you weren't treated well, otherwise every company can just treat all their employees like shit and nobody would know/care.

I'd love to see Microsoft respond to this!

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

#48

Post by arafalov » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 2:39 AM UTC

kposehn wrote: post #24

harryf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are ways to get changes made in Big Co. Very true. I have this book in my head that might one day get written. Title would be something like "Intreprenauring: Innovating within Large Stupid Organizations" with a focus on practical "hacks" for getting stuff done. Probably all been said by Dilbert already though.

> "Intreprenauring: Innovating within Large Stupid Organizations" Please write that book

Anyone trying to learn to work in LSOs, should read the Political Savvy book first: http://www.politicalsavvy.com/docs/book.html (ignore all the colour scheme and additional monetization junk, just borrow/buy the book itself)

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

#49

Post by darksaga » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 2:54 AM UTC

hung wrote: post #16

Sort of lost his credibility after he revealed that he was canned. If you're spinning your wheels at a company and hate the culture, why not do something about it? You're as bad as the useless meeting-goers if you can't actually do something and simply complain all the time. For what it's worth, I was at MS for 7 months. Left on my own volition and now I'm heading up iOS development at a small startup. And it's a lot…

I had the same reaction. He would have kept his respect with me had he lobbed a few grenades in his resignation letter. However, kicking the devil in the nuts and then expecting something positive to happen was surprising.

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

#50

Post by sliverstorm » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 3:11 AM UTC

evoxed wrote: post #4

I know that there are lots of smart people at Microsoft and that they are perfectly capable of making effective products, but I think this effectively sums up all of my feelings towards today's Microsoft: > This company is becoming the McDonalds of computing. Cheap, mass products, available everywhere. No nutrients, no ideas, no culture. Windows 8 is a fine example. The new Metro interface displays nonstop, trivial u…

> Windows 8 is a fine example. The new Metro interface displays nonstop, trivial updates from Facebook, Twitter, news sites and stock tickers. Streams of raw noise distract users from the moment they login.

There is a concept called "Give them what they want". If Windows is successful because it gives customers what they want, it is nothing but folly to criticize their product based on your own personal value set.