Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding • Hacker News Board

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#61

Post by plinkplonk » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 7:08 AM UTC

DaveMebs wrote: post #56

plinkplonk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's not really a status symbol." A status symbol is, by definition, something only or mostly upper echelons of a hierarchy can get, with fig leaf justifications about why the folks on the lower rungs are "not worthy" of them. The surest way to make anything (a private office, a parking space, a laptop) a status symbol is to mandate that only people above a certain level in the hierarchy can get one.(Note that I am…

Everything done at MSFT is based upon dev-test-pm triads where all members of the team have equal say in the product and decisions. This is true from the individual contributor level up to the VP level (where it starts to break down). Dev's report to dev leads, test to test leads, and PMs to PM leads. All PMs, including individual contributors, get laptops. They are the same level as developers, and more importantly,…

"I'm a PM at MSFT, and you know what I want? A second desktop and better monitors."

If you want them to do your job and you are not getting them, that just illustrates the point better. Economizing on hardware (and paper towels, heh!) is really dumb for a software/tech company.

"I should also point out that most senior devs do have laptops in my experience. It's the really new, junior guys that don't get them right away."

So, in other words a laptop is a status symbol. Junior devs rank lower in the hierarchy though they use the same tools and work on the same codebases as senior devs.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#62

Post by egor83 » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 7:12 AM UTC

dikbrouwer wrote: post #13

I'm a bit confused by this post. The author seems to celebrate a private office. I strongly prefer open work spaces that you share with others, as do many companies I've worked with/seen. Care to share your opinion? I'm curious...

A poll about preferred work environments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270424

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#63

Post by InclinedPlane » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 7:14 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #57

boyter wrote: post #9

Reading this almost makes me want to cry. It's still all to common these days to find developers with 4 year old machines, comprised of scavanged parts (from people leaving) running Windows XP. A level of bureaucracy forcing you to maintain 3 tickets (at least) in 3 different systems to make even a typo fix in a production system with 3 day minimum turn around time. Servers with less RAM and resources then your 4 yea…

And for me, it hilighted some of what I've suspected for a while is wrong with Windows development. I own a small company that handles a lot of end-users' various issues. Although I spend most of my time now coding, I spent more than my fair share of time working one-on-one with individuals and companies that were having problems with their systems. I still spend around 10 hours a week doing it. My primary developmen…

I don't think that's actually the problem. Windows (and many other MS groups) have quite excellent performance and integration testing. They generally do a good job of keeping performance under control. I think the biggest problem is how they approach performance as a test signoff criteria, usually, rather than as a budgeted line-item with goals for improvement.

As to situations like what you describe with file sharing in a certain environment that mostly comes down to insufficient beta testing and straight up prioritization/de-prioritization of certain issues.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#64

Post by whakojacko » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 7:15 AM UTC

0xEA wrote: post #51

4 PMs to 5 devs seems like overkill. why do this?

Not sure why, but from what I hear from friends at MSFT, an approximately equal number of devs, qas, and pms is very standard.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#65

Post by prodigal_erik » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 7:19 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #48

absconditus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience open spaces are preferred by those who are less competent and want to bother me all day with questions.

You never ask people questions when coding?

My favorite argument comes from http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html : "Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds)."

If a question isn't an emergency, I queue it up by sending email. If it is, I ask in person, fully realizing I'm fucking up their day and hoping that doing so really is in the best interest of the company. I also only check my email a couple of times per day and wear heavy closed headphones for coding, because those elusive moments of flow are about half of what I live for.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#66

Post by whakojacko » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 7:20 AM UTC

theoj wrote: post #21

dikbrouwer wrote: post #13

I'm a bit confused by this post. The author seems to celebrate a private office. I strongly prefer open work spaces that you share with others, as do many companies I've worked with/seen. Care to share your opinion? I'm curious...

The idea is that developers should have a quiet, distraction-free space to do their coding. With open spaces and cubicles you hear other people's conversations and you cannot reach the deep focused attention that you need to produce good, bug-free code.

A decent semi-open setup has you not seeing much other than your monitor, and not hearing anything because you have good (company paid for) headphones on. And like others have said, If I can always WFH when I feel it is necessary.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#67

Post by lovskogen » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 7:21 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #33

plinkplonk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Laptops are officially only for managers and Program managers." Heh! That's what I thought :-p Not surprised to hear MS works that way :-). Funny way to economise, making laptops status symbols. I think Google gives devs nice laptops and is probably better off for it.

The number of hours of work-from-home that Google gets out of those laptops more than justifies their cost. Hell, I'm posting this from my work laptop, taking a break from writing out a whole bunch of use cases and product design decisions.

What do you do over at Google?

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#68

Post by msg » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 7:23 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #43

pacifi30 wrote: post #23

The thing here is not about if Microsoft let their developers use all the new shiny technology but the point to stress here is how much percentage everyday does a developer at MS actually codes, I bet it wont be more than 20%. I am so sure of this because being at Amazon since April last year, I havent coded more then 700 lines of code, bulk of which was supporting new features in the already behemoth software. I alw…

That bad at Amazon? I've been at Google for a little over 2 years and have written about 160,000 lines of code for them. (And deleted about 30,000.) Seems like a lot more than I expected, but just looking through my recent commit history, I wrote 830 lines of code just last week on my 20% project alone , so 1600 lines/week doesn't seem that unreasonable. And here I've been complaining about how I never have time to g…

I just had my two year anniversary at Amazon. I've written many more than 700 lines but I bet less than 160K. And yes, deleting code is the best.

I don't know the GP but their post is believable. Some parts of Amazon are mired in cross-team dependencies. Worse, to get anything done in those situations, hacks have been piled on top of hacks for tragic years. The right solution may be waiting in the wings but all the dominoes have to fall first.

There is a lot of variety at Amazon. There are high-pressure, high-reward teams like Kindle. There is cutting edge stuff at AWS and elsewhere.

My team is a leaf far out on the dependency tree. Approximately, we have only end users. It's a great situation, even with a pager (shared between five people, so one week or less a month). Our pager, on the average, does not go off. We get to ship software every week and we're profitable.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#69

Post by InclinedPlane » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 7:24 AM UTC

pedalpete wrote: post #2

I've never read a post by Richard before, I don't want to seem like I'm giving him a hard time, and I'm a happy Windows user, so I'm a big fan of his work. But this article isn't inspiring from a developer perspective. I've worked in a big IT department (300 people I think),as well as start-ups, so I'm not completely blind to the structures of different work environments. When Richard first mentioned that everybody h…

Microsoft treats developers very well. From offices, to hardware, to free gym memberships and health care coverage, to the idea that you're generally not expected to work more than 40 hours a week, it's all great. But that can't and doesn't replace the need for healthy corporate culture and good, intelligent, pragmatic leadership, a lot of which has increasingly been lacking at MS. You'll have a quad core desktop with 8 gigs of RAM, but that hardly helps you play the game of office politics that is often required to get bonuses or promotions (when the company bothers to provide them). It also doesn't help a corporate culture that is becoming increasingly bureaucratic and process oriented rather than results oriented.

A lot of talent is and has been evaporating up and out of Microsoft for just these reasons.

Re: Working at Microsoft – Day to Day Coding

#70

Post by egor83 » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 7:24 AM UTC

bmk2000 wrote: post #35

pacifi30 wrote: post #23

The thing here is not about if Microsoft let their developers use all the new shiny technology but the point to stress here is how much percentage everyday does a developer at MS actually codes, I bet it wont be more than 20%. I am so sure of this because being at Amazon since April last year, I havent coded more then 700 lines of code, bulk of which was supporting new features in the already behemoth software. I alw…

That sucks for you. I've been working at Microsoft for about 4 years. First 2 years as a tester, and the latter 2 years as a dev (still a dev). When I was a tester, I coded 4 days a week with 1 day a week for other investigations (live site issues, meetings, etc.) As a dev, the ratio haven't changed. I still code at least 4 days a week (80% of the time) with 1 day a week for meetings, investigations, documentations,…

When I was a tester, I coded 4 days a week

I'm sorry, but what's the difference between a tester and a developer then?