Slashdot Mirror

OK, so I'm basically your age (finished a year ago from college). It would be a no-brainer to me to choose Google over Microsoft given the choice. I used to be a Student Ambassador to Microsoft and I became the dispenser of Microsoft gifts and paraphernalia at my college. It was good for my resume and helped me get a job, but the way I was treated (or not treated) by Microsoft totally turned me off to working there or even trying to apply for that matter. They outsourced all interaction between students and MSFT in the Student Ambassador program to a temp agency with considerable churn and lack of structure. And they never encouraged us to apply to Microsoft either or treated us like we were really all that important, but rather exhorted us not to sell our giveaway software on eBay. Instead we had to promote some Imagine Cup contest they ran which got more and more complex/convoluted (maybe run by the people who helped design Vista). And now, they dumped our Tech School entirely because apparently they'd rather hire from gen-ed and/or we're too small for them to care anyway. We also had an alumni from the school who was working at Microsoft give us a presentation for the senior class, and we got a real sense that he works very long hours and it's really not all that interesting, even if technically challenging. Yeah, working on the new Age of Empires or XBOX game is probably interesting within MS, but little else is...

I have a pretty good friend working at Google, and I queried her about how it was there. She wrote up a little piece on her blog on the differences between Google and Microsoft and why she chose Google. She loves it there working on Google Talk, and the 80/20 rule is strictly enforced. She has also experienced that it is not a grueling work schedule, but in fact a joy to do your work there and the 20% is a nice thing to look forward to in a given week as well.

I'm now at a financial company in NYC doing .NET programming which is cool. Furthermore, I'm completely sacrilegious/traitorous from Microsoft's point of view as I've recently bought (and sold recently) AAPL stock, purchased a Macbook laptop, and have registered and plan to attend a Java SIG at Google campus in NYC. I've stopped attending the Microsoft .NET events because I'm sick of the "Rah-Rah" mentality and low level of techie goodness at the .NET user group events in NYC. Oh, and I recommend to people to short MSFT right about now...as I believe they are going the way of the dodo bird in the next 10-15 yrs (or perhaps much sooner).

Blogging (and networking sites) both appear to fads, and I have still found very few blogs I read regular. There's one great blog of a friend but she rarely posts and when she does, it's useful and interesting. Then, there's the Google blog, but basically it's a place to announce new products, so it's a bit misnamed. So, sorry Scoble, I like your C9 with videos (esp. interviews with geniuses like Alan Cooper of About Face 2.0 fame), but your blog sucks like the rest of them. Do I care about your RSS feed collection, or your lunch events, or winetasting with a new MS employee? No, and I know more about you from your video interviews (and actually learn something at the same time) than from your prolific blogging. Now, I already feel like I just wasted 2 minutes reading that stuff.

Amazon, Google, and Apple, please DON'T start blogging. You can be secretive for a reason (because you have technically smart and creative people) and they have jobs to do, not loads of time to blog. Maybe spend your free time teaching the next generation of CS students (like my friend, "Google Gayle" link). Would you use 10% of your "20% time" (so to speak) blogging - what a waste of your genius minds...

OK, back to writing software and bugfixing - I'll leave the prolific /. activity to others who have more time to share it. :)

Blogging (and networking sites) both appear to fads, and I have still found very few blogs I read regular. There's one great blog of a friend but she rarely posts and when she does, it's useful and interesting. Then, there's the Google blog, but basically it's a place to announce new products, so it's a bit misnamed. So, sorry Scoble, I like your C9 with videos (esp. interviews with geniuses like Alan Cooper of About Face 2.0 fame), but your blog sucks like the rest of them. Do I care about your RSS feed collection, or your lunch events, or winetasting with a new MS employee? No, and I know more about you from your video interviews (and actually learn something at the same time) than from your prolific blogging. Now, I already feel like I just wasted 2 minutes reading that stuff.

Amazon, Google, and Apple, please DON'T start blogging. You can be secretive for a reason (because you have technically smart and creative people) and they have jobs to do, not loads of time to blog. Maybe spend your free time teaching the next generation of CS students (like my friend, "Google Gayle" link). Would you use 10% of your "20% time" (so to speak) blogging - what a waste of your genius minds...

OK, back to writing software and bugfixing - I'll leave the prolific /. activity to others who have more time to share it. :)

You sure about that? Parts of Asia (China, I believe) have 50% women. 20 years ago, when law school was dominated by men, could you have said "men are more interested in law - look at the percentages in law school!" Why do you make the same argument about computer science? http://www.glaak.com/Default.aspx?b=1dfdb56c-f693- 481f-9b64-59487b18e198Here's a blog from a woman in computer science who talks about her experiences.

Microsoft holds the yearly Imagine Cup, which has had thousands of participants who program all kinds of .NET projects. Each year, a set of Student Ambassadors to Microsoft are involved in promoting this competition and getting HS/college students interested in real-world programming projects which they continue to own and could potentially sell after demonstrating them to MS and INETA members. I was one such SA, and was priveleged to know others who were knowledgeable and motivated, but it was a constant battle because the Imagine Cup was poorly timed (because we all know MS is never late) both years I promoted it and didn't jive well with college Senior Design projects. Of all the SAs (in past years anyway), I know of very few who had offers and accepted them at MS, while others like my friend Gayle were more prominant in that they left MS for Google (Seattle Times) and had good reasons for it. I'm also definitely not working for Microsoft, and I can safely say we all saw MS to be massive and unwieldy with the coveted VS.NET devs hidden behind scores of contractors and PR people and PowerPoint Slides.

If you are talking about the person who does the http://www.glaak.com/interviews site, then it is actually three summers (+ Apple).

I'm a Student Ambassador to Microsoft (basically promoting .NET on campus). I have a fellow SA to Microsoft who has recently accepted a job offer to work at Google. Interestingly enough, she's had three internships at Microsoft (C++, MFC, and COM) and one internship at Apple (iChat AV) - if you don't believe me, let me refer you to her resume. I'm sure Google could use her Windows knowledge in future endeavors...

I sense an all-out war developing between Microsoft and Google. Right now, I'd rather not work full-time for either, because I think one of the two could very well crash and burn after the dust settles. At this point, I'm rooting for both...or neither.

Now if Google and Apple joined forces, it could get quite interesting indeed. They both on some flavor of *NIX at their core, right?