Microsoft Employees Critical Of Their Employer

bonch writes "BusinessWeek is running an article on internal unrest at Microsoft from their own employees. 'Once the dream workplace of tech's highest achievers, it is suffering key defections to Google and elsewhere... Much of the sharpest criticism comes from within. Dozens of current and former employees are criticizing -- in BusinessWeek interviews, court testimony, and personal blogs -- the way the company operates internally.' In related news, Steve Ballmer has pledged to make changes inside Microsoft to avoid the embarrassingly long development cycle of Vista, including a 'revamping of the engineering and the processes.' Is it too late?"

Comments

Avoiding the question(s)

[aktzin]

Also on BusinessWeek there's an interview with Ballmer where he dodges every question he's asked (and re-asked) regarding morale issues at Microsoft, competition, release delays with Longhorn/Vista, etc.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_39 /b3952008.htm

Oddly he didn't jump around screaming "Developers, developers, developers!!!" this time around.

Fewer BizDev losers would go a long way

[Numair]

I have dealt with people at Microsoft in the past, and found that their problem is not with their engineers or with the guys in the trenches, but with the business development guys. Seriously, how many of them does it take to screw a lightbulb? It's pathetic ... So much schmoozing and nonsense, no focus on real results - everyone is always trying to get that one big deal, not focusing on the incremental stuff that is vital to actual innovation taking place.

The best thing Microsoft could do is make a statement that they will stop issuing statements, and let their work/products speak for themselves ... Which they can totally do, as evidenced by the tremendous amount of innovation seen in Office 12, for example ...

Same thing happening here at Pixar

[bombadier_beetle]

The culture just isn't what it used to be, and besides that, people are getting burned out, considering the kind of hours we've kept for the last howevermany years. Not to mention that management has made some bad decisions lately that have hurt the company, and there's a murmur of concern going around that Cars is going to be Pixar's first ho-hum movie.

Re:Sign of a Maturing Company

[Vicissidude]

Sounds like pretty much everywhere I've worked which at one time seemed a dream job.

Microsoft is different, if only in scale. These employees work on products that bring in a billion per month for their employer. Yet, these same employees only make market wages. It was only a few years ago, these employees were all but guaranteed from their options to become millionaires. Now, Microsoft is trying to up their profits on paper, so they're squeezing employees for that money. Nevermind that Microsoft is still making around a billion a month. And nevermind that Microsoft's lack of profit growth is directly attributable to those managers who are making a million a year in salary.

Former Microsoftie Here-- no dream job

[einhverfr]

I worked at Microsoft for a few years. I never found it to be a dream workplace. Many of the largest complaints I had (that of feeling like I was the victim of interdepartment turf wars) turned out to be extremely widespread.

The basic problem is that despite a huge amount of effort on the part of senior management pushing a message of "help beyond your department," departments still have to justify budgets, and are very unwilling to cite cross-department contributions in this process. So you get a message of "go do this: it is important to the company" and then when you are done you get "I wish you hadn't taken the time out of studying for more MCP exams to make these admittedly great contributions."

The problem was so bad in my department that the General Manager went to great lengths to make himself available on the floor and break down any image of him as being inaccessible. And yet he was entirely unsuccessful in this endevour.

When I left, it became clear that my entire department was not long to remain in the US. About 2 months ago, they finally committed to lay off those in my department.

I never found Microsoft to be a dream place to work. Politics of the worst sort (yeah, politics are everywhere), and in particular failure to recognize outstanding performance lead many blue badges in my department to feel very unhappy with their jobs. In short, we never felt valued.

By nearly any account, I was a steller contributor. I was asked to provide leadership roles in various ways, from conducting training for my coworkers to acting as a technical lead in the response to the Blaster worm. Yet again, even though these roles were done at the request of management, I never felt that my contributions in these special projects was appreciated in any way, shape, or form. May have just been my department though.

Re:Signs of a clueless Company

[gnutechguy]

I was a Microserf in Support... that's right; not all Microserfs are developers.

Here are some problems with Microsoft:

1. Training - There's a phone; now go do that support stuff

2. Customer satisfaction surveys - Customers got mad when you had to tell them "Windows doesn't work that way". You had to get a 8 or 9 out of 9 on everyr survey or your manager would get mad. Unsupported product? Third-party issue? User error? Tough!

3. Managers - I had 5 managers in one year. One manager skipped free training because it interfered with "Survivor" on TV. Only manager had atechnical clue; the rest might as well have managed a pizza parlor

4. Co-workers - they regularly backstabbed contractors. Why? Because they could

5. No internal processes - Support engineers have to just make everythingm up. There are NO processes for escalation

I am glad to be gone from that madhouse

I used to temp for Microsoft.

[elister]

I tested hardware for Win98se, WinMe, Win2k & WinXP. And main annoyance I had with my job was that it was far too boring. I would often email in sick Monday, Tuesday, & sometimes Wednesday. When I came in, I was able to easily catch up and log all my test scores by Friday afternoon. The job was just too slack, and it showed with management who would take our entire team out to Hooters resturant, come back 2 or 3 hours later drunk off their asses. The boss would invite me to go with them, but I really dont like getting drunk in the early afternoon. We had mini-fridges in the lab and occasionally people would start drinking at noon.

While some may think this is great, it really creates horrible work ethics should you move on to a new job. Lots of young people thinking that this was normal, and when they moved onto a new job outside the company they might assume that its ok to eat, drink, sleep, & shower at work. This is basically what happened to me, I moved on and ended up getting fired from two jobs, for doing things that were considered very tame at Microsoft (swearing in a casual way, using email for non-business related purposes like talking a friend down the hall). I came really close to getting fired on my current job for creating a batch file to copy .ini files which got Lotus Notes to work (call after call to internal support didnt work). My boss accused me of hacking the operating system, and I got dinged pretty bad on my evaluation. So while I did have some fun at MS, it set a bad example of conduct for future jobs.

Policy and proceedure are radically different at Microsoft compared to companies like Starbucks, or Blue Cross.

The irony for me was that MS was going to hire alot of entry level testing positions (they lost the perma-temp lawsuit). I didnt think I was qualified, but my boss pressed me to apply. I never got the job because im not very good at answering Brain Teaser type questions, if only the interviewers had asked me questions relating to my job, maybe I would have been hired. But most of the people in my lab, the ones who didnt really care about getting hired on full time, got hired full time. Including the potheads and alcoholics.

I had one guy who couldnt take the stress of working at MS get hired on full time, and he would duck into the parking lot to smoke pot for 2 hours when he told everyone he was over at the developers office testing. This one guy was responsible for testing Digital Video devices, and he was just too fucking stupid for words. The developer however was the smartest, nicest guy I ever met there.