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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?"
Sounds like pretty much everywhere I've worked which at one time seemed a dream job. Eventually things change. Workers set in their ways and expectations grumble the loudest. Truth may be, it still may be a dream place to work, it's just that many people don't like change, where others thrive on it (hint: Change is often an opportunity for promotion or to shift into another position you prefer.
Like my experiences, I fully expect some people will anonymously gripe, but still stay put because the change of finding a new job, fitting into a new workplace, doing work in new and different ways is often a bigger challenge then standing pat.
As for Ballmer, he's going to have to go through the kinds of things IBM has done many times over the past few decades. Competition is out there (notably Linux) and Microsoft really is stagnating. Windows Vista may well be their Edsel.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We can only hope.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
As the saying on leadership goes: "A fish rots from the head down." If the report about the chair is true, then I would suspect that this is where it begins.
(Again, we don't know if the story is true...)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/
"We're not Developers, Developers, Developers! for you anymore!"
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
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_3Oddly he didn't jump around screaming "Developers, developers, developers!!!" this time around.
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
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.
... Which they can totally do, as evidenced by the tremendous amount of innovation seen in Office 12, for example ...
The best thing Microsoft could do is make a statement that they will stop issuing statements, and let their work/products speak for themselves
This is no surprise. Microsoft has gotten so big that they have become a jack of all trades but no longer a master at anything. When you try to do everything you expand so large that its hard to control the growth of the company and management policies. Microsofts sole power was in being able to compensate people well but people are leaving not because of money but because they do not like the job. This could be a big problem for Microsoft and we will watch Google and other companies slowly eat up some of the top devs from MS.
All companies have internal employee gripes about working there with very few exceptions. Those exceptions tend to be companies that are flush with cash and are able to treat their employees as they should be treated. But when it comes to "brass tacks", the niceties are the first thing to go. Now, I should also say that I can't stand Microsoft or Windows, I think they're both shite. But, Windows isn't going to suddenly disappear and niether is Microsoft. Witness the auto industry. There are companies out there that make shitty autos but you don't see them dying out. You also don't see consumers russhing out to buy a new car every time the auto industry says to do so. The same thing applies to Windows. As much as Microsoft might wish that people will flock to Vista (whatever flavor) the real truth, and they know this, is that there are people who are STILL going to be running Windows 95 out there if it still works for them. So, none of this article warrants gloating about the demise of Microsoft. It ain't gonna happen. If it were, then Chevy should have disappeared decades ago.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
With some of its key breakthrough features gone, Vista's improvements include better handling of peripheral devices, such as printers and scanners, and cutting in half the time it takes to start up. Those are needed improvements, and there's no doubt that hundreds of millions of copies will be sold as people upgrade to new PCs. But the changes are hardly the stuff of cutting-edge software engineering.
Indeed. Microsoft is going to have to rely heavily on its marketing dept. in order for Vista to sell. I mean, seriously, what does it really have to offer that is a big improvemnt on XP, or even 2000 for that matter. Sure, the fanboys will all buy it becasue it is the "new and exciting MS Operating System" and joe sixpack will get it with his new computer, but what businesess will be able to justify the cost of a meaningless upgrade.
If MS is really going to be pushing better printer and scanner compatibilty, a new GUI, and faster startup times as the big features in Vista, they might as well just let all of their top programmers go to google and start hiring all of the top marketing people in the world to replace them.
I'm a MSFT stockholder. All you layabouts, get off your duffs and get back to work. Whaddya want, more free Cokes? Give me a break.
You want to be smurfy, get good enough to work for the research arm and then we'll talk. Otherwise be thankful you aren't stuck in a cubicle at Symantec or somewhere lame.
Youse don't know how good youse got it.
Well, I guess that's better than internal unrest from someone elses employees
To put this in perspective MS has 61,000 employees. If MS has 200 disgruntled employees then that's 0.003% of their staff. At a former company we had 150 employees and it's safe to say that 10% of them were disgruntled, if not more. If you want to find a disgruntled employees, look not at Microsoft but at the DMV, Delta and Northwest airlines. /devils advocate
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.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Chairs will continue to fly until morale improves.
...to change a lightbulb?
Seven.
One Project Manager...to write up the requirements.
One MBU Intern...to report on how Apple engineers did it in Tiger.
One Marketing Droid...to call CNet and tell Ina Fried that it'll be changed in an innovative and exciting new way in Windows Vista.
One Software Engineer...to begin work on it and then take a job at Google implementing Lightbulb Beta.
One CEO...to throw his chair around his office when he finds out.
One PR Flack...to explain to Bob Enderle how "although the lightbulb won't be changed in Windows Vista, it will be released in 2007 as a separate, more refined technology."
And Paul Thurrot, who will receive a private demostration of the lightbulb, devote one week on SuperSite explaining that Apple's lightbulb in Tiger is dimmer, Google's Lightbulb Beta is "limited," and MS's solution, while late, is indeed superior and "Highly recommended."
Unbreakable office furniture!
It's just like Apple when Jobs was ousted and Scully took over. The pinheads don't know how to inspire/lead/challenge the techies.
Same thing with HP when it was no longer a place for engineers, run by engineers.
You can probably find the same pattern repeating at lots of high tech companies.
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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 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.
.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.
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
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.
You really can't afford to be that naive as a "soon-to-graduate senior" if you want a job of any kind. You're at the absolute bottem of the totem pole. You should be grateful and say, "thank you" to ANY company that will offer you any kind of job, especially Microsoft. As is, it sounds like you're going to be delivering pizzas with your newly minted degree.
Wow. No reason to be hatefull.
You do know that 98% of the cpus in use on the planet don't run Windows. Yes, the gas pumps, the VCR/DVD players, the television sets etc. all use microprocessors that don't run windows. The 8051, 68000, Dragon, Z-Logic, PIC are all systems that still require talented programmers.
For you to shred this guy is just un-called for.
As an experienced IT person, I gotta say that if you were a smart soon-to-graduate senior, you wouldn't be writing off a job at the largest, most well-respected, most stable company in the entire industry (and possibly the country).
As a experienced IT person I would hope your using the right tool for the right job. Windows doesn't fit in every situation (I'm not saying OSX/Linux/etc. does either). As far as Microsoft being well respected, you should admit that this is your own opinion and not that of the IT/Consumer industry as a whole.
No flame war intended.
It's just the normal noises in here.
Either Ballmer, Allchin, and Gates give up control of the company, or Microsoft will be irrelevant (if not bankrupt) by 2012-2015.
Something I've said many times before, and will maintain, is that Microsoft have never had a concrete, long term operating system strategy after Windows NT 4. That is evident from the fact that 2000 and XP were both merely incremental upgrades to NT 4 for the most part.
Vista is going to be comprised of leftovers...Things which Microsoft would have incorporated years ago if it hadn't been for them having to make ship dates. It is also going to be Microsoft's last release that the majority of the computer-using public care about.
Microsoft need to do what Apple have done; move to a BSD core, and thus allow each group to play to its' own strengths. The BSD people are very good at making a core, underlying operating system. Microsoft on the other hand have proven that they're good at UI and glitz. If the two were to be combined, we'd have a system unlike anything we've yet seen...the best of both worlds. This is where the GNU crowd need to see that the BSD license is useful in the grand scheme of things...because it gives companies who want a closed-source product a competently-constructed base.
However, I know that realistically, Microsoft are not going to do this. Gates, Ballmer, and Allchin are going to stay in control, and the company is going to become irrelevant, because they won't let go of their usual, failed way of doing things.
Disney used to consistently be on the list of top 100 companies to work for. The corporate atmosphere changed, not the people. If you mean "change" being a switch from focusing on the needs and interests of their employees and customers to "shareholder value", then yes, you're quite right. People don't like that kind of change, except for the shareholders of course.
Same thing happened at EDS, which used to be a really great company to work for. The focus shifted from quality service to executing contracts as cheaply as possible. Morale tanked, service went to hell, contracts impoded, downward spiral began.
Dell is currently experiencing the beginning of its slide. One of the first signs is a shift away from quality customer service. That's how it begins.
The only thing surprising about the MSFT internal distress is how long it took for people outside the company to find out.
If you want to test my theory, then watch SAIC. Currently an employee owned company, but they're about to go public. My bet is their IPO will lead to a period of rapid growth, eventually shifting to a focus on making money for the stakeholders. Service will suffer, the employees that have been there the longest (and hence make the most) will get forced out so they can be replaced with lower cost replacements. Turn over will increase, service will suffer, contracts will be lost. SAIC will turn into EDS.
I think it's funny how bean counters see the old guys as a liability to be replaced. Forgetting that the reason they have been with the company so long and make the most money is that the customer likes them and they get the job done.
When bean counters get ahold of your business, the same thing is going to happen as when Republicans get ahold of your country.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Well, yeah, a guy who admitted that he would be working as an insurance saleman if it were not for M$ is not the best man to be running a tech company. Then again, M$ is not much of a tech company as it is a sales and marketing company.
You can see how nuts Balmer is from the article himself. The complaints are that people are not being rewarded by a company that's got poor organization and infighting that interferes with getting things done. His response is ludicrous:
Employees' complaints are rooted in a number of factors. They resent cuts in compensation and benefits as profits soar. They're disappointed with the stock price, which has barely budged for three years, rendering many of their stock options out of the money. They're frustrated with what they see as swelling bureaucracy, including the many procedures and meetings Chief Executive Steven A. Ballmer has put in place to motivate them. And they're feeling trapped in an organization whose past successes seem to stifle current creativity.
Worse is what he has to say about those problems:
"We have as excited and engaged a team of folks at Microsoft as I can possibly imagine," says Ballmer. "[Employees] love their work. ...[cites Xbox and MSN as successes and might as well have farted] says Ballmer. "We won the desktop. We won the server. We will win the Web. We will move fast, we will get there. We will win the Web."
Won the server? He's losing the desktop and what does that have to do with NOT PAYING PEOPLE WHEN YOU ARE BURSTING WITH MONEY or STUPID FUCKING INTERNAL SALES MEETINGS WHEN YOU SHOULD BE PUTTING OUT PRODUCT? Steve, baby, being second rate was good enough for Windoze 3.1 and 95. For all the money your company has you should have something on the desktop 6 times better than KDE, Gnome and all that have, but you don't. You've got a piece of shit that has not fundamentally changed in ten years. That and the bad attitude of thinking he can cram that second rate junk down people's throats is pure lunacy.
It is so over for that company and that's good. At last the closed source nighmare of the 80s can die. The greed heads and control freaks can go back to insurance sales and the business can revert to key banging and hacking among equals.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The exodus of good employees from MS and their inability to attract top talent can be easily explained. Microsoft's stock price has been flat for the last five years.
People didn't flock to Microsoft from 1990 -2000 because it was such a wonderful place to work. They went there to get rich on stock options. Working for MS now is no different than working for GM or Dupont. The massive growth phase ended five years ago and will never return.
The reason people are leaving for Google can be explained by this
graph.
"organizational model"
einhverfr, there is a simpler explanation of the same thing, in my opinion. Microsoft was never relationship oriented. Mentally, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are still the socially disfunctional teenagers they were when they started.
Microsoft has never been a trust-based company. Anyone who tries to manage without examining the quality of relationships must manage by constantly testing the limits of what he or she can push other people to do. "Testing the Limits" management makes employees feel disrespected, because they ARE being disrespected. Before, programming was so exciting that employees were willing to be abused. Now that is beginning to change.
Microsoft has always sold mediocre products. The company has always been organized around taking advantage of technical ignorance, and around examining just how little people will accept. Think how miserable it is to work at a company that never does a good job!
Microsoft Basic was the first major product. It was poorly implemented and poorly documented. For example, there was no way to write a strictly binary file! An ASCII Hex 07 character would ring the bell rather than be written to a file.
Microsoft Assembler was provided with manuals printed from a dot matrix original. The assembler was unreliable. It would sometimes just not produce the correct instructions. The world had to wait for Borland Turbo Assembler to get a reasonably good assembler.
In an hour of testing the first version of Windows NT, which I had bought, I found 3 pages of serious bugs. My money was totally wasted.
The first version of Microsoft Access had huge bugs.
Microsoft Word in Office 2000 sometimes destroys its own files. (Tip: Open the Microsoft Word file in Open Office and save it as a
ChkDsk.exe (Check Disk) supplied with Windows XP Professional has a log file parameter. ("/L:size NTFS only: Changes the log file size to the specified number of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays current size.") However, according to Microsoft technical support, Chkdsk does not actually produce a log.
Many other Windows XP command line interface programs don't actually work completely with Windows XP. The CLI is very incomplete and toy-like.
Microsoft software has had incredible numbers of very severe security vulnerabilities and Microsoft has been very slow to fix them. The vulnerabilities have cost customers hundreds of billions of dollars. If Microsoft had to pay for the destructiveness of all the vulnerabilities, Bill Gates would be the poorest person in the world, instead of the richest. Microsoft is like the cigarette companies. If the cigarette companies had to pay the total cost of cigarettes, including medical bills, cigarettes would not be profitable. If Microsoft had to pay for the damages caused by its mediocre software, Microsoft would not be a profitable company.
Apparently in an effort to create copy protection, Microsoft designed Windows XP to save configuration data from most programs in one huge file called the Registry. If that file somehow becomes corrupt, it can be impossible to repair for a reasonable amount of money.
Microsoft is managed around taking advantage of technical situations rather than managed around trying to develop good products. Microsoft is, in that way, more an abuse company than a software company.