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Competing to Work for Microsoft
theodp writes "Addressing 5,000 developers in Bangalore, Bill Gates announced the Code4Bill contest, a nationwide talent hunt which will begin in January and last eight months. Twenty finalists will receive internships with Microsoft India before one Superhero is selected to join Mr. Gates's own team."
I'm pouring a 40 of Japanese bubble tea on the curb for timecop.
then tell Bill "No Thanks"
Enjoy Every Sandwich
Superhero-The Developer's Song
Hey, Microsoft just sponsored a puzzle-solving competition here at CMU. And they're (or at least Bill is) sponsoring a large portion of a new CS building for our school. I guess that their contributions in the US just aren't that visible.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
I am a software engineer in Bangalore, and honestly I find this "contest" a bit condescending. I mean, why should I jump through hoops to work at Microsft? If I wanted to work at a large company, I can apply to Oracle, Sun, IBM, Yahoo or Google (all of whom have development centres in Bangalore).
The only situation where I can imagine myself competing against 5000 developers for a single job would be if I was fanatical about the organisation (e.g., Google), and I certainly don't feel that way about MS.
BEcause not everyone wants to go into business. I'd personally rather go back to flipping burgers- the hours are better, the pay is at least regular, and the stress is lower. Starting a buisness is a low probability gamble with long lasting and extremely negative side effects on your life and health. No thanks.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Most coders aren't good businessmen: they don't like the nuances of business and are likely too introverted to be any good. However, working at a big company that decides you are one of the best programmers in [demography] probably means you can earn piles of cash doing what you love. Some coders might just do it for the fame, and to put on their resume.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Give me that guy's code, and I'll find at least a dozen things in it that are pretty much fireable offenses in any reasonably disciplined dev org. During my time at Microsoft (5+ years), I've known no less than 50 Indian SDEs (MSFT jargon for software developer). Only two of them could write what I'd call "good code". One of these two was a freakin' genius, but I digress. I don't know if it's cultural or not, but it seems that Indians are predisposed to writing horribly convoluted, unmaintainable cut&paste garbage (sorry, I can't call _this_ "code"). For most of them, if it works _somehow_ means it's good enough. If it were up to me, half of these folks (not just Indian, of course) would be gone and the rest would be scared of checking in atrocities they check in right now for others to rewrite later.
And the thing is, the culture at MSFT is such that you can't just email into dev team alias and say "this is crap, and this needs to be rewritten". You'd "hurt people's feelings", which will affect your yearly review, pushing it towards (or below) 3.5 grade, for which you get bonus and stock grant that may or may not cover the cost of living. So folks just shut up and suffer.
Actually, I think Vista will be pretty interesting to watch. It is now mandatory in many (if not all) teams at MSFT to outsource at least something across all disciplines. They outsource mostly Test, but since you have to outsource Dev and PM, too, some of Dev and PM work gets done in IDC (India Development Center). Generally, whatever comes from there ends up being rewritten by non-Indian devs in Redmond, on their own time, because you aren't going to tell your (most likely Indian) manager that the code that came from IDC fucking sucks. As pressure goes up in the ship cycle, folks in Redmond have less and less time to rewrite IDC garbage, so it gets checked in (and shipped) as-is. So I fully expect Vista to be a fuckup of gigantic proportions, until at least SP1.
The sad part is, people will buy it anyway.
BTW, this is not a racist or anti-outsourcing rant. Test folks in China did (and no doubt still do) a stellar job. I'm just puzzled that Indians fuck up so badly time after time. If you guys are reading this, you've got to realize that sooner or later it will become clear to the higher ups that company money is better spent in China, despite pretty shitty English that Chinese folks speak.
Nobody here thinks we have some "god-given right to technology jobs". However, we don't like companies that ship jobs out (especially our well paid jobs) to some other country just so they can save a few bucks.
You are right about the ex-soviet states. If they bothered to learn english, you guys would be fucked. If the Chinese learned english, everyone would be fucked because they'd have programmers working for $1 a day.
I have met plenty of Indians who are pompous and quite pleased with themselves. Don't think we have some kind of patent on that. It's something you will find in people all over world.
Finally, fuck the "large portion of humanity". I, JUST LIKE U, only care about MY FUCKING PORTION. Don't play self righteous with me. Every one is in it for themselves. To say otherwise is to either be incredibly naive, deluded, stupid, or a fucking liar. Take your pick which you are. The only difference between anyone is how many people they are willing to fuck over to get what they want.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
And, if you admire Bill Gates, you have a serious lack of ethics.
Though I will not include Bill Gates in the list of 'truly evil', some of the role models Indians consider are people of totally dubious background.
About 10-12 years back there was stock market crash in India engineered by loopholes-in-the-system+backdoor-deals by a rogue trader - Harshad Mehta.
I have seen many reports/articles/interviews where he was admired for his money making skills and quotes like 'I want to be like Harshad Mehta' with all the sincerity. For the last two/three decades there are very few socio-cultural icons in the subcontinent...the people who can be role models.
Tat Tvam Asi
I'm a coder. I've got my own comany. I'm not a great business man :). If you settle for a one-man company you don't need a whole lot of know-how about economics, not much venture capital and so on.. and still you can easilly get about twice the pay of a normal programming job, get to decide workhours / vacations yourself and such. The only good thing to have are some connections at other companies (friends that work there for example) that might need programming help to get you started. Once you'va made a few projects, you'll be drowning in work from them.
However, starting up a larger company with more emplyees, that's another thing.. :)