Working at Microsoft, the Inside Scoop

bariswheel writes "Responding to the public interest, a long-time Apple and UNIX user/programmer, and a JPL/Caltech veteran, writes an insightful, articulate essay on the good, the bad, and the in-between experiences of working at Microsoft; concentrating on focus, unreality, company leadership, managers, source code, benefits and compensation, free soft drinks, work/life balance, Microsoft's not evil, and influence."

Comments

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[yagu]

Aside from the obvious puff-piece nature of this article, it's a bit of a Trojan Horse. Under the auspices of a broad view of what life at Microsoft is like, the author gets to air out the PR spin that Microsoft's Not Evil in seven contrite paragraphs (the average number of paragraphs for each segment is closer to four).

Also, assign credibility inversely proportional to the distance from the source. This guy works there, okay so the only way to describe "work at Microsoft" is to be there, but come on, are we going to get objective information?

For the record, I once worked at Microsoft, and agree with his observations that the people there are like people elsewhere, and they're bright, and they're hard-working, etc. But, to equate individual ethical behavior somehow with a collective corporate ethos doesn't add up, the calculus is flawed. In my opinion, Microsoft as a corporation exhibits behavior that could be considered evil, certainly some/much of its behavior has been found in a court of law to be illegal.

As for the some of the author's observations:

At Microsoft, I've had access to the source code for Halo 1 & 2, Internet Explorer, MDAC, MSXML, the .NET Frameworks and CLR, SQL Server, SQLXML, Virtual PC, Visual Studio, Windows, the Xbox and Xbox Live, and probably several other projects that I've forgotten about. Does it get better than this?

Yes.

Given that Microsoft's been convicted of monopolistic practices, it may shock you when I say that Microsoft's upper management strikes me as very ethical. They talk about ethical behavior all the time...

Thou doth protest too much.

On the one hand, I'm making more money now than at any other point in my life, and I have all I need so perhaps I should be satisfied and leave it at that. Overall, I think Microsoft's compensation and benefits package are still above average for the industry, and well above average for the typical American worker.

On the other hand, I and my coworkers have watched many benefits erode or disappear during the past five years. It's public knowledge that raises and annual bonuses have diminished, option grants have been replaced with stock awards, employee stock purchase plan benefits have decreased, and cafeteria and company store prices have increased. For new employees, vacation time has been cut from three weeks to two, and new parents have to take their parental leave within 6 months instead of 12. It's not a positive trend.

Microsoft's ill-gotten gains were long the easy way to sustain the talent pipe-line. Market forces are catching up, and Microsoft is starting to have to compete on more equal footing with other companies to get talent in the door (no more, "you're guaranteed to be a millionaire in fiver years" promises). And, it's a little annoying to hear the Microsoft have-nots whine about this -- join the rest of the world folks.

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[archen]

Microsoft's ill-gotten gains were long the easy way to sustain the talent pipe-line.

I wonder if it really has to do with sustaining the pipeline, as much being mired in corperate BS. Why is this company that makes money hand over fist with some of the best programming talent you can find putting out products that are hardly better than the last version?

I've given this some thought and I'm starting to think that Microsoft has spread their uber-talent too far across the board. Now before you say "what else are they supposed to do?" consider 8-10 years ago during Win95/98. The company was throwing out significant upgrades left and right with REAL improvments - about the opposite we see today. At the time however MS had a real focus on some core products that could in some respects tie together.

Nowdays Microsft is in everything from the Xbox to who knows how many software company aquisitions and trying to tie them together in a meaningful manor. It seems like in trying to use the MS engine (OS) to drag up new producs, they bit off more than they can chew and the engine (company) is being held back. MS can't sustain itself because the one hand literally cannot see the other. The company is too big, and lacks focus.

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[IamTheRealMike]

I could have also sworn that at the time IE came out, the only other browsers were horrid and stagnant.

Let's see. Internet Explorer was introduced at a time that Netscape, for better or worse, was adding features at a relentless speed. Why do you think they threw so much money at it?

IIRC Netscape 2 added Java, frames, plugins, several new elements and one or two other things I forget. Netscape 3 added JavaScript, a HUGE change which is basically what makes web apps possible in the first place. They also added cookies (or was that v2) and SSL at some point, which made online shopping possible. Netscape 4 added DHTML and lots more CSS support. Netscape Navigator evolved so fast that the term "internet time" was coined to describe it. Then IE came out and cut the funding for competing browsers to a big fat zero. That is when things started to stagnate.

To claim that IE somehow re-energised the market is a gross misunderstanding ... and even if IE was better back then (and by v6 I'd say it was better) this doesn't change the fact that it wasn't built to be competitive. It was built to destroy the competition and then halt the progress of the web. That's just bad, no two ways about it.