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Microsoft or Google?
Undecided asks: "I will be graduating next April, and I have been fortunate enough to receive job offers from both Microsoft and Google. This has left me with a bit of a conundrum, however — I'm having real difficulty deciding which offer to accept. Putting aside compensation and other personal circumstances that will factor into my decision, what is the Slashdot community's take on this? Am I crazy not to go with Google? I am especially interested in the insight of others working in the computer science industry, in particular those who may have experienced what it's like to work at both companies."
A professor of mine (who went away and came back to visit) said that if you work at Microsoft you'll have a life outside of work. If you work at Google, then work will be your life. At Google you'll end up being at work all the time, but you'll enjoy it, and you get really good free food. But at Microsoft you can at least go hiking or something on the weekends. They're both pretty demanding though, I take it.
That's what I've heard as far as corporate culture goes. As far as business practices go and innovation, that's common knowledge.
And what... no Apple?
I have to ask, are you even from Seattle? I've lived here all my life and can honestly say it is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been in. No matter where I travel (and believe me - quite a few places...) I am always thankful to return home to the fresh air, mountain ranges on both sides, comfortable weather, abundant trees, etc.
We have actual seasons, as opposed to many cities that seem to only have two, with a range of decently hot weather, to not-too-cool winters. In regards to rain, we had a nice long stretch of 60 or so days (someone correct me if I'm wrong) just a little while back where there wasn't any rain at all. One thing I can say about the rain though, is that it makes the air amazingly fresh.
Not exactly a technical topic, but Seattle's constant rain is an overstated load of hooey.
------------------ D. A. Davenport: http://www.firebin.net
I still have friends at MS and they are putting in 60+ hours because their managers insist on it. One guy hates it, but the pay is good (he makes 160K there) and the other guys stays because of what he does (not wild about the hour, but likes the job).
At Google, from what I have heard, the members put in the hours because it is fun, not because it is demanded of them. Biiiig difference.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's got nothing to do with conjugation.
"Microsoft were" and "Google have" assume that company names are collective nouns. This is common in non US English. "The government are" vs "The government is", etc. Not everyone here speaks US English.
Microsoft's actually not one big monolithic Borg culture as Slashdot likes to jest. I have made many friends with Microsoft people over the years, and have one friend who works for Google. So, take what I'm about to say somewhat at face value; it's all second-hand information anyway.
Google might be a good place to work if you just really feel that their products and services are going to be part of the next big wave of technology. They are doing a lot of cool stuff with network computing which I think people failed to predict a few years ago, and they have a culture of "doing the cool stuff". However, they're a small company. Despite their significant resources, they are still as susceptible to the mood of the market as any other relatively small company. Sure, they can liquidate resources if they get in a pinch due to the whims of the marketplace, but to do so would invariably affect their deliverable services and drive more people away. That's a hard place to be and could lead to a devolution of Google within a very short timeframe. They've been lucky so far, and I have to admit I do like their products a lot. However, I don't pay for them. At least not directly.
Microsoft is a big company with deep pockets and wide reserves that can weather a storm in the economy much better than Google. Sure, again they can liquidate resources in a crunch but it would take an economic disaster far worse than the Dot Com crash to kill a company like Microsoft. We as the Open Source / Apple / Tech crowd might want to believe Microsoft will be beaten by , but that's not really going to happen any time soon.
Google has a monoculture. Sure, they're a small company doing some cool stuff but they're still quite focused on a particular market. When you work for Google, you work for the company. Microsoft surprisingly has many different cultures depending on where in Microsoft you work. Microsoft is not one company, not really. It's a gestalt entity that shares the umbrella name of "Microsoft", but each division is run differently by different people with different management styles and personalities. This makes sense because each division does something very different. Even different areas of the country provide different cultures; I find the Microsoft guys I work with and know in St. Louis are VERY different from the Microsoft friends of mine in New York, at least in terms of business. They work differently, they think differently.
Bear in mind also that a job at Microsoft doesn't tie you to Redmond. You can pretty much work anywhere in the world. Last I checked, Google is in SF and that's about it. Bear that in mind; at Microsoft you can transfer your job to any of the other communities where they perform that function. Especially Microsoft Consulting Services... you can pretty much pick your location after you've been at MS for 6 months to a year and really proven yourself.
On the down side, I do know that Google tends to be an easy-going work environment, though with a veiled sense of pressure. Employees are subtly pressured to work far beyond 40 hours a week and thus it's not a good career in my opinion for someone with a family or someone intending to start a family. However, it *is* a fun place to work with lots of dynamic individuals who work hard but also play hard. Microsoft... well it depends where you work. There are fewer chances for advancement within Microsoft because people do tend to stay there. That also to my mind speaks to how good Microsoft actually are to work for; people tend to start there and stay there. However, the chances to "make it big with MS Stock" are over and have been for years. There may still be room for Google millionaires for real rock-star employees... MS... less so. However, the lack of advancement in my opinion is more than made up for by the flexibility of work location I mentioned previously.
I have to say that those friends of mine who work for Microsoft really enjoy their work. Many of them are as much of a geek as I am... running Linux and Vista on thei
As I've noted in my other posts, I work for MS and I'd have to disagree somewhat. It all depends on the groups you end up in. I definately know of people here that work on tiny, insignificant roles in the company. Most often, they seem to be in the "big divisions" (Windows and Office). But I know of many people (including those in my group), that work on a wide variety of "different and interesting" projects, that have a key impact on customers. Maybe not on MS overall, but if I had to choose between making MS happy, and making millions of customers happy, it's certainly the latter that I'm choosing.
The way MS works is that there are a ton of these little product units that almost act like a company within themselves. So you get a lot of the benefits of working in a small company (high visibility among your peers) along with the benefits of a large company (stability, etc). Granted, there are a lot of disadvantages as well (red-tape, paperwork, etc.).
It's probably moot for the author, since I would imagine it's the same setup at Google as well. It appears they have many little teams as well, all working on their own bit of Google-goodness. So my advice: check out which groups gave you an offer, and decide what you would rather work on. Personally, I only chose to work at MS because I got to work in the games industry. I definately would not have come here just to work on Office or Windows, despite them being the huge drivers of the company.
-- jchenx
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...
.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).
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
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