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."
Tell both companies the other has noted in an interest in you working there and ask the question that most job interviewees hate; but not "Why should you work for us?" but "Why should I work for you?" It's the question they will be least expecting and the answer may be somewhat telling.
And google is perfect?
.NET Framework 3, Office 2007's new and very innovative UI, Vista's new techs (all kinds of), etc.
They have a great advertizement program funding their search engine (along with the IPO money). Which search engine isn't as good as it used to be IMO. Too much results are from ebay/amazon/and linkfarms lately...
Other than those 2 things they've had for pretty much forever, what have they done that's overly impressive? gmail is OK... Google maps is pretty good. Video is so-so. But that's about it. Most of their other stuff was bought outright (like youtube, writely, etc). Some of it plain sucks (like their poor excuse for a spread), and besides their search (and perhaps gmail), the number of users is rather low... They just don't have many big successes.
In comparison, MS is no worse. Look at all the new exciting tech in the
Also, they're a younger company, give 'em a few years and they'll be very much alike to MS and older companies.
This will be modded down into oblivion for going against the slashdot groupthink (M$ bashing), but still, consider it!