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Microsoft Research Fights Critics
coondoggie writes to tell us Network World is taking a look at why Microsoft Research has to fight so hard against critics. From the article: "When the word 'innovation' is tossed about many may look down their nose at the company sitting on top of the high-tech industry — Microsoft. [...] Microsoft Research incubates not only futuristic ideas but young minds, having hired 700 interns worldwide this year including 250 computer science PhD candidates in Redmond alone, which is roughly 21% of all the computer science PhD candidates in the United States."
If Microsoft were less predatory and less a bully in business maybe the rest of the world would stop looking down their noses at Microsoft's "research". As it is, it looks less like research and more like unfettered spending to find "yet another" way to dominate.
I welcome research from any company. I'm guessing I've probably used what amounts to "innovation" from Microsoft, derivative of work from their labs.
Unfortunately for Microsoft (but true to their character) they have tools for mouthpieces like Ballmer. Microsoft inks a deal in what could only be viewed with raised eyebrows, and Ballmer punctuates that with "they're infringing our IP anyway...". As long as Microsoft continues to be so hostile to the world in general, they get what they sow.
Their research may be golden, but it's ill-gotten gains, the world thinks so, and the world is probably right. The fact that Microsoft has such a corner on every market that they can hire 25% of the Computer Science PhD candidates only adds fuel to the fires of suspicion.
In the interim, it's a shame Bell Labs has gone from world leader to nothing... budget cuts, etc. (Lucent)... there was some real research there, and lots of it was shared with the world.
Large companies shouldn't hire these professions just to "push the envelope." Instead, I would hope that all companies diversified as their employee numbers grow. I work in a large IT company and have witnessed the above professions working effectively--especially in the R&D department.
- Psychologists
- Sociologists
- Anthropologists
- Medical Doctors
I'm actually shocked that list wasn't longer and more astonishing. No music theory majors to look at musical products like Guitar Hero's success? No athletic trainers to combat my country's obesity or offer and IT solution for it? No history majors toOne of the areas of studies the gets some of the most criticism from me. But you know what? When it comes to performing experiments on how people think and react to stimuli, psychologists are pretty damn good at it since all their data has been collected empirically from subjects. And who uses the code and devices we make in the end? Humans. And who better to tell you what the effects will be after a human has used your product for hours on end? You know, I've often wondered how many psychologists Blizzard employs because I can play that game for long periods of time with little or no fatigue on my eyes/brain.
As software becomes more and more decentralized and internet based, communities form around it. Communities identify themselves by it. For instance, I am part of the Slashdot community by merely posting on it. Think about how many sociologists that MySpace must employ to predict/track or protect people from social deviance. How do you handle that? How do you address that? Not really an engineer's department.
Now that's a word I hear thrown around a lot and abused to mean many things. But most importantly, it's the study of diverse kinds of people. If you're an international company, you need anthropologists to view your projects and make sure that you aren't inadvertently calling your product or displaying something that may limit your market or create bad press. Engineers focus on one type of person when they make their product and so you need people to make sure that it is still marketable to the world.
Most likely hired for the sheer fact that baby boomers are getting old. Huge market for healthcare. If you can make anything related to it and sell it, you're in the money for the coming years. I may be a horrible monster for saying this but things like Alzheimer's Disease are multi-billion dollar industries based on treatments. Gene therapy and computational techniques in gene sequencing just make the field all that more lucrative.
On top of that, you need to think of the disabled using your product and be conscious of their disabilities. Also, what medical problems might be associated with your product or how can you make it easier on the end user. You don't want a million lawsuits if I'm losing my eye sight or getting arthritis by playing WoW, do you?
Come on people, this is the R&D of the largest software company in the world. I'm shocked that I'm not more shocked on what they're up to.
My work here is dung.
Is the stuff that's going on at MS really all that interesting that 21% of PHD students want to work there? Or is the pay just that good? Or are they just looking for a nice shiny star on their resume? It seems to me that there would be a lot more interesting places to work than MS.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
That's because, unlike the old Bell Labs nor Google, Microsoft doesn't really capitalize from its research. Look at the research with Singularity, for example. As a future computer science researcher (I'm just a sophomore in college now), I would love to get my hands on a system like this. Finally something new that isn't based off of nearly 40 years of Unix. The goals are quite noble and innovative, and I'm glad that Microsoft is doing systems research, something that seems to have been neglected in computer science for some time (Rob Pike talked about that in his "System Research is Irrelevant" talk back in 2000). However, Vista makes use of absolutely none of this technology, and Microsoft doesn't seem to want to incorporate any of this research in Windows at all.
MS can be so much better if they actually applied their research to Windows, its flagship product. But since Microsoft has already accomplished its goal, have 90% worldwide marketshare on operating systems, I guess it can get away with incremental improvements every half decade or so. It's not that Microsoft doesn't innovate, look at the research. That's innovation. It's that Microsoft doesn't want to capitalize its innovations and is content on sticking with its Windows (and Office) monopoly.
If M$ research has a to fight an up-hill battle, it's because Microaoft has lied in so many ways in the past. Especially when it comes to innovation. From DOS to Internet Explorer, Microsoft has had a habit of:
1. Buying the second or third ranked player in a market segment.
2. Rebranding it.
3. Throwing their advertising dollars behind it.
4. Calling it "Innovation."
Worse is when they steal other's ideas and call it "Innovation." How many time have they been sued?
I hope they are on the path to reform, but it will take a significant pattern of honest behavour before I believe what they say.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
I'm a Ph.D. student in one of the big universities. I also work as an IT consultant while I'm trying to finish. I have interned in several large companies and now work in a startup. I have also talked to _many_ Ph.D. students about interning at MS and would like to convey those findings here.
First, nobody finishes a Ph.D then wants to work at MS in order to find an interesting career. New grads or interns go there to make some money, and hope to move on soon. The respect for MS from IT-aware people is obvious from technically-minded forums such as Slashdot. What I find curious is that many people try to sell Slashdot as 'anti Microsoft' and that it has a an anti-MS bias. From my experience, the only bias is that the people whom bother to post on Slashdot know something about IT and the computer industry in general. Sadly, MS is a marketing company, much like Symantec has become. Software is not the focus, and proper software which is acceptable to a computer-aware user base is surely not the goal of MS. Only MS could advertise they have ~21% of the Ph.D. students while the entire IT field knows the students don't want to be there. From my view, their claim is intended to be impressive to the less-informed public, not for the IT crowd.
In short, computer-aware people know MS is marketing only and do not respect it for its software. However, to have 'dealt' with MS looks good on the resume because it shows you can deal with B.S., much like having a Ph.D. shows. We all know that many more people could earn doctorate degrees if they wanted them, but don't bother and just go have a career with a bachelor's level degree. The extra degree says you can do what needs to be done and work against the odds to make what you envision happen. I view interning at MS much the same way-- proof that those students can beat the odds and work in a less-than-perfect environment (note this is a good skill to have in higher-level employment positions and is why Ph.D.-level people are paid more).
I have never worked at MS and would not necessarily be proud to have MS on my resume. But it does say something, that you dealt with MS and will most likely appreciate working somewhere else next.
Well ... I wouldn't count it out yet. Singularity is only 3-ish years old. In fact, from what I understand they only recently reached the stage of having an interactive command line. IANA Computer Scientist, but I'm sure it's got a long way to go before even its base concepts are suitable for mainstream use. Hell, there's not even any clue as to whether development of Singularity into a mainstream OS would even be feasible.
Not to mention there would be an absolutely massive paradigm shift involved in moving from Win32/64 to a platform like Singularity...
Who doesn't like free music?
What's amazing about MS is how little they accomplish given their resources.
Windows is still bone primitive when it comes to basic housekeeping: your network administrator disconnects a drive that you 'share', you attempt to import a file into an Office ap and the system grinds to a halt - does windows intercept this? advise you? nay nay nay! You have to go to Google to even find out why it's happening. What about ID7s disregard of CSS conventions? We still have all those cryptic error messages. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Why doesn't Paint do anything reasonably useful after all these years - you can't even constrain a rectangle into a bleedin' square
What are they working on up there?
Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people!