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Internal Microsoft Email about Life at Google
An anonymous reader wrote in to give us "An interesting perspective on Google, from an internal email sent around Microsoft. Basically an interview that provides analysis about how Google compares to Microsoft from an employee perspective. Included are suggestions for what Microsoft might copy in order to stay competitive in the job market and criticisms of Google's "college kid" atmosphere."
"These kids don't have a life yet so they spend all of their time at work."
:)
"People are generally in the building between 10am and about 6pm every day, but nearly everyone is on e-mail 24/7 and most people spend most of their evenings working from home."
Wow - I dunno about the rest of the world, but for our company that's the norm and we're all in our 30s/40s working for a marketing company
"Microsoft is an amazingly transparent company. Google is not. "
Ya, right.
... that google abhors private offices and loves open-space plans, was the moment any temptation to go work for them evaporated for me. Now if only there was a company like MS (work-environment wise) that worked in the unix-linux-lamp-python-etc space...
-- the cake is a lie
Sounds more like this to me. We do seem to be moving in that direction. Microsoft even has its own currency.
Somehow, the author interprets the great perks like free T-shirts, meals, health care, and facilities as Google playing your parent and running your life. That's a hell of a spin job on what I'd consider a dream environment.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You must be new here.
...), and allowing a lot of worse behavior (e.g. beating women is okay if it's a cultural habit, see the quran, it has a chapter on women, read it) or plain racism (can't blame people for directly quoting holy books now can we ? "the lowest animals on this earth are non-muslims" - quran 8:55 "kill them in any manner possible" - 9:5). Liberalism is about moral relativism ("yes but republicans kill people too, so it's just normal") and denial of responsability ("just because I say you can't arrest terrorists does not mean I support them killing ..." - yes it does ... obviously).
Slashdot seems to have a rather large number of people, shall we say, slightly left of stalin. Needless to say, they'll do just about anything to "change reality". Never forget that evil is defined, and enforced by their groupthink (if you have any doubts as to what groupthink will do to a society, look at the red khmer, or nazi germany, or any muslim nation), or you will face the consequences. Just watch this post.
Needless to say the microsoft scaremongering and daemonizing, while occasionally "somewhat" justified, generally is just mindless me-too infantile behavior. Same with topics about the american government (okay, they're not perfect, but they try, which is more than can be said for most regimes people here seem to support, such as Iran or Venezuela), and just watch what they say about Bush or global warming.
You see politics is not about reality. For example the reality is very simple : the UN is run by oppressive regimes, and is nowhere near the "freedom-promoting" organization it claims to be. Just check it's stances and membership with an open mind, and you'll see. There is no way that e.g. khatami will every promote liberty, since the first thing a free Iran would do is kill him. Many, many regimes are run like that one, or worse.
Next "liberalism" is about a lot of things, but not about letting people do what they want. In fact, it's about outlawing a LOT of behavior (smoking, drinking,
Given that many people here openly support these types of ideas, are you really surprised to find hating idiots here ?
Google is about making a better, quicker, more effective product or filling a need that wasn't filled before. Microsoft's policy has typically been "How do we control the market?" "How do we make this product necessary to the industry?" etc... Not building a better/quicker product but making a product in demand. Kind of like requiring vista to run certain games(while my railroad tycoon 3 causes vista to coredump on my laptop, I'm not touching it on my desktop, which means no shadowrun... damnit).
You can argue it any way you like, Microsoft is a little more agressive in the industry and Google believes if you build a great product people will come(and with their name they believe everything they do is a great product whether it is or isn't because they get people just because of their name). Microsoft has given up on better/quicker and gone for "How to make this necessary?"
The memo is wrong about private office space. Microsofties are used to it because they all have private offices (with doors and all), which is far better than cubes, but his dismissal of shared working spaces comes with no backup arguments (other than a link to a JoelOnSoftware article that talks about them expanding space--how is that a backup argument?)
I used to work in a team room environment, where all the developers sat together in one room (there were 10-15 of us or so), working on the same product. I loved working in that environment. You could talk to anyone just like that right away. Not having to walk for a minute or half a minute makes quite a difference, believe it or not. Since the barrier for asking someone for help or ideas is so low (lean over and speak), it's much easier to quickly bounce off ideas without having to interrupt your own flow. Also, you overhear others' problems and ideas, and pitch in with your own. Countless times I've heard someone lamenting some problem and was able to chip in with "oh I just solved the same issue."
Yes, you must have headphones in the team room, because sometimes you just need to concentrate and headphones are essential to drown out the noise.
Unfortunately, I am back to working in a cube and I miss the team room days.
Just wait another 5 years and Google will be the new evil empire, they are almost already there with all of the privacy concerns.
I spent time working up my resume to get noticed at Google or Microsoft to get a job. I really wanted to work in a field that was 'techie' and that I was working for a company I believed in.
Then I got a job at a video game company. It was a smaller firm, but a lot of fun to work at. People were all young (I'm only 26), they had free food and lots of perks. You could go to work in shorts and a tshirt.
But then I started to see the down sides of it all. I worked long hours, and often worked from home. My health insurance wasn't anything special. Being on email till the wee hours of the night was an annoyance.
And then I found another job, and left.
Now I work for a place I have no real feeling of accomplishment, nor is it a place I yearned to work for. But I get in at 10am, I am out the door at the latest by 6pm. I don't work from home. I don't get on email after I leave work. Emergencies come up and then I take care of them, but I am able to separate my work life from my personal life with great distinction. My co-workers are in their 30s and 40s and 50s, all of them have families and leave on time to make sure that they are home to pick up their kids, play with them, and be at their soccer games. They encourage me to leave work and go out on a date, watch a movie, read a book, and do something constructive. They know that working isn't the point of life, but merely a part of it.
And now at the age of 26, I finally have a job that I yearned for, but didn't know I wanted.
Do yourselves a favor -- find a job that will let you live your life reasonably. You will be better at your job because you appreciate it, not because you are dying for it.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I strictly work 7.75 hours per day mon-fri; no blackberry, no work at home, no email checking at home. Heck no work contact at home at all. This is EXACTLY how I want it - my family is much more important to me.
I work for the last tech generation's great and most favorite company. A big three letter place. It's a tomb. It's a company that sees its future as merely saving and cost cutting its way to prosperity as it develops nothing and creates nothing. And the only new things to come out of it anymore is via acquisition.
MS is probably just like that. A husk on cruise control that's driven by costs, bureaucracy and slack. A place where nothing new happens because the executives are paranoid rich blockheads.
Some MS insider should check to see what the average tenure with the company is now. I'm sure its dropping. If it's a really low number like mine is then that's a red flag for a company that just wants to operate on the lowest cost basis, probably out of the country and where innovation and quality are already dead.
Notice that the M$ guy never mentioned "do no evil" as a factor.
The fact that this was a non-factor in the discussion perhaps indicates that this MS->Google->MS employee really is working where he belongs.
(Yes, I know that Google hasn't perfectly observed its "do no evil" rule, but it still seems a heck of a lot better than M$ in this regard.)
As long as it doesn't intrude on my life, I'm all for that. However, if you work 24/7 and our mutual boss wants to know why I'm not accomplishing 20 tasks a day, that gets annoying and your work habit is affecting me. If our mutual boss decides to make you the "norm" and expects everyone to follow suit, then you've created an environment for burnout and your work habit is affecting me. If you get in the habit of working 24/7 and you catch a cold and come in to work anyway, and I catch your cold, your work habit is affecting me. You infect me with a cold and I'm staying home, dammit. You infect other, saner, people and they'll stay home too.
Allowing someone to behave detrimentally in a work environment sets a dangerous precedent because nobody works in a bubble; it changes the work culture to one that benefits the organization unequally over the individual, it creates health risks, and combined, potentially skews a society's economy. That's why I care if *you* work yourself to the bone. You're not only my colleague but you're a barometer of the world around me.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Do you really think you will find privacy in Mr. Gates' empire? You could work in a vault, but every file on your computer, every email, phone call, and web site you visit will be monitored. Why do you have to make me sound like a broken record? *exasperated sigh* Proof, please? You might even get fired for making a blog post at home that Mr. Gates did not like. As usual you're misrepresenting that situation. Work at any big company. They will fire you for taking photographs of private company matters. It's called 'corporate espionage' and it's not in any sense of the word 'protected' by any law. It doesn't matter what he was doing, whether he was taking photos of computers, trousers or whatever. He fucked up big time and you won't find a single company of Microsofts size that will tolerate that behaviour from their staff.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
And btw, your kids are NO better off for it. All you've done is deprive them of time with you in order to give them some extra stuff.
Please, I URGE you to "worry about" your kids. Your time with them is MUCH more important than material gains.
You're not giving them the best you can give, you're giving your EMPLOYER the best you can give, at the expense of your kids.
Wake up and check your priorities.
BTW, I have a wife and four kids, so I do know what I'm talking about.
Good job with that strawman. Boy does he look like an idiot. I mean, that guy thinks you shouldn't be able to arrest terrorists! What an asshole. He thinks killing is ok because republicans do it! And he wants to outlaw drinking, smoking and legalize wife beating. Mr. Coward. If you think that is what liberals think no wonder you don't like them. They sound like idiots! No I don't doubt that you can dig up morons on the internet that actually think these things. But I can tell you that the vast majority of self-described liberals are universally opposed to domestic violence and prohibition. A great number of them smoke. Most of them drink. None of them think you shouldn't be able to arrest terrorists. Almost of all them are opposed to religious extremism and fundamentalism. (do I need to find some choice passages from another popular holy book?) And nobody, I MEAN NOBODY, supports the Iranian government. Holy crap, do you really think liberals think that? Because they don't, ok?
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Any respectable geek should run from the TechStop idea:
Yeah, it's cool that there's someone there to answer dumb-user questions, but I would hope that my company would hire programmers that realize that the that network cable goes into the NIC. Besides that, the person working the counter is likely a step up from a BestBuy salesman, able to see a problem, but not good enough to get a job as a dedicated sysadmin.
The available supply of equipment is a nice idea, except that there's inevitably someone (like myself) that would snap up the new and neat stuff that came in and drop off my crusty old gear. The end result there would be a stock of old crap that some manager can't justify replacing.
I would think that the best idea from that section of TFA is "a more flexible model for employees to define their OWN equipment needs". I'd rather accomplish that with a corporate card that let me order my own stuff using my own limits (as designated by my position or manager). And if the under-an-hour feature is of real value, let me use my account at the local computer store without approvals.
Yes, it was a neat idea, but not for a company that touts its staff of geeks.
So, Microsoft is trying every single (quite pathetic I have to say) thing to avoid employee leaking to competitors or better places, including having developers in their own private office?
With team members probably not communicating with anything else than e-mail, no wonder why they can't make a single product without crashing all the others.
Not if he dies before you get to know him.
Not being dramatic, just pointing out the flaw in the argument.