Slashdot Mirror
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
The biggest difference between Google and Microsoft is that Google turns research ideas into products. Microsoft spends something like five billion dollars on research a year, and pretty much any conference has a few interesting papers by Microsoft Research, but five years later you still won't see any products based on them. Google have a good track record of turning employees '20% time' into products. I think the difference here is that Microsoft have a research arm, and a products arm, and are not good at passing ideas between the two, while Google have people doing product work 80% of the time and research 20% of the time, so there is no disconnect.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"Microsoft is an amazingly transparent company. Google is not. "
Ya, right.
I heard, that over at google, they have vat grown clones of Natalie Portman for use by all employee's. How is Microsoft ever going to counter that?
My guess is with an army of brain dead Steve Balmers...
... 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
Would the last person to leave Redmond for Mountain View please remember to turn off the lights.
Now, you say "oh, but patents 'only' last 20 years". Well, I've got news for you: US diplomats have been pushing for 40 year patent terms abroad (asia, mainly). Once a country goes for that, then the USA will have a policy-laundered excuse to "harmonize" up to 40 years. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The entire patent system should be abolished - if you want to reward "innovators" over and above the free market, find a way that doesn't deal a death of a thousand cuts to the freedom of hundreds of millions.
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!
I'm amazed to see discussions, not just here but elsewhere, based on blog posts which supposedly give "an insider's look" or "confessions from a former...." and are taken as the gospel truth.
Admittedly, I am cynical, but isn't it common sense to take these things as false until proven true?
Personally, I give this kind of thing as much credence as forwarded-forwarded-forwarded email.
I think another big issue is that Google is probably still at that stage where projects are new enough and the organization is new enough where you're actually permitted to accomplish significant things without a mountain of bureaucracy, a long series of pointless meetings, and approval from several large committees. You get the impression that, unlike other software companies, Google hires good people and lets them work instead of keeping them perpetually frustrated.
Eventually, Google's employees will be as over-managed as most other employees at most other software companies.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
#1 Tip for MS employees: tell people you work at Google.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I've tried to write code in a cubicle, and it sucks, big time. I can share an office, but two-up in a 10x20 is about my limit.
So, if I find myself competing with Google for a candidate, I can see the main lever to apply. Besides matching their salaries, I've got to provide a private office, and make sure that the work is as interesting as whatever they'd be doing at Google.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I blogged about my own experience at Googleplex in Mountain View. I concur that Google is very hush hush in general. My most surprising observation was that the security guards were rather laid-back while some engineers were very solemn and confrontational. This is not indicative of the overall feel of the place though - it's like a cruise ship party where people do work.
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?"
hmmm... a while back there was speculation that Microsoft had despaired of ever having its press releases taken seriously, and instead had started to release company PR disguised as "leaks" about which it would then pretend to get vary annoyed.
By doing so, instead of everyone going "ho-hum - more PR from Redmond" they'd take the leaked document very seriously. Then someone would pipe up with, "you know, if you think about it, Microsoft really don't sound too that bad in this", and everyone would take that seriously too. Because, you know, if it wasn't true, why would they be so angry?
So I suppose it's possible that Microsoft employees aren't the intended audience here...
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
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.
I work at Google. It really is a dream job. The main criticisms he had were:
1. People work too hard
2. There is little privacy
#2 is true and is unfortunate, although it matters less than you think because nobody expects you to be working all the time. #1 is just a load of crap. Some people work hard because they feel like it, but there is very little pressure to do so, and many people do not work hard at all. I average less than 8 hours a day and never work from home, and I have never been given crap about it.
...that there are so many replies along the lines of
"Dude you shouldn't have published this, why do you even work for microsoft."
and
"You should quit right away"
and
"this is horrible, man you ARE the reason microsoft is suffering!"
and
"What is wrong with you? Why would you publish this? This is internal only"
and
"I cannot believe you posted this. What is wrong with you? Makes me shudder to think what else your pathetic and bereft character would allow yourself to post"
and
"Idiot, idiot, you should quit. You should be ashamed. Hopefully HR will figure out who the hell you are and can your ***."
When I read the posting, my thought was that both Microsoft and Google sounded like interesting places to work, with different profiles of plusses and minuses.
When I read the responses, my thought was that Microsoft must be as full of paranoid conformists as the second circle of Hell. If these responses are typical of the environment, goodness knows what Microsoft does to people who post Dilbert cartoons on their office walls.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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.
Now they are not supposed to have a life. Techies didnt have a life in college. They need to get their kicks in sometime. Retirement is a nono as with all the soda few will live to see retirement
**Life is too short to be serious**
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.
People know about M$ because M$ has misbehaved not because M$ wants people to know things. M$ leaks like a sieve because their employees hate their company.
That's it. You're a dead man, honestly, watch your back.
I'm taking like a man all the discussions about "evil" and all the posts talking about "you're forgetting, they're convicted monopolists!!!" people repeat like damn parrots on these forums with the cool and non-chalante expression of a Marlboro man going for his 156-th smoke this afternoon.
But I'm not going to see four instances of "M$" in a single line of text and stand here taking it like a pussy.
I'm coming for ya! Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!
I'd go a step further than that. I'd guess a lot of good ideas at Microsoft are thrown by the wayside not because communication is bad, but because the ideas are "dangerous." The company's massive revenue comes mostly from Office and Windows; many things that are new, shiny and have the potential to change the world, also have the potential to change the OS and productivity markets. The Web's history at Microsoft is the core example of this way of thinking - if Microsoft can control something and prevent it from being too world-changing, it's all right. Hence Fake-Java, IE, ActiveX and so on. If it weren't for the company's paranoia of upsetting the cash cows, Microsoft would probably have changed the world a dozen times over. They might have better supported Java, built Web versions of Office, opened more APIs in Windows, spearheaded the OpenDocument format and adopted it in Word ... and I'm sure there are thousands of other "what-ifs" that the cash cows have killed.
Google doesn't seem to care what they tear down in order to build new technologies, aside from their ad revenue, but at the moment that's not in serious danger.
What makes the open plan office thing tolerable at Google is a very large number of modest-sized, well-equipped conference rooms.
Google does go overboard on on-site services designed to keep people at work. I'm surprised they didn't go all the way and build dorms. Some large Japanese companies do that. But the real feel of Google is "overfunded dot-com". Yes, they're profitable. But the profitable part, search, was built some time ago. Most of the technical people in Mountain View are working on Google's money-losing sidelines, like desktop apps. Those are the labor-intensive parts of the business.
Remember that Google is really an ad agency. That's how the money is made. Much of their newer hiring is sales reps for ads. The days when the ad sales just ran on autopilot are over; now Google has to push their ad products. In time, the ad agency people may take over. That will be an interesting culture change.
Google's campus used to be SGI's campus. Most Google buildings are former SGI buildings. So if you've been in the Valley for a while, there's always that reminder that a company can go from #1 to zero in just a few years.
Compare Intel in Santa Clara. Intel looks like Dilbertland. Intel is where cubicle culture began. Intel has built buildings from the ground up with single rooms covering about two acres, full of tiny cubicles. The cubicles are so small that only one chair will physically fit in them; they look like library study carrels. These aren't for call center employees; these are the people who design Intel CPUs.
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.
"I bet when MS is born, it looked like what Google looks like know."
In all fairness, when MS was born there was more gnashing of teeth, the boiling of the black blood of the earth, and child sacrifices.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Here's an idea for us older types with families...I think IT companies would have fewer retention problems if they balanced this "take care of everything" approach with some reasonable limits.
Here's an example: Most parents would love the idea of on-site daycare for their kids. It's the 2000s, and many women actually want to keep working after they have kids. Making the whole childcare thing easier would definitely keep good, more experienced workers in place and productive.
The problems come when this extra stuff is provided with the understanding that you will work tons of extra hours for it. The college campus atmosphere works for younger workers, but most older ones with families want a balance.
In your 20s, especially in the IT world, you don't have a whole lot of outside commitments. You can go to work, then go home to an empty apartment. This doesn't fly once you get married and you're expected to put time in outside of the office. This is another reason why Big 5 consulting is so attractive to the young. A job where you get to travel, drink in strange places, and make a lot of money is a really easy sell for a new grad.
I think companies (especially software/hardware/services houses) would be really surprised how much a few extra "grown up" perks add to productivity. If I have to make one less trip a day because something's provided, that's more time I can be contributing. One of these things would be an enclosed work space...cube life is annoying especially when you have loud neighbors.
I currently work at Google, and people aren't expected to work overtime, they choose to. Keep in mind the types of people Google hires - very intelligent overachievers. These are the types of people who want to keep working after they go home.
If you don't want to, like me, you can put in your 40 hours a week and be done with it. I work my 8 hours a day and that's that. Nobody asks or expects me to do more.
In fact, even the founders actively encourage people to have a better work-life balance. They've come out and specifically said that if we feel pressured to work overtime then something is wrong.
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.
I agree with what you're saying for the most part, but I, too, have worked in both types of environments. You've captured the downsides of the start-up type company pretty accurately. The downside of the other type of environment is a tendency toward under-achieving.
... i.e. big HMOs, university staffs ... any job where it's really difficult to get fired or laid off once you're in. These jobs attract people who have families, outside lives, want the healthcare and the work/life balance, precisely because they offer so much security.
... and the buck stops there. Your manager diddles the numbers a bit. Everybody's told they need to "work a little harder." And that's it.
You see it more in larger companies, and especially as companies get closer and closer to government
The problem is, once you have a preponderance of people with that mindset on staff, it becomes difficult to act like the smaller company. When your whole staff is seeking security in their employment, it makes sense that the organization naturally becomes more and more risk-averse. You stop taking chances. There's nobody to rock the boat.
When that really starts to suck is when upper management starts looking at the numbers and they say, "Hey, it's a different market, your department isn't pulling its weight anymore. We need change." In a company full of ambitious over-achievers who have learned to be just a little bit afraid for their jobs, this situation is an opportunity. It's time for new ideas to surface, for the underdog to make his bid for success. New projects get launched. People move offices, start reporting to different bosses. You try stuff.
In a staid, safe, secure work environment, however, this is how it happens: Upper management says "we need change," and the head of your department says, "Yes sir, will do, sir"
And maybe you were at the same meeting that the head of your department was, and maybe you heard that upper management guy saying "we need change," and now you're just sitting there. Twiddling your thumbs. Waiting for the axe to fall. And you go to your boss and you say, "Shouldn't we really be doing this or that?" But he's thinking about his kid's braces and his car payment and his wife's last biopsy, and he doesn't want to rock the boat. So he sends you back to your desk. To wait.
Bitter much? Nah, not me.
Breakfast served all day!
Not if he dies before you get to know him.
Not being dramatic, just pointing out the flaw in the argument.
Maybe he didn't mention "Do no evil" because when he got to Google he saw that it's an empty slogan used for bullshit PR.
...
Make your slogan, "Do no evil", and not only to you proclaim your own self-righteousness, but you imply that all of your competitors ARE evil. Wow, soo clever. Must've taken 50 of Google's 1000 PhDs to come up with that one.
Show me someone that constantly says, "I'm not a racist", and I'll show you a racist.
Show me someone that constantly says, "I'm not evil",
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000