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Microsoft's Treatment of Google Defectors
Miguel de Icaza (Note, this Miguel is not the Ximian developer, just someone whose small life is fulfilled by trolling under someone else's name) writes "Here is a story revealing just how threatened Microsoft is by Google. While senior partners can expect the full chair experience, some lowly staffers who are putting in their notice are being escorted off campus immediately. Why? Because they've put in their notice to join Google. In Microsoft's eyes, Google is Enemy No. 1. Anyone leaving Redmond for the search leader is a threat. Not because they'll scurry around collecting company secrets — as if Google's interested in Microsoft's '90s-era technologies. Departing employees, however, might tell other 'Softies how much better Google is. If an employee is leaving for Amazon.com or another second-tier employer which doesn't make Microsoft so paranoid, they'll probably serve out the traditional two weeks of unproductive wrapping up. So if you're planning on leaving Microsoft for Google, pack up your belongings and say goodbye to friends ahead of time. There'll be no cake and two weeks of paid slacking for you."
If you're leaving these days it's not uncommon to get escorted to the door... and it's not uncommon to be a perp walk, which sucks. It undermines the fabric of trust in the workforce generally and damages individual psyche specifically. Microsoft isn't unique in this regard, though the article does seem to indicate it is Google-specific.
If it is Google-specific it underscores Microsoft's pettiness, and maybe a little stupidity. They should enforce a consistent policy. Unless an employee has shown himself to be a bad seed, treat him (or her) with respect.
I experienced the perp walk (layoff) after 21 years with qwest. It has garnered nothing but ill will since. The net balance of this kind of treatment is surely negative. You can handle this kind of policy with dignity. Most don't.
While I doubt too many Google employees are leaving for the crumbling Monarchy that is Microsoft, I wouldn't be surprised if Google has similar policies and procedures.
I have never worked for Microsoft and to be honest, I'd probably never want to. I think the key problem for Microsoft is that nothing they do is exciting anymore.
I think Vista has really damaged Microsoft. Not in terms of revenue, since a sale of Windows XP is still a sale for Microsoft. No, the damage is in morale. Vista was an absolute disaster for morale. They worked for a couple of years only to ditch it and start again from the Windows 2003 Server source-code. Nothing they put in to Vista was in anyway something you can get developers energised about. Every feature had nightmarish committees which destroyed any hope of motivation. They even developed anti-features like SecurePath that nobody cares about.
I read somewhere that Microsoft developers write something like 1,000 lines of code a year. Last-year, I contributed around forty times that to our source control at work. When you're paid so much to do so little - that has to destroy morale too. Most developers I know like to work.
Vista is a symptom of a much deeper problem. Microsoft doesn't know how to be sexy. it doesn't now how to to be secure and it doesn't know how to please it's users. Worst of all, it doesn't know how to make it's huge base of developers happy!
All of this makes Google a very attractive place. If all your talent walks right of your door, it isn't too long until there is no way whatsoever to fix any of the problems I've just mentioned.
Put more succinctly, Microsoft sucks and Google rocks.
Simon.
Actually, getting escorted out the door gets you two weeks of paid slacking at home! I would consider it an insult if I weren't important enough to be shown the door in a paranoid fury.
"There'll be no cake and two weeks of paid slacking for you."
The cake is a lie
The cake is a lie
The cake is a lie
The cake is a lie
I miss the companion cube
There is no cake!
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
The cake is a lie!
At our business (office machine dealer), ANYONE that resigns, even though they give a two week notice, is asked to leave at the end of the business day. Their email account is yanked, all passwords changed. It's SOP for just about any business. With the ease of taking business customer information with you, I don't blame MS, or any company for doing this. I don't think it is sour grapes, but a good business practice.
Just to clarify, the submitter is not the real Miguel de Icaza. The real one uses the Slashdot ID miguel.
Two weeks of paid slacking? Gee, sounds like Microsoft is really missing out there.
If someone has turned in their resignation why would you want to keep them around for two more weeks anyway? Their work should already be documented and "two weeks of paid slacking" doesn't sound like valuable work to me.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
While that is the right thing to do, why on earth would you tell your current employer where you are going next?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Giving only one side of the issue. It could be that Microsoft has some institutional anti-Google hate, but it sounds a little bit black top hat and twirling mustache to me. I have to ask why they are leaving MS for Google in the first place. It seems to me that it's very likely they were already unhappy with their job there, so they may very well have been seen as disruptive and escorted out because of it. I know this is getting off the MS is the most evil corporation ever bandwagon, but I just don't see a huge multinational corporation having institutionalized hatred of a competitor so strongly that they can't bear to have people talk about switching teams. How does it benefit Microsoft?
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Why is this a problem? Its just MS playing it safe, if I told my employer that I was leaving for our biggest competitor I think I wouldnt be allowed to sit around for the next two weeks out of concern that I could be gathering information. While 80% probably wouldnt there would surely be some who would. I can think of a half a dozen times off the top of my head when non-MS engineers I knew were "shown the door" when they informed their employer they were leaving for a competitor.
And since when is Amazon a second tier company? I've been there and know people that work there, it seems like a great place and from what I hear the compensation is very competitive with MS, Google, and whatever other company you think is a trendy "first tier company".
Sorry, but even if I were to be escorted off the premises after giving notice it wouldn't prevent me from talking to coworkers. I've kept in touch with coworkers from a number of previous jobs. In todays high-tech marketplace it's very common. I get from, and send to former coworkers e-mails about new job opportunities. I have IM and e-mail accounts for a number of people going back 4 jobs or more. Then there are sites like LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc. that let you keep track of former employees.
If I worked at MS, gave notice that I was going to Google, and was immediately escorted out, I'd be much more inclined to e-mail my former co-workers and let them know what happened. I'd also willingly give them details about working at Google if they asked.
In Soviet Russia, Microsoft acts on rumors about you!
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
That happens in the airline industry all the time. BS article, like nobody knows about google perks.
I've been twiddling with computers for a long time now. For me, Microsoft has always been like Churchill's definition of democracy -- it's the worst operation system (for the general public) except for all the others that have been tried. Yeah, macheads could argue that the OS* flavors are great but so many people would never even bother taking a look due to the premium price paid for the hardware. And Linux on the desktop? That was as far off as fusion power plants. Nothing Microsoft did was particularly elegant but you just sucked it up and dealt with it. What other choice did you have?
Well, it seems like Microsoft has really gotten itself in a bind. I think it's certainly possible for them to reverse course and right things for the company but I don't think it's plausible. Not that they're going to evaporate tomorrow, just that they've peaked and are entering a shallow and prolonged decline. Why is this? Because the very kind of corporate culture change that would allow Microsoft to get lean and agile is an affront to the power structure. I love Orwell's quote on this sort of thing: "The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." In this case, substitute "marketplace" for "battlefield."
The poster above nailed it when they said that Microsoft's products aren't exciting and thus the company itself is not an exciting place to work for. Why is it that Microsoft has to buy innovative companies instead of spinning off ideas from internal skunkworks? Because the corporate culture smothers innovation in the cradle.
So now we're seeing a mixture of interesting trends. Ubuntu has really made desktop Linux practical for the average Joe, I'd say 90% of the way there. That last 10% is up to the 3rd parties, bundling drivers so that a non-tech can go to the store, buy a widget, take it home and have it work right out of the box. We've got ridiculously low-priced laptops, both the OLPC and that new one from Asus. We've also got more encroachment from smart phones, PDA's, etc. These are all devices that are taking over activities that used to be wedded to PC's, big, bulky desktop machines running Windows. We've got open source office applications that can run native under Windows or Linux. They will only improve in time. Google is spitting out innovations left and right.
While making future predictions in the computer arena is a fairly silly thing to do, I'll go out on a limb and say that Microsoft is in serious trouble here. In order to overcome these dangers, the Microsoft kakosarchy will have to go away. Otherwise I think we're looking at a long, slow withering.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I don't want to cite references, so just take this as anecdotal, but judging from comments from people who've left Google, and some other Silicon Valley commentators, I've recently been getting the impression that working at Google isn't really that great (at least, no better than MS). Supposedly there are too many people for too few profitable projects (remember where 95%+ of Google's revenue comes from) and thousands of people are, allegedly, working on projects that are going nowhere. I've also heard that since the IPO, a two-tier kind of environment has built up between the rich, old employees and the new ones.
Giving notice is a courtesy to the company and it must be earned.
>>If you're leaving these days it's not uncommon to get escorted to the door...
Then, if this is standard practice at your company, do not provide notice. Just quit, walk out, and never look back.
Clean out your office over the preceeding week, then simply say to your manager on the last hour of your last day "I quit, effective immediately. I'm not coming back tomorrow, and I did not give notice because of the poor way this company responds to those who resign (e.g. "perp walk"). Goodbye and good luck." Or just send them an email over the weekend. It might sound harsh but if they truly respond this poorly to resignations, you have nothing to lose anyway.
The funny part is, I'll bet the clueless executives have had at least one profanely expensive "retreat" this year where they listened to expensive consultants's opinions on boosting employee morale and/or commitment.
First of all, the summary is a verbatim copy of the "article" (minus one sentence at the beginning and one sentence at the end). Secondly, the "article" cites no sources at all (not even so much as "this guy I know"). Finally, any idiot can see that this is just the next installment Slashdot's Two Minutes Hate of Microsoft. I'm not saying that this doesn't happen (in fact, I wouldn't doubt it), but this "article" has absolutely no substance at all.
I guess what I'm saying is that is the blueprint of a perfect Slashdot story (sadly, this is not sarcasm). I know weekends are usually slow, but this is just pathetic. What's even more amazing is that it wasn't posted by Zonk or kdawson.
I agree, it is very common. I think most HR consultants advise companies in competitive industries to escort fired or quitting employees to the door immediately, giving them no chance to do any damage. The thing is, I still think it's wrong. It's a unilateral violation of the trust contract between employees and the employer. Employees are trusted with the most sensitive information and assets of the company while they are working there, and it would be easy to abuse that trust. Any employee who is planning to leave, or who getting the vibe that they could be laid off, could be stocking up on sensitive info or doing other damage if they wanted. What stops them? Nothing but mutual trust and the value of personal reputation. When the employer violates that trust contract by treating the employee badly and showing that they have no trust, that is being communicated not only to the mistreated employee, but to everyone else who still works there. Only future badness can result. As an emmployer, I'd rather demonstrate trust in my employees and take the chance of an occasional hit from a bad one.
From this heading alone, I'd conclude that defection is the other way round. That is to say, the defection is from Google to Microsoft.The story suggests otherwise.
But again, I could be wrong.
why not just avoid telling the company you are leaving where you are going to? ..or just use the same trite line companies use whenever they fire a CEO: "leaving to persue other opportunities" or "taking a sabbatical" or whatever.
I play a pivotal role in a grand conspiracy to cripple the free software movement from within, by covertly embedding an unnecessary, yet seductively useful, patented technology at the very heart of the linux operating system's second most popular desktop environment.
Umm, who the fuck is this guy and is he for real?!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
There is a name for this, it's called Ghosting. I've just learned this term recently as we have had so many performing this maneuver, especially for contractors. I think the first time I ghosted was in 1998.
" I would rather not divulge who my future employer is".
The last job i left to move on/upwards i was *not* asked out of courtesy, i was wished well.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I can understand why a company might escort you off the premises after they lay you off - to avoid you stealing stuff and generally trying to get back at them. But when you resign you've already stolen everything you intend to (unless you're particularly disorganised), so what's the point?
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
You're all a bunch of whores.
I love how you all sit around trashing Microsoft. Thanks to you douchebags who thought Microsoft was some "evil" monopolistic corpoartion back in the 90's, you hopped on the anti-trust bandwagon forcing them to shell out billions of dollars in wasted money to governments and whiny corporations that couldn't compete with them.
Well, you got what you wanted.
Now, Microsoft sucks and you're kicking them while they are down, in the same breath sucking on Google's cock so hard, believing their "do no evil" crap while they get rid of any last piece of privacy American's ever had.
I have worked at or have friends who have worked at Fortune 500 companies where when layoffs come, a security guard appears and people are told they have five minutes to pack their things and exit the building. This is often after years of working at the company, including unpaid 24/7 oncall and late night, weekend and early morning work. Sometimes the guards are even armed. Not every company is the same, but some of them really make clear what their view of you is - you are a wage slave, to be used up through long hours and even after years of being there, thrown away because some executive a few steps up on the management chain decided the rate of profit was threatened. And we are supposed to be professionals, or at least skilled workers - look at all the easily avoidable mine collapses that have been happening around the US in the past few years. In 1991, 25 people died in a North Carolina slaughterhouse because management kept the fire doors locked, most of the bodies were found near the locked exits. While IT workers generally get better treatment than this, most IT workers I know work much more than 40 hours a week, one result of this is they have little or no social life. In a way they are an ideal creation of this type of society - poorly socialized, skilled, working many unpaid hours, and for the most part disposable after a certain age.
"as if Google's interested in Microsoft's '90s-era technologies"
It's crap like this that makes me embarrassed to be a Slashdot reader. Way to go, CmdrTaco.
Why don't you just lie?
Like... you know... when they ask you... you tell them that you are going to work for McDonald's, or that you are dieing from AIDS or something.
My favourite would be a rare form of Ebola virus. Make sure to cough from time to time.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This happens in the Media Business all of the time. I had a co-worker leave for a competitor and it was "out of the place now" in the blink of an eye. They get to take the two weeks paid. The concern is about stealing intellectual property and possibly using it on "the other side" for competitive means.
:)
There is also no cake for those people, although when leaving for a new place that doesn't seem as important as the benefits of going to the competition (more money, perhaps an office and higher title) while getting two weeks of free $$$.
The cake is a lie, usually for the Media Business it's Pizza that they are missing out on
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There's an interesting article on Security Focus covering this subject:
[...]
One could simply build a special device with a short range Bluetooth receiver that performs a scan for discoverable Bluetooth devices every minute, and then reports all discovered devices to the monitoring system. If more then one receiver is installed at various distances, the network of such devices (nodes) could record the device's position and additionally, the movement of a Bluetooth device -- all this without the device owner's knowledge. The non-discoverable device could be also reported if we know the MAC address and make a request to it every 1 minute and report any response.
Such system could have a number of interesting uses. For instance, if we carry a Bluetooth enabled handset (in discoverable mode) with us while shopping at the local supermarket, the supermarket owner could easily track our movements as we walk through the supermarket, record how long we spend in certain areas, and eventually create a map of our movements within the supermarket. Based on gathered data, it would be possible to analyze our shopping behavior as market research, and as result change positions of certain products or advertisements, or worse, sell the marketing data to research companies. RFID might seem to be more efficient in such a system, however this would require the supermarket to issue RFID tags to their customers, which most people would not accept. By using the Bluetooth technology on the phone they are already carrying, companies can avoid issuing special tracking cards or badged to customers yet still be able to track their movements.
BT positioning based on zones and is not necessary limited to an indoor environment or a small area. It can also be used for the surveillance of citizens within a city. The perfect example of such a system exists as the Loca project. It is an artistic project run in Helsinki which explores various aspects of Bluetooth surveillance and mobile media, and also raises public awareness of pervasive surveillance.
[...]
http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1836
In my last company, the standard practice was to immediately walk you out if you were going to a direct competitor. If you were not doing that, then you served out your final days like normal. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I think it is understandable.
Is this the real Miguel who works for Novell and sometimes posts here, or is this an imp? If it's the latter, why is he allowed to submit articles under the confusing pseudonym?
Besides, this "article" is at best worth a brief mention near the bottom of a tech gossip rollup. I'm not at all surprised that Microsoft wants people leaving for Google out immediately. I've seen this happen at companies I've worked at, where someone gives notice in favor of the company's or team's main competitor.
They wish there was no serious competition like back in the 90s. But luckily for consumers there are alternatives now, they're still racking their brains on how they came to have competition at all.
The fact that they call their competitors enemies says a lot (that is if they refer to them like that).
Here.
you had me at #!
I thought the poster exaggerate very much. Come on, I code that much just playing around and I am just a hobbyist. That is until I googled "1,000 lines of code a year" Windows and this shows up:
The ultimate and final monolithic operating system? which points to an ex-Softie's blog.
That puts the number at 1000 lines/yr*1 yr/wk*5 days/wk = 3.85 lines per working day per developer. All I can say is, Holy Cow! No wonder...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
.. treat people this way. They cannot do this in Europe thankfully and usually the notice period is more than 2 weeks (and our vacation time is over a month :) )
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Based not on rumors or hearsay, but on their products and services, which generally are lackluster and messy, apart from the Xbox 360 maybe, Microsoft is in a downward spiral right now. I'm quite happy about that, not because it hurts Microsoft, but that leaves room for better, more modern, more secure and less bloated products. I'm happy for Google, Apple and the Linux and open source communities!
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
If you think MS R&D is bland, it's because you're just uninformed.
Take a look at this for instance - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECPOXUQB5k0
throw new NoSignatureException();
Apparently Msft does believe people will move from Google to Msft, because they are recruiting prettily heavy from those in the Google Seattle Office. Two googlers tell their stories of the funny blunders the msft headhunters on this blog - I kind of doubt either of these recruiters still have jobs...
Why would you tell your soon to be former employer that you are going to go work for one of their competitors? Just say you are going to go work for a startup that you hope gets bought out by Microsoft.
I've seen employees escorted out and had to escort one out at a previous job. It's a humiliating experience even under the most benign of circumstances.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Not sure about the cake, but the two weeks period is mandated by law. Even if they escort you out the door immediately, they still have to pay you for to more weeks — although you may have to perform your slacking at home (or even at your new workplace).
It works the other way too — you can not quit instantly — if the employer chooses to make you show up for two more weeks, they can.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Putting in your two week notice is lame to begin with. Do you think the company would give you two weeks notice before they fired you? Hell no. It's a made-up plea of courtesy.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Q: Why is starting a message in the "Subject" line irritating?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
it tells the other employees how shitty the company they are working for is.
Read radical news here
it IS so bad!
And Ballmer isn't?
I work for a former Microsoft employee, and he does agree that Ballmer is one of the weirder things... definitely not good for morale to have that guy at the helm.
Not even a multinational corporation with Steve "I'm going to fucking kill Google" Ballmer running it?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
if someone is gonna pull a stunt by stealing secrets of a company and use it for his/her new workplace, s/he is definitely gonna take care of it BEFORE s/he delivers his/her notice. what a politicoally correct, spellingly wrong post this has been.
Read radical news here
You mean that there are common forms of Ebola?
"My lawyer told me not to say who my new employer was."
I tell today's young tech people get stupider and stupider. You don't tell, they ask you say, "That's not the issue, thanks." But if you're going to brag all over the place then you're a retard.
I'd love to be working on that! Really, no sarcasm here, I would love to be paid to work on a project that doesn't have to be profitable.
If your motivation is a paycheck, I feel sorry for you. A paycheck is what forces me to get a job in the first place, and not slack off 100% of my time. But it is not the motivation for picking one project over another. Any living wage, especially in this small town I live in, will get me rent, toys (new hardware), probably even a vacation.
If your motivation is that your project be profitable, again, I feel sorry for you. Windows is certainly profitable.
I'd much rather work on a project that interests me, that advances the technology, and that maybe, just maybe, will be popular enough to change the world. But all of these fit things like Linux. If I can make a profit, or my project is a real contribution to the company, fine, but these are nice bonuses.
In other words: I'd much rather work on R&D than work on a successful product.
Fortunately, I've got a job (not at Google) that lets me get paid to work on something that will be profitable, and very likely will be popular. I'm definitely doing things (within my niche) that no one else is. About the only thing I don't have that occasionally makes me wish I was at Google is 20% of my working hours to spend on anything I want -- I can still work on pretty much anything that'll help the project (which covers a lot), I can write a corporate blog, but I can't, say, spend work hours developing a new OS or something.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Just counting lines of code can be highly misleading:
1. IIRC that was a flawed metric anyway. That was final number of lines of code, divided by developpers, divided by time. It just isn't the same as what you seem to think it means. E.g., lines of code changed or refactored or whatever, would not be counted in that number.
Judged by that kind of a flawed metric, my contribution to some projects would actually be a negative number of lines of code per time unit. E.g., each time I moved someone's copy-and-paste code to its own method and replaced it with a call... well, let's say it was in 3 places, 20 lines of code, replaced with a method and a call each. That's minus thirty-something lines of code in a quarter of an hour by that metric. Am I the worst programmer ever, or what?
I'm sure CVS counts them for yours, though. So you're not comparing the same number.
Now I'm not saying that that alone accounts for that kind of a difference, but it's a start.
2. Just writing code is easy. It's debugging it that takes a lot of time. So the limiting thing is really how well you want that code to work. Going from, say, 90% caught bugs to 95% can easily double your development time on the whole... and thus halve your average lines per year.
Yes, I know, it's MS, but they still have a policy to not ship with known bugs. (Though obviously the unknown ones are more than enough in their own right.) So they'd inherently have less lines of code per year, compared to, say, Google which is officially a perpetual beta.
3. Lines of code / time doesn't scale linearly as the program complexity and team size grow. In other words, you can't just add man-months.
I thought I was so smart too in college, when I could write a program or module of several hundred lines of code in a day. But then that was the whole program, that was the whole complexity, and I was the whole team. That's the easy scenario.
Now move to something the size of Vista and it's just not the same thing any more. Now you suddenly have to deal with stuff like how your code works together with Tom, Dick and Harry's, what they want from your code, and what you need from theirs. There's a lot of overhead just to synchronize it all, document it all, learn other people's APIs, and deal with the increasing level of mis-understanding each other's interfaces.
Now I'm not saying that MS is necessarily the paragon of efficient coding anyway, but I am saying that a lot of people waving that number around... just aren't qualified to make that judgment. They've never actually worked on something that size, and that total team size. I've seen teams hit a wall and get bogged by the fact that each time one guy changes something, it broke some other guy's code, long before being anywhere near the size of MS or of Vista.
4. Well, I also don't like that metric because I've seen people actually abuse it. Not all lines of code are born the same.
E.g., my good coleague Wally would have topped that metric easily, because the guy just copied and pasted everything in sight to make it look like he's doing something. Not only he had whole open source projects pasted into his code tree, but also such surrealistic stuff as: a Swing (standalone GUI framework) file chooser dialog hidden deep in the source code of one of his EJBs (server-side thing.) That thing didn't serve any purpose. It was just there to inflate the number of lines of code he supposedly produced.
Replacing that monstrosity with something smaller and simpler, not only cut down the size (hence, less average lines of code per year for the team, ya know), but also made it run around 40 times faster.
You can also inflate the number of lines of code arbitrarily by just liberally mis-applying patterns. Just have everything get packed in a decorator, made by a factory, which is a singleton, register it with a manager, etc, etc, etc. The number of lines of overhead can be grown arbitrarily, without actually adding any functionality. And past a size wit
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Where I work, it's a contractual obligation. I am required to give notice if I wish to resign. Likewise, the company is required to give me notice if they want to make me redundant. There are some get-out clauses: I can trade unused holiday time for notice, and the company can trade money for notice (so that if they want me to leave right now, they have to pay me substantially more [in addition to the statutory redundancy package; I forget how much that is --- three month's salary?].)
What's fairly normal in IT is that when giving or given notice, you finish up your job and then go home. For the remainder of your notice period you don't come in to work, although you still get paid full salary.
Of course, I live in the UK, which has substantially better labour laws than the US...
The folks I know who went to Google weren't escorted out. They come back for lunch, even.
Maybe you're frog-marched out if you work in MSN, or search, or something directly competing.
As to "how much better it is at Google," from reports it seems to be a wash. MS appears to be a better place to work if you're raising a family (wonderful medical package -- way better than Google's -- understanding management, etc.), while Google seems to cater to the younger employees by making it possible to live your entire life without leaving the building.
I've worked at both kinds of companies (guess what? there were free lunches at Silicon Valley companies prior to Google). And I remember Apple in the 80s and early 90s where the unofficial policy was "bring 'em in and burn 'em out" (the sabbatical at five years was great for winnowing out the non-hackers). Big and slow (MS) is bad, because dinosaurs can stumble and living in a company town like Redmond isn't necessarily a great idea (just talk to some Boeing folks), but a quick and burn-outish place is bad because you're just going to be so much biological waste after a few years of 12-hour days ("Look, someone threw out a perfectly good software engineer!").
At any rate, escorting folks who have given notice is nothing new. Believe me, worse would be, "We're going to keep you here for two weeks," and then give you a blank walled office to sit in, with no network or access to anyone and escorts to the potty. Worse than that would be, "You're going to spend the next two weeks standing at a whiteboard doing a brain-dump of everything you've been responsible for on this project." [Been there; I'd made the mistake of giving *three* weeks notice, just to be nice, and my hands were cramped and my brain was leaking out my ears by the time I got out of there].
That's a very immature attitude. When you give your notice, they pay you for the remaining months work, but ask you to leave immediately. That's very different than just quitting on the spot.
You actually blame the antitrust suit for Microsoft being that bad?
Did you actually use Windows 95? 98? It sucked. ME sucked more than Vista, by a lot. Back in a time when floppies were one of the more convenient ways to transfer small files, your entire computer would lag, horribly and visibly, during any floppy access.
If we hadn't given them a thorough slap with the antitrust case, not to mention some actual competition from Google, they wouldn't be doing as well as they are now. Judging by how well they're (not) doing now, that's saying a lot. But I do see Windows 2000 as a direct response to Linux -- which, no matter how you look at it, NT was intended to be a direct response to Unix.
As for evilness, is it really any better now, with Steve "The Chair" Ballmer?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
But if there is anything I want to take with me I will have arranged for it ahead of giving notice.
;-).
Of course in germany most office workers have 6 week notice, in switzerland 4 week are common. And if they escort you off - which happens in europe too - they still have to pay
Martin
PS: It's all in the contract of cource - if they damand 4 weeks in the contract and then they don't want it after all then it's there loss.
Some sort of "elite" white collar workforce. Nonsense. It's just drudge work for the man, it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on. Want to stop being abused, like this example, get rid of the brainwashing you subject yourselves too thinking you are better than the herd and unionize, and learn from the past examples of other unions and create a union that doesn't suck.
If not, you'll keep taking abuse. It's that simple. History is profoundly clear on this, very generally speaking, the larger the corporation the more you are disposable tissue paper and you'll eventually get treated like that. The only thing that stopped worker abuse in the past was unionizing. The companies sure didn't do it voluntarily either, no, no, NO, it took unionizing and court cases and serious hardball politics and nasty strikes with violence to create a functional middle class that got treated with at least a modicum of respect. It was a low intensity and long running internal civil class war, let's get real, it was a war our working ancestors fought and only semi won. And it is because the corporate borg (how appropriate in tis example), have no pity, they don't care, their profits at any cost, their control over you in the form of some sort of modern day aristocracy. You get treated like a serf, recognize that, you can go forward.
And the white collars still shit all over what our grand dads and great grand dads did. Shame! They actually went through physical peril and utter bankruptcy, starvation, homelessness, fought for the next generations, and you chucked it all out from being brainwashed by the wallstreet journal reading crowd. They faked you out, lock stock and barrel, you got *conned*, and it is apparently so embarrassing cognizant dissonance sets in.
The corporations are "unionized", yet most white collars don't want to see that, because their bosses and wallstreet don't use that exact word, but the industry-your big company you work for, is not a single human you are entering a contract with, it is a huge organized entity, in cahoots with the bribed off political system, unionized against you, a single individual.
Sure, ton of examples where unions screwed the pooch, well, you are either smart enough (white collars all claim to be smarter than lowly blue collar workers) to see what needs to be fixed there,and do it, or not. If not, what makes you think you are intellectually elite, when you leave yourself open to abuse like that? Looks more like being a pussywhipped drone to me, no matter your last take home check level, still pussywhipped, because you have zero defense against abuse, but your employer can use offshore labor (the threat of making you compete against even worse abuse, that's all offshoring labor really is, the globalization con job you fell for), security goons, threats, intimidation, business laws that allow your employer to force you to work an ungoldy amount of hours for the same pay based on their whims and the bosses mercedes and hooker payments, etc, with no recourse other than going out and applying for a job at some other megacorporation with the same exact polices you are fleeing from. Or you got kicked out and away from.
Learn from history and social structures or not, binary choice there. If you don't learn stop complaining, if you won't work collectively to save all your own asses, don't think some magical system will just be poof created that will take care of you, because it won't happen, the opposite happens, as you can see daily in the headlines, more consolidation, more of the transferring of wealth upstream into fewer hands, more abuse you have to take at the workplace, more getting trapped into the economic system THEY run where you get put into lifelong economic bondage, i.e., "serfdom".
Want to see an example of where corporate government (it is one entity now) conspires against you, where they are "unionized" and you aren't, and they keep getting away with it? The inflation figures, totally
as if Google's interested in Microsoft's '90s-era technologies.
Quite right. MSFT is hoarding precious IP from last week's technology. Reminds of lady who lives down the road. She didn't want to go to the hospital after falling and dislocating her hip because she was convinced thieves would break in and steal her salt and pepper shakers. She refused transport until the daughter showed up and convinced her she'd pack them up and take them home with her.
The simple fact is staff are leaving MSFT for Google because they are fun, hip and technology progressive. MSFT is political, heavy-handed and more concerned with their revenue stream than fielding quality software. Ballmer is up in Tower Redmondore, surrounding himself with high paid toadies, convinced departing employees are thieves and traitors.
Paranoia coupled with arrogance and stupidity in equal measure is a volatile mix.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Said like a lousy manager, or one who doesn't appreciate what people actually do, or somebody who never worked in a large enough organization to appreciate the true cost of attrition, or I don't know what...
Excepting the departures of Truly Useless People, those last two weeks are somebody's last chance to find out that which you don't know about that which you are about to inherit. I am so sick of watching stupid managers and stupid successors squander that invaluable last chance because they act like scorned girlfriends or just don't understand the true value of even people who would leave, and the undocumented knowledge they carry in their heads.
I've never met a leaving person who wouldn't be helpful in his own succession. Most, in fact, are incredulous as to how little anybody seems to care about the invaluable knowledge they are walking away with, and how much more difficult their successor's lives will be for the ignorance.
Shape up, managers and everybody else. Those defectors leaving your ranks should be more valuable to you in those last two weeks than in any other two weeks of their employ.
until morale improves theory, isn't it?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
something like that
Read radical news here
Personally, if I was leaving to a direct competitor I'd want to take steps myself to ensure I didn't any longer have access to information I could take with me. Not because I'd ever take anything with me, but because I wouldn't want even the opportunity in case someone do leak something and I'd be further up the list of possible suspect than I otherwise would.
For the same reason I really want companies I leave to have a good policy of immediately changing passwords etc.. Not for the sake of the company, but for my sake. I don't want the risk of them coming to me a month later suspecting me of having used my access after leaving.
People should stop being so negative about the perp walk - it also creates a level of protection for you, as long as it's standard practice. Of course if you're being targeted, you should be pissed off.
Or just send them an email over the weekend.
I agree. If you are facing the perp walk, what's the point of going in?. Email is the way to go. Even explain to your boss that you can't face the perp walk, if he's even a little human he'll probably sympathise.
Because in all european contries I lived and worked notice period is part of your contract. Usally symetric - otherwise the contract might me considerd unfair and exploiting.
And if you leave on the spot - without a very good reason - you might, no most likely you will be sued for damages. You gave your employer no change to find a replacement, you did not hand over your work to the person which is going to replace you.
You might still be escorted out - but then it would be a golden handshake as the company would still have to pay for the full notice period. And that - kind of - compensates for the insult.
Martin
Note that the protections you mention are very different if you are being made redundant (as in the company is removing your position) vs. being fired for cause though.
Generally you wouldn't get paid much extra for leaving immediately in the case of redundancy, unless it's in your contract, BUT if you and the company arrange to have a legal agreement signed that state that you mutually agree to terminate the employment agreement immediately for the consideration of three months pay, those three months pay can be usually be paid tax free (assuming the paperwork is done correctly). If you're being made redundant, it might be worthwhile being proactive about asking whether they'd consider this as they might not think about it. The benefit from the company point of view is that you sign away your right to dispute the redundancy, which takes away a risk of potentially large legal costs, and it doesn't cost them any more in cash other than a couple of hundred for the legal fees.
In the latter case of being fired for cause you have very little protection if they have followed proper procedure, but since proper procedure includes several warnings, and the possibility of you taking it to an employment tribunal, you'd know plenty of time in advance what's coming your way.
Even if the company will treat you poorly, you are working for and with individuals that you may meet again in your career. It's to your advantage to treat all with respect even if they (or the company) don't return the favor, your professionalism will be noticed and remembered by some.
MSFT is political, heavy-handed and more concerned with their revenue stream than fielding quality software.
Actually, MS has a far more diversified revenue stream than Google, which depends for around 97% of its revenue stream on two products. It's a lot easier to punt a new product that's potentially disruptive when the worst it can do is knock off a few percentage points, rather than take away half your revenue in one go.
Da Blog
To apply the same logic from an employees' perspective, as you are attempting, you'd quit effective immediately, but show up to work for the next two weeks and work without pay.
As I mentioned in my other post it's part of your contract here and for office and IT workers it is often a lot more then the law requires. And for the reason that two week are not enough to hand over all your work.
I find this whole discussion rather stange and disturbing. Live in the US is different indeed.
Leaving on the spot - ghosting - I'll be sued for damages if I did that. The same way I would sue my company if they layed me off with out the contracted notice.
Martin
PS: Terminating a work contract without notice is of course possible in exceptional circumstances - which usualy involve unlawfull activities of one of the contract members. Of if both parties aggree in "harmony".
There... much better is it not?
Oh.. and say that tomorrow someone somewhere digs up three unique bar stools made by Jesus in his carpenter days. With his mark on them and all.
Only three bar stools in the universe made by Jesus.
But two of them are kinda greenish in color, while the third one is kinda reddish.
Guess which ones would be called "common".
See... even rare things can be common or rareierer.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If you give notice in Washington, you get paid for the length of notice whether you're at the office counting the minutes away or escorted out the building at that very moment. So give a month's notice 'Softies!
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
Shure my company will give me notice. I fact I will get 3 month notice. But then I work for the Post in Switzerland - a company which cares about there employees.
Martin
It doesn't matter how much msft products suck. Msft wants to create a world where you *have* to have msft - if you want to use computers.
Anything other than msft won't handle the OOXML, or the new multi-media formats. And only the newer versions of msft's OS will run the new applications, and have up-to-date drivers.
If you have that level of control, who cares if everybody hates your products?
And there is no upper limit? No, there must be otherwise you could give 10 years notice and you could not be layed off without beeing payed for the full 10 years.
Or even better: give notice to your 65th birthday and have a job for live!
Martin
If you're moving to another company, you've got two weeks to say your goodbyes, make sure you can keep in touch with old co-workers that you may not have exchanged Facebook invites or phone numbers with, and maybe get a tearful bon voyage on your last day.
Leaving for Google? Boom. You are a non-person. You have broken sacred ape law. You've shattered the trust that the Company and your fellows had in you, and you can never come back. Well, sure you might be able to, but you're still dirtied by the subconscious assumption that you've done something heinous enough to be escorted and exiled from the communal hearth. That sets up a much different atmosphere, and adds a social layer to the whole thing: You're not just moving to a new school district, you're defecting to an enemy state. There are a lot of people who are affected by that sort of sentiment, whether they'll admit it, realize it, or not. The threat of disrupting ties with an existing social group is a powerful one, even if it is only implied.
You do not have to tell what company you are going to.
Or is that part of the employee agreement at Microsoft?
Guys ( and Gals) If you EVER quit a job and they don't accept your 2 weeks notice, you are still entitled to get paid for that 2 weeks, don't ever forget this. You are politely telling them that you will be quitting in 2 weeks, not that you are quitting today. If they choose not to accept your resignation in 2 weeks time, thats their problem, not yours. Every job I have ever resigned from where this occurred has tried to not pay me, but one threat of calling the dept of labor and they have come up with my paycheck. I am in NY, laws may differ in your state.
VBJonC
This is completely normal at almost any company.
Sure.. sometimes it feels like "Hey they don't trust me."
If only HR policy could be fine tuned to every individual.
At my workplace, we've had a good mix of reactions.
In most cases, notice is accepted and the employee can work out the rest of their days.. it's all very friendly and amicable.
In some cases, employees hang around and just stir shit up, complain about all the stuff they dno't like about working there, and waste time.
Now put yourself in the owners shoes.. is that what you are paying them for? I wouldn't.
The company generally has to pay you anyway... it's often a much easier deicision to simply have you out. They don't lose anything.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
If these losers are coming direct, without a detox period at another company, then the only thing that is going to happen to Google is that they will absorb the toxic work culture that has been part of M$ for so very long. Dumb move.
Most employees are "at will" employees. You can be fired at any time for no reason. Unemployment my apply, but two free weeks of pay almost certainly does not.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
Quick question: how many people here work or have worked for Microsoft? What about Google?
How many here actually have a snowball's chance in hell to work for either of these companies?
Why does Slashdot care so much about the goings-on of the elitist clique of software developers fostered by both companies? Is there any chance this will actually effect any of us, or is this simply the Slashdot equivalent of reading People magazine?
From personal experience, I can tell you that Yahoo has this exact same policy.
And it was worth it.
Treatment of defecators? Well I guess no turd is good enough when all your produce is branded micro-soft... But no worries, keep em coming boys, Google's sewage is not all that is hyped up to be... Let me throw some new ideas out there to get things going before shit hits the fan. How about poopoo.NET? silverTHRONE? Live Doodle(TM) search engine and services? ironFLOAT? VisualCRAP#? Brownlight? Longhaughty? Intestine Explorer 8? DefecatingDirectory? Orifice 2007? The Doodle Key? (next to the current toilet-paper key). Outleak Express? PowerPunt? So there you go... There should be enough ideas there to keep the most fertile minds busy for a long time... In any case, lets keep the windows open for that breath of fresh air we all need... AAAAhhhhhh ManureSoft
Don't fool yourself; Google wants to control standards. Microsoft does it in a defacto and relatively closed way and crosses its fingers that it gets market buy in - Google sets up alliances of groups and leads them all to the watering hole. Microsoft's approach is definitely not open, and Google's is questionable (see OpenSocial). Open standards and free software are usually done through an open committee with many leading orgs, or through a grass roots open source effort with consensus or majority decision-making. Google's recent open efforts do not meet this criteria so far.
Have you ever typed out a full post with case points and examples. Then realised, if I said this I'd be fucked. I'm gonna agree with most of the people on this board. There really is no reason not to get another 2 weeks out of a quality employee if you can. I've had bosses that actually spent half a day talking to me about things to watch out for in the future things that they think I can improve on etc. Right after I put in my notice. Now, if you don't trust them then by all means start the process quickly and walk them out the door. I think it solely depends on the person and whether you trust them enough to continue doing good work for a couple more weeks.
Microsoft has been buying innovative companies for two-decades and this has only added to their growth. The fact that Microsoft can both identify and assimilate innovative firms, accross so many product offerings, is a strength, not a weakness of the company.
no, most people don't try to cheat their employers at the last minute... you might need to come back to this company later, and why would you get yourself in potential legal trouble just to get at your boss? Perhaps on the last day your boss should look over your box of stuff you take and of course cut your access and accounts at lunchtime... then go out for one last long lunch with the crew and leave early. you can still look over what you're taking out and still cut the access it's about being professional and friendly about it.
"Employees are trusted with the most sensitive information and assets of the company while they are working there, and it would be easy to abuse that trust."
Would that be the employee who goes home and downloads IP content, and shares his HD with the rest of the world? No, no trust issues there.
"As an emmployer, I'd rather demonstrate trust in my employees and take the chance of an occasional hit from a bad one."
Of course you would.
If you plan to leave the company to head to a direct competitor, do you expect a ticker tape parade? It's a conflict of interest if you stay around those 2 weeks to work.
Anyone trashing microsoft for doing this needs to get a grasp on reality. This type of action is also very common if you work for a Japanese company.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
In addition, "golden handcuffs" are getting more common: Leaving your employer (even if through a no-fault layoff) often means you must immediately repay stock options, retirement fund matches, educational benefits, and bonuses from the last year or two.
And on top of all that, non-competition clauses are growing downright exploitative. A friend of mine is working under a contract stipulation that basically says "if you quit your job, you'll never work in IT in this state again."
Posters demanding to be modded a certain way should always be modded "-1, Self-Important Nitwit."
How does Microsoft know whether an employee is resigning to go to Google? When you give notice, you don't have to indicate what you're planning on doing next.
"Microsoft Office has just finished redesigning almost the entire UI of Office in their new release, and it's been received pretty well."
Yeah, um. About that. It's not been received well AT ALL in my workplace. We hate the new Office UI with a passion. It's big, it's loud, it's hugely confusing, it can't be customised, and by ditching the menu bar it throws out 23 years of consistent interface design philosophy in one swoop.
However, we're moving to it, because we're a tertiary education provider and we feel we have to teach "what's out there in the market". In other words, we have no choice, we're being driven into this.
We're not looking forward to the switch.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
there will be cake and grief counseling.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
It's common for people going to the competition who have access to confidential company information to be escorted off campus immediately after resigning at most companies.
At any business I know of, when someone was leaving for a competitor it was usually policy to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Say all you want about trust and morale, but that's the plan no matter where you work.
I would imagine that Google probably does the same when their employees leave for Yahoo. Or when Amazon's employees leave for Barnes & Noble. Or when United's employees leave for Southwest Airlines.
-David
And on top of all that, non-competition clauses are growing downright exploitative. A friend of mine is working under a contract stipulation that basically says "if you quit your job, you'll never work in IT in this state again."
Luckily for him, such a contract is all-but unenforceable. You can not be deprived of the right to work in your area of expertise.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
simply say to your manager on the last hour of your last day "I quit, effective immediately. I'm not coming back tomorrow, and I did not give notice because of the poor way this company responds to those who resign (e.g. "perp walk"). Goodbye and good luck."
I did this at my last job. They lied to me about giving me stock in the company and raises. Then they fired about 8 of my best friends with no notice. I figured that a company that would do that deserves no notice. But they had the last laugh. They said since I quit, i was no longer an employee and not entitled to the several thousand dollars in unused vacation that they owed me. Never work for a company whose president is a lawyer.
I guess I'll have to rethink my strategy when I leave my current company that lied to me about giving me stock and raises.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Do you know what that came about? Do you remember USWest AT (advanced tech)? It was our answer to Bell Labs. It really was not bad, and they had some sharp ppl in there. But they did several things wrong. At any rate, when the CEO announced to the VP who had built this up, that he was going to kill off AT, the VP came back in with a pistol and LITERALLY threatened to kill the CEO. At any rate, right after that, the perp walk was started for ALL. Interestingly, when I was contractor and gave notice(I was there 3 x), I was treated better than several employees who had given notice and were walked off (I was allowed the 2 weeks).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Speaking as an insider, I call BS on this story. I've seen a couple of cases where a departing employee left before their notice period was up. It is not common, certainly not policy and not limited to those leaving for Google. Most often, the employee was winding down the old project anyway and was anxious to get started on the new gig. Usually when someone gives notice in the middle of a project, the team is motivated to keep him or her on as long as possible, to suck the last drop of contribution possible. You guyz should be ashamed for letting your rabid (and increasingly quaint) anti-MS bias trick you into accepting the premise of this story without confirmation. What's /. if not the hotbed of the passionate rationalist?
Let me offer an alternative view: that the Seattle tech scene containing MSFT, GOOG, AMZN as anchors and a fair number of smaller companies is evolving into a Silicon Valley society: easy, frequent mixing, good communications among the players and all parties very motivated to preserve their good reputation, well knowing that they will be seeing each other again.
I've got a friend who worked at a software company for a number of years and was involved in a lot of projects. He gave his notice and said he could continue working for up to 4 weeks to help transition projects if needed. He had timed things to be leaving after wrapping up the project he was working on. Really tried to be a nice guy about it. And he was switching to a job that did software in a totally different field -- no common customers, no related technology.
The management didn't quite see it that way. He was asked to wait in a conference room while they conferred. They had security put his personal possessions into a box, turned off his access, had HR come review all his NDAs and threaten him, and then made a public announcement (over the paging system) that he was no longer an employee and was being escorted out. And then gave a 2 security guard escort to the parking lot, and followed him until he drove off the lot.
He tried to keep it all in perspective -- he was a bit shocked at how he was treated since he thought he had a good relationship with the company, and had wanted to leave on good terms. His new employer was happy to let him start early.
Funny enough two weeks later the old company called him. Could he help fix a problem a very important customer was running into? They said if he came in and helped he could pick up his final paycheck at the same time (nice veiled threat). He was cool about it. He said that his new job was taking up all this time and he didn't have any time currently, but that he might be able to offer some advice to the current staff over the phone. Oh, and they could mail him his check. Yeah, that went over like a lead balloon. Lots of threats, cursing, and such. Wish he'd recorded that. His new company gave him Group Legal as part of his benefits, so last I heard he was using that to attempt to get his final paycheck. And he's incredibly happy at his new company.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
But at MS it is only true for ppl resigning to go work at Google. IOW, you give notice and say that you are going elsewhere, you get your time. If you are going to Google, you are walked off. BIG DIFFERENCE from what you are saying.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It is the only MS product you are FORCED to buy.
All others are optional and for example I like SQL Server very much. SQL Server is taking away marketshare from Oracle, got OLAP long before O, and has a lot of good features people actually use. And no one forced me to choose it.
But I would hate to buy a laptop with Vista, and MS is trying to force me do exactly that in one year when I plan to buy it.
I want to have choice about it. I'm not in the USA. Six months ago it was all Vista. I hope it will change.
I don't want to be forced to buy Vista if I want XP. That's why people in the media are looking at Vista. That's why I tell everyone NOT TO USE Vista.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
You are a republican who votes for all neo-cons?
If a company demands the traditional Two Weeks Notice, then they should be required to honor it in return. While they can give you payment in lieu of that time, they shouldn't be asking for anything they aren't willing to equally commit to in return.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Through a couple sources I have heard that it is not uncommon for Bill (in the past) and Steve to really be condescending to employees. To hear one of them relate to me an experience, they were and possibly remain the worst they have seen in their 20+ years of work in the technical field.
Does not sound like a place I would desire to work.
I was told last Friday by someone working at GOOG that GOOG HR has just made an internal announcement to *NOT* consider (ex-)MSFT employees for hire.
Since my source is working closely with the hiring HR so I believe this is not a rumor.
People that leave Microsoft for Google are called "Defectors", and people that write code for Microsoft make "Defects".
Thanks... thanks... I'll be here all weekend. You've been a lovely audience, and be sure to tip your waitress.
"Put your message in a modem, and throw it into the cyber-sea." - Rush
Is it by any chance something like being escorted by security if you say that you are going to work at A, and working out your two weeks if you go to B?
As for an off chance that I am to meet someone I used to work with... well... there are several options.
a) Deny its me - "No mate, I'm his twin brother. Fuckin' tragic what happened there."
b) Claim miracle cure - "Like... I was out... and I suddenly got better. Praise the Jebus!"
c) Beat them to the punch - "Hey there! Were you forced to do the Ebola just to get out of there too?"
Then before they reply continue to talk to everyone around you about how bad it was when you left. So much, that you had to lie just so you could clean up your desk in peace.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
My neighbor, and good friend, retired after 40 years at the post office, as a postmaster. That's a position of high trust, and he was well liked by all.
His subordinates planned for cake and ice cream his last day. Nothing doing. The postal inspectors came in that am, grabbed! his ID badge, keys, changed the safe codes and computer passwords, and sent him out into the public lobby. There they handed him his commendation letter from the local elected officials, shook his hand, and wished him good luck.
We are a weird country.
Never work for a company whose president is a lawyer.
That's amazingly good advice. We had a collaborator who's husband is a lawyer and as long as it was legal she's do the most insanely unethical stuff without a sign it bothered her.
If i were about to leave M$ (or the company i work now in) in favour of google, i would be out of the door very much before the security guys (they armed where i work,b.t.w.) could get to me for the "Goodbye" buttkick. Probably also before my boss would put his hands on a chair.
I left Microsoft (but not for Google) and I stayed on for an extra 6 weeks to finish my work, document all my features and help with the next version. I think I committed code my second to last day on the job. I was very open about where I was going and what I was doing next, which didn't conflict with my current job. I got my good-bye lunch also (The cake is the lie. The last person I knew who got cake worked in the same team for 10+ years.) I'm sure my managers would have treated me the same way if I went to Google. It all depends on your team.
(Full disclosure: I would tell you about my experiences interviewing with another company, but sadly I'm under NDA.)
If you were non-ethical, at the time you decided to leave, but before you gave formal notice, you could do all those things you mentioned. Any non-ethical employee could do this at any time.
Treating outgoing employees as potential criminals is a reflection on the culture of the company.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
If they do this only if they know you are going to work for Google, the solution is simple: just tell them that you are leaving, and nothing else.
"They said since I quit, i was no longer an employee and not entitled to the several thousand dollars in unused vacation that they owed me."
You might get a second opinion, depending on how your vacation time is defined in your (former) employment contract. Earned compensation is an entitlement that can't be hand waved off, even by a slick lawyer.
NON-geek Linux user since 1998
At least for me. I did an internship at Google while doing my postgrad and after two weeks there I decided it wasn't for me. I was looking forward to finishing and a few times I was about to quit before the end of the contract. Actually, I came to really hate almost anything related to Google to the point that these days I don't even use their search. And I am not some kind of nut case, I have worked for other big names in the industry, and Google was by far the worst place, including the people, the projects, the internal mess...
If you're a Microsoftie defecting to Google you're probably already sick of being treated like a gimp and getting escorted out of Microsoft will hopefully be the last time in the career your company treats you that way. Think if it as a "Thank God I'm getting out of this bullshit company!" going away present! Anyway, it could be worse, Ballmer could be throwing chairs at you on your way out.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What ever gave you the idea that people in business are rational? Rationalizing, maybe, but rational? If it's not fear or greed, it's not capitalism. Same with business which these days is simply capitalism writ small.
That is all.
...they weren't particularly nice with me either. My former colleages at Google that I considered my friends not answering my e-mail messages anymore was quite shocking. Or when they didn't let me in to say hi when I went to return the laptop and instead I had to hand it in to a security person was quite disappointing.
Stay away from those 5 year olds, buddy.
Infuriate left and right
Here in The States, we legally (and spiritually) value corporations as the primary entity that produces economic value. Our laws treat a corporation much like a person.
How do we offset this seemingly overbearing allocation of power to corporations? We counter as individuals with pursuit of our self-interest: "I owe the corporation nothing." As usual, in the United States, the right of the individual reigns supreme. (You gotta love that.)
Consider that. A corporation is essentially the sum of its people's doings. But a cultural irony of the United States is that we who breathe such life into corporations deny them their most valued commitment: that of their employees. We deny them *us*.
And why, you might ask, could such a contradiction make sense?
It is because we trust neither corporations nor individuals. Both, by nature, are selfish. So we pose the two as adversaries, fodder in a competitive arena. They are merely two points of view dueling for a higher ground. From that competition of ideas (vocalized through media pronouncements and water-cooler banter) emerge various perspectives of the day. And as each of us adopts one or more of those perspectives, this informal but continuous voting process produces a seemingly nonsensical consensus that is Our View of Corporations (and Our Obligations to Corporations), for *today*.
BTW vista buisness OEM comes with downgrade rights to XP pro and doesn't seem to be any more expensive than XP pro.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The same thing happens at Yahoo. It's widely known that if you're going to Google, don't say that when you resign. It's especially prevalent, in southern California offices, were the bulk of Yahoo's revenue are generated. It was pretty obvious when it started happening.
Before, if you left, you were thanked for your years of service, wished the best, often given a farewell lunch & goodbye drinks. Your last day you'd go around saying goodbye to your peers, exchanging hugs, etc. It was handled very well.
Then people suddenly just started disappearing. At first you'd see someone silently packing a box, with security standing behind them. Terse announcements to direct peers would follow, with rumor spreading to the rest of the organization.
"What happened? Did they steal?" everyone would ask.
Eventually a friend in the know would clarify -- no, they hadn't stolen anything. In fact, they hadn't been fired. They had just given their two weeks & shared they planed to go to Google. The response to their two weeks was those final two weeks would be "vacation" and there was "no need to come in anymore."
I have no idea to this day if Yahoo realizes what a colossal blunder it is. For the employees who do stay it's completely demoralizing to see coworkers treated that way. It basically says that we're only good to them so long as we're useful. It's worse than when they killed the candy bowl in lobby because a director was worried about her budget.
By the way, speaking of defections to Google -- if you're wondering why Panama took three attempts, watch this google video. The guy giving the intro? He was leading the second try when he left.
Which reminds me of a former employer. One factor in the annual company bonus was determined by the scores from a survey on employee morale. Talk about talking out of both sides of your ass - "we take the survey very seriously so be truthful so we can better assess management & improve the company" and at the same time, "be honest & tell us the management has created a miserable work environment and we'll give you less money."
Vote Quimby.
I agree with you here. I do not approve of the fact that the major computer manufacturers have signed these agreements with MS. I'd much rather the OS win (or fail) on the merits than any sort of marketing shenanigans.
The witch hunt on M$ employees moving over to Google looks to me like M$ are fighting demons in the dark. Yes, they want to be #1 in every area they go into and while doing so they're neglecting their key products, the geese laying those 24 carat golden eggs. I am talking about Windows and Office. Latest Windows, Vista, got a lukewarm reception. Apple reached 9% of its installer base on the first weekend after the release of Leopard. 9 month after release Vista is not even there. I M$ wanna see a better bottom line, they need to go for quality, not a multitude of new areas, where somebody else does it better already.
Or just send them an email over the weekend. It might sound harsh but if they truly respond this poorly to resignations, you have nothing to lose anyway. ...or just stop showing up completely. Maybe even take a vacation. Or an unpaid leave---to climb everest or something. Then phone them saying you're enjoying your life so much you're not coming back.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
I mean really... if you just keep your mouth shut about where you're going or what you're going to be doing after you leave, how will they know you're going to Google or anywhere else? Duh.
Think of me when you shave your legs...
Because, you know, everything about human work is simply defined by economic measurements.
Your, and I guess the common, view of work is almost funny to me, if it wasn't so sad.
The 1920s and 30s factories called; they want their labor forces back.
Hmm, I've quit a few different programming jobs (sometimes to a competitor, sometimes to a different industry) and never been marched out the door. I wish that would happen, but oh no, it's always "hope your Word skills are fresh, mate, you're going to be spending every minute of the next four weeks writing documentation". It's enough to make you not switch jobs!
... Linux was enemy number one. How fickle can Microsoft be? Here I was, figuring that we had this stable, long term relationship. But now Microsoft dumps all of us Linux users and takes up with a new enemy number one. What's the matter? We're not good enough for you???
Have gnu, will travel.
Do they get to keep the chairs bulmer throws?
This sort of thing is extremely rare in the US, we're almost entirely "Employment at will" - you can not come in tomorrow, and they can tell you to not come in tomorrow, neither side needs notice or a reason (although certain bad reasons are expressly illegal, so companies tend to be paranoid about documenting their reasons anyway). You're free to enter into other contractual terms, but very rarely does any normal salaried worker do so.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
>> I'd also willingly give them details about working at Google if they asked
Your employment contract clearly states that you can't solicit your old co-workers to join your new employer for a period of one year after you leave the company. "Giving the details" could be considered a violation of your contract.
Escorting people out the door when they join Google is not necessarily Microsoft policy. Case in point: Earlier this year I left MS for an unrelated position at Google. When I gave my notice I was treated respectfully by MS. No chairs were thrown. I worked the full two weeks of my notice. I was given a nice going-away party. My boss and his boss did want to know why I was leaving, but were not at all angry or threatening.
Of course, I worked in a non-mainstream part of MS, that didn't compete with Google, and went to work in a completely different, non-mainstream part of Google.
So I think it depends on what your old and new jobs are, as well as the personalities involved.
Like most such stories, I have to guess its based more on circumstances than anything else. I know of at least two people that have left Microsoft for Google that gave two and three week's notice, and continued to work their planned time.
In one company where I worked on dev & testing of new products, I was walked out the day after I gave notice, but without any hard feelings (and they paid me for the two weeks).
So what? Switzerland is not the only country in Europe with this kind of law. In fact it's common for ALL of Europe.
But you forgot to mention the one month minimum by law requirement even in Norway. Three months is just the normal amount of time for employees.
Every software company does this, Microsoft is hardly alone in that. When I worked on a large product at IBM (the development team was about 200), we shipped every release with many thousands of known, unresolved bugs. I kid you not---myself and 3 other people were responsible for an important component in that product, and I remember one release where our component alone had 500 open bugs. Of course we fixed hundreds of major bugs before each release, and the ones that remained at ship time usually ranged from minor to inconsequential.
But that's nothing--some of my friends at the time were working on Eclipse, the free open-source IDE for Java and other languages. Even though Eclipse was way smaller than our product, it had a very large userbase who could find even the most obscure bugs. As a result, major releases of Eclipse often shipped with as many as 10,000 known, unfixed bugs in them! Despite that, I used current versions of Eclipse every daily for 4 years and only twice did I encounter a bug that actually affected functionality.
Bugs are just part of the reality of large-scale software development. Software is fungible... the first 90% of the work in a software project takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time. Eliminating ALL bugs from a large program is more or less impossible. The closest humans have got to this unattainable ideal so far, is at places like NASA where they spend about 100x the time and money on every line of code that the rest of us can afford to spend.
Besides that the European system of law works in a very different manner and would never permit that kind of unbalanced contract. It would simply become void and illegal. And I doubt it is legal in the US today either.
So I'm the original source of the article, which got mangled by ValleyWag and has started morphing into a bad game of telephone tag.
My friend was asked to leave when he gave notice. This also happened to three other people I know. However, other friends I know who have left, as well as myself, had two weeks and a farewell dinner or lunch. There was no perp walk or security walking people out the door, but their badge
It's a crappy policy, IMHO. One I don't like at all, and hope they change.
I find that "Goodbye and thanks for all the fish." works nicely in situations such as this.
To boldly use to and too two times and get it right too! They're not gonna believe their eyes when they see it there!
Drinking the Kool-Aid was never bad. The Acid Test gave us the fire in the Valley. I suggest you have some. You'll come out with a much more balanced view in life.
"Where have all the good people gone?" - Jack Johnson
well how elite Microsoft is you all can guess. Thing is this is'nt smthing that's happening in America or places like microsoft etc. I've seen employees of concerns like Oracle, Yahoo, Verizon getting escorted out ( getting all of couple of hours to clear their desks ) if and when they give their next company as a competitor. SAP is oracle's case etc. And what nobody bothers to read is that all this is in their signing contracts itself. So all i can say is wise up. Its an industry wide practice. Nothing much you can do about it. nf
Sorry, this is not news - any company with sensible management should do this (but maybe a bit more sensitive).
:-).
:-).
As a matter of fact, you're already too late - the moment someone decides to leave the company they're metally already "outside". You have no idea how long before the announcement they have started 'hamstering' office supplies
Now, I jokes about this, but the dark version of this is theft of intellectual property. Client knowledge, company strategy and competition insight, codesr taking their code with them, etc - I can't see anyone inclined to take information to make their own life difficult by pre-announcing they're about to walk.
In conclusion - nothing to see here
Insert
As an employee, you have to give 30-days notice before quitting, and work the 30 days. If you just say "I quit" and go away, the employer can fire you for abandoning the job and you lose whatever accumulated vacations/bonuses you have to receive.
As an employer, you have to give 30-days notice before firing, but you have the option to just pay for the 30 days and sending the employee home. The soon-to-be-fired employee has (IIRC) 2 less work hours per day (full pay still) during the 30 days, to be used for finding another job. The employer must pay proportional vacation (30 days/year with extra 1/3 monthly pay vacation bonus) and proportional Xmas bonus (1 month's pay) for the employee. And 40% of the amount of the employee's FGTS (some compulsory savings account we have here, like 8% of the gross income per month).
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Let the countdown to Google taking over the Evil Empire from Microsoft, as Microsoft did from IBM begin!
T minus 477 days until Slashdotters knee-jerk hatred of Google and counting...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
>>That's a very immature attitude
Yes it is. And it's comparable to a security guard marching you out the front door and off the premises, and another boxing up your personal belongings and delivering them to you in the post.
Giving notice is an extension of trust and a show of courtesy, from the employee to the employer. If no such trust exists, then it follows no such courtesy should either. Unless you happen to enjoy being treated as a criminal, with suspicion and disdain.
>>When you give your notice, they pay you for the remaining months work, but ask you to leave immediately.
Not in the US. Companies may simply terminate your employment (and associated benefits including life and health insurance) immediately and show you to the door. "Goodbye and good luck."
The lead poster has obviously never worked a single day in a real corporate IT environment.
When you leave, you are done and out. There is no "last two weeks" when you have access to go anywhere and do anything on the network.
Yeah, it does suck that you can't say goodbye to the people you've worked with for years, but that's the price you pay for the life you lead (to quote... yech... Godfather 3). It sucks that you need to have somebody put your stuff into a box for you to pick up. But you know what? That's the job, that's how it is.
IT means that the information is more important than EVERY OTHER consideration. The information must be preserved at all costs. That's the job. Being nice has nothing to do with it.
Yeah, it sucks, but if you don't like it, go take some MBA courses and start talking about emerging synergies within dynamic paradigm shifts.
It does matter when you criticize the poor fellow for not knowing about it and tell him to: "study more". I'm just saying you should give him a break for not knowing.
I did claim it was illegal to force someone to work, but what you described is obviously the other way around. At least from what you presented I can see how that situation at least resembles indentured servitude. It's really sad especially for the average American worker. But it's not the company's fault that your system is organized the way it is. Under the average European health care system you are automatically covered regardless of employment status and condition. And it's cost free, even for major surgery. And, yes, it is always available and good quality. I appreciate it more and more.
It is impossible to generalize that "Smaller companies have happier employees doing more interesting work, while large companies are full of melancholy drones."
There is nothing inherent in the size of the company that dictates if the work or the environment will be good or bad. There are large companies that are great to work for, and there are small companies that are soul-sucking pits of despair.
YMMV
SirWired
How on earth was docking you for two hours worth of pay when you left early illegal? I think you are confused as to what it means to be a salaried employee. If you are an "exempt" employee, it just means your employer doesn't have to pay you overtime. It does not mean that if you are finished with your work, you get to go home early.
Being a salaried employee means that you have significant freedom as to how you perform your job, and it usually means that you have some flexibility as to the timing of work week. It does not mean that you can take off from work for two hours and expect to be paid for it.
If you had complete scheduling freedom and all your employer was paying for was skills and your work product, you would be an independent contractor, not an employee. (Which would make your employer very happy, as they would no longer be responsible for pesky things like your payroll taxes, workmen's comp, etc.)
SirWired
Rather than be a code monkey for either Microsoft or Google, I would suggest taking the following steps to a highly profitable software engineering career. This is so common in Silicon Valley, particularly in the chip CAD software industry, that it's practically the local pastime.
1.) Get a Master's or (preferably) a Ph.D. in computer science and/or engineering
2.) Make a tiny start-up with a handful of people (people who you'd want to have in your lifeboat if you were a passenger on the Titanic)
3.) Design a brief business plan that centers on being bought out
4.) Develop a piece of software around some interesting idea, perhaps a slightly improved placement heuristic for example
5.) Get bought out
6.) Rinse and repeat 2-6
This may seem outlandish to those not in the know, but it's actually a very common career path for many people in Silicon Valley who make more money in two or three years than the best code monkey makes in 10 years at Microsoft or Google. Importantly, rather than being escorted out of any building by security, you will be handed a check worth a small fortune to give away your start-up's IP.
No, no, no. Please, do not refer to European countries as "EU"-countries. We are not all members, and do not want to be either.
And the reason I mentioned it was, of course, just to highlight the differences. Not advocating either system really. But I must say I appreciate that if I were to need major surgery I would not have to pay anything before, during or in recovery after the operation. And the welfare benefits that would kick in to aid you while you're not working. Haven't needed it yet though.
Yes, there was that problem a few years back. At least here in my part of Europe we don't have them any longer. Freedom of choice, it's called now, the money follows the patient and you can choose which ever hospital you want to perform the operation. It even works so that you can have surgery done abroad if there's no available capacity in our country at that moment.
I did some checking online of labor law, and you were right. An exempt employee can only have their pay docked for an absence of a whole day. Of course, you can still be fired, but your pay cannot be docked.
SirWired
Are they actually stupid enough to be laying off good people (who happen to be stuck with a bad project), then turn around and attempt to hire some more people?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Are you suggesting it's the rule or the exception? Because either way it's not very a scientific method or sample.
I would then suggest the problem, in that specific country, would be with the management. Because they could easily organize their system the way my country does by giving the patient freedom of choice with user hospital selection. And like I said when the national or regional capacity is not available they can have the surgery done abroad. And, yes, there's always some country in Europe, or some other place, with capacity for the precise problem in question. We already do this here, we both export [to Germany] and import patients [from Denmark].
It would also probably mean an increase in government spending on healthcare leading to greater demand and probably an increase in supply as well. Otherwise they could probably be sent abroad [payed for by the government] like many wealthy people are doing today. Did you see the "60 minutes" show on Indian commercial health resorts? They provide excellent healthcare for a very reasonable price - and the patient gets to recover in a nice tropical environment. From what I hear there are plenty of Indian doctors are already working in the US, so quality is not the issue. Globalization could probably benefit us all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Then why didn't you just leave at 3:00PM?
Honestly, were they pointing a gun at you or what?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.