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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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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();
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!"
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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?
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."
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.
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.
Having worked on "nowhere" projects, I'd say the essential point that you are missing is that people working on a "nowhere" project go nowhere. Or are laid off. Nobody sponsors a non-profit project out of the good feelings it gives them.
If you aren't part of the profit, you are part of the loss. And losses get cut.
Be thankful you are working on something people believe will be profitable. Many, many things Google is looking at have almost no hope of ever seeing light of day, much less being profitable.
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.
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*.
"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