Who is Winning the Web Talent War

jg21 writes "Ever since Fortune wrote an article about it, mentions have been occurring hither and yon about how Google is having problems retaining employees, and the latest comes in Web 2.0 Journal, where Dare Obasanjo interestingly tracks and interprets a couple of blog entries that he says leads him to hypothesize that "Google's big problem is that the company hasn't realized that it isn't a startup anymore." Of course Obasanjo works for Microsoft; it will be interesting to see if an equally prominent Googler posts a counter-theory."

Comments

interesting?

[gEvil (beta)]

it will be interesting to see if an equally prominent Googler posts a counter-theory

No it won't. It will just prolong the pointless bickering between the two companies.

Re:interesting?

[Ohrion]

Some of us find that bickering terribly interesting though. I'm one of those people. The information that comes out during those tirades sometimes reveals "interesting" things.

Re:interesting?

[maxume]

Google's momma so fat, when she gets on the internet, she really is on the internet!

Re:interesting?

[MightyMartian]

What's pointless about it? Microsoft's web presence is complete shit, and has been for longer than Google has been the major force. Google's presence is dominant and its apps are useful (at least to some extent). The bickering is simply more of Microsoft's FUD, it's playing the same sort of game it did with IBM back in the early 1990s.

Re:interesting?

[pitchpipe]

See, it's TFOGs (The Fucking Other Guys) that suck to work for, and here's why. blah, blah, blah startup, blah, blah, too big, blah, no catered lunch, etc, etc...

Later, changes jobs.

See, it's TFOGs (The Fucking Other Guys) that suck to work for, and here's why. blah, blah, blah startup, blah, blah, too big, blah, no catered lunch, etc, etc...

I wonder if Google Trends can spot this?

Re:interesting?

[MrMarket]

Some of us find that bickering terribly interesting though. I'm one of those people.

I doubt many of those people work for Google.

Re:interesting?

[Westley]

The bickering itself (from within either company) is less interesting to me than the speculation it results in.

Re:interesting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, this is just some hollering from an MS guy trying to get Google to fight them in public on a specially crafted platform that's designed to put Google in a bad light. Why would they let themselves be dragged into it?

Re:interesting?

[Scrameustache]

Some of us [...] I'm one of those people.

Huh-uhhhhhh... but iz you like 'em?

Re:interesting?

[mark72005]

Google's momma so fat, she stood on a corner and some cops came running and said "Break it up!"

Re:interesting?

[fm6]

You mean between fans and critics of the two companies. The people who actually work at Google and/or Microsoft have gone out of their way to be civil about the whole thing.

Re:interesting?

[fm6]

I agree with your excremental assessment of Microsoft's web presence. But the rivalry between Google and Microsoft is about a lot more than web applications.

And far from being FUD, a lot of the criticisms of Google and its products are spot on. I'm no MS fanboy, and indeed if there's a Microsoft way to do something and a Google way, the Google way is always the one I prefer.

But the fact remains that too much of Google's software is poorly tested, haphazardly documented, and always introducing irritating feature changes without notice. That's not a sign of a company that's well-run.

Re:interesting?

[candeoastrum]

It will just prolong the pointless bickering between the two companies.

Not for nothing but saying between the two companies imples that Google actually has been a party to this stupidy. No need to drag them into it when they haven't even said anything. It's like someone accusing you of something and then a third party comes along and says you two need to stop fighting. wtf?

Re:interesting?

[MightyMartian]

I could say precisely the same thing of Microsoft. Differences between newer and older versions of Windows, Office and the development apps, some of which appear to be there for no other reason than to be different, cause incredible headaches. Heck, the general policy in a lot of IT departments is not even to install new Microsoft software until at least SP1, which suggests pretty damned heavily that inadequate testing has been done. In Google's defense, they don't charge for most of their web apps, so there's a built-in understanding that some things may be a little iffy. Microsoft, on the other hand, charges a great deal for its operating systems, Office and development apps, so what precisely is Microsoft's defense here? Since these apps aren't the main part of Google's revenue stream, but rather ways of attracting users, while Windows and Office are pretty much the entirety of Microsoft's revenue stream (or at least the profitable part of it), I can only assume that Microsoft must be much more badly run than Google.

Re:interesting?

[fm6]

Differences between newer and older versions of Windows, Office and the development apps, some of which appear to be there for no other reason than to be different, cause incredible headaches.

I utterly agree, except maybe I'd user a nastier word than "headaches". But here's the important difference. Changes in Microsoft products happen as a result of announced upgrades, and the kinds of issues you describe can be avoided by not buying the upgrade. And if you have to buy the upgrade anyway, at least the changes don't go in before they're analyzed, tested, and documented.

By contrast, a change to a Google app can appear at any time. They don't seem to have anything like a formal QA process, nor is there anybody who's job it is to say, "is this change really necessary?" If the change is documented at all, it's in some blog somewhere. It's as if the entire Google application suite were a kind of Wikipedia of software.

I used to think it was really cool the way Google would deploy ground-breaking applications without so much as an announcement. But now their constant bit-twiddling drives me crazy.

Not that Microsoft is immune to bit-twiddling either. In the past they've been even worse than Google, though I think they've done better in recent years.

Re:interesting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Googlers are talented enough NOT to respond!
(spent too much time posting this already...)

Re:interesting?

[baboo_jackal]

Google's momma so fat she has other, smaller fat people in orbit around her.

Re:interesting?

[Blakey Rat]

In addition, Google only has to test on three major browser and a handful of add-ins/third-party toolbars. Microsoft has to test OS releases on thousands of different hardware combinations. It's apples and oranges; considering the environment the Microsoft software runs on, you'd expect it to have a hundred times the bugs of Google's various web apps.

Re:interesting?

[fm6]

There, I disagree. An application like Microsoft Word shouldn't break just because you're using an ethernet adapter that Microsoft didn't test. There are more QA issues with the kind of software Microsoft develops than there are with Google's. But Microsoft can afford to spend a lot of money on QA, and does.

Google's testing issues are simpler, but not for the reasons you state. I very much doubt that anybody does an IE/Firefox/Opera runthrough every time an application gets a new feature. Browser-specific issues are handled by the AJAX layer, and Google's is pretty solid. In effect, that's a single platform that all their applications are coded against.

That does lower the QA bar significantly, but it's obvious that Google's QA effort doesn't even reach that lowered bar. Not because they can't afford it or because they don't care about quality. It's because their corporate culture has no room for the people who see that boring stuff like QA gets done.

Re:interesting?

[CoughDropAddict]

I do not speak for Google, but wanted to throw in a Googler's opinion. Here in Google Seattle (and Google Kirkland) we have tons of ex-Microsoft people. I was recently having a conversation with another Googler who has been here longer than me and we were musing about how neither of us knew of anyone who had gone the other way. Then this (non-)story breaks of one guy goes GOOG->MSFT, and my Googler friend sent me an email that said "well, now we know of someone who went in the opposite direction."

So whatever, one guy goes to Microsoft from Google Seattle when tons have gone the other way. But somehow this became a whole news cycle. One Microsofter called it "an exodus" (that's right, one guy plus anonymous unspecified other people is an "exodus"). I've tried to resist the urge to say anything, but come on. There is no exodus.

One thing to keep in mind is that Sergey Solyanik (the guy who started this whole news cycle) went back to Microsoft to be a Dev Manager. If what you want is to be a Dev Manager in the traditional sense (steering the course of a project top-down), I can see why you might leave Google -- management is totally different here. It's a very engineering-driven, bottom-up culture. Apparently that didn't work for Sergey. More power to him for recognizing that, and going to the place that works better for him.

But if you're an engineering-focused person like me, Google is a mind-blowingly awesome place to work.

To summarize: no, the tide is not turning on Google being an awesome place to work. Yes, Google is still awesome for people that fit its culture. No, there is not an "exodus." Yes, one guy left Google for Microsoft but many many people have gone the other direction. No, Google is not perfect. Yes, I do truly regret if a person has a bad experience interviewing here or if they get bad attitudes from anyone, but most of the people I know here are a pleasure to work with and very smart.

If I knew that my 21-year-old self was going to be reading this message, I would tell him: "yes, Google is exactly where you want to end up." I've worked at a couple of other places and had a good time, but Google is a perfect match for me.

(I'm not really interested in dignifying responses from bitter people who have a bone to pick with Google for whatever reason.)

Re:interesting?

[Blakey Rat]

Oh no, I completely agree with you. I also don't agree with this statement:

Browser-specific issues are handled by the AJAX layer, and Google's is pretty solid. In effect, that's a single platform that all their applications are coded against.

As a former Safari user, it's clear that Google's layer is not coded for, nor tested against, Safari. Maybe it's better now, but a year or two ago, it took ages for Google to release *working* Gmail features to Safari browsers, compared with IE and Firefox.

Not because they can't afford it or because they don't care about quality. It's because their corporate culture has no room for the people who see that boring stuff like QA gets done.

I would argue that if the boring stuff like QA isn't getting done, they actually do not care about quality. They operate like open source developers, who never do the boring stuff like QA, or even actually readding or answering bug reports for the most part.

(See http://blakeyrat.com/bugs/ and pay attention to the section on Inkscape and Notepad++. Slashdot, while commercial, also has the open source development philosophy and also doesn't give half-a-shit about bug reports.)

Re:interesting?

[fm6]

I would argue that if the boring stuff like QA isn't getting done, they actually do not care about quality.

You're confusing indifference with self-delusion. You have to distinguish between people who honestly don't care about something and people who do care, but con themselves into believing their own shit doesn't smell.

The software world is full of people who do really crappy work, but tell themselves that they're great overachievers. And I do believe my hero-worship of Google ended the day certain people I knew personally to be in that category accepted job offers from them.

Re:interesting?

[aevans]

That's exactly the point. To those developers who consider 21 "the distant future", Google's junior-developer centric environment is appealing.

Re:interesting?

[jo42]

Except with Microsoft, you get a choice - you can keep running Office 97 or Office 2000. With Google, someone farts out a new Gmail feature and you don't have any choice but to use it. The stuff Google bought out is decent. Stuff developed from scratch feels half-baked, incomplete and kludgy.

Re:interesting?

[MightyMartian]

That might apply to the kernels and drivers (including rendering engines), but that doesn't apply to pretty much 99% of the software. The days of direct calls to the BIOS is long long gone. Office 2007 will on a Via chipset or an Intel one, because anything hardware-dependent is handled at a very low level. This might have been true fifteen years ago, but sure isn't now.

Re:interesting?

[MightyMartian]

Let's see here. They're not as concerned about a browser with it's own peculiarities that runs on at best 10% of the computers accessing their services as two browsers that make up over three quarters of the computers they access their services, and this is somehow Google's fault. Tell Apple and the guys at Konqueror that Apple's feeding off of to make a browser that's closer to either IE or Firefox.

This is like bitching that some small market-share version of *nix requires customized changes to the Makefile to compile. Use a minority browser, expect a longer lag for newer features to reach it. It's not as if Safari is such a wonderful and all-encompassing browser that the vast majority of web users give a fuck about it. One thing Google is plugged into is the marketplace, and it's hardly Google's fault that some niche browser like Safari doesn't render things properly with their libraries.

Re:interesting?

[MightyMartian]

Pretty much everything Google offers free beyond basic search is labeled "beta". AT least it has the good graces to alert potential users that it's all a work in progress, unlike Microsoft, which offers operating systems and apps that are clearly not sufficiently tested, and pretty much require at least one major set of upgrades before a lot of IT professionals even consider them candidates.

Re:interesting?

[Hognoxious]

Some of us find that bickering terribly interesting though. I'm one of those people.

You sound like the kind of idiot who prefers emacs.

Re:interesting?

[tacocat]

I agree with you and it's rather trivial these days to manage the news and information from Microsoft. Just use the following rules:

1. Everything Microsoft says is a lie.
2. Everything that someone says wherein the message is "Microsoft == Good" is a paid for advertisement that eventually leads back to Microsoft. See rule 1.

And that's about it.

Microsoft has tons of cash and little pragmatic talent. As such, they are very slow to develop anything new in real terms but very adept at creating stories to the contrary. Just like any really fat company who's interest lies not in innovation, but protecting their territorial gains by whatever means necessary (legal, marketing, media).

Along with this, I'm sure you can find people who leave Google for their own reasons and people who work at Microsoft for their reasons. The companies are very different culturally and that will shape their decision on where to work.

You want top-down bureaucratic management or a more anarchistic bottom-up model you have to make a choice. Then there is always something in between.

Re:interesting?

[Two9A]

You know, I wish there was a "-1 Not Funny" sometimes. That was fucking terrible.

Yo momma's so fat, she weighs more than the Internet!

Re:interesting?

[Doggabone]

If I knew that my 21-year-old self was going to be reading this message, I would tell him: "yes, Google is exactly where you want to end up."

That's exactly the point. To those developers who consider 21 "the distant future", Google's junior-developer centric environment is appealing.

But in this case, age 21 is in the past; not "the distant future". Or, from your comment, exactly not the (original) point.

Re:interesting?

[MikeFM]

I'm quite a bit older and Google's developer centric environment is appealing to me. When I'm even more ancient maybe I'll try to get a job there.

Re:interesting?

[baboo_jackal]

Yeah, I totally understand. I wish there were a "-1 Yo momma so fat I had to grease the door frame and stand on the other side holding a Twinkie just to get her through" mod.

Web 2.0 ?

[guysmilee]

I only read the Web 1.5 Blogs ...

Re:Web 2.0 ?

[Tubal-Cain]

I prefer the Web 3.1 alpha blogs.

Re:Web 2.0 ?

[4D6963]

I prefer the Web 3.1 alpha blogs.

I, for one, can't wait for Web 95!

Re:Web 2.0 ?

[Reverend528]

I, for one, can't wait for Web 95!

I'm not looking forward to the dreaded winter of Web Me that is going to follow it.

Re:Web 2.0 ?

[techdavis]

web Vista..... :P nuff said!

Re:Web 2.0 ?

[grossvogel]

you know it's time for 3.0 when when the pop-up ads in Web 2.0 blogs offer you $50 off registration for a conference that happened over a week ago.

Re:Web 2.0 ?

[corsec67]

You might not live that long.

2095 is a long time away.

Re:Web 2.0 ?

[b4dc0d3r]

Waiting for portables, desktops, and servers to be completely intertwined - for the web version of this http://www.geocities.com/rcwoolley/

Re:Web 2.0 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, can't wait for Web ME!

Waiting

[Archangel Michael]

I'm waiting for the web to mature, 3.11 for Workgroups.

Re:Waiting

[ibmjones]

I'm waiting for the web to mature, 3.11 for Workgroups

I read that as "manure". Same difference, methinks. :D

Re:Waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

Web 3.11 for Workgroups sucks. I'm waiting for Web ME

Re:Waiting

[bornyesterday]

Oh god. Can you imagine the wait until Internet '95 though?

Re:Waiting

[boristdog]

You just brought up a lot of bad memories.

Fie on you, I say!

Re:Waiting

[pragma_x]

I can imagine. In the year 2095, I'll probably be too ancient to blog much more beyond "get my head out of this jar already" and "I really wish they'd move me closer to the window."

However, the user experience will be nice step up from Internet 3.11, even with the bugs and backwards compatibility issues.

Re:Waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

3.11 for Workgroups? Dude, DOS 7.x rocks!

glassdoor.com

[whtmarker]

From reading google and microsoft reviews at glassdoor.com, it became apparent that microsoft is like a government job with tons of bureaucracy. However google on the other hand treats non-engineers (marketing, etc) like second class citizens. Marketing and Sales guys complained that the expected endless promotions but instead found a kind of invisible ceiling.

Re:glassdoor.com

[realmolo]

There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys. If they want to advance, they should have to learn some technical skills.

Good marketing and sales guys have one skill, and that is "schmoozing" (also know as "people skills"). I don't consider that a skill worthy of big promotions. Raises, surely, but not promotions. It's not a skill that makes one an effective manager. The opposite is probably true, actually. Most marketing/sales people, the good ones anyway, live in their own little magical world where the normal rules of logic don't really apply. They should be kept FAR AWAY from any kind of technical positions, and should NEVER be allowed to manage technical projects.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Dan667]

So true. They also should not throw chairs.

Re:glassdoor.com

[peragrin]

Marketing in charge of technical products gets you Vista, Windows ME, MS BOB, Clippy, and a host of other software written by lot's of different vendors.

I wish i had Mod points for you.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. We certainly wouldn't want them to be aware of technical limitations with a product that might interfere with the reckless promises they make customers. How would they get those fat bonuses if they had to stick to the facts? Pissed off customers are customer service's problem.

Re:glassdoor.com

[zappepcs]

That one skill is quite important for sales and marketing people. Their next most important skill (breathing doesn't count) is knowing when and how to keep their mouth shut when the technical people get involved in a sale or project.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the reverse is also true, though.

From what I observe as a business-geek is that the best ceos can relate to any position moderately well. A "Jack of All Trades".

When you are high up in the organization and you have to come out of your cube for more than 50% of your day, what you disparage as "people skills" count for the majority of work.

Truth is, you gotta be able to relate to everyone, and if that means having technical or "schmoozing" skills, then you gotta have it.

And don't forget the nunchuck skills, because girls only like guys that have skills.

Re:glassdoor.com

[SpeedyDX]

It's interesting that whenever a MS vs. Google debate shows up on /. about which company is better to work for (or perhaps, more accurately, better run), I usually see posts about how engineers are treated better than marketing people in Google, and that shows up as a point of superiority on Google's part. Not saying that's what you're saying, as you're obviously just putting a link up with those opinions.

I don't think, however, that this "us vs. them" mentality is fair. It represents a very ethnocentric frame of mind. Bureaucracy isn't always a bad thing. It prevents a lot of screw ups that may otherwise occur without that system in place. From a business owner and consultant's point of view, I can appreciate the value of a bureaucracy. It may not be the most efficient system, but efficiency is hardly the goal. Sustainability and stability, in a business philosophy perspective, are the primary goals of a corporation that must be fulfilled before a business can achieve true success. That is, they are necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for a successful business.

When viewed in that light, it's hard to say how successful Google is. Google has rarely (if ever) released a final non-beta product. Their revenue is heavily dependent on online advertising. The one critical service that Google has is its search. If people stop searching with Google, their revenue will drop significantly to the point of possibly being unsustainable. If people stop using Gmail, their revenue will drop further. It seems unthinkable now, but it's happened before (cf. Yahoo).

With all this in mind, Mr. Obasanjo's viewpoint appears to be right (I didn't RTFA because of all the obnoxious ads). If Google wants to avoid Yahoo's fate, they'll have to find some way to make their business stable and sustainable. Android seems to be a step in the right direction.

Microsoft, and its bureaucracy, appears to have the two necessary conditions pinned down pretty well.

Re:glassdoor.com

[ibmjones]

Marketing and Sales guys complained that the expected endless promotions but instead found a kind of invisible ceiling.

Which is curious, since Google's core strength is online marketing and generating sales leads.

Re:glassdoor.com

[lazyDog86]

Absolutely! What's the point of these guys anyway? We engineers know what's best for people.

...and that is why Apple products have proven such a failure in the marketplace.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Elias Ross]

I'm not sure why you got modded up... Managing people and getting paid more and getting promotions based on merit is orthogonal to "managing technical projects." Why would a promotion of a sales person create a technical manager out of them?

And if Google or whoever don't pay or promote according to merit, they're not going to retain very good sales or marketing people. They are only hurting themselves.

Many people (technical or not) "live in their own little magical world" and don't pay attention to what customers want, how to get the job done, or manage their time well. Technical people write software like Debian Linux. Having good relationships with customers (sales) and people to promote software (marketing) is what made Microsoft a lot more successful than we'd like to admit, although I wish they weren't so ruthless and avaricious.

Technical people often have a disdain for people who don't understand technical things, which is why this board is full of responses similar to yours. It's some sort of elitism I wish nerds would knock off.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Shippy]

...it became apparent that microsoft is like a government job with tons of bureaucracy I currently work at Microsoft and previously I worked at a Dept. of Energy nuclear laboratory. Microsoft is nothing like a government job. The amounts of bureaucracy don't even compare. Here I have my computer set up the way I want, I don't have to punch a timecard every day, I can be open with my opinions to my boss and my team, I get as long of a lunch I want, I wear what I want to work, etc. etc. Microsoft has a lot of process (which we need -- and are trying -- to improve), but I wouldn't equate that to the "red tape" type of bureaucracy that a government organization has. The two aren't even close in terms of bureaucracy. Please don't make that comparison.

Re:glassdoor.com

[sm62704]

There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys

I vote "third ark".

Re:glassdoor.com

[dwiget001]

I was a salesman *and* first line technical support for a specialized computer-aided-design software company, starting 20 years ago. Did it for seven years. Being sales *and* first line tech support, you get a very clear picture of what customer service or lack of it can do to your sales. I quickly got my technical knowledge up and that just increased my ability to sell. After self-teaching myself programming (two languages) I moved into the division that handles the programming of my company. From my own experience, sales and marketing people in a technical area *need* technical knowledge of what the heck they are selling *and* need to increase that knowledge, just like technical people need to keep up on top of technical issues, techniques, etc. In fact, it is *vital* for the success of a company that this occurs.

Re:glassdoor.com

[corbettw]

There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys. If they want to advance, they should have to learn some technical skills.

What an incredibly bone headed thing to say. Have you ever tried selling an expensive product to a customer? What about convincing a customer they have a need for your product, when they really don't? Do you know the right time to ask for the signature on a contract? How many objections can you overcome to get the close? Do you even know what an objection is? (Hint: it has nothing to do with the customer saying "No.")

You should try working in sales for a year, and see if you still have this attitude. When you find out just how hard the job really is, you might start appreciating those who can do it well.

Re:glassdoor.com

[smallpaul]

There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys. If they want to advance, they should have to learn some technical skills.

What does that mean? What do you mean by "technical skills"? Does Steve Jobs have "technical skills"? Does Jeff Bezos? Does Larry Ellison? Is your opinion grounded in anything empirical?

Re:glassdoor.com

[MMC Monster]

Success can be measured by the bottom line. Google may not be as successful as Microsoft, but it's pretty good.

IMHO, the bickering seems to be some bloggers that are being read more because it's a slow news cycle.

Re:glassdoor.com

[woot account]

Protip: if you're having to overcome a bunch of objections, it's probably because the person doesn't actually need what you're selling. That's why so many of us think marketing people are scum: they make a living off of conning people into buying things they (or sometimes anyone at all) have no use for.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Lord_Frederick]

Here's a thought...if the customer really doesn't need your product or it's not worth what you are charging, maybe your product sucks. How about hiring better engineers that can develop a product so good that sells itself instead of paying top dollar for slick sales guys that can talk executives into buying crap.

Re:glassdoor.com

[MrMarket]

I'm a people person. I deal with the customers so the engineers don't have to. Don't you get that? What the hell is wrong with you people!

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

And just the same, technical people should be kept away from management positions. Working on a computer all day only teaches you how to manage data, not people.

Further, don't group marketing and sales together. They are very different disciplines. I am studying marketing, entrepreneurship, and management and technology right now, and I can tell you that sales is primarily for college dropouts, whereas marketing is for those who finish college and have a great deal more knowledge.

Finally, don't assume that anybody with a business background is devoid of a technical background or any sort of competence and is only self-interested. You are being completely prejudice in every regard, just as I could say that programmers should never be asked to communicate beyond code because they could never manage anybody.

I'm fighting a losing battle everytime I post anything that might chip away at the overall superiority complex of many of the technophiles here on Slashdot, so I expect this to be modded down to oblivion.

Re:glassdoor.com

[realmolo]

What I'm saying is, if you are going to work for a TECH company, you should probably understand the tech. And if you are going to manage technical projects, you better have a *really good* understanding of the technology.

And no, I don't think Bezos and Jobs and Ellison have any real technical skills. But they *aren't in charge of technical projects*. Not in any real way. They have "vision" and all that. That's what CEOs are for. But would you put Steve Jobs directly in charge of the OS X development team? What does he know about programming? Very very little.

Most companies have problems with promoting people to "management" as a reward, without considering if they should BE management.

Re:glassdoor.com

[corbettw]

if the customer really doesn't need your product or it's not worth what you are charging, maybe your product sucks.

Do you honestly think that's the source of most objections? You've never been involved in a sales call, on either side of the table, then.

How about hiring better engineers that can develop a product so good that sells itself instead of paying top dollar for slick sales guys that can talk executives into buying crap.

That's an interesting point. What does the term "better engineers" mean to you? And if I were to hire those engineers, would we have a basis for agreement on this conversation?

Re:glassdoor.com

[MrMarket]

Agreed. Knowing the needs of your customer and identifying which products to sell and whom to sell them to is just as important to business success as actually making the product.

Engineers can't build anything that makes money if no one is telling them the needs of normal people.

Re:glassdoor.com

[the_B0fh]

Not sure why you get modded up. Does it _really_ matter to you whether you are sales peon I or sales peon II or sales peon XVIIVMC?

In a sales department, there will only be so many territorial managers. There will only be so many sales directors.

What kind of promotions did you have in mind?

The reason the tech people can get more "promotions" is that they have a lot more projects, and these projects open up fresh lines for others. I'm sure if they open up GoogleMoonbase, there will be lots of sales promotions too.

Color me someone who never got the "Oooo, I just got promoted for doing the same job over and over again".

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple (read: Steve Jobs):
Proof that obsessive-compulsives have something to contribute to society.

Re:glassdoor.com

[gbjbaanb]

There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys.

don't forget the glass floor and sides to go with that. And a heavy weight. Some rope. And a deep stretch of water. :-)

Re:glassdoor.com

[dissolved]

you need "specialist" sales as much as you need specialist engineers and devs. It's a common attitude to berate sales guys for not knowing absolutely everything you do but when did the people who slate them last go and stand in front of a CEO and make a sales pitch (and win)? Sales is a skill, just because it's not as tangible as coding it doesn't mean it's not hard.

Re:glassdoor.com

[metlin]

There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys.

Okay, this always gets to me.

Repeat after me, marketing and sales are NOT the same. Both are completely opposite ends of the spectrum.

Understanding a customer's needs is a core element of marketing, and that includes user experience, user needs and the like. To just about any company, that is a very important thing, and in Google's case, that is a very distinguishing element. In fact, separating all the crap from the data and getting to the crux of what users want, and translating those into requirements to be designed and developed in products and services is not something that's easy, and it's one of the things that marketing is usually tasked with.

Marketing also deals with such things as appropriate pricing models (which includes a lot of math, let me reassure you) to find out the best way to market and sell something.

Finally, marketing also deals with promotions, distribution strategies, distribution channels etc. All of this involves significant amount of data analytics to understand what needs to be done.

Now, a part of marketing also includes branding, but once again, good branding is backed by strong data to suggest and recommend appropriate branding strategies.

While sales involves a lot of, well, selling (which usually necessitates schmoozing), marketing is entirely different.

Not that I'd expect a Slashdotter to know the difference, but still, please don't club the two together.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

which is why this board is full of responses similar to yours

I think it's more likely because people like you, take the original post, copy and paste it and then replace a few words so it speaks on your own behalf.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Just_Say_Duhhh]

Yeah, but as soon as a sales guy GETS tech knowledge, they transfer to the tech team (just like you did).

Re:glassdoor.com

[Scuzzm0nkey]

Why can't the customers just talk directly to the engineers?

Re:glassdoor.com

[Thelasko]

That one skill is quite important for sales and marketing people. Their next most important skill (breathing doesn't count) is knowing when and how to keep their mouth shut when the technical people get involved in a sale or project.

I think the reverse is also true, though.

I think the grandparent is right and the parent is wrong.

Where I work, the salespeople try their best to keep the customers away from the engineers. We usually find out later that the salespeople sold something to the customers that we don't make.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

You had the wrong government job my friend. In my experience with government jobs, here's how I respond to each of your points:

1.) "Here I have my computer set up the way I want": since my boss is out doing some save-the-world job like joining five colleagues watching a construction worker dig a hole, I get to set up my computer exactly how I want: underneath a bunch of car magazines and 12-packs of Mountain Dew.

2.) "I don't have to punch a timecard every day": I guess you've got me there. I just need to remember to punch in at 8 a.m. and make sure I finish my golf up by 4 p.m. to get credit for an 8-hour day.

3.) "I can be open with my opinions to my boss and my team", since my theoretical boss is never around (see #1), I'm in practice my own boss. Therefore, there's hardly ever a difference of opinion between me and my boss. My "teammates" enjoy an equally empowered career, though not all of them use golf to pass the time.

4.) "I get as long of a lunch I want": I generally don't need more than 7 1/2 hours for lunch (gotta punch that timeclock you know), I can divide my workday between lunch and golf any way that I choose.

5.) "I wear what I want to work": People think I'm a little strange when I show up in a toga to punch my timecard, but since no one sticks around after punching in or out, there's no one there to care.

Out of all the possible bureaucracies you could have joined, you picked just about the only one that values accountability and getting things done (or at least status reports that indicate such). What a terrible mistake; there are so many other departments that you could have joined and would have never had to worry about things like milestones, getting fired, etc. ;)

Re:glassdoor.com

[JCSoRocks]

I'd have to agree here. Most customers have no idea what they want. You're talking to someone that's high enough up to be able to make the decisions and that usually means they're out of touch with what happens on the shop floor (where my company's software gets used).

I once had a customer tell me that they thought it was perfectly reasonable to assume that joe blow in the shop would read the information off of a container and type it into our software... In reality this meant that joe would be dragging a 50 gallon drum over to a workstation buried in the corner of the shop so that he could copy it. It took forever to convince them that that just wasn't going to happen - for a myriad of reasons. Even when you have a product that perfectly meets the customer's needs you still have to get past their unfounded complaints.

Re:glassdoor.com

[geekoid]

Really? well a CEO that can shmooz well can bring in huge contracts.

VP's that can Shmooz also get big contracts.
Being able to shmooz your way into the White House and bring big deals.
Technical skills are not needed, at all.

Re:glassdoor.com

[CaptKilljoy]

>What about convincing a customer they have a need for your product, when they really don't?
I have a little thing called scruples that prevents me from doing this. Perhaps you should look into getting some.

Re:glassdoor.com

[heytal]

> (I didn't RTFA because of all the obnoxious ads).

Then why not check out the original post which is available at http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/06/29/TheGOOGMSFTExodusWorkingAtGoogleVsWorkingAtMicrosoft.aspx

I'm not sure why /. posted an advt ridden link, rather than posting the original link.. oh yeah, that would require folks to RTFA, and I'm not new here :-)

1. Get permission to re-post an article with advts
2. post the advt ridden link on /.
3. ???
4. Profit

Please do not mod me funny. I've just tried to consolidate the two responses that I'm most likely to get, into this post itself.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Paranatural]

Having worked in sales, I can comment on this. I was a salesman for years. I wasn't very good at it, because I was focused on solving the customer's problems. Those problems could frequently NOT be solved by using our services. The people who were very 'good' salesmen were great at figuring out their customer's problems, ingratiating themselves to the customers, and promising up and down that our stuff could solve their problems, regardless of the reality.

I've known a few legitimately good salesmen. My father is one. He sells industrial pumps and seals. When he was hired the first thing he requested was a month to work with the engineering and maintenance people. He was granted that, and studied the technical aspects intensely. He went on to become the best salesman in the company, and later split off to start his own company doing the same thing.

Is being a 'good' salesman hard? Yes, lying effectively can be a challenge. I have, however, no issue will a 'glass ceiling' for those who do not want to learn the technical aspects of their jobs.

Re:glassdoor.com

[geekoid]

Bullshit.

I have worked for MS as a consultant, and for government agencies. The BS at MS is outstandingly surreal. Them management bickering, people driving feature based on ego, and not on any form of reason. The outright lies to superiors who wanted to hear lies, gah.
MS's process doesn't need to improve, it needs to change completly.

Meanwhile, I don't ahve any of those problems with the government agency I work at. I come in on my schedule, and the software I have written has saved taxpayers millions of dollars.
If you say something people don't want to hear enough times at MS, you will be canned.

Re:glassdoor.com

[value_added]

When you are high up in the organization and you have to come out of your cube for more than 50% of your day, what you disparage as "people skills" count for the majority of work.

You leave your cube?

Who keeps an eye on that red stapler, then?

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys. If they want to advance, they should have to learn some technical skills.

And vice versa

Re:glassdoor.com

[Stook]

I fail to see why advancement has to be in a technical related field for these kinds of positions and there should therefore be a glass ceiling. There are many different, non-technical, positions a marketer or salesman can advance too within a technical company without needed to be technical. If you think a good marketer is only good at "schmoozing" you're sorely mistaken or have never meet a good marketer. There is a lot of needed knowledge and skill for those kinds of positions.

The quote about, "It's not a skill that makes one an effective manager" is irrelevant in your argument. Does being a good developer or system administrator make you a good manager? No. That could be said of anything.

While I agree that by-in-large sales reps are not properly knowledgeable about the products they sell, that shouldn't prevent those who are and are good at what they do from advancing through the company rather than just getting a raise.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys. If they want to advance, they should have to learn some technical skills.

How about just some skills. Any skills. Have to crawl before you can walk.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Stook]

So they're scum for selling the products you created? That's what keeps your job around. You can call them scum all you want, but they're the ones earning the money to write your paycheck.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a thought (from a programmer): maybe you have no experience in the software industry and have no idea how things work, and you should shut the fuck up.

Re:glassdoor.com

[mark72005]

I'm not sure why you got modded up... Managing people and getting paid more and getting promotions based on merit is orthogonal to "managing technical projects." Why would a promotion of a sales person create a technical manager out of them?

I've had the experience in past jobs of working in a technical position under someone who was transferred from a non-technical area.

These "McManagers" as we affectionately called them were actually not all bad. They didn't micromanage you because they didn't know what you actually did. They weren't mucking things up making bad decisions because they couldn't make any decisions.

McManagers really are kind of a blessing. They are like a glorified secretary. They attend meetings and run interference for you in a lot of ways so that actual work can get done. Sure, a real manager is better, but a clueless one is better than a bad one.

Re:glassdoor.com

[mark72005]

<p>What an incredibly bone headed thing to say. Have you ever tried selling an expensive product to a customer? What about convincing a customer they have a need for your product, when they really don't?</p></quote>

Is that supposed to be commendable?

Re:glassdoor.com

[Billly Gates]

Unfortunately the sales and marketing teams make the sale and not the quality of your products. Micorosft did this quite well.

I wish E-directory services and Novell were still around rather than active directory junk with Windows Server. But that sales guy from Microsoft made a point that I should pay $$$ because everyone else did so it can't be bad. I objected to it but wow that salesmen said it would cure cancer and end world poverty, etc.

If you own a business your opinion about salesmen would change and I hate them too on a personal level but like the way my employer can sell as it ensures an income for myself.

Marketing at least listens to customers and tries to figure out where to go with product development unlike sales.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

BZZZZT

Making a good product that people want and enjoy is what keeps my job around. More often than not, sale and marketing are responsible for breaking products by trying to wedge them into areas they don't fit in. And creating ill-will towards companies with half-truths and outright-lies about product functionality, not to mention marketroid doublespeak that makes your company untrustworthy.

Take a look at MS and Google. Which one has a lot of sales and marketing people bungling their products? Which one does everyone trust and love?

Congratulations, you just learned why marketing is Evil. Exaggerated, yes, but the point is that the product (and its' makers) is key, sales is just there to answer phone calls and punch in orders.

Re:glassdoor.com

[stewbacca]

I shudder at the thought of letting any of our "technical people" anywhere near prospective customers...

Re:glassdoor.com

[MMInterface]

I think one thing that may have flown over you head at MS is the size of the company and how experience can very from group to group. Everyone likes to think that their experience is the norm. In contrast to what you say I have met managers at MS that use iPhones and make running jokes about certain MS products in the open. I have never met anyone who was fired for any reason at any employer I have been with but I am not going to claim that no one gets fired. Telling the guy above you that he is lying because of the experience in your group is entirely stupid. If you think this stuff is all the same in every group then you don't have a clue as to what goes on.

Re:glassdoor.com

[BitZtream]

Funny, I can take your third paragraph, swap the company name and primary products and we're suddenly seeing the exact same point made about MS:

Microsoft has rarely (if ever) released a final non-beta product. Microsoft's revenue is heavily dependent on Windows. The one critical product that Microsoft has is Windows. If people stop using Windows, their revenue will drop significantly to the point fo possibly being unsustainable. If people stop using Office their revenue will drop further. It seems unthinkable now, but its happened before. ...

Google wants to avoid Yahoo's fate ... what, you mean being second? Yea, if I was in first I would want to stay there as well. Good observation.

Lets apply the same thing to Microsoft:

Microsoft wants to avoid Apple's fate

You think android is the way google is going to have a stable sustainable business? They plan on making money off advertising on phones ... with open source software ... I'm sorry, how many ads have you seen in open source software exactly?

Which division of Microsoft do you work in?

Re:glassdoor.com

[ultranova]

Protip: if you're having to overcome a bunch of objections, it's probably because the person doesn't actually need what you're selling. That's why so many of us think marketing people are scum: they make a living off of conning people into buying things they (or sometimes anyone at all) have no use for.

Since you call marketing people scum, I very much doubt you're one of them, and thus couldn't really give protips on marketing, right ?-)

Anyway, you're wrong. "We can't use Linux, because it has no office applications" is an objection. "Actually, OpenOffice is available for Linux, and Microsoft Office can be made to work through Crossover Office" would be a counterargument to that. Handling objections isn't about conning people, it is about getting them to express their reservations and concerns about the deal and addressing them.

Obviously it's possible to be dishonest in handling objections, but in no way is the process of handling objections in itself evil.

Re:glassdoor.com

[stewbacca]

That's not how it works. I'd direct your attention to Wal-mart, McDonalds and/or Microsoft as evidence. The "best" anything never sells the most. The secret is simply making stuff that doesn't suck too hard, and then convincing a bunch of bean-counters that their organization needs your 70% solution.

Re:glassdoor.com

[stewbacca]

Your sentiment is my number one complaint at the tech company I work for. Everyone assumes I'm a computer guru, developer type. You don't have to have a lick of technical skills to do most of the jobs in a tech company, as running a business is pretty universal to any industry. HR is HR. What technical skills are unique to HR in the tech industry?

Re:glassdoor.com

[Stook]

Fail...

It doesn't matter how good, useful or unique your product is, if you don't have good sales reps and marketing people to push your product, it's no more than a glorified paperweight.

"Making a good product that people want and enjoy is what keeps my job around." This is only true as long as your product is selling. Who do you think it is creating that sense of "want"? It's not you.

I'm not trying to defend whether the tactics used when selling are morally ethical or not, but the fact of the matter is they generate your company's income.

I would also argue that if a sales rep can break your product, that's a crappy design and poor quality. The only thing a sales rep should be able to break, by pushing your product into a place it doesn't belong, is the process at the purchasing company.

Re:glassdoor.com

[stewbacca]

Marketing also deals with such things as appropriate pricing models ... to find out the best way to market and sell something.

Wait...so how are marketing and sales on opposite ends of the spectrum if part of marketing's function is to figure out the best way to sell something? I'm not flaming, I'm just curious, because I liked your post. Just this part of it contradicts what you are claiming, and is literally why I have a problem separating marketing from sales.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Oswald]

Do you honestly think that's the source of most objections? You've never been involved in a sales call, on either side of the table, then.

Hell yes, I would have thought that would be the source of most objections. And you're right, I've never been involved in any sales calls. So now I'm curious how much easier you think sales would be if the product WERE a perfect fit (and appropriately priced) for most customers. Could "better engineers" (by any definition) make a salesman's life 30% easier? 50%? none?

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

"Marketing and Sales guys complained that the expected endless promotions but instead found a kind of invisible ceiling."

Oh, boo hoo. If you look at the emphasis in technical businesses it is often tilted too strongly to marketing and sales of crap products rather than good product engineering. True, you always need a proper balance between marketing/sales and product engineering for a company to work (i.e. poor marketing and sales doesn't work either), but given the gutting of the research departments of many technical-oriented businesses because they seem to "cost too much", I don't think "too many engineers" is likely to be a problem.

Either way, we'll soon know whether Google's approach pays off in the long run. Maybe their different approach will work, maybe not. But sympathy for MBAs in sales and marketing who don't rise to the top of the company by default in a highly technical business? Sorry. In the old days it was often that odd and rare combination of a business-savvy engineer that ran many successful businesses in technical fields. Why shouldn't today's MBA graduates have to become technically competent to rise to the top of a technically-oriented business? Do they think they can run the business well without understanding it on a deep technical level?

No way. They should have to learn this stuff just like an engineer would have to learn about business before being qualified to run the company. Plenty of engineers go back to school to get an MBA if they are interested in management. Why can't MBAs go back to school to learn engineering or some other relevant technical subject for the same reasons?

Re:glassdoor.com

[mini me]

What technical skills are unique to HR in the tech industry?

Understanding why 20 years of Java experience is important for all new hires to have.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

There SHOULD be a "glass ceiling" for Marketing and Sales guys. If they want to advance, they should have to learn some technical skills.

What an incredibly bone headed thing to say. Have you ever tried selling an expensive product to a customer? What about convincing a customer they have a need for your product, when they really don't?

If that's what you're doing you don't deserve to get paid at all. In fact, you should suffer the same misery that you bring into this world, for using your talents to convince people to buy things that they don't need. An ethical salesperson should make their money by discovering the actual needs of customers and helping to fulfill their needs in the best way possible.

Re:glassdoor.com

[ColdWetDog]

We usually find out later that the salespeople sold something to the customers that we don't make.

That's a feature, not a bug. Otherwise the technical folks would forever be on version 1.x.
Sometimes you just have to push people.

Re:glassdoor.com

[metlin]

I was talking about it in terms of skills - I've met plenty of marketing geeks who are very quantitative, and have strong technical backgrounds (including PhDs in engineering, statistics and economics). Given that a lot of what marketing has to do is analytical, this is not surprising. I've also met some socially challenged marketing people, which would be a curious thing for many Slashdotters who automatically assume that everyone in marketing is a schmuck who enjoys schmoozing with people.

Even the soft skills in marketing tend to be quite unique (e.g. it takes a strong, creative streak to come up with good design, catchy elements etc). Certain distinguishing elements of Google (like the colors, the fact that they change their logo periodically, their April 1st pranks) are obvious now, but quite obviously, it took some very creative people to think that up. That is not to say that there aren't bad designers out there; just that design is just one part of marketing, and good design (like everything else) is not something anyone can do. In some ways, I'm reminded of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

Apart from their specific skills (e.g. languages, art, design, user experience etc), most of the creative marketing folks are also skilled at ethnography and the like (either naturally, or because they work at it).

Sales on the other hand, does not require a lot of hard skills, just very good soft skills. As far as sales is concerned, they are tasked with selling something, and they will try and do their best to sell it. Now, this is by no means easy, but it (usually) does not necessitate any technical skills - be it in math, finance or whatever else. Which is why it is very valuable to have a technically strong sales person (imagine a sales person who is excellent at finance). While not particularly uncommon, it usually doesn't happen.

Most sales people usually tend to be very social (and sociable, affable) people who are just good at what they do. Their education helps, but is usually is immaterial because nobody is going to ask to see a sales person's CV - just their sales track record. On the other hand, you wouldn't want to hire someone to do marketing distribution channel analysis without an adequate background in the area.

So, yes, marketing and sales are related, but in terms of skills, both are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum.

Re:glassdoor.com

[stewbacca]

I'll bite. Am I missing the joke somewhere?

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to Apple. Apple has good engineering but if you don't think they market the shit out of their product. You're kidding yourself.

Apple commercials are on all the network. At times, appear every other commercial.

Apple also markets using billboards, buses, magazines.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Thelasko]

That's a feature, not a bug. Otherwise the technical folks would forever be on version 1.x. Sometimes you just have to push people.

That would be fine if every product they sold got better and better. Unfortunately, they usually sell something we used to make 20 years ago, with additional features we have yet do develop. It's more like forking a project over and over, instead of moving on to version 2.0.

Oh, and they promised them they would have it by tomorrow. This isn't software, this is a physical product. Good luck getting union labor to pull an all nighter.

I have to run, the president of the company is about to give a speech about why we spend so much on R&D, and how we can reduce that figure.

Re:glassdoor.com

[slimjim8094]

If you're writing and selling something that people genuinely don't need and you need to 'convince' them to buy it... you're making the wrong thing. Plain and simple. A good product sells itself through logic and (just enough) advertising to make its name known

Because this is slashdot, here's a car analogy:
I make a car with 10 cupholders and a 2-cylinder engine. It gets 3 miles to the gallon, if you're lucky. But it has built-in 115VAC outlets.

That car company doesn't deserve to stay in business. And if you took part in that, you should've realized that it was a stupid idea. You don't have a right to sell a product that nobody needs. There are plenty of things that people actually could use, make those.

Re:glassdoor.com

[speedtux]

What about convincing a customer they have a need for your product, when they really don't?

For people that do that, there shouldn't be a glass ceiling, they should get fired outright. Or do you believe that the customer isn't going to figure this out sooner or later?

You should try working in sales for a year, and see if you still have this attitude. When you find out just how hard the job really is, you might start appreciating those who can do it well.

Sure, it's a hard job. So is cleaning toilets. Neither of those should qualify you to lead a company.

Re:glassdoor.com

[woot account]

Point well taken.

I still say, though, that even if that's a useful application of marketing, the general opinion of the tech-oriented /. crowd will be that marketing is only used to sell things people don't need.

Re:glassdoor.com

[slimjim8094]

Of course it's not evil. What you described is a simple conversation - but I've only met about 5 marketers that are that honest and frank.

He's talking more about something like Vista: marketing thought it would be awesome if it looked pretty, etc. So it got delayed, time was spent working on the graphics so cool tech like WinFS wasn't implemented, and we're all left with something that marketing can go 'ooh, shiny' at. Aside from the fact that nobody's life was ever made easier because of graphics, and would have been made easier by the slightly less flashy tech.

Re:glassdoor.com

[slimjim8094]

Google is successful because dealings with them don't repeatedly leave a bad taste in the mouth. Microsoft (Vista aside) generally starts out pretty well, yes it's easy to do the usual stuff etc. But try and do anything more complex, it's difficult or impossible and support is essentially nonexistent.

Google has managed to retain the feel of a bunch of nerds cranking out cool stuff from a garage somewhere (Google Labs helps here). Microsoft feels like a monolithic faceless entity. Everybody's had problems with Windows, and it's never fixed.

If Google can continue to stay at the cutting edge of stuff with voluntary (not reactionary) additions of features for cheap or free, they will stay at the top. There's always a market for ads.

Microsoft hasn't been proactive in years (some would say never). I used Compiz on a Intel 855GM about a year and a half before Vista came out, and it worked great. That's not bleeding-edge on Microsoft's part, and bleeding-edge is necessary for a major tech company.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

You misinterpreted what he said. A good salesman is worth lots of money to a company, and usually is very well compensated. Promotion up through the sales and marketing organization is fine. Unfortunately, when the road warrior doesn't want to travel any more he often gets promoted into a program manager or general manager slot. The shmoozing and negotiation skills that served so well when selling place him at a great advantage over the technical staff, but too often they are used to "sell" bad ideas to the organization. Been there, seen that.

Re:glassdoor.com

[techno-vampire]

Who keeps an eye on that red stapler, then?

It's chained to my desk, and nobody in the office has access to a pair of bolt cutters.

Re:glassdoor.com

[wilder_card]

Damn. I want to hire you for my company. First I'll have to get a company...

Re:glassdoor.com

[jgarra23]

This is incorrect. No one NEEDED a cellphone until they were created. No one NEEDED a microwave or a television.

There's the old adage of the two shoe salesmen who went to Australia back in the 19th century. The first came back and said "bad news, the natives don't wear shoes..." well the 2nd came back and said "good news, the natives don't wear shoes!"

The point is that sure we don't need it, so what? That doesn't mean the product/service isn't a necessity which people won't need in the future or that it won't enhance their lives somehow.

There are plenty of sleazy salesmen out there but they're not sleazy for selling people products they didn't perceive a need for.

As an engineer, I love the misplaced disdain for salespeople amongst my colleagues, sure they have a reason to hate people in sales but they're often so wrong as to why they hate these people. Maybe it's because this particular salesperson can't remember your name, or maybe they can't turn the sales-talk off?? There are plenty of better inter-personal reasons to hate people in sales.

Re:glassdoor.com

[dwiget001]

Yeap, but then again, part of my job in the technical area was teaching sales and marketing people the "tech" side of things. And, given that I was a sales person in the area, I knew what to teach them. That included "you have to increase your technical knowledge on a continuing basis in order to do your job effectively". Some of those people are still with the company, in the Sales division going on 15 years now. I was one of the few "sales person turned tech person" in this company, there has only been one other one besides me. Both of us were very successful in sales and have been even more successful in our technical positions. Not every sales person is cut out to be nor has the drive to become a tech person, in my own experience.

Re:glassdoor.com

[k_187]

to my knowledge Java hasn't been around for 20 years. (and yes I'm too lazy to look it up, its quitting time anyway.)

Re:glassdoor.com

[techno-vampire]

So they're scum for selling the products you created?

No. They're scum for selling the products I make to the wrong people to solve the wrong problems. I worked, once, doing programming and support for a little software company making a specialized program for law firms. The company finally failed because of two things. The first one was that we had so many returns because the program didn't do what the salesdroids claimed it would, or couldn't be used to do what they'd led the customer to expect. The other was that there was no provision for deducting returns from their commissions. That meant that they had no reason to be honest because even if we refunded the price, they got paid. Clearly, neither the founder nor the venture capitalists he worked with understood how Sales works!

Re:glassdoor.com

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

I have been on both sides. It taught me one thing: Get everything in writing before currency changes hands.
If a product does what they say it will do, this should not be a problem.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketing in charge of products also gets you the Max and iPhone ... even though I hate them both. =]

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, then they can shat out disastrous rushed products to make arbitrary release dates.

Re:glassdoor.com

[stewbacca]

Not only has it not been around for 20 years (I don't think), it also isn't very relevant in most tech jobs

Re:glassdoor.com

[Stook]

No. They're scum for selling the products I make to the wrong people to solve the wrong problems.

I would add a third possibility as to why the company failed. The product didn't provide the functionality the company intended to deliver to their targeted market.

Regarding the issue of the company not having a policy to deduct returns, that's something that is relatively easy to fix. Delivering an end product that poses no value to the end consumer is quite another. If the product added value to a market, the sales reps would have figured out that niche and increased sales to that niche.

If the product has no value to offer, who are they supposed to sell too? If there is no place for the product, everyone they sell to is going to be the wrong people with the wrong problem.

I love how people feel that because I created a well constructed (and I use that loosely) product, it will sell itself. You may have coded the best code in the world for the worlds worst product and it's not going to sell jack. There is a possibility, a very real possibility, that the product you created sucks and that's why your company went out of business.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=22980

Look at the story of Epic. They make Clinical Systems for large hospitals, and are kicking everyone else in the industry in the butt. Look at the story for a description for their sales team.

Re:glassdoor.com

[fistfullast33l]

Consultants rarely understand the corporate culture that they work with. That's why they don't stick around long - they're paid to come in, do a job, and be expendeble when layoffs come around or budgets are cut. I rarely trust the opinion of consultants until they can prove to me they understand the environment they're working in.

Re:glassdoor.com

[techno-vampire]

I would add a third possibility as to why the company failed. The product didn't provide the functionality the company intended to deliver to their targeted market.

The real problem was that at the time (mid to late '80s) not enough people understood what we were doing and how much time we could save. (You might say that we were solving a problem that our market didn't preceive as yet.) The program was similar to a document generator, but instead of a long, difficult proceedure for creating a template, the program walked you through the process with some simple, but impressive looking AI. (You'd be surprised how smart a program looks if it remembers what you did last time and suggests the same thing.) Back then, most law firms were using computers like glorified typewriters. That is, instead of using a document generator or mail merge program to produce filings from boiler plate, the secretaries were either retyping them or hand modifying an old one. We might have had a chance to carve out a niche for ourselves, but the problem with the commissions ate the capital before we had time to establish ourselves.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Stook]

Don't twist things here. If you read my post properly, I said, "If you don't have GOOD sales reps and marketing people to push your product..." I never inferred anything about the size of the department correlating to its effectiveness.

While they may not have a marketing department, they certainly have a marketing strategy, it just happens to rely on free participation from non-employees via word of mouth.

Also, don't confuse marketing with sales. Marketing, among many other things, creates a brand awareness while sales, sells. They may rely on word of mouth for brand awareness, but they still sell. It makes sense that they don't have a large sales staff given that they don't have a large list of customers either.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

I would add a third possibility as to why the company failed. The product didn't provide the functionality the company intended to deliver to their targeted market.

That one and the previous ones can be subsumed under a more general heading: sales, marketing and development not being driven by the same goals. It can fail if any of the three components fails: marketing doesn't identify the correct market, development doesn't develop a product correctly tailored to the target market, or sales sells it to the wrong market. And the three kinds of failures can happen at the same time.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Penguinisto]

Not sure why you get modded up. Does it _really_ matter to you whether you are sales peon I or sales peon II or sales peon XVIIVMC?

If each of these sales peons get bonuses and commissions, then the it's not just 'promotions' that drive them, is it?

Also, as a business grows, all departments grow (and divide, then sub-divide...) - including sales.

In a sales department, there will only be so many territorial managers. There will only be so many sales directors.

What kind of promotions did you have in mind?

See above. Also note that most CEO's come from (wait for it...) sales and business backgrounds. Ever wonder why that is? Even in the tech world - how many lines of code or chip designs do you think Paul Otellini accomplished? Samuel Palmisano? How about Steve Ballmer (I honestly don't know the answer in his case...)?

For every Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin, there's at least 100 Samuel Palmisanos (IBM, in case you're curious) and Paul Otellinis, who have never written a line of code, or held a soldering iron.

Color me someone who never got the "Oooo, I just got promoted for doing the same job over and over again".

No matter what the field, it's never the case... management (or rather, fighting both ends of it to get what you need done, done) will insure that. ;)

Re:glassdoor.com

[Quikah]

Take a look at MS and Google. Which one has a lot of sales and marketing people bungling their products?

The only reason Google doesn't have a lot of sales and marketing people is because they don't sell any products, they make all their money from ads (98% according to their last quarterly report).

I think this is partly the reason for the "problems" discussed in the article. The focus is on cool because that is what gets the eyeballs, which increases your ad views. It doesn't matter if there are bugs, as long as it is usable, they don't need to sell or support their products. This is why they can keep gmail in perpetual beta for example, they don't need to "release" it since it is never going to be sold. I would be curious to see a similar look at the Adsense departments at Google, I would imagine it is a lot more corporate.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Lodragandraoidh]

After self-teaching myself programming (two languages) I moved into the division that handles the programming of my company.

I am almost speechless. Do you at least have someone with a CS background and experience doing development overseeing your work? Is that person mentoring you?

Re:glassdoor.com

[Lars512]

I think you severely underestimate the task of the "slick sales guys". I'm sure that every IT organization has its own fine-tuning in terms of the sales/engineering balance, but they're probably not far off as it is.

Even if your product is the best in the market, it's not worth anything if you can't convince people of that. The world is full of great ideas and products which went out of business to an inferior competitor who marketed better.

Furthermore, once your product is above a certain level in cost/impact, customers demand a level of professionalism in sales. You should be able to convince them that your product is the right choice, and then overcome emotional barriers to making that choice.

That said, the best sales people (in my experience) are those who elicit your real needs, tell you hard facts, and point you in the right direction, even if that doesn't involve buying their product this time. Sounds a lot like requirements engineering, doesn't it. These guys get your respect, and the long term return business, since you'll go back to them every time.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Atlantis-Rising]

That is the job of a consultant, not a salesperson.

Ideally, the two are not the same person.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Blakey Rat]

Here's a thought...if the customer really doesn't need your product or it's not worth what you are charging, maybe your product sucks. How about hiring better engineers that can develop a product so good that sells itself instead of paying top dollar for slick sales guys that can talk executives into buying crap.

Maybe the product sucks because the company has too many "better engineers" who don't understand the intended customer, don't know how to make the product usable, and haven't bothered to write any manuals or tutorials for it.

Software development is a team effort. Adding more engineers isn't a recipe for making a product more successful, necessarily.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Here I have my computer set up the way I want ...

Ubuntu, eh?

Re:glassdoor.com

[drooling-dog]

You should try working in sales for a year, and see if you still have this attitude.

At the very least, it would make a good (and funny) reality TV show...

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Technical people often have a percise and factual way of stating things so devoid of padding that may appear rude. This is often mistaken for a disdain for people who don't understand technical things, which is why this board is full of responses similar to yours.

It's some sort of fake, embarrassing elitism that I wish marketing drunks would grow out of.

FTFY

Re:glassdoor.com

[story645]

I think that's 'cause some of the ./ crowd seems to buy into cartoon stereotypes of the evil adman. I've done lots of pr for non-profits, mostly to recruit people or raise money for a good cause.

I headed PR for my high school's robotics team and I wasn't trying to sell anyone anythying; I just wanted to get us cash (in the form of sponsers) so we could buy the parts we needed for our robot and some girls 'cause they look good to sponsers/US FIRST. I do the same thing for my college robotics club and team 'cause well a bot costs money and it helps to have people to build it and in any school sufficiently large there's no way people will know what's going on without telling 'em.

Out in the real world, good marketing's a large part of why the 'buntus are going strong Canonical's got a great marketing team that knows how to sell the product and to who, which is why it's slowly picking up market share and reaching a lot newbies. Joel on Software makes a point about how Torvalds "evangelized" linux, which is really another way of saying marketed it. Slashdot posters play into the game all the time with the pro-FOSS, anti-MS rethoric; they play right into the new word-of-mouth marketing strategy that's become all the rage.

Re:glassdoor.com

[methuselah]

Spoken like a true salesman. salesmen generally wildly over estimate their value and how easy they are to come by. Ill grant you a tech with no "personal skills" cannot manage well. A bullshit artist is just that full of shit and useless to technical people. Its just common sense to look within the pool of competent technical talent to look for management to "bring" along. To many times I have been stuck on a project with a politician in charge because this is the traditional business method and the project just failed miserably. Google has a track record of being fairly successful at completing project competently. If this is because they don't promote people above their ability to comprehend what it is they are involved in and this leaves "sales and marketing" out then that explains a lot to me about their success.

Re:glassdoor.com

[story645]

Uh, 'cause a lot of engineers don't want to talk to them? Even if they don't think of the customers as idiots, they think of 'em as a hassle. Even the understanding ones often have trouble with communication knowing what level to keep the conversation at so as not go over the customers heads and not be patronizing, the right questions to ask to figure out what the customer really wants (which is often completely different from what they requested in the first place), and just how to talk to them.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Daengbo]

From you:

the general opinion of the tech-oriented /. crowd will be that marketing is only used to sell things people don't need. --

Quoting from the GGGP:

What an incredibly bone headed thing to say. Have you ever tried selling an expensive product to a customer? What about convincing a customer they have a need for your product, when they really don't?(emphasis added)

See now why that opinion exists? That's what started the whole "That's why Sales and Marketing are scum" set of comments above you.

Wasting six mod points to set the record straight

Re:glassdoor.com

[mjwx]

I vote "third ark".

I thought all the Salesmen and Telephone Sanitisers were slated to go on the "B" ark?

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone that didn't belong on said Ark would recognize that it was the "B Ark"

But don't worry, we'll be along right behind you.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

You've totally got your finger on the pulse my man. The only way to head a big project is to keep it real with the peeps. Technical skills are useless if you can't synergize your actuality.
The last head of Engineering (before I came along and saved the day) was just some guy who seemed to only be interested in wizzmos, du-dads and gobeldy-gook. He couldn't leverage creative value cost containment. He would use phrases like "techincally impossible", "illegal" and "idiotic".
Since I took over with my revolutionary program, "Effiency Is Line Count Per Dollar" our software engineers are producing way more code then they were before. We will be shipping the first product that was produced under my leadership soon. It is a LCD screen that will be mounted on the hoods of vehicles to inform the drivers of amazing deals in the area. For the next version I plan to have the cars drive to our Value Added Distribution Points automatically when a deal that would be in the best interest of the driver is detected in the area. With the help of congress I plan to make our devices mandatory.
Upper management things I am doing a great job. I already make over seven times what that silly engineer made and I am probably going to promoted (again) soon.

Booyeah!

Re:glassdoor.com

[danilo.moret]

Mod parent up.

He's right, most people don't understand that good marketing is not about promotions only, and definitely isn't sales. Good engineers will tell you how to do things, how long it will take to do them, and will come up with some good ideas. Good product marketing will tell you what to do, how to present it, even how to charge for it. And good sales people will assist your customers in choosing what to buy, how to buy and gently tell them to pay good prices for these great products your marketing and engineers guys built.

Re:glassdoor.com

[corbettw]

Google has a track record of being fairly successful at completing project competently.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Good one.

And for the record, I'm a sysadmin (though I've tried sales in the past and did not do well at it).

Re:glassdoor.com

[slimjim8094]

That assumes the product in question is useful. You missed my sentence about 'genuinely don't need'.

A good salesman will always have a job. No matter how cynical you or I may be, there are always interesting, out of the box technologies and inventions that need to be sold to people that previously wouldn't have needed. Electricity was great, but people had gas for light and mules for labor without any of that dangerous magic coming into their house and starting fires

But then there are lots of products that pretty much aren't useful to anybody. That's why people hate marketers - the loudest ones are for things like the 'almighty cleanse', mixing religion with fake (and probably dangerous) medicine. That's why marketers are hated - selling crap that nobody needs to people who don't know any better.

It's a lot like lawyers - the loudest are hated for being sleazeballs, while good lawyers like NYCL are a breath of fresh air. Both are necessary evils, to some extent.

Re:glassdoor.com

[simplerThanPossible]

Sales and Marketing guys are 100% pointless, apart from the money and customers they bring in.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a word for people like you.

Sociopath.

Re:glassdoor.com

[fermion]

Reminds me of the line from AbFab, where Eddie is correcting the misconception of her daughter, telling her that PR is about telling people about products they don't yet know that they need.

It also amazing me at the even the lowest of the tech worker lives in a glass tower. Who needed a transistor radio? Who needed a car? Who needs a computer, or a website, or email. How many semiskilled web monkeys would be begging for scraps on the street if the PR people did not create a need for new products? It does not just magically happen you know.

I am not marketing, I just know that as much as we would like to, we can't ship the the annoying 1/3 or our workforce to another planet just because it is not immediately obvious what they do. It is like the roach. They must have some purpose. In any case, if one has the job of developing the sleazy product that requires the sleazy sales person, then there is little basis for moral superiority.

Re:glassdoor.com

[The_reformant]

The main reason is that they promise undeliverable things. Management on the technical end back them up (cos we cant lose a x million $ contract) and then the tech staff end up working sgtupid hours hacking together something that pays lip service to whatever feature the sales guy has promised.

Re:glassdoor.com

[RiotingPacifist]

They still have to talk to you! If you dont have the required technical knowledge to speak to the enginiers in a language they understand if not you at best just pass on the same information the customer gave you or worse you pass on less information than the technically minded customer.

Re:glassdoor.com

[RiotingPacifist]

Steve Ballmer (I honestly don't know the answer in his case...)?

all i could find was

He has headed several divisions within Microsoft including "Operating Systems Development", "Operations", and "Sales and Support."

But im sure he was called in as a sales manager when windows x was released because sales of previous versions weren't good.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I dub it laissez faire marketing.

Re:glassdoor.com

[peragrin]

apple doesn't let marketing near a product until after steve approves the product. it is how they can keep products under wraps until it is almost ready for launch.

Marketers can't keep secrets, ever. Didn't you read the article about privacy policy's earlier?

Re:glassdoor.com

[Scuzzm0nkey]

Whooooooosh! Watch Office Space sometime

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Your organization's Internet use policy restricts access to this web page at this time.

Reason: The Websense category "Reality" is filtered.

Re:glassdoor.com

[sm62704]

What's embarrassing is that I'm in the middle of Restaraunt (again) and the captain is in the bath offering Ford and Arthur Gynnyn Tonyxes.

I think I'm getting Al Sheimers.

Re:glassdoor.com

[MrMarket]

The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

Re:glassdoor.com

[Buskaatt]

Spoken like a true techie (with no marketing experience)

Re:glassdoor.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I have to disagree with that - changes in the UI (and that includes graphics) to create a more streamlined user experience will in fact boost your productivity and make things easier. Take the revised Alt-Tab in Vista and XP and compare that to earlier versions of Windows where you did not get the little preview of the window and had to hunt among several identical icons for the file/application you were looking for. Flip 3D is just a more glitzy version of that but even there the preview feature actually adds to the experience and makes lives easier. Just a tiny feature you say? If anyone using Windows just saves a few seconds a day that adds up to a quie sizable amount of money ...

Re:glassdoor.com

[dwiget001]

Yes, we have four or five with a CS background and experience that monitor, direct me on how to correct my work (when needed), etc. This company has been around for 20 plus years now, lots of very experienced programmers around, including our CEO.

No, google's problem is the exact same as...

[juuri]

,,, Microsoft's is (was?).

Outside of a few exceptions google has managed to quite quickly develop an intense monoculture of people afraid to buck the system or trends. This is to be expected with rapid growth; too bad for them.

Re:No, google's problem is the exact same as...

[ShieldW0lf]

No, google's problem is the exact same as... (Score:1, Troll) by juuri (7678) Alter Relationship on Wednesday July 02, @12:19PM (#24032409) Homepage ,,, Microsoft's is (was?). Outside of a few exceptions google has managed to quite quickly develop an intense monoculture of people afraid to buck the system or trends. This is to be expected with rapid growth; too bad for them.

They're a one trick pony, like MS (who had 2 tricks, OS and Office) who have been given gobs of money in the hopes that they weren't. But they are.

They decided to start "monetizing" their garage offering and make "me too" apps, just like MS, and they've been going downhill ever since.

Re:No, google's problem is the exact same as...

[ady1]

>>and they've been going downhill ever since.

I would like to smoke what you are smoking. It sounds really promising.

One sentence summary of Microsoft

[antifoidulus]

"Microsoft's big problem is that it doesn't realize its not the only game in town anymore"

Re:One sentence summary of Microsoft

[russlar]

"Microsoft's big problem is that it doesn't realize its not the only game in town anymore"

I disagree. I think that Microsoft is well aware that it isn't the only game in town. What they don't understand, is how to remedy the situation.

You are right in inferring that MS was the only game in town for a long time, and it is because of this that they seem so dumbstruck now. They know they're being overtaken, but they have no idea what to do about it, because they've never had to compete directly before.

Re:One sentence summary of Microsoft

[dgatwood]

I disagree. I think that Microsoft is well aware that it isn't the only game in town. What they don't understand, is how to remedy the situation.

"Remedy the situation" is an interesting choice of words, as it could be interpreted two ways---the way that you probably meant it and the way that is more accurate but less flattering. IMHO, it's not that they don't know how to survive and thrive as one of many players, but rather that they don't know how to get back to a monopoly state. Microsoft's fundamental problem is that their corporate goal does not seem to merely be doing well for themselves as a company, but rather making sure nobody else does/can. It's a completely backwards corporate mentality and will eventually be their downfall in much the same way that treating their customers as likely criminals has hurt them significantly. The goal of a company cannot be to eke out every last possible cent.

Put another way, the goal of a company must be to remain reasonably profitable while behaving responsibly, reasonably, and treating their customers, suppliers, and even their competitors with due respect. Sure, sociopathic corporate behavior serves companies well in the short term, but as Microsoft is seeing now, it eventually comes back to bite them in the you-know-what.

Re:One sentence summary of Microsoft

[russlar]

IMHO, it's not that they don't know how to survive and thrive as one of many players, but rather that they don't know how to get back to a monopoly state. Microsoft's fundamental problem is that their corporate goal does not seem to merely be doing well for themselves as a company, but rather making sure nobody else does/can.

That is my point. All MS knows how to do is create and monopolize a market where no pre-existing competition exists. Now that there is competition, from Goole on the web and from Linux as an OS, MS is lost. They don't know how to "survive and thrive as one of many players", because that has never been their goal.

Re:One sentence summary of Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Shareholders expect increases in profits, or they will force changes in the management of the organization. If Microsoft merely "does well" instead of continually rising in profits, the shareholders will not be pleased.

Microsoft's problem is that they're up so high at the top end of the spectrum that there really isn't anywhere to go but down. So they have to come up with new avenues, new tricks, new ways of squeezing out more pennies from their customers, while doing anything they can to get new ones. They can't get any more money or become "more profitable" without crossing the ethical threshold, which they have done countless times.

Microsoft is a great example of capitalism in progress, and is an example of a company that chose to toss ethics out the window and stay in business, instead of stay ethical and lose their business to their competitors. But it's only a short-term solution, as they're discovering.

They should have accepted the break-up option that the DoJ was trying to push on them instead of buing/forcing their way out of it. It would have given them new opportunities.

-M

What's new

[Frankie70]

What's new in this slashdot story?
The only link here which was not covered by the earlier story here is
the Wikipedia link?

Hmmm, I see a pattern...

[tgd]

Based on people I know who have done it, and other stuff I've seen online it seems everyone goes from Microsoft to Amazon because they want excitement, then Amazon to Google because they realize Amazon isn't that exciting, and then Google back to Microsoft because they realize they want to work 40 hour weeks and be comfortable.

semi-dupe?

[fragbait]

I don't know if I'd really call this a dupe because I think all the links in this post were AT the other article instead of IN the slashdot post.

-fragbait

Ballmer's chair thowing....

[8127972]

.... Is clearly having an effect in bringing talent back to Microsoft.

Re:Ballmer's chair thowing....

[JCSoRocks]

Where else can you write software *and* learn to juggle chairs!? I bet they have a heckuva dodgeball team too... "If you can dodge a chair, you can dodge a ball!"

Re:Ballmer's chair thowing....

[bomanbot]

If they want to bring back talent, shouldnt Ballmer throw lassos or boomerangs instead of chairs? Should be much easier to haul them in that way ;-)

Why does he care ?

[dbcad7]

Why doesn't he focus his energy on the company HE works for ? ... I think I'll spend tomorrow seeing if I can't fix our competitions problems for them.

Makes me like google more

[Minter92]

Is it odd that that made me like google more? It seems like a place that I would like. I place where a person can be creative and free from bureaucracy. A place where ideas can foster and be developed quickly.

But I've never worked at either place so what do I know.

Please tag

[MyLongNickName]

ZOMBOcom. Clearly they are winning the talent war.

Re:Please tag

[Chris Mattern]

Because, after all, you can do *anything* at ZOMBOcom.

Re:Please tag

[Thelasko]

ZOMBOcom. Clearly they are winning the talent war.

Extra funny points for bringing up a random website I haven't visited in years. I forgot all about that.

Re:Please tag

[JakeD409]

Wow, I thought I was the only one who had heard of this site. I'm so relieved!

Re:Please tag

[dkleinsc]

No you can't. ZOMBO has lied to you. OBMOZcom is winning the talent war.

Re:Please tag

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, that's really weird. Scary, really.

At first I thought you were referring to a company where the entire marketing/sales department was staffed by zombies. Now, that would be an unstoppable sales force!

Re:Please tag

[b4dc0d3r]

I thought he was tied with McCain - are the polls updated?

Tim B^Uckley

[Anonymous Coward]

I nominate Tim B^Uckley of Ctrl-Alt-Del fame. He's the most talented person in the world; otherwise what reason would he have to dismiss and act aggressive towards criticism? He's like that because he has elevated the visual arts and expert draftsmanship to a level that few illustrators can ever hope to achieve.

B^U

Declare yourself the winner

[192939495969798999]

The easiest way to win at something is just to declare yourself the winner as soon as you possibly can, because it's apparently much harder to reverse a decision once any kind of decision has been made on the winner (i.e. the 2000 US presidential election, where Bush just "declared" himself the victor and became president, despite actually losing the vote).

Re:Declare yourself the winner

[sm62704]

The easiest way to win at something is just to declare yourself the winner as soon as you possibly can

Yeah, that really worked well for the Saddam Hussein.

Re:Declare yourself the winner

[4D6963]

The easiest way to win at something is just to declare yourself the winner as soon as you possibly can

And if that doesn't work, just 'adapt' the definition of "winning".

Re:Declare yourself the winner

[Actually, I do RTFA]

(i.e. the 2000 US presidential election, where Bush just "declared" himself the victor and became president, despite actually losing the vote

He won the election. You can complain about the Supreme Court ruling that led him to win the election. You can complain about voter disenfrancisment in Flordia that put it into the Supreme Court's hand. You can complain about the electoral college overruling the popular vote. But his declaration was only made (and not subsequently retracted) after the Supreme Court had handed him victory.

Popularlity Cycles

[blahbooboo]

I think when companies get this large it's all about "cycles of popularity." All places have their pluses and minuses, and the few reports in this article are hardly of such grandiose statements. I can say having interacted with a lot of Microsoft people lately they really do have a thing against google. The mantra really is "Google doesn't really do anything successfully other than search." I think someone said on Slashdot that Microsoft makes software people have to use, Google makes products people want to use.

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[dedazo]

The mantra really is "Google doesn't really do anything successfully other than search."

Actually the point of that blurb is that Google doesn't do anything profitably other than search and the ads attached to that. Which makes Google essentially a one-trick pony. Which is always dangerous, yet at the same time diversification sometimes brings loss of focus. All companies go through that sort of thing. Some make it and some don't. I don't see Google not making it though.

Microsoft makes software people have to use, Google makes products people want to use.

I'd disagree with that. There are a lot of Google "products" I dislike, and even a few I've enjoyed using they've ended up shuttering (like hello.com). On the other hand, there are lots of Microsoft products I enjoy using, like most of their server SKUs, .NET, Visual Studio, etc. Of course there are MS products I won't touch as well.

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[UnknowingFool]

Google doesn't do anything profitably other than search and the ads attached to that.

Technically you could say that Microsoft doesn't do anything profitably except OS and Office software. Most other ventures of MS don't make profit. Xbox360 while considered a success is nearly $6billion in debt. Zune hasn't made a dent. Hotmail hardly makes anything. The list goes on.

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[dedazo]

Technically you could say that Microsoft doesn't do anything profitably except OS and Office software.

Technically that would make them a two-trick pony, which is twice as good as a one-trick pony.

Xbox360 while considered a success is nearly $6billion in debt

Wrong.

The list goes on.

Go on then. The development tools division has been in the black for a long time, as has the server products division (outside of Windows Server, which is also on the black). Their hardware group (input devices and things like WiFi adapters) has also always turned a profit. The Mobile Devices and business solutions groups lost no more than $10 million last quarter, IIRC. MSN is also in the black (not at Google levels obviously), and Hotmal is part of that. So Zune and, outside of the XBox, the home entertainment division also lost money. What else?

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[MightyMartian]

Microsoft employees likely hate Google for the same reason that Ford and GM employees are probably pissed at Toyota and Honda, because the latter are manufacturing more of the kinds of cars that people want, while the former, through the sheer incompetence of upper level management, kept building the kind of cars no one wants.

Microsoft has been trying since the mid-1990s to create THE web presence, the portal that everyone would go to. They failed early on against Yahoo, and it's been the same crap even after Google took Yahoo's premier position. Microsoft is suffering the same fate that it's competitors did in the late 1980s. Simply put, Google has has laid its claim on web portal/web apps, and everyone else is playing catch up, just as Microsoft did for personal computers. The problem for Microsoft is that in this analogy, it's not even the Apple of the Web, it's more like the Commodore or the Atari (and we know what happened to them).

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[ChatHuant]

Technically you could say that Microsoft doesn't do anything profitably except OS and Office software.

You could indeed say that, but you'd be wrong by billions of dollars. The SQL Server group is highly profitable as well, making almost a billion in profit in the first quarter of 2008, and over 3 billion over the 9 months ending March 31. See the numbers here, in note 9 (SQL Server is under Server and Tools). Note that even the Entertainment division (makers of the XBox) made a profit that quarter, and also in the 9 month ending March 31. The only division in the red is the Online division (no surprise there).

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[UnknowingFool]

Wrong.

The article you mention only says that the Xbox division is profitable in Q2. It also says that the company is profitable overall. It does not mention that the division has lost $6 billion since the Xbox was created. Any profit that Xbox makes now is only paying back for the initial losses.

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[Foofoobar]

Hmmm... Sql Server. Not games. Not operating system. Seems to oddly fall under 'OFFICE SOFTWARE'!!! *slaps you for being st00pid with two o's*

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[uniquename72]

Funny, my copy of MS Office -- which is what OP clearly meant by "Office software" -- didn't come with SQL Server. Maybe I should call the MS rep and find out what's up. *slaps you for having no reading comprehension skills*

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[Foofoobar]

Oh... clearly whats meant merely because it has 'Office' in the title? That's awfully simplistic thinking? You must be a visual basic developer huh? So what then you use SQL server at home to play Quake? NO?!! Oh well then your kids use it for the education. NO?!!! Where where would you deploy SQL Server huh? What location would it be deployed in, I wonder. Some sort of cubicle laden environment managed by some type of managers with an office type decor. What do they call that? Oh yeah. It's called an OFFICE moron!!

Hence Office software... duh. Get a brain and then come back to have this discussion in two years when you've learned how to operate it.

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[uniquename72]

One doesn't capitalize the 'o' when referring to general office software. It's pretty simple, really.

You see, in English, capital letters are reserved for specific occurrences, one of them being proper nouns, which would include the use of capitalization in the word 'Office' in the post you replied to (but only if the OP was referring to the name brand).

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[Foofoobar]

Semantics is the last resort of a losing argument. Look at the Microsoft org chart to see where they place SQL Server in and then come back and tell me how right I am.

Re:Popularlity Cycles

[ChatHuant]

Look at the Microsoft org chart to see where they place SQL Server in and then come back and tell me how right I am.

SQL Server is made by the Server and Tools division, and the Office suite by the Business division, so it looks like you're not right at all.

The only winning move...

[IBitOBear]

... is not to play.

Would you like to play a nice game of chess Professor Falcon?

(Seriously, companies in every industry are constantly exchanging employees. Every industry ends up terribly inbred. So the war is eternal and nobody can "win" it. Saying it's a Web Talent war is like "the war on [concept]". It's a kind of Professional Jingoism.)

Re:The only winning move...

[MyLongNickName]

I have to admit I am not sure how this relates to the original post.

Re:The only winning move...

[IBitOBear]

It's just a minor screed about how everything is "a war" even when it isn't anything like a war at all.

The original article depicts people moving between similar companies as a "Web 2.0 Talent War".

The Parent tries to "infiltrate" a third company.

I make a "War Games" movie reference and then follow it with a serious observation that not all conflicting interests constitute a war.

You have to consider it as a whole...

Ah, more screed on the death of context... 8-)

Re:The only winning move...

[MyLongNickName]

If you say so. Not sure how it ties in to the zombo.com post, but maybe I am missing something :)

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[account_deleted]

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direct urls

[whtmarker]

direct glassdoor.com links:
reviews of microsoft
reviews of google

Not One Size Fits All

[cthrall]

It's always kind of funny when companies wonder about retaining staff. It shouldn't be that hard to answer that question.

If people are happy with their compensation and their work, they will stay. If they are not happy, they will leave.

And this is different for everybody. Some people want to work 40hrs. Some people are ok working more if the compensation is there. Some people want to work on prototyping with new technology. Some people want to work on designing large scale solutions.

When you are small, it is arguably easier to treat everybody differently. Once you scale, you start having these "one size fits all" reviews and compensation packages that don't really capture what people think is important.

Free lunch is cool, but will it make up for the fact that your manager isn't any good? Spending 20% of your week on your own project is cool, but what if you already worked 50hrs on something that's overdue where you didn't come up with the estimate?

Re:Not One Size Fits All

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Free lunch is cool, but will it make up for the fact that your manager isn't any good?

No, but these are unrelated. Free lunch and a good manager is better than no free lunch and a good manager. Separate issues.

Spending 20% of your week on your own project is cool, but what if you already worked 50hrs on something that's overdue where you didn't come up with the estimate?

If you spent 50hrs working on an overdue project then the planning has already failed miserably and things need to be revamped. The 20% on your own project is partly to make sure you don't get burned out by working excessively on one project. Working really long hours, especially all on the same thing is not a sustainable development method. It's fine for a few people at a start up (I've done it) but when you start to grow, it just doesn't scale. That's partly why Google tends not to release things on a fixed schedule, but instead whenever they are sufficiently complete and stable. Seriously, if you're looking at working 50hrs to try to get something done at the last minute, the people allocating the manpower and putting together the schedule failed spectacularly and a better solution is just to delay the release while engineers work sane hours, but do better quality work.

Exodus of talent, not migration?

[sandysnowbeard]

Truly talented people should eventually feel the onus of working for someone else's company and branch off to do their own things. Inevitably a God-gifted talent is going to have some crazy and genius ideas that do NOT fit the corporate mold and whose superiors will be uncomfortable with such ideas and whose potential they will not be able to see. And such people will get out.

For instance, ignoring the dubious notion of 'morality', how many projects have the top Google guys stifled because they were 'evil' or didn't see their potential? Sometimes you just want to make evil.

Thus, I'd argue that perhaps it's not truly a mass-exodus from Google TO Microsoft or Amazon, but just seems that way because of the constant influx of new hires to feed the beasts. Many of the top talents go to start-ups or back to school, or in some cases out of the comp. sci. world entirely.

Re:Exodus of talent, not migration?

[sm62704]

Truly talented people should eventually feel the onus of working for someone else's company and branch off to do their own things.

Talent is plentiful, but multitalent is rare. Someone good at programming will likely not be good at marketing. Just because you're a good guitar player doesn't mean you'll be any good at selling shoes. Talent in any field isn't inborn; every field requires training. Just because you're a good linebacker doen't mean you'll be a good coach.

For instance, ignoring the dubious notion of 'morality', how many projects have the top Google guys stifled because they were 'evil' or didn't see their potential? Sometimes you just want to make evil.

IHBT? How can you say morality is dubious? If a thing you do hurts people besides yourself, it's wrong. The only people who can't understand that are psychopaths and sociopaths.

Dare Obasanjo is a committed partisan

[crush]

Anyone who saw even his earliest writing (ie. in Kuro5hin when he was just interning) is aware that he views everything through the highly tinted lens of internal Microsoft propaganda.

In any case Google are still best positioned to control the web for the forseeable future and Microsoft is thus being bonzaied into competing in the operating system arena and having their lunch eaten by Apple on the desktop front and GNU/Linux on the server front.

At least Mono means that all the time that Dare has invested in .Net won't be completely wasted :)

Re:Dare Obasanjo is a committed partisan

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who saw even his earliest writing (ie. in Kuro5hin when he was just interning) is aware that he views everything through the highly tinted lens of internal Microsoft propaganda.

A pretty savvy way to climb the corporate ladder applies to the modern medium.

Could it be ....

[Anonymous Coward]

... that Google's success is the result of actually providing good products/services instead of providing poor to mediocre products/services but having marketing and sales douchebags put a more positive spin on them?

Tags

[Idiomatick]

Can someone tag this flamebait. Along with the last article on the issue. I mean COME ON you are quoting a msft lackey on Google. No shit he is going to say bad things. Google doesn't have problems getting the people they need. This is stupid, and I thank God that Google isn't just like microsoft. I'm somewhat amazed that the losing company can point and go oh hey, they suck because they arent just like us, and that has nothing to do with why we are getting crushed in every market they enter.

Salesmanship

[TigerDawn]

The recruiters are over selling the company during hiring, and google keeps falling short of what the recruiters are promising.

The second issue, is the business people have grown their institution to the point, where they feel the IT works are meat, and largely not relevant to the company. So they decide cutbacks are necessary to bring in more business people so the higher up business people can sit and hob nob instead. This of course is referring to middle management, I know the top level management do not last very long in public corps, if all they do is look pretty.

IMHO, based on similar situations in other bloated corps I have worked in.

Corporate Politics

[unapersson]

This seems like something of a propaganda war targeted at those inside Microsoft to try and stop the exodus. Lots of: "Look at me! I used to work at MS, I went to Google, but now I'm back because working at Google really sucks". It's funny that they've all appeared at the same time. It stinks like some kind of campaign.

An a google intern...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had an offer from Microsoft and Google. In the end I chose Google.

Both companies offer different environments. The Google environment suits me better. Some of my friends enjoy the Microsoft environment better. In the end computer science students are the winners. More competition, more money = good.

Microsoft Employee Posts about Google

[MattW]

And the Microsoft employee claims that Google can't build enterprise-class reliability because of their happy-hacker environment. Oooookay.

"How do you write Microsoft employees so well?"

"I picture a Google employee, and I take away reason and accountability."

Re:Microsoft Employee Posts about Google

[FlyingGuy]

Because thats "As good as it gets"...

I wonder how many others got the cool reference.

Debating Class

[Anonymous Coward]

Well he certainly convinced me with such hard hitting comments such as:

From: My Successful Interview at Microsoft

Google sux!

The only think Google wants to know about their candidates are their algorithms and analytical thinking skills. Nothing about technology, nothing about engineering. [Because thinking skills have nothing to do with engineering]

People working in Microsoft are relly very smart and skillful. Their process is far ahead of Google. Their quality of development is far ahead of Google. [And Google is struggling? Vista is flying off the shelves? Botnet crooks don't wake up every day saying "Thank you!" to Microsoft?]

Their [Microsoft's] engineers are better. Their development process is better. Their products are better. Their technologies are better.

It looks like Microsoft is focusing on hiring 14 year old fan boys.

Re:Debating Class

[MightyMartian]

It looks like Microsoft is focusing on hiring 14 year old fan boys.

That would explain why they have never been able to get on the map as a web portal. It's pretty clear by now that the first thing most people do when they get a new Windows box or reinstall Windows is to go Tools-->Options and enter http://www.google.com/ (or sometimes http://www.yahoo.com/) into the Home Page field.

That tells you all you need to do about who has the better Web development. No wonder Redmond keeps going back to Yahoo every other day of the week begging and pleading to let them buy the company. The saddest part of that is that Microsoft honestly thinks that it will somehow make them a real competitor.

Try respecting employees to keep them

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reminded of a thread on this site a few weeks ago where contributors almost uniformly insulted female programmers. Any company that learns to reward ability, not gender, is going to get ahead.

Two Words: Confirmation Bias

[MattW]

The blogs Carnage cites immediately read to me like whining from people who found they couldn't hack it at Google. "There's not enough process!". Translation: "I can't do this unless I can spec it out in massive detail, get feedback from people with a clue, and then have a project manager follow my progress all the way through while 'balancing' other resources into my project when I'm slow!"

"The interviews are all focused on algorithms and not software engineering skills!"

Translation: "My Java vocational training degree didn't prepare me to actually think, and Google doesn't care how into scrums I am! Waah!"

And this is why people love and continue to use Google, especially the clued-in crowd, and why people desperately buy up copies of Microsoft's OLD product because it sucks less than their new product.

Middle ground??

[Panaflex]

My biggest grudge against these places is the "life suckage" they employ...

I mean.. I want to do something other than code 12 hours a day (ya know... sometimes?)

I've been coding since I was 10 years old... I find it fun and enjoyable. That's why I contract... let me decide how to live my life, and I'll provide you timely, reasonable service.

I still relish the thought of doing massive parallel systems dev... I do small clusters now, and I really love it.

Re:Middle ground??

[jsebrech]

My biggest grudge against these places is the "life suckage" they employ...

I mean.. I want to do something other than code 12 hours a day (ya know... sometimes?)

You underestimate the amount of overhead involved in a programming gig. If they can spend half their time coding, I'll be amazed.

I see the 'Submarine' Pattern

[weston]

The Submarine.

Look, how is Microsoft going to compete with Google? What, historically, are their best tactics?

Yeah.

I think we're going to see a lot more articles like this appearing in the press for the forseeable future. Some of the sources will have direct and obvious connections to Microsoft, others won't.

Re:I see the 'Submarine' Pattern

[MightyMartian]

If this is anything like the campaign for Chicago campaign back in 1993-94, we'll likely see a lot more "Windows 7 does live apps sooooo much better" with artistic renderings of supposed screen shots, with lots and lots pro-Microsoft articles in their in-the-pocket computer magazines and industry literature.

Snitcher report

[xadoc]

This sounds more like a snitcher's frustration report than an actual work report.

This was garbage two days ago and is garbage now.

[EjectButton]

This is the same piece of trash that was posted two days ago.
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/30/2240206

I won't repost my entire comment from that discussion, but the entire thing is based on the comments of three people. One interviewed with Google and never worked there, the other two worked at Microsoft, tried Google and had a culture clash, and fled back to Microsoft.

Many slashdot readers might not reconize that it's a dupe since each article links to a different site (with near identical text) and no one bothers to RTFA. Though how can you blame them when the editors don't even read their own site much less the articles on it.

He IS fixing his company's problems

[weston]

Why doesn't he focus his energy on the company HE works for ? ... I think I'll spend tomorrow seeing if I can't fix our competitions problems for them.

He is focusing his energy on the company he works for. This isn't a genuinely friendly suggestion for improvement -- in fact, it's likely it's presented that way to mask what he's really trying to do.

Google's stellar image hurts Microsoft as much as the quality of their products. It influences people to choose them for search and as an ad broker. It encourages top talent to look for employment there instead of MS or elsewhere.

So if there is any cost to offering Google criticism that might end up being constructive to them, it's balanced against the benefit MS may derive if they can successfully tarnish Google's image.

As it happens, in this case, I think there's not even a chance this might be constructive criticism. The engineering-centric culture at Google is considered a feature, not a bug, and it's improbable Google will change this. Everybody writing these articles knows this.

Re:He IS fixing his company's problems

[dbcad7]

I agree..

But you know, if an employee comes up to me and says "You know, that Jonesy is a terrible slacker, doesn't do anything right, and is late all the time.".. Well, that might be something for me to look out for with Jonesy, but it doesn't improve my opinion of the employee who told me all that... In fact it usually gives me a negative impression of them.. and if it turns out that my opinion of Jonesy's work disagrees, well then I think that the employee is a damn lier, and he'll probably be out the door before Jonsey.

Go Left Go Right Where is the middle.

[jellomizer]

Googles problem that is Way Left. Microsoft is on the Right (It use to be left but it moved right), A lot of talent is in the middle those small to mid sized companies, who may never get wide brand reconigtion. But make a good living giving their custers tools they want. Slashdot tends to think of software/service in terms of mostly Consumer level products, stuff that you use on your own system. However there is a huge market of buisness only apps many of them customly made, by a lot of talanted programers who's code will not be recgonized outside their clients. Many of them offer novel and inovative methods to get things done as the reason why they were hired because they couln't find software that did what they wanted done. As well they need to keep their product quality (some will call it eyecandy) up to what people expect and see from companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

Both Microsoft and Google have a huge Ego, Microsoft has been brused lately a bit but not as much as it deserves. And these huge ego's often close their eyes on what is going on.

Re:Gmail is still in beta

[msuarezalvarez]

In the name of $DEITY... they've had more users and success in beta state than most apps out there, webbeased or not. Why do you possibly case if they call it a beta, a gamma or a zeta?

Talent War...?

[jxliv7]

Come on, there is NO war.
 
Unlike some /. articles that want to pit black hat against white hat, MS against the world, or geeks against the techie-muggles, real life is about EVOLUTION. Changes. Progress. Popularity. Seasons. Adapting.
 
If you want to look at life as a struggle or war - whether you're working, socializing, being healthly, improving your finances, whatever - a struggle is what you'll get.
 
Stop this stupid fighting attitude. All you're doing is making yourself upset (over something you have no control).
 

So what happened?

[madmaxmedia]

And now you spend all day surfing and posting on Slashdot, so what happened? ;-) Just kidding. My background has been a mix of marketing and technical, so I can appreciate having a good understanding of both sides. A marketing person can obviously benefit from a good technical background, or even just an *appreciation* and interest in the technical side of things. And vice versa- a technical person who has some appreciation of end user perspective will probably produce better products as well.

Re:So what happened?

[dwiget001]

Ding!

You hit the nail on the head.

I help our sales people constantly from my job in our tech division. I know their job, so I know what they run into, know what the importances are, in regards to the tech they need to know. Plus, knowing how poor customer service effects sales, from my position, I also monitor the customer service lines to ensure our customers are serviced quickly *and* with a high level of technical knowledge and skill. Definitely a much broader view than the majority of our technical staff, but I help keep them in line as well. :)

Re:So what happened?

[dwiget001]

P.S.

As far as surfing and posting on Slashdot, it is within my duties to monitor technical trends, which for me Slashdot is part of. Posting, well, that could be considered a gray area. :)

fear of the giant, planet eating space goat

[Scrameustache]

google on the other hand treats non-engineers (marketing, etc) like second class citizens.

Good, they belong on the B ark.

The Debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Hypothesis is wrong. Google is very aware that it's not a start-up. The people at Google are aware that it's not a start-up.

I'd say the one thing Google realizes is that software development is still a craft. As such, there is a lot of artistic nature in the production of good software.

Most other software companies have screwed up on this point, by mistaking software development for engineering just because the tools and product are "high tech". They are missing the *act* of software development; distracted by all the high tech trappings.

Once a company makes that mistake, it's over. Because bad engineering processes are impossible to pry out. They're like a cancer.

Google is not a start-up in *size*. Hasn't been since before they went public.

And no matter what start-up feel Google manages to maintain, that's the one that will never come back.

They know that.

Microsoft's still trying to be a startup too...

[argent]

A startup has one or two primary products, and everything else the company does is about promoting these.

A mature company the size of Microsoft is either a middleman like Walmart, or it has diversified, and has multiple product lines, and gets worried if any one product line is a significant part of its revenue. A mature company is willing to allow competition between business units. A mature company that puts all its wood behind one arrow and cripples products to avoid competing with their sacred cow(s) ends up like DEC... bought by a company that got started making the personal computers DEC didn't want to undercut the VAX.

Microsoft crippled their handhelds and cut off the micro-notebooks built around Windows CE, and now they're scrambling to come up with a version of Windows that will compete in that market. So instead of having ten or fifteen years of increasingly sophisticated handhelds running efficient but still desktop-quality software that make Linux on the eeePC look sick, they cut that whole line of development off when they introduced Pocket PC for palmtops only and promoted Tablet PC for the notebook-level devices instead.

New Microsoft employee likes MS? Who knew?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article. Next to an annoying Microsoft ad, a Microsoft employee, Dare Obasanjo, says the following. Don't miss the sentence, "Their [Microsoft] products are better." This is the second Dare Obasanjo Slashvertisement in 2 days. Is Slashdot so desperate for money that it is destroying its credibility? Dare, I dare you to answer this: What Microsoft product is "better"?

"Microsoft is Better Place to Work than Google"

"At my interviews I was asking my interviewers in both Microsoft and Google a lot about the development process, engineering and technologies. I was asking also my colleagues working in these companies. I found for myself that Microsoft is better organized, managed and structured. Microsoft do software development in more professional way than Google. Their engineers are better. Their development process is better. Their products are better. Their technologies are better. Their interviews are better. Google was like a kindergarden - young and not experienced enough people, an office full of fun and entertainment, interviews typical for junior people and lack of traditions in development of high quality software products."

versus? really?

[GalacticCmdr]

So a Microsoft (MS) Project Manager got a bunch of quotes from ex-Google people currently working at MS, or people that selected MS over Google for his column. Is his results at all surprising? Would someone return to MS only to give a quote to a MS PM that he much preferred his time at Google?

The article is pure PR crap - nothing more.

Re:versus? really?

[NaijaGuy]

I'm surprised nobody poked fun at the author's Nigerian connections! He is in fact a son of the recent president of Nigeria, and one of my friends used to live with him at a military secondary school (Air Force). I've read some of his blog posts ever since a fellow Rice student told me Dare was an intern on his team at Microsoft (some half a dozen years ago, I think), and he has always struck me as someone who has wanted to make his mark by working hard on his own rather than by harnessing his privileged past.

Re:versus? really?

[MightyMartian]

So a Microsoft (MS) Project Manager got a bunch of quotes from ex-Google people currently working at MS, or people that selected MS over Google for his column. Is his results at all surprising? Would someone return to MS only to give a quote to a MS PM that he much preferred his time at Google?

The article is pure PR crap - nothing more.

Everything that comes out of Microsoft is bullshit. Whether it's employee blogs or the odd Microsoft rep (and that means anyone in Microsoft) who comes on Slashdot, it's all lies and half-truths. Nothing these people say can be trusted, and so they should simply be rejected. Perhaps if more Microsoft employees were laughed off stages and universally mocked, they might either a) stop pretending that we're retards or b) start telling a little truth. I for one am sick and tired of the Microsoft shills assuming the IT world is populated by mental deficients who would buy into their lies.

Re:This was garbage two days ago and is garbage no

[Anubis IV]

On top of what you just said, it's also taken well out of the context of Google's current position.

Google has scaled from a 1000 person company in 2004 to 18,000+ today. It should come as no surprise that more people will leave Google for other companies now than they did four years ago, regardless of changes in corporate culture. It's a simple matter of scale. Losing 1% of their employees four years ago meant 10 people. Today, it means 180.

An article like this one which more or less implies that "more people are leaving Google every year" gives the idea that there's some new or increasing problem in the population when, in fact, the only "problem" is the increase in scale. As a percentage, I'd bet that no more people are leaving this year than last, but the total number of people leaving might be increasing simply because the population itself is growing.

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Bureaucracy: anecdotal evidence

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

One of my contacts inside the company wanted to set up a technical reference bookshelf for her people, sort of a micro-library.

She couldn't get the bookshelf to put the books on because it wasn't an approved item of furniture.

I'm hearing complaints like that more and more, though I haven't heard anyone say it's quantitatively as bad as a government job.

Half a year ago, Dare Obasanjo promised

[melted]

Half a year ago, Dare Obasanjo promised that he would stop blogging. It looks like his verbal incontinence is back and it's as strong as ever.

Quality of service, eh?

[coolingfan]

And the culture at Google values "coolness" tremendously, and the quality of service not as much.

Since when did MS care about quality of service?

You must be new here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me be the first to Welcome you to Slashdot.

Re:Web 2.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

As one of those sales engineers. I think that customers need to lower their standards. If customers want us to be so technical that would really force me to golf less and have to sit behind the computer longer and get fat like most of my customers. Wouldn't want that!

Obasanjo's dad

[nickname29]

The surname Obasanjo sounded kinda Nigerian, and I checked his background (for interest sake). This guy is the son of the president/military ruler of Nigeria. Soo cool!

Good thing to see that his dad put that stolen oil and government funds to good use - his son's education.

That's it, i'm giving back my geek card

[Aceticon]

This the 6th or 7th post i've read moderated +5 from some ignorant elitistic techie going about how technology people are somewhat superior to Sales and Marketing.

Honestly, i'm ashamed of being on the techie side of the fence.

Open your eyes people and get out of your high-horses:
- A successful company is a gestalt of different people with different skills doing what they do best.

So yeah, people skills are really important if what you're trying to do is selling things to people, while logical skills are really important if what you're trying to do is construct really complex functional structures. That doesn't mean one is better than the other one.

And yes, a successful company needs both people that can sell well and people that can make great products to sell:
- A great product that is not sold is worthless
- A great salesforce with nothing to sell is worthless

Re:That's it, i'm giving back my geek card

[story645]

- A successful company is a gestalt of different people with different skills doing what they do best.

Totally agree. I wish these "elite" techies would get that without marketing and management and everyone else, they probably wouldn't get paid. (Unless they work for google and/or any other company where customers never have to go near what they produce.)

Re:That's it, i'm giving back my geek card

[Stephen Ma]

A successful company is a gestalt of different people with different skills doing what they do best.

True, but in a high-technology company, the technical people need to be on top. The CEO does not absolutely have to be a true engineer but he needs to understand the technology thoroughly. As evidence, notice that Intel and Microsoft both follow this recipe. And IBM nearly died when its CEO was a Air Force fighter jock (John Akers) and recovered when an engineer took charge (Lou Gerstner).

Re:That's it, i'm giving back my geek card

[the_B0fh]

I'm not sure how you read that tech is superior to marketing or anything else. You have not explained how someone should be sales peon I or sales peon II or sales peon MCXIIVIM for doing the same thing over and over again. I pointed out techies have an opportunity for advancement because they are promoted to do different things on new projects.

Perhaps you need to take a deep breath and re-read what I wrote.

Re:That's it, i'm giving back my geek card

[Aceticon]

sales peon

Ahem?

... techies have an opportunity for advancement ..

And so do sales people: it's called big client accounts.

Not to mention opening "new markets", targeting "different market segments", analyzing sales patters, etc ...

Even though my main occupation is in technology, I do own a small company that sells electronic goods. I can tell you from experience that, if you try to do more than just sell the same things as everybody else day in and day out, it's not easy.

You either have only talked to incompetent sales people (the equivalent of a below average programmer in a state job) or you're just ignorant and formed a negative opinion out of thin air (or your vague idea of how selling works, whatever is thiner).

High stress, highoutput = high burnout/attrition

[syousef]

What's not to get here. Whether you work for Google or MS, if you're working 6 and sometimes 7 days a week for 14-18 hours a day you'll eventually burn out. Google may or may not be as good as it once was as an employer but that's not the only reason people change jobs. They get burnt out. They look for something exciting or a change. They find that they can't move forward or get a promotion as easily without changing employer.

When I was a young single bloke, I'm sure I'd have enjoyed long hours working on products that could change the world. Now, I'd still like to work on interesting stuff but I have a family, and I have other interests. I'm not going to do ridiculous hours just to compete, or just so I'm picked to work on something exciting. Despite this I think I'm a better coder now than I ever was, and I think I have higher output than I ever did. That's why I work somewhere where that is recognised instead of trying to compete on hours. Based only on the stories I've heard (as I've never worked at either), if I was working at Google or MS, I don't think that would be recognised, or if it was, I'd still be expected to put in more hours on top fo that. So I wouldn't last very long there. As long as I can find good work elsewhere, that's fine with me.

Strawman

[LibertineR]

Marketing in charge of technical products also gets you Exchange Server, Visual Studio, Visual Basic, Excel and SharePoint.

But, I can see how you might still think that a bad thing if you worked for Lotus or Borland. But then, those guys NEVER let the marketing dweebs near their product groups, right?

It showed.

Re: Strawman

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketing in charge of technical products also gets you Exchange Server, Visual Studio, Visual Basic, Excel and SharePoint.

You say that like it's a good thing...?

Re: Strawman

[br00tus]

Marketing in charge of technical products also gets you Exchange Server, Visual Studio, Visual Basic, Excel and SharePoint.

Are you using a Sharepoint as a model of a *good* product? Are you kidding me? Sharepoint is the worst piece of crap ever. I can't tell you how many nightmares I've seen over the years with regards to different versions of Sharepoint, how much time and money wasted on it and so forth. Thankfully I was always at an arm's length from the project. You're actually boasting about Sharepoint? Are you kidding?

And then you're boasting about Exchange Server? Another giant piece of crap with lots of bizarro Microsoft features - we had to give it its own DNS server because of whatever wacko requirements put in with regards to DNS and so that those wouldn't affect our normal DNS server. Not to mention how it handles mail and so on. The best I can say about it is at least it isn't Sharepoint.

I am not someone who thinks one language is good for every job, so I accept if some department at some company thinks Visual Basic works best for them, so be it. I don't have high regards for it, but I'll be neutral, to each his own.

Excel is a decent product. I never get that complicated in my spreadsheets though, and use Gnumeric instead of shelling out however much for Excel. Visual Studio is decent as well.

Re: Strawman

[Walter Carver]

Those are probably the products that the Marketing department hasn't corrupted yet :-P

Re: Strawman

[LibertineR]

An easy answer would be: "What is doing the job of either SharePoint or Exchange better than they are?" Obviously nothing. From your response, I would guess you are expert at neither product, especially with your DNS issues. If you were using a DNS with Active Directory that was not BIND8 compliant, than you deserved problems. Again, if there is something better than Exchange, why does it have almost no serious competition except for die-hard Notes fanatics?

Finally, find me ONE product that does all the things that MOSS does, especially when combined with Office 2007. The adoption rate for MOSS is tremendous, because it solves so many business problems right out of the box, that all the custom code needed to make earlier versions productive is 90% unnecessary.

I'm glad you think Excel and Visual Studio are "decent"; otherwise, I would call you a complete fool.

Cheers.

Ass backwards

[LibertineR]

There is nothing more dangerous than the mouth of a technical person during a product sale. The job "Sales Engineer" was literally invented for techies who know when to shut up and when to answer a technical question without verbosity, negativity or (stupid) honesty.

More potential sales have been destroyed by techies talking too much in a meeting with prospective clients than empty beer bottles in Ireland.

Example:

Sales guy-"I'm telling you, Lotus Notes can do that right now, and in addition it can-.............."

Technical dude-"Well, yeah, but not really, its kind of a hack, but we hope in the next release to tighten that up, we were in a ru-.........."

Client-"Thanks for coming, guys! You need your parking validated?"

Re:Ass backwards

[jlarocco]

Good! Those kinds of sales need to be stopped. How can you possibly think it's a good idea to lie to your customers?

Re:Ass backwards

[illumin8]

There is nothing more dangerous than the mouth of a technical person during a product sale. The job "Sales Engineer" was literally invented for techies who know when to shut up and when to answer a technical question without verbosity, negativity or (stupid) honesty.

To give you a counter-example:

I used to work for a small, regional ISP as lead sysadmin. We were attempting to sell a multiple-T1 internet connection to a large local business in the area that had over 400 desktops and a few class C's of public address space, along with a smattering of web servers and publicly facing sites. The salesmen decided to bring me along on the sales call to answer any technical questions.

After the salesmen gave them their "speech" about how fast we were, how we could speed up their business, yada yada, all of the "marketing" type information, their CTO had some questions for me: Where do you get your bandwidth from, and more importantly, "how can we transition our 4 class C's worth of publicly facing services without interrupting our business?"

I proceeded to tell him about our connectivity to tier 1 backbones, then went right into a transition plan. "First, in preparation, we want to set the TTL on your DNS records down to a lower value, so that when we make the final cutover to your new address space, old DNS records for your domain names won't be cached on the internet for days and cause your servers to appear unreachable." I proceeded to walk him through a transition plan.

The CTO was so impressed by the preparation that he bought our service. They also paid some consulting time for me to come in and personally assist with their implementation. He told me later on "If you hadn't come by that day, and it was just the salesman giving his marketing presentation, we would have never bought your service. I needed to talk to a technical guy that knew what he was doing to get confidence that our needs would be handled."

So, you see, it does pay to bring knowledgeable technical people with you. I know in my job now as an architect, I make a lot of purchasing decisions. If I get a boring marketing only presentation, I'm more likely to kick the vendor out and never buy anything from them again. Don't give me the marketing presentation. Let me talk to one of your geeks and I'll pick his brain and figure out for myself if your product really does what all of the marketing literature says it does. Vendors lie. Geeks tend not to. Every geek is worth 100 salesdroids blowing smoke up your ass.

Re:Ass backwards

[YourExperiment]

I'd be pretty glad to be told the feature was a hack. I could make an informed decision about whether it was worth living with the hack until the next version was out, or whether I should go with a competitors product. I'd appreciate the company's honesty in this situation.

If, on the other hand, they assured me that a product had a certain feature, and it turned out that it didn't really work right, I'd sue them. I'd certainly never buy anything from them again.

Re:Ass backwards

[LibertineR]

Sales people should NOT lie, but they can sometimes explain deficiencies in a more artful way, and avoid a blown sale. That is all I was saying.

funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, it seems to boil down to the MS guy not liking Google because it's not dull and mindless enough. make things cool? Instead of having PMs and endless meetings and too many managers desperate to prove the need for their existence in the form of endless powerpoint presentations, meetings, and conference calls?

Guy mentions 10% bug rates for new google products. How does he explain the persistent bugginess of *mature* MS products when they have all the processes he wants?

Oh wait, all that management doesn't add any value...

Damn I hate boring corporate drones. they can all go to redmond for all I care.

The Microsoft Hypothisis

[Nishi-no-wan]

Look, Microsoft has long held the hypothisis that if they say something enough times that they can make it true. Observe:

• We write secure software.
• Microsoft has a lower TCO than Linux.
• The features in Vista are what our customers want.
• Everything in the OOXML fasttrack process was done legitimately.
• People would rather work at Microsoft than Google.

I really don't know why people believe a word that comes out of Redmond any more.

Real Companies just laugh.

[Bigmilt8]

I work in a real industry for a real company. I look at this mess and just laugh. I have to say this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. What is Google anyway besides a website?

I completely agree

[LibertineR]

I wasn't suggesting that bringing the tech along is a bad idea, its just a dangerous proposition when you have one who doesn't know when to shut up. In the example I used above, surely the salesperson could have found a more artful way of relaying the information, even offering timelines against incremental payments for what worked and what didnt. Most times, you need to get your foot in the door, do a good enough job to expand the business potential, then profit.

I WAS the tech dude for most of my career, but now that I own the business, I'm at the other end of the table doing the sales thing, but with integrity. You never want to say something to get kicked out of the building, before you have a chance to propose your value proposition. A bad tech will do that to you when you least expect it. I know. I've been that guy, and I learned the hard way.