Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
This guy's the limit!
I'm waiting for the web to mature, 3.11 for Workgroups.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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.
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.
.... Is clearly having an effect in bringing talent back to Microsoft.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
ZOMBOcom. Clearly they are winning the talent war.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
"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.
Anybody want my mod points?
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?
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.
"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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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 :)
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."
I prefer the Web 3.1 alpha blogs.
I, for one, can't wait for Web 95!
You just got troll'd!
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.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
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.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
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.
Tweet, tweet.
This sounds more like a snitcher's frustration report than an actual work report.
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.
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.
Tweet, tweet.
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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).
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.
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
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.
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?"