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Why Microsoft?
theodp writes "Before a large crowd of students at the University of Washington computer science department, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was asked why students should care about Microsoft enough to want to work there. Aside from the ending, which begs for an if-you're-happy-and-you-know-it-clap-your-hands remix, Ballmer seemed to handle the question adequately for an MBA-type, although TechCrunch has a different opinion, suggesting 'maybe it's time for the great salesman to hang it up.' Oddly enough, a recent resignation letter from a Microsoft developer en route to Facebook ('Microsoft has been an awesome place to work over the past twelve years. In college, I never thought I'd work for Microsoft. Then I interned in 1997 and fell in love.') may be more what the skeptical CS student was looking for in terms of a Microsoft endorsement."
4 stories in a span of a couple of hours. Why Microsoft?
did you forget to take your meds?
... and a fancy name on the good old CV :D
We all trash Microsoft for making shitty products, but in the end we would all work for them given the chance.
Maybe because if you have just a semi-successful career there, it looks awesome on a resume? I mean, let's face it...unless your office is run by an anti-Microsoft kind of person, the average company hiring IT folks (programming or otherwise) would likely be extremely impressed to see that on your resume, especially if you stayed there for multiple years and leave on your own rather than being fired.
One of the biggest lessons you can't learn in college: sometimes, a job is worth taking for no reason other than how it contributes to future opportunities. Ditto for taking classes post-college.
Living With a Nerd
I wonder how much Ballmer was sweating when he answered that one? The guy can prolly lube himself up just by walking. It *is* a good question, tho.
C|N>K
Because Microsoft has a proven track record for Developers Developers Developers!
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
It doesn't even matter that this was Microsoft, other than the fact that if it were IBM we'd never have gotten an article about it. However, the kid in question may have been asking why IBM, or why Ford? Why not? Healthy, established companies with plenty of money that pay dividends. Everyone has heard of them and if you're "good enough" to work for them, then you should be "good enough" for anyone else later. Just because you and your buddy start a website in your dorm room and print up business cards declaring fancy titles doesn't mean that's going to be a good reference when you find out that becoming an accidental internet billionaire is harder than you thought and have to go find a real job.
But, oh yeah, Apple is "changing the world" with their "magical" products (disclaimer, this is being typed on a Mac), so clearly everyone who is anyone should want to go work there. Or the new flavor of the week Rails shop. Or wherever. And for some people, maybe that's a better option and if they can make it work, good for them. I work for a small company practically no one has heard of, and right now it works for me. But, I'm to the point where I would much rather have the greater stability that working for a larger company would provide. In a few years the questioner will likely start to see the same thing.
Most computer science students take the subject because they finish high school and think "what career pays well?". On the other hand those with a passion for technology all their youth tend to end up as Electrical Engineers. Thus, with no historical appreciation for the kind of technologically disruptive and legally overbearing company they have been, you can understand why Computer Science students may be lulled into a false sense of self-worth and pride about working for Microsoft.
Microsoft will pay you well and you feel you are part of a community.
The downside is that you have to hide your MacBookPro and iPhone from public view.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Microsoft wouldn't really be that bad to work at because all their problems occur in management. Everyone who I've talked to that works at Microsoft loves it, the reasons their products are crap is because they have terrible management, separate people into "teams" which have little communication with each other, then they have separate "teams" working on the same product... which ends up being a mess.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
1. Fire Balmer (he's a bully and the bully pulpit is gone for Microsoft.)
2. Pay a large dividend.
3. Break up the company by design.
4. Put spending caps on useless shit like the "Windows Sound"
5. Give managers a % pay raise based on how much smaller they make their code while maintaining function.
6. Release a non backwards compatible operating system that kicks ass (they have at least two that have been shelved.)
Why Microsoft?
Easy. Limited possibilities, so you don't have to think much, or solve real problems. Many mediocre job opportunities.
Why not?
Difficult, you are faced with real challenges, which some folks find positive. Also much better pay and growing market. You also get much less dispensable at some random downsizing. Ethically correct.
Microsoft is and always has had a good reputation as a place to work. A lot of the senior managers came up from the trenches and do care about the working environment.
I mean, say what you want about their business practices, quality of software and anything else, they've always come across as a good employer.
Oddly enough, a recent resignation letter from a Microsoft developer en route to Facebook ("Microsoft has been an awesome place to work over the past twelve years. In college, I never thought I'd work for Microsoft. Then I interned in 1997 and fell in love.") may be more what the skeptical CS student was looking for in terms of a Microsoft endorsement."
Reading the rest of the long post, it's not explicitly clear why he left MS but he hints at several reasons. One of which was brought up by mini-microsoft about the little fiefdoms that became the culture at MS:
A PM once remarked of a former Microsoft VP known for being ultra-aggressive in meetings: "I'd rather have him pissing from my tent than into my tent." Everyone within earshot chuckled at this witty political insight. I'd actually rather not have anybody pissing on any tents, mine or otherwise.
The other is the perks are going/gone. Some of it is understandable but he seems concerned that MS was focusing on the wrong things.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
We are constantly inventing new phrases and new usages. Why raid an ancient and well used phrase, disembowel it, and stuff a completely new meaning inside? If you want to play alien body snatcher, do it with real humans, not with time honoured Latin phrases.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
A friend that recently departed from M$ said the internal organizations are so politicized other groups would refuse cooperation or willfully withheld information "because they can."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I've never worked for Microsoft or GM, but from the outside the two look very similar.
For years both were/are giants in their respective industries - the standard of those industries if you will.
Years of shoddy products and internal political turmoil took their toll on both companies.
I wonder if Microsoft will avoid GM's fate - financial problems and an eventual government rescue? It's hard to imagine Microsoft with financial problems, but at one time in the not so distant past, it was also hard to imagine GM with financial problems.
-ted
He was so happy after being at MS for 12 years that he left. You can talk and give praise about how great it was for him at MS but his actions speak louder than his words.
The Tech crunch article says this " why someone would want to work at Microsoft when there are so many more exciting companies out there, like, say Apple." The answer is simple. Apple are crap to work for. There is a REASON why Apple have never appeared on the Fortune top 100 places to work and Microsoft has for the last few years (since at LEAST 2006) Granted they arent up there, but they ARE there.... Remember Apple is the place that will lead you to suicide if you even slightly make a fuck up too... :)
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
I was attracted into the faculty as a postgrad, and bait-and-switched by my Microsoft-compromised academic seniors into a worthless make-work project with no academic merit whatsoever. Never again.
The truth is that Microsoft is deeply unpopular and extremely uncool, and basically has to buy all its friends.
I absolutely swore off working for Microsoft for life after I saw what they did to my university IT department in an Australian university (QUT). They bought their way in, poached all the top-flight academics and locked them away on busy-work projects in Redmond and Cambridge. Then, taking advantage of the Australian Government's famous neglect of the higher education system, they gave us funding and "free" software licenses and turned all the students and academics into paid-for shit bitches, doing menial, unoriginal and worthless work.
The only people I saw going to work for Microsoft, were my fellow students. They were the very best and brightest, but were totally sucked in by the money and conference junkets. Their devotion to Microsoft was the most disturbing and cult-like thing I've ever seen.
Like many days, today's /. feed is more than 50% stories related to Microsoft. OK, I get that the community here is predominately pro-Linux/anti-MS and I should expect the stories to skew to one side. But I'm not seeing the nerd value in a lot of these stories as they seem to only be posted to support and/or justify the collective belief that all things MS suck.
I'd like to see more news for nerds and stuff that matters make it to the feed.
I'm currently a software engineering student (in another country) and will be graduating in a year or two (depending on how much time I allocate to school and how much to part time job and other activities). So I'm kinda in the "target audience" of this question.
You are indeed correct that they could have mentioned any other similar company. During my freshman year, we visited IBM and they (head of HR in this country, some developer and someone third) gave us nice presentations about what IBM is and what they do and such. But they failed to make a point that it would be nice to work there. They did mention some teambuilding days or whatever were those and implied that they have a good team spirit: First friday of every month they (well, large part of them, they implied. They do employ some thousand or so people here) go to a bar together.... But even so, when I left the building, I felt kind of "Meh. That was a load of generic, corporate BS...".
Now, I'm not saying that I wouldn't work there because of that. Of course I would. When I'll graduate, I'll apply to every imaginable software engineering job and if I'll get a steady one at IBM, I'll be happy (especially in this economic situation). But what I am saying is that if I'll have the luxury of getting two job offers, one from IBM and one from some smaller shop... I'll probably take the latter one. And I'll probably start by applying to that kind of jobs first. Simply because IBM failed to make the point that I would enjoy working there, that I would find it interesting, that I would feel that I am an important part of the organization, that my job would have some importance...
Obviously we all need to pay our bills. But after that? You spend some 8 hours a day (+probably some overtime + travel) at the same place. It is quite important how you feel about it when waking up in the morning and knowing that you'll have to get there once again. I would say that it outweights how nice the company looks in your CV and even slight differences in wage. So... If the large corporations want to get the best people, they'll have to make the point that the best people would enjoy working there. Otherwise the best people go somewhere else and they'll just get the mediocre people.
Ballmer should just never, ever appear on camera. He just shouldn't do it. Some P.R. person needs to take him aside and convince him that it would be better to have some spokesmodel than for his simian presence to scare the young.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When I graduated Microsoft was one of two organizations courting me. I decided that working at a nuclear weapons complex was the more ethical decision :)
Joking aside, there was more than one person I knew in college who were platform agnostic when I knew them, but they all became complete MS fanboys after working there. It was pretty strange to me. I had never been a fan of the company, and I didn't want to be sucked into that. The job I have now is just that - a job. I'm not doing anything I think is wrong, and I'm not changing the world. I'm simply making life easier for the small group of people that use my software. I'm happy with that.
Rackspace. All I remember is Indymedia. Shows how fanatical Rackspace is, doesn't it.
Why? That's what employers do. They employ you and (in the general case, though the GP poster avoids that situation) try to do the statutory minimum to keep you.
If that's acceptable for companies (they do do it you know), then why isn't it acceptable for an employee to cash in and do the minimum?
Hell, every management change to IPO is a case of them cashing in. Have you heard of ANY company that decided not to IPO because their workers wouldn't get as good a deal as they did?
No.
Even though I try to be grammatically correct (It almost hurts to see people misusing "your", "you're", "yours", etc.) I wasn't aware of such a meaning for that expression. I do have an excuse, though: English isn't my first language. (So I think that it is acceptable if I err here and there)
In any case... "Begging the question" is a horrible way to express that concept. It apperas to be a fallacy that is called "Kehäpäätelmä" which could be directly translated to "Circular argument" or something like that. It conveys well that it means something like "Argument that is based on the premise that the argument is true" even if you've never heard of it. But "Begging the question" doesn't really convey the meaning, at all. Combine that with people using it the wrong way (a way that appears more logical, to be honest)...
So even though I now know what it should mean... I think I will continue "misusing" it. The original meaning shouldn't have been named that way in the first place, the language has evolved to be more logical, etc...
For those wanting to discuss the article instead of Microsoft bashing...
I liked the insight into How to get ahead the best. - Maintaining skills, performing good work, meeting commitments, act on your ideas, no unnecessary gossip...
I would hire this guy if I could based on that one blog post.
I'm a die hard "drank the kool-aid" Mac person, but I'd work for Microsoft. I live in Seattle and have lots of friends that have and do work for them and it seems like a good place to work. The corporate culture on the tech side seems very nice: flexible hours, plenty of opportunity to work from home, no dress code, plenty of free drinks in the break areas, "beer fridays", etc. The company does seem to take care of the employees and their needs. There are metro bus lines that run from the various parts of the area to MS and back. The cafeterias are nice and have different stuff so you can head to a different buildings cafeteria if you feel the need for a change. The work doesn't really sound any harder than any other place I hear about, and if they have to let you go, they are usually really kind about it. One friend's group was dissolved but they basically kept her on for two months with the only job duty of looking for internal positions to apply for. There is some orange-blue badge issues between temps and perms but most people are in the position they want. There are plenty of permanent positions if you want to apply for them while a good number of people enjoy the three month break between contacts as a vacation and typically. Rehiring at MS seems to mostly be a function of if you did a good job or not. As a place to work, it seems to be one of the better places around and honestly, their ideology and methods probably aren't any worse than any other large companies.
I scoffed at Microsoft back when I had first graduated college. I got 5 or 6 recruiters trying to get me to interview with them, but I turned them all down because a.) I didn't want to live in Redmond, b.) I didn't want to work 60 hours a week, and c.) the salary was too low. Instead I took a job at a small company in Portland as their sole programmer. I had it really easy there. I had pretty much total creative control, and even spent several hours a week working through courses on MIT OCW, but my career has suffered for it. Now, 5 years later, I should be making about 50% more than I am, but I have to work my way up from the start because I never had any "team" experience.
Two words: flying chairs.
Well, technically, standing on a catwalk more or less above Mr. Ballmer...
You guys do realize these questions weren't spontaneous, right? Ballmer had a big television (or TV-sized display) on the floor in front of the raised stand where he was sitting. The question would pop up on the television, and so would the answer - he'd pretty much read it verbatim. He would occasionally expound on an answer - go "off script" as it were.
The thing that got me was how lackadaisical and boring a number of the answers were, given that his team had time to pre-write the answers. Even with lead time, they don't seem to know how to fire up people about their products anymore.
#DeleteChrome
If I didn't do my job here at MS, they would hire somebody else who would. It's a paycheck, and in this economy... It's certainly not the company I first worked at in 1995, but what is? I remember that at that time you could get s--t done. We were doing things that made the PC great. Great games and technology. We did a port of Doom II to Windows for id. It ran on Win32s, and used Dispdib for window/full-screen toggling. My boss got the Autorun feature in to the OS. We could and did change the world. Anymore, it's so fragmented, mobile, web-apps, cloud, search, online, we've forgotten our core mission. The company store had great PC applications and PC games because we used to make great PC applications and PC games. Monster Truck Madness, Combat Flight Simulator, Close Combat, etc. Anymore, all there is in Windows 7 and Office and XBOX stuff. There is so much enterprisey stuff that I can't relate to. I feel like we are Oracle or IBM. It's mainframes all over again, only smaller and in shipping containers.
I'd rather watch another insipid reality TV show than listen to a Ballmer speech or interview.
Seriously Steve, hire someone to do all the speeches and interviews, it's the first of several things you could do to make MS interesting again."
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
I joined Microsoft 3 years ago in a Developer position, and I just love it. It is a great place to work, very very very smart people in every corner, there is no such BS of what you can buy or what you can use, a significant number of Microsoft employees use iPhones, iPads, and Google search, nobody will come to you and say you shouldn't use this or use that, I have colleagues that went Google and returned back in less than a year, not because Google is bad, but because Microsoft benefits for families are much better, while companies like Google, Facebook are more suitable for singles with no life, while Microsoft encourages you to have a work-life balance. Also Microsoft as a company is very unique, you can't find one company that has products ranging from hard core OS kernel developers to search engines, to programming languages design to game development and home entertainment .... etc lots of opportunities that can rarely be in one place.
Seriously, if it were correctly translated to intended meaning verses word-for-word translation wouldn't the phrase be "begs the questioner"? Sounds like the meaning was lost in translation.