Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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.
Perhaps Slashdot, slowly accepting their continuing decline in the web forum discussion arena, is trying to reinvigorate what they perceive to be their original driving force (shitting on Microsoft) instead of trying to fix the actual problems (that the site is stale, the "editing" still is non-existent after all these years, and that other outlets on the web provide more open ideas than the stagnant masturbatory groupthink).
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
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.
You would be surprised how much rationalization a higher salary can buy.
I wouldn't, even as a lowly intern (i.e. zero responsibility) for extreme amounts of pay. Make of that what you will. I did apply to Google for a datacenter job once but, let's be honest, so did a few thousand others no matter what the position. But MS? Beat a path to my door, offer me 50% stock, I don't really care - *if* I took the job it would be only to cash in on it immediately and I'd do the legal minimum necessary, but to actually WORK for them? Nope. Having said this I've probably ruined any chance of actually working for them anyway (as if being a Slashdot regular wouldn't rule you out immediately), and do I care? No, not really. Do they care? Probably not either.
I made a rule for myself when I left uni - never work for anyone that doesn't appreciate you. It's served me well through my own business (yes, I told customers to bugger off because I didn't like the way they were treating me - still made money, though!) and later employment and I've never had more than a week or so of unhappiness with a job in the 10+ years since - and you couldn't pay me enough to suffer that. I had workplaces change, even people change, to become less hospitable and almost immediately I provided the necessary minimum notice and left for somewhere else - usually for more pay, and more appreciation, and never have a problem finding the next job (I consider a 2-3 week window between jobs HUGE and the past three employments I've had my previous / new employers fighting over me for months and/or I have a definite job offer on the table before my existing employer even knows I'm looking - the new employer would know that I wasn't on notice when they offered the job, but they never cared about that, and I would eventually give due notice to my current employer, but I see that as my skills being in demand).
I trash Microsoft for making shitty products. I do it as a living, in fact. I also avoid Microsoft products where I can because of this (unfortunately, I work with established AD domains a lot on a contract basis so I can't really avoid Windows, but I have converted several schools to much better products - latest was an installation of OpenOffice in a private school that could EASILY afford site licences for Office but saw the actual benefits of Open software after several little chats). I would also avoid MS as an employer, because I know that even if the job is interesting, the tech is cool, the project was the best in the world, the colleagues were fabulous, the money was ludicrous, that I would have to eventually follow some horribly contrived mission statement, or ill-thought-out company policy (can you use Linux machines as an MS employee without working in their "Linux lab"? What about Firefox? What if I deliberately choose not to use the MS tools and/or develop cross-platform tools to get my job done? Can't see MS releasing those to the public, or even allowing them in the first place), or whatever new management fad is doing the rounds in those-above-me's golfing circles.
Not everyone sells out for the money. If they do, there's still a limit to what they would do for the money and that might be much lower than you think. But, to be honest, I hereby publicly state that MS can keep all their jobs. I actually make MORE money from going in, fixing up their messes and putting people on the alternatives, and I specialise in mainstream UK schools. The crappier they are, the more I make (Windows Vista and 7 "upgrades" have been an absolute god-send!). But, hell, I turn down jobs because I don't like the approaches of my predecessor there, or because the guy in charge that I would never have to talk to is a complete scumbag, or (another real-world example for me) because it means working for a school that think it's okay to spend £100,000 on upgrading a perfectly good network (and nearly the same again on a network manager) when the kids don't have exercise books to write in. That manager would have been me, but I told them to stick it and went to work for a primary school for 2 years.
We all trash Microsoft for making shitty products, but in the end we would all work for them given the chance.
I've trashed Microsoft's shitty products, but I don't trash the ones that generally work well. I'm quite happy with Windows 7, thank you.
But I don't think I'd want to work for them. Partly because I hate writing code, and when I think of Microsoft I think of programming. Obviously they've got some kind of beefy network to handle all that coding... And they need someone to run it all... Which would potentially be the kind of thing I'm interested in... But that brings me to problem #2 - I don't want a giant organization where I wind up with an uber-specialized position. I like my little IT department where I can get involved in literally everything.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Um, no. No. A million times no. Microsoft's is losing their grip on all of their endeavors, and you can smell the fear and loathing. It's a juggernaut built on the backs of broken promises and stolen dreams, with an army of giddy fanboys clamoring for their turn to be chewed up and spit out by the machine. No thank you, I'd rather spend my days contented with a decent salary that pays the bills and affords some luxury, and a career that affords me the opportunity to solve interesting problems and leaves my soul intact for myself and my family.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
Language evolves, as any linguist will tell you.
I have my own list of pet peeves (such as "could care less"), but the fact is there's a good chance it'll go from being the phrase of choice among illiterate morons to something in common parlance within a generation. "Begs the question" is a phrase that I'd say is substantially further down that road, to the point where your explanation is probably less well known than the colloquial meaning of "raises the question".
He said "decline in the web-forum discussion arena" which means a relative decline. You don't have to change to decline at all if everyone else is improving around you.
;)
That said, my only problems with it are what seem to be an increasing number of Troll stories seemingly posted for the sole sake of getting a nice, hit-count generating flamewar going and a certain echo-chamber like quality amongst the mob where it seems people come here to tell each other that their ideas are radical and right (piracy group-think, I'm looking at you) and to shout at people who don't share the group think.
On topic, why the Hell is this a story? Reasons to work at Microsoft? They pay you money. Or is that out of fashion these days?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.