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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."
We all trash Microsoft for making shitty products, but in the end we would all work for them given the chance.
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 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.
You're modded funny of course but it has quite a bit of truth.
Apple does not pay well. Microsoft pays better.
Microsoft makes you part of their community, Apple does not, everything is segmented and you have no access to other's information.
Arguably, Google is more Microsoft-like, except you're also allowed to bring your MacBook at Google :P (however, forget about the iPhone, it's N1!!)
You joke, but I contracted there a few years back, and at one high-level meeting I sat in on, half of the managers present had iPhones and wielded them shamelessly. I was the only one with a MacBook Pro... but it was running Windows.
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I once got asked by a recruiter to interview for a Microsoft job but, despite offering a better salary, I told the recruiter I simply didn't want to work for a software company where "proprietary" is the watchword. (I currently work in the telecoms industry for a company that does pretty much everything on Linux).
However, I recommended a colleague (who I knew wasn't happy with his job) to the recruiter & he ended up getting the Microsoft job & a better salary. As far as I know, he's still there & happy.
Just because you don't care much for what a company produces does not mean the company is not a good place to work.
I think you're kind of missing the point.
Why should I work for X? is certainly a valid question. Depending on the company you have different pros and cons. Maybe they pay well, but they've got crappy benefits. Maybe they don't pay so good but they've got great benefits. Maybe there's tremendous name recognition. Maybe there's an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something spectacular. Whatever.
What's vaguely interesting about this is that until fairly recently, nobody would have asked that question about Microsoft because the answer was flat-out obvious.
They were, for a very long time, the IT company to work for. They were big. They were doing interesting things. They were turning out huge products. Everyone used their software. It almost didn't matter what they were paying, people wanted to work for them.
That's changing. And that's why this is a story.
It isn't flat-out obvious anymore. And there are plenty of reasons why you wouldn't want to work for Microsoft. Or why you'd rather work for someone else.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
other outlets on the web provide more open ideas
Those other outlets being? All technical web forum discussion seems to be in decline. Probably because you used to have to be technical to be on the web at all, now you don't.
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Another thing to consider is the country you live in and what influence it has on the product design and development.
I know of quite a few people who work in big US-centric organisations (but are based outside of the US) and although they have a job title that implies that they have responsibilities, they really are only performing a sales/account management role and have to report back to someone in the US who really makes the decisions.
I worked on the launch of a mobile phone a couple of years ago where we found out more about the product from the pages of Engadget than we did from the product team at that very company. It turned out that they didn't find out any information internally until the last minute - when often it had already been leaked throughout the internet and be seen by their clients.
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Divisionised big companies tend to have that problem... They declare "Total synergy" in operations, but in reality different cultures in different divisions make it an internally hostile environment.