Microsoft Barring Certain Staff From Buying Macs, iPads?

mr100percent writes "Microsoft has reportedly moved to prohibit employees in its Sales, Marketing, Services, IT, and Operations Group (SMSG) from using company funds to purchase any products produced by Apple. The company had already barred staffers from using expense allocations for competing smartphone platforms, however the new guidelines explicitly note that Macs and iPads have been added to the list. 'Within SMSG we are putting in place a new policy that says that Apple products (Mac & iPad) should not be purchased with company funds,' an alleged letter distributed to staff reads."

Comments

Barring?

[bananaquackmoo]

Barring and "should not be purchased with company funds" are two entirely different things.

Re:Barring?

[Skapare]

This only says not to buy those things with company money. IOW, Microsoft doesn't want its own company money to be supporting Apple and other competitors. It is not applicable for staff buying them for personal use.

Any company is perfectly within their rights to specify how the company money is spent.

Re:Barring?

[Anonymous Coward]

More to the point, Microsoft has always tried (AFAIK) to eat its own dogfood, so this seems to be simply an extension of that as opposed to any particular malice.

Re:Barring?

[cpu6502]

This is more than just money..... it's selling to the customer. Wouldn't it look bad if a Microsoft employee came to your company to demo a new product, and they whipped-out their Apple Macbook to give the presentation? Or even less obvious... the MS presenter spends the lunchbreak listening to an iPod. It sends the wrong message that "Yeah I work for Microsoft but I really prefer Apple."

Telling sales staff to not buy Apple (and instead use Microsoft products as frequently as possible), is the same as a store giving employees 40% off if they buy and wear the store's goods. It shows that the employee not only sells but also uses the product day-to-day.

Re:Barring?

[project5117]

A mod point, a mod point, a kingdom for a mod point!

Thank you for pointing out the important distinction that this request was for *sales* staff purchases with company funds. There's no indication in the summary that other divisions were affected by this request. Here's to you get to +5 Insightful quick!

Re:Barring?

[f3rret]

Barring and "should not be purchased with company funds" are two entirely different things.

Yeah oddly enough I've no problem with this. It's Microsoft's money, they get to make the rules.

Re:Barring?

[Pokermike]

is the same as a store giving employees 40% off if they buy and wear the store's goods

In fact, it could be worse -- MS is paying for the equipment. Most clothing retailers require employees to wear the company's clothes while at work and to purchase said clothing with their own money (discounted, of course).

Re:Barring?

[0100010001010011]

I've had a dog and I've owned Microsoft products. I'm not sure if "eating its own dog food" is the correct analogy.

Re:Barring?

[semi-extrinsic]

Anyone who needs Office to be productive is useless. What you need is gvim (or notepad++ if you are too retarded to learn a good editor), a good VCS, and a decent C or FORTRAN compiler. If all IT companies sacked all employees that couldn't understand a Makefile, we would all be better off. And as a bonus: unless you're looking at solving nonlinear coupled PDEs, you'll get enough speed from gcc or gfortran, so all your tools are free!

Re:Barring?

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw you and your God damned "logic." I hate MS and all they stand for, so this is an egregious exercise in corporate favoritism/fascism. Then again I do not like Apple either so it is not so bad. Wait, I also no longer like google. Fuck it, I need a beer.

Re:Barring?

[Anonymous Coward]

What you need is gvim, vcs, and a compiler

I have me a hammer! I sure do see a lot of nails!

Re:Barring?

[pclminion]

Wouldn't it look bad if a Microsoft employee came to your company to demo a new product, and they whipped-out their Apple Macbook to give the presentation?

Wouldn't it look bad if a VP dropped in on your internal product demo and asked "So how does this compare to that Apple shit that we're trying to compete with" and you have to say "I have no idea since I'm not allowed to buy a fucking Mac to make the comparison?"

Re:Barring?

[Anonymous Coward]

And also worth considering is that a typical mac product costs an awful lot more.

No its doesnt, stop this myth. Our Dell laptops are almost 200 dollars more expensive than a like equipped Macbook Pro. The cost significance is so great that we are thinking of dropping Dells all together and moving to Macbook Airs for both PC AND Mac users because even with Win7 licensing costs added, its STILL cheaper to buy a 1 grand MacBook Air over a like model Dell.

Ever seen data entry staff sitting in rows on iPads? No of course not.

You bet your ass I have seen 60 Sales and Marketing staffers using iPads in the field, and we are starting to move 500 positions who DONT need a laptop or desktop to using iPads running Citrix within the next 2 years.

So in conclusion, you dont know jack about how iPads are being used in big business.

Re:Barring?

[baka_toroi]

I'm not trying to be offensive, but stop typing "M$". You are not 15 years old, are you? Also, this isn't 1997 anymore.

Re:Barring?

[jdgeorge]

The point is, Microsoft's Win8 strategy will be, at least in part, a direct competitor to Apple's iOS strategy.

The MS sales staff need to use, understand, and sell Microsoft first and foremost.

Re:Barring?

[spire3661]

Its appropriate for the time period his story is set in.

Re:Barring?

[meloneg]

Most major breweries in the U.S. (even Guinness - *SOB*) are owned and operated from overseas. Brew your own!

This may be one of the most (unintentionally?) funny things I've ever read on /. No kidding? A famous UK brand isn't US-owned? Wow?

Re:Barring?

[baka_toroi]

Do you REALLY think we need to be reminded? Especially on Slashdot, of all places...

Re:Barring?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, this isn't anywhere close to the truth. MS used an in-house developed Xenix-based mail system internally prior to the release of Exchange 4.0 (the first version of exchange, and a followup to MSMail 3.0). Starting in the last phase before release and continuing for a few months or so ITG did a phased migration off of Xenix mail and onto Exchange. There wasn't any particular pain outside the usual complexity of doing any large migration. This was all well before Hotmail was a part of Microsoft.

Source: I was on the exchange team at the time.

Re:Barring?

[husker_man]

I used to work at Motorola. About twelve years ago, the president of the company (Chris Galvin) was upset at the number of employees who worked there who had cell phones from other vendors - Nokia being the chief sore spot at the time. Word came down from management that it was not a good idea for one's career to be using a non-Motorola phone for either personal or corporate use. To be fair, they did give us excellent discounts ongoing on Motorola phones, so it was pretty much a good thing.

Re:Barring?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to criticize someone's geography, at least get it right yourself. Ireland is not in the UK.

Re:Barring?

[KevReedUK]

There's no indication in the summary that other divisions were affected by this request.

employees in its Sales, Marketing, Services, IT, and Operations Group (SMSG)

...so it's not just the sales staff!

Re:Barring?

[black3d]

Name a bug in Office that has been there more than a decade which affects your usage of the product.

None?

That's why people who type "M$" are criticized. Because it shows they're speaking purely out of spiteful bias and simply like to parrot things "they've heard" on the interwebs. This commonly occurred for example, with Windows Vista, where the product was hugely, widely bashed by people who had never used it. In fact, it's still bashed by people who've never used it. And the faults they describe largely either didn't exist, or only affected a small number of users.

"M$" simply demonstrates a mind-set of pre-determination by the writer, and suggests they're not going to be rational in any of the arguments they make.

Re:Barring?

[alexandre_ganso]

Of all things, you went to choose the Republic of Ireland's most known symbol to say that is UK?

Ok, I know, uk, england, northern ireland, great britain, commonwealth, queen's territories, all this crap IS confusing. But let me get you a couple of things straight:

- Ireland is an Island. On it, there are two countries. One is Northern Ireland, another is Republic of Ireland;
- Northern Ireland is part of UK, commonwealth or whatever. Its currency is the british pound. Its capital is Belfast
- Republic of Ireland is an independent country which today has nothing to do with uk. It is part of the Euro zone. Its capital is Dublin. DUBLIN THE CITY WHERE GUINNESS IS MADE (mostly)
- There is some animosity between the Irish and the British, to say the least. What you just said might be considered offensive in there.

Republic of Ireland is not the most resourceful country on the planet, granted. But two things you can bet they are very proud of: Their Guinness and their Jameson's.

Re:Barring?

[alexandre_ganso]

Actually, microsoft sells mostly software. Pretty much all their software for pcs runs on macs, right from windows on. They could use apple machines, with windows on them, or even mac os, provided they still use microsoft Office produts for mac on them.

What would be shameful would be to see MS sales people giving a presentation using apple's Keynote. On a hackintosh dell running Lion.

Re:Barring?

[PixelPusher1532]

So can we type A$$pple to refer to people throwing money on Apple products? Please please please????

I prefer the more politically correct term, iLemming.

Re:Barring?

[hairyfeet]

You know what that M$ shit makes you sound like? This guy that's what. you could post the most insightful exposition on the current state of MSFT in the software arena but 90%+ aren't even gonna see it because they see M$ and think "Douchenozzle fanboi" and walk right on past. There are plenty of abbreviations that are NOT from 1993, use MS, MSFT MSoft, whatever but the stupid M$ bit hasn't been applicable since DOS died in 1999. Eat some fruit, get some sun, quit acting like a douche, kay?

As for TFA duh! To use a /. car analogy do you think Ford would want their employees using company funds to buy Chevys? hell no, its called supporting your company and eating your own dog food. What they do with their OWN money is nobody's business, what they do with company funds very much IS the business of the company.

Re:Barring?

[Macman408]

Noooo! They shipped Jameson's overseas too? Does anybody know where I can get a good domestic Irish whiskey in the US?

Re:Barring?

[TapeCutter]

The MS response basically says it's fixed in the latest version and they are not going to patch older versions. That kind of policy has been common practice in the software industry for a long time now. Fixing bugs in old versions is all cost unless you can sell them a support contract, fixing the bug by selling a copy of the latest version is all profit. Even with a support contract the likely answer from most software vendors would be "install the latest version".

Re:Barring?

[Americano]

Guinness

A famous UK brand

This may be one of the most (unintentionally?) funny things I've ever read on /.

Yeah, what you said. Just not for the same reasons.

Re:Barring?

[gnasher719]

I used to work at Motorola. About twelve years ago, the president of the company (Chris Galvin) was upset at the number of employees who worked there who had cell phones from other vendors - Nokia being the chief sore spot at the time. Word came down from management that it was not a good idea for one's career to be using a non-Motorola phone for either personal or corporate use. To be fair, they did give us excellent discounts ongoing on Motorola phones, so it was pretty much a good thing.

That's quite idiotic. If they worried that too many Motorola employees bought non-Motorola phones with their own money, then they should have tried to make better phones.

Re:Barring?

[serviscope_minor]

How about Micros~1?

Re:Barring?

[Score Whore]

Um. No that's not the idea at all. It simply mean that you use your product. The phrase "eat your own dog food" has been around for years, since the 1980's at least, and in use in other industries entirely.

Re:Barring?

[Lumpy]

"you need to pay for a extended warranty"

Funny, nobody at Best Buy held a gun to my head demanding I buy an extended warranty. But that was in 2007 with my 17" macbook pro that has worked perfectly still to this day AND still holds a 2 hour charge on it's battery.

Let me guess you are one of those people that never has owned a mac product but tries to sound like you know what you are talking about.

Re:Barring?

[colsandurz45]

Actually Guinness is a UK owned company. Diageo owns Guinness

Re:Barring?

[psiclops]

Im form Aus, the locals do not love fosters. we export that shit for others to drink. VB and carlton draught are probably our two major local beers. (other states are a bit differently, i hear they like XXXX further up north)

Right

[mwvdlee]

And this is news... how exactly?
Don't most companies ban using company funds to buy competitors' products for operational staff?

Re:Right

[ashmon]

They're just letting us know that MS wants its own employees to use the best possible tech available.

Re:Right

[sideslash]

It's news because the largest software company in the world is ignoring the fastest growing platform for software in the world, rather than writing software for it.

Don't post about subjects you're unfamiliar with. Microsoft has always written a lot of software for the Mac, and even today has a bunch of stuff both released and in development for the iPad. It makes sense with their dogfooding policies to favor Windows stuff for their staff, but they are by no means "ignoring" iOS.

Re:Right

[bkaul01]

Note that the restriction applies to certain divisions/classes of staff, and developers aren't among them. Salespeople don't need to purchase iPads. Developers might... Microsoft has released several smaller iOS apps (e.g. PhotoSynth); the question isn't whether they can develop for a competing platform, but whether it makes sense to shoot themselves in the foot by doing so at the expense of their own platforms. With WOA in Win8, there's an obvious tablet focus, and Office 15 is included with WOA versions of Win8, which implies that it could be a significant distinguishing feature: the message could end up being that Windows has Office and works well for content generation, while iOS is just for consumption, i.e. browsing, movies/games, etc. Not sure which strategy is best, but there is some logic to that one.

Re:Right

[mevets]

| Don't most companies ban using company funds to buy competitors' products for operational staff?

It is interesting that they had to make a rule. That implies that a notable quantity of staff were choosing Apple products first.

I worked at a now swallowed vendor of servers and workstations. Despite producing competing products, MicroSoft computers were commonplace until OS X came along. In a way, that was even stranger, since they were saying Apple's version of UNIX is better than ours.

Just like a lot of companies

[g051051]

Lots of companies, including the one I work for, won't let you arbitrarily buy Apple products with company money.

Re:Just like a lot of companies

[houghi]

It is not just Apple. I was not allowed to buy a Learjet last week.

Re:Just like a lot of companies

[ZaskarX]

Let me guess...you work for Cessna?

I am no longer surprised.

[aardvarkjoe]

Just when I thought that the quality level of Slashdot stories couldn't get any lower, samzenpus swoops in to prove me wrong.

Re:I am no longer surprised.

[c0d3g33k]

I'm giving up my moderation rights for this discussion to say that the next improvement Slashdot should implement is to allow moderation of the stories themselves. I'd love to be able to browse stories on the main page (or in a personal newsfeed) using a filter setting of my choosing based on the moderated quality of a story rather than topic, submitter etc.

Re:I am no longer surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

What did you expect? The story had "Microsoft" in the title and ended with a question mark. This pretty much always means it's bollocks. See these examples of headline that would not technically be wrong, due to the question mark, but that are clearly inflamatory and designed for nothing more than page hits:

"Apple CEO Steve Jobs spent $10 billion dollars on FUD campaigns?"

"Google stole your credit card details?"

On that note, I think just to prove the point I'll publish my own little mini story within this thread to prove the point:

Samzenpus is a child rapist?
=====================
It turns out that a guy was arrested for child abuse earlier this year who held the same first name as Samzenpus, could it therefore in fact be Samzenpus himself who raped these children?

Re:I am no longer surprised.

[synapse7]

Think how surprised he would be when such story is posted again hours later.

Re:I am no longer surprised.

[webheaded]

So you want...Reddit? :p

True for Any Large Corporation?

[gregarican]

Company expenses cannot be used by employees for purchasing competing products? I'm aghast with surprise! Oh yeah, this is Microsoft we are talking about. So it's news *rolls eyes*

So what?

[Enry]

Company tries to prevent sending money to its rivals. Film at 11.

"With company funds"

[Anonymous Coward]

"With company funds" being the keywords here.

Re:"With company funds"

[LordLimecat]

It warms my heart to see that everyone saw that key phrase and pointed it out rather than descending to a frenzy of fanboism and irrational argument over platforms.

Sounds Reasonable

[donleyp]

Do you think that there are any people at Apple with Windows laptops? Probably a few, but talk about a career limiting move :) Fun fact: new employees at Google are told that "they better have a good reason" if they request a Windows laptop for their primary machine.

The Car Analogy

[jdastrup]

And Ford employees are only giving a discount when buying Ford cars, and only specific Ford cars. It doesn't stop them from buying a different car with their own money for their own personal use.

Interesting, though, that it's only certain departments, not the entire company. Going back to Ford, many of the senior levels I knew were allowed to buy (or at least drive company-owned cars) that were the competition. They claimed it helped them learn about the competition. I have no problem with that.

Why is this a story?

[Karmashock]

I'm pretty sure apple has similar rules about buying MS products with company funds.

Would apple be okay with their employees buying lots of MS mobile phones using company resources? I doubt it. Sure, there's not much chance of them choosing to do that but the reality is that no company is going to be happy about it's employees using company resources to buy a competitor's products.

Re:Why is this a story?

[KrazyDave]

I'm pretty sure Apple doesn't need similar rules about buying MS products.

You think it's odd?

[p0p0]

What until we find out employee paychecks are considered company funds and they aren't allowed to purchase them with their own money.

Just like at Coke or PepsiCo

[HockeyPuck]

At Coca Cola, you can't even talk about P*psi based products, bring one in to work or eat at their sponsored establishments.

As a comparison... here's Coca Cola's list of brands.

So "don't buy a iPhone with MSFT's company's funds" is a lot easier than "don't consume our competitors products while on business." Not so easy when you're flying and you want a drink and the only drinks that the airline carries are from your competitor...

Hopefully you will never be in that position

[SmallFurryCreature]

Really, the first thing that comes to your mind when you are the owner of a product and your own people prefer to face your wrath by buying from the competitor to do their work rather then use their own product, is to ban them?

You wouldn't consider maybe asking them WHY the competitor product is the preferred choice?

And this is hardly news, MS pulled something similar when the Zune was flopping hard and MS employees brought their iPod's to work.

And MS yet again totally fails to ask WHY people prefer to buy ANYTHING else over their products. MS Phone 7 is just the latest in a long line. Is there even a MS tablet out there that MS employees can buy?

It doesn't even solve anything, if MS employees are forced to buy stuff they don't want, they will just hate it and their hatred will be seen by others. You want your employees to be advocates of your product. Not the condemned acting as a warning of the misery that comes with your company.

Or do you think it is good advertising for a restaurant if guests can see your employees vomiting out the employees lunch?

Re:Hopefully you will never be in that position

[BlastfireRS]

You could very well ask them why they prefer a competitor's products; I'd encourage anyone in this situation (including Microsoft) to do so. There's a huge difference, however, between allowing employees to bring in their personal Macs for work purposes and allowing employees to use your hardware refresh funding or hardware stipends on an excessively expensive competitor's product. The whole situation regarding banning iPods was ridiculous, and they were rightly mocked for doing so. Still, this scenario is about what Microsoft allows to be done with its own money, and I can't particularly demonize them for making this choice.

Re:Ah, stupid manager alert!

[Registered Coward v2]

Cpu6502 will no doubt rush through the ranks as a manager because he has the usual manager capability to confuse the disease with the symptom.

Car companies often have the parking lot filled with the companies cars and NOT because of any guidelines (cars are after all privately bought by the people in production) but because the employees feel connected to the company and are proud of what they produce.

While they may be proud of what they produce , most also get a sizable company discount. For many, wallet no doubt wins over price.

MS clearly is totally unable to inspire loyalty in its employees to feel proud of what they produce and want to show it. You can then put out a guideline forcing people to show fake pride but then you are just fighting the symptom, not the disease. If MS can't even build products good enough that people who want to work for you want to have the products... they got no chance in hell of selling to the rest of us. Eat your own dog food and if you got to beat the god to get it to eat, you failed.

No, they're saying that you can't use MS funds to pay for Apple products or phone bills for non-MS phones. Not unreasonable, and quite frankly having them use their products can also result in some real world feedback on what works and what doesn't. Do employees prefer Apple products? Probably,and I'd bet it was a big enough percentage that MS decided to stop paying for competitors products. I had a friend who filled up his company car with a competitors gasoline - and got a note back, after he expensed it, from his boss saying "we don't buy non- Union 76 gas with company funds."

I do agree that the company discount argument is irrelevant and MS should see why employees prefer Apple products to their competing ones; but that is separate form putting money in a competitor's pocket.

Re:allow moderation of the stories

[TaoPhoenix]

That's the Firehose.

The users already do moderate those, but then the editors get a 1000% weighted vote to override the user moderations and post whatever they like.

Re:Ah, stupid manager alert!

[digitalsolo]

I have several friends that work at a local (large) GM plant. Not all of them drive GM, or even domestic or UAW produced vehicles. That said, if you drive a non-GM vehicle, you have to park at the far lot; GM vehicle drivers are welcome to park much closer.

Re:well duh

[zlives]

yes but owing one makes the owner "feel" creative..

Re:well duh

[DeathElk]

This is a common misconception spread by anti-apple people, or people who have not used an iPad. Visit any recording studio (home or professional) and you are likely to see iPads being used as instruments, console/transport extensions, composition scratchpads, etc etc. WRT data entry, I wouldn't want to type on one all day, but as a note taking device, the screen based keyboard is perfect for touch typing.

Re:Ah, stupid manager alert!

[HornWumpus]

I have a friend who worked for GM. He drove his Honda to the plant once.

Four cut tires, all the glass broken, punctured radiator, pry marks on the gas gap cover. He assumes they were interrupted.

Re:well duh

[ancarett]

You're so right. There's nothing touch-typing-friendly about a screen-based keyboard. It can be fun, but you can't have your eyes on one part of the room while you take down text or transcription at 80+ wpm. Virtual keyboards are useless for high-speed or even medium-speed touch-typing tasks.