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MSFT Reaches Out To Hackers: 'Do Epic $#!+'
hessian writes "Microsoft isn't exactly known for its underground hacker culture, but a recent effort to give its employees more slack is generating some wild experiments. Last summer, Microsoft completed a redesign of one of its original buildings on campus — Building 4, where Bill Gates' office used to be — into a laid-back workshop where staff can tinker with things. It's open to anyone, anytime, and it's got everything from a hardware workshop to an actual working garage door. If it doesn't sound to you like something Microsoft would normally do , the Garage's motto will really shock you: 'Do epic s--t.'"
"...as long as it doesn't threaten our bottom line."
Epic $#!+ can't come out of sitting in "Building 4, where Bill Gates' office used to be ..." and pretending it's hacker's garage.
you need a real garage, with real hackers in it, don't think Microsoft's engineers will do the trick.
Really ? the word is censored both times in TFS and even the image itself is blurred in TFA.
Are we really so prude and puritan as a culture that we can't even bring ourselves to write "SHIT" ?
This goes beyond political correctness - it's frankly ridiculous.
when a company tries to exploit a culture that isn't truly core to them. That 1337 5P34K motto sounds so incredibly phony it's pathetic.
Microsoft, here's a hint for you: 133T 5P34K stopped being cool 10 years ago.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
First, there needs to be a company culture in which people dare to take time to play in a facility like that.
Second, there needs to be an outside chance that the epic "s--t" will actually see the light of day and not be stomped on by Steve Ballmer because it doesn't run Windows.
Third, there needs to be infrastructure. One MS manager I know tried to order a bookshelf to store technical references for the group's use. The request was denied because the bookshelf wasn't a standard item. What happens when a hacker orders something random?
Fourth, for people who aren't pure hackers but have some self-interest, there needs to be some believable financial benefit to developing something cool
Without all that, this idea is sheer cargo cult.
...too late.
Never understood why anyone censors "bad" words yet leaves enough letters there so people easily figure out what the word is. Is it the spelling that's offensive or do they think they're tricking kids?
Yeah, I'm not quite sure what the deal is. I wonder if it originated with the Orthodox Jewish approach of writing "God" as "G-d", which was based on a sort of superstition against writing out the full word, even if it was obvious what the word was.
In older English texts that want to censor such things, they seem to do a better job actually censoring the words so that they're removed entirely, replaced with just a mention that there was a swear, like "the man responded with an interjection not printable in a magazine of this type". That seems like the way to go if you're truly offended by them.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The problem is not that MSFT employees don't have good ideas; the problem is that management kills them (the ideas that is).
I work at a group in Microsoft, and you are just completely effing clueless. My specific group is more fun than any startup I've worked in (I've worked through two startups), and many other groups that I work with are just as healthy, productive, and focused. The work we are doing is on a long time-scale (meaning, we're not driven into making bad trade-offs just to meet idiotic short-term deadlines), it's significant, and I think it will have a significant impact when the time is ready. Your hatred for Microsoft doesn't mean that the object of your hatred conforms to your views. First you set up a straw-man argument, assuming that what Microsoft is doing is exactly what your own dysfunctional company is doing. Then you basically say that Microsoft is doomed because your own situation is terrible. That's simply a fallacy.