Fair enough:) But I work there and I feel it is quite fair. Ill tell you
why: Microsoft treats me very well. I learn an awful lot working at Microsoft.
If (or when) I moonlight, Ill use this knowledge. This will benefit me greatly.
For me, its a fair deal.
What I feel people are assuming is that the assignment of any IP developed by
employees by default to Microsoft is someone a problem. What many dont realize
is that unless it directly negatively impinges on Microsofts business - you get
the IP. In many cases you get all of it and Microsoft gets nothing. This is
especially true when people come to work at Microsoft and they have projects
in-flight, or products already in the market.
Here is another way to look at it. Lets say you were an employer - maybe you
own a small software firm that specializes in writing software for robotic
control in manufacturing plants. Lets say you took the route where
you let Employees do whatever they want in their spare time and had no claim to
anything done outside the office.
Now, Bob comes along and writes some cool new robotic control software.
Its not exactly like your stuff, but kind of close. He puts it up on
a web site and you notice some of your customers posting questions about it in
his forum.
You pretty much have one recourse - immediately fire Bob and sue him for
non-compete. But this may suck - Bob is a nice guy! Your wives are
good friends, your kids go to the same school and both your families go to the
beach every 4th of July. Bob was one of your first and best employees.
You even give him generous profit sharing.
So, how would you feel Mr. Entrepreneur? What would you do?
Now, lets say there was an IP policy in place - similar to Microsofts and
most other companies. In that case, Bob would have had to ask first
and the conversation could have gone smiting like this "Hey! Thats a
great idea. its cool if you want to spend your own time on this. I
like it so much that well make it a company product and Ill give you 25% of
the profits. Ill even loan you our spare robot for testing."
Without that policy, that conversation probably wouldnt happen.
Heck - Bobs spare time is his right?
Many commenters seem to feel that what they do on their own time is their own
business - damn (or even fuck) their employer (go look at the comments).
Employment is a two way street. If you want your employer to treat you
fairly, then treat them fairly as well. Showing a modicum of loyalty isnt
a bad place to start.
Ok - so there seem to be lots of Slashdot commenters that dont like this
kind of policy. Ok, thats groovy. Everyone in the US is at
liberty to work for companies that dont have those policies. Nobody is
making them work for Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Apple, IBM, Facebook, Amazon, or
HP.
Fair enough:) I think its accurate to say that Microsoft's policies are very liberal for the US. Its cool that in places like the UK employees are more at liberty to do things outside of work without any employer entangle ments.
Sure! I think that NHS is a gret enabler for individuals and entrepenureship. I'm somewhat of an oxymoron in the US. I'm quite conservative, but I'm highly infavor of President Obama's health care initiatives.
The absurd restrictions as you call them are the norm in the US, and for most US companies that have offices abroad - though local laws may enforce different employee and IP agreements. You may not like it, but if you refused to accept them, then you would have a really hard time working in the US. Which may be just fine for you. There are great places to work all over the world.
With respect to funding - see my other post.
Also, is "MS can go fuck themselves" really the best you can do? Really?
-Foredecker
Really? Have you looked at your employment agreement or corporate policies carefully? Even if there are not any expclity restrictions in either place, there are state and federal laws that protect your eomployer against many employee behavirs they may not like.
What would your employer do (and I'm not asking you to reval it, I know you don't want to be a paid shill) if you started competing directly with them in your off time? I suspect they wouldn't be too happy abou tit. I'm also pretty sure they could fire you for it (not that they would, they are probalby pretty groovy people).
Like many other posters have pointed out. The vast majority of companies have very, very strict IP policies. For most, antying an employee does - work related or not - belongs to their employer.
My point is that Microsoft's policis are very, very liberal and favor the employee. The only way they could be more liberal is if hey didn't exist.
-Foredecker
It is highly unlikely that Microsoft would screw Bob (the real name of
Paint.NETs author). Its just not the right thing to do. It is very
unlikely that Microsoft would tell Bob to stop working on paint.net. First, it
would make Bob very happy, second its very, very unlikely that Paint.NET would
be materially impactful to anything Microsoft would do. Of course, I
cant say this with authority, but I know Bobs management chain really well (I
used to be his skip manger) and we just wouldnt do this.
I know slashdotters love to assume that being a developer at Microsoft is a
mind-numbingly boring, tedious, manual, excruciating, soul-crushing bureaucratic
exercise. This couldn’t be further from the truth – especially in Windows.
People that work at Microsoft , like Bob, work for real people. Human beings.
Nice folks. Mangers, like myself enjoy treating people fairly, liberally, and
nicely. It makes us happy. It engenders friendships. It is essential to making
work fun and enjoyable.
I know folks just dont want to believe it, but Microsoft has some of the
most liberal and supportive policies of any company, not just high tech
companies. We treat our people really well. Yes, yes, not everyone
is happy - just go read the Mini-Microsoft blog. But, I claim
this is a very small minority - compare the number of posts on MM with
the number of blogs on blogs.msnd.com
and blogs.technet.com. Whats the
factor? 1,000 to 1? Higher?
Feh - I hit submit instead of continue editing. My apologies. I didnt
address your comment "in whos universe". In the vast majority of these cases,
nobody could quit their job and pursue their moonlighting work. This is
especially true of for ad-hoc mobile app development. They only reason most
people can do this kind of thing is because they have a day job.
In most moonlighting situations (not just at Microsoft), the moonlighter
cannot just quit their day job and pursue their dream.
I think the moonlighting policy at Microsoft is more than fair - its
excellent. As I said, it is very likely the most liberal of any high tech
company. I know it is much more liberal than Google and Apples polices.
Remember, the 20% time thing at Google has nothing to do with moonlighting -
its time spent on projects for Google. Its also worth noting that while
Microsoft doesnt have an official delineated 20% time policy, that kind of time
is common for many people. But, its different than Google. For example, when my
team is in the middle of a Windows development cycle - we focus on that 100%.
But, when we are not focused on finishing a coding, integration or stabilization
milestone, we very often have time to work on 20% kind of things - often way
more than 20%. We call this prototyping. It is quite common for prototype code
to productized and used in products. Ive done this several times. So have many
others I know. This is true for minor things and some big things. For example
Superfetch was heavily prototyped. So where some key cold boot
optimizations. We could not have included these things (and many others) in
Windows without considerable prototyping time. Note that prototypes are very
often the idea of a single person, or a small group of people. Program
mangers often come up with great prototyping ideas. Prototyping ideas almost
never come from management saying "Hey guys, go prototype this thing" (but that
does happen sometimes).
As further illustration, many of the projects on Codeplex.com are from Microsoft people
and are great examples of moonlighting and 20% time kinds of things. Heck,
Cineplex itself started out (long ago) as an internal side project.
Freelance is cool and I've done that in the past (liked it too...). But how good is your health insurance? Mine is pretty darn good. Working in a big company has its advantages. Its great for some poeple, not so good for others. Its great that you enjoy freelancing, but it certainly isn't for everybody.
Here is the truth. Microsoft has one of the most liberal employee
moonlighting policies of any high tech company. This includes yours.
Microsoft has long allowed moonlighting. There are many employees
that moonlight. Of course, a lot of moonlighting is writing software. This
is often to extend Microsoft products. But there are others as well, some people
write books, some write and perform music, some build furniture and some teach.
The only things Microsoft has ever ask of any moonlighter is/p>
Ask for permission first. People get it in most cases directly
from their manger, or a director. No VPs or HR needed.
DDont compete with Microsoft. People will not get permission
for this. For example, I wouldnt get permission to write a new
word processor thus competing with word.
Dont let it impact your Microsoft job. Note, moonlighting often
benefits a persons day job, and often their team.
Microsoft gets an implicitly license to your stuff. Note this
doesnt encumber the employee in any way - they can sell and license their
stuff too. But Microsoft can use it with no royalties.
After all, were funding it indirectly. Its only fair.
Again, moonlighging is very common at Microsoft. Our policies are quite
liberal and have been for a very long time. I understand Bill put them
inplace himself.
Here, Microsoft is simply making a very liberal policy even more liberal.
-a href="http://foredecker.wordpress.com/about/">Foredecker
II think some slashdotters assume that if its not some big earth shattering
high PR value block buster thing, then it must not happen. My point
is that this happens all the time. The benefits Microsoft Research
brings to our products are many, but not necessarily highly visible.
Remember, we are a company. Our goal is to make money - great heaping
gobs of it. MSR is a key part of this. MSR does exists to
benefit our products. This often takes time and not everything MSR
does gets into a product. But we learn a lot even from the things
that dont help a product directly.
But, you are missing my other - and most important - point: Diegcog - very
likey just made that statment up. Its called lying. Ill be interested
to read his respsonse, if any.
Dude, that is complete and utter BS. Did you just make that up? Or do you
have first hand knowledge?
I actually have first hand knowledge: Many, many things make it from
Microsoft Research directly into products. Im aware of many that are in
Windows. We are really good at this.
Were not perfect, if you are going to be derisive about Microsoft, at least
be original and accurate.
Ok! Now were getting somewhere. In your last post you didnt curse,
and you didnt say anything insulting. You are getting close to a lucid and
fact base conversation.
The idea that posting a positive comment about your employer makes someone a
"paid shill" is just goofy, it is nonsensical. If you really
believe
this, then there are large numbers of paid shills posting on Slasdhot and in
many other places. So, please be sure to
critisize them as equally as you have critisized me.
I think you dont understand the labor market. My explanation that
we pay people the same no matter if they are citizens or on a Vista doesnt prove
your point - not even a little. We dont complete for labor with just
ourselves,
but with many, many other companies - the demand for labor in our industry is
what sets labor prices - not what just what we pay. We compete for
top talent every day with Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, IBM, Oracle, and many
other companies (including small companies and startups). Its this market
that determines the cost of labor - how much we pay in salary and the overall
total rewards package.
The current labor market for they kind of people we hire - devleopers and
technical people in particular - is currently tilted in dramatic favor of the
candidates. Said more simply, the demand for top technical tallent
greatly outstrips the supply. Im sure you understand basic
economics to know what that means.
We simply cant pay less than the market rate or people that we wanted to
hire would simply go to other companies that offered better packages. We see
this all the time. For example, we recently lost a very good new-grad hire
to Google. They simply offered the candidate a higher sign on bonus.
He waned to buy a new car. He was very up front about it. He was
talking to Amazon as well. Unfortunately, he accepted Googles offer before we
had a chance to counter. He was new to this and didnt understand that he
had a good negotiating position and very likely could have gotten more out of
someone.
I dont like tax cheats either - they are breaking the law. I was
really clear that avoiding taxes legally is good, right, proper and noble. If you dont like people and companies that do that then you really dont like a very large
number of people and companies. Are you being hypocritical here? Have you ever taken a tax
deduction?
How about for mortgage interest? Or a home office?
If so, how is OK for you to do that, and cheating if others do it? How do
you judge a ligitmate tax reduction technique, or a bad one. Do you just
know it when you see it - which is subjective relativsim at its worst - or do
you have some more objetive criteria? You can
I can agree to disagree here - but as long as its legal, its not cheating. I argue that it would be good to make it much simpler, and that it would be good
for the country if some corporate and individual tax shelters were eliminated.
But again, if its legal, its not only OK, its good, right and proper.
I searched, but I dont think anybody ever fussed at us about doing anything
that could remotely be called bribing dell. Do note that we
have long had a marketing program where we give partners marketing dollars if
they meet a min-quality bar. You may be familiar with the Windows Logo
Program. If they meet our logo requirements, they get some marketing money.
This program changes a bit from release to rerelease. All OEMs are
equally eligible.
My apologies for missing your comment about "calling Linux a cancer". Ballmer was widely misquoted here. If you read the articles (here
is one), he was talking about the GPL - not Linux itself. Ive
personally heard Ballmer talk about this internally, and it is the license he
doesnt
like, not the things that use the license. Now, you may
believe
that is splitting hairs, and if you take umbrage to Ballmers opinion here, then
I suggest you have a thin skin and are more than a littl
Re:A Microsoft Nokia bad-analogy award
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
·
· Score: 1
How do you figure? Did you do any math
actual math? If so - care to share it? Or cite an reputable article?
What did you compare it to? Or did you just make that up?
Yes, there was a $1B mistake with the early XBOX 360.
That was written off and paid for a couple of years ago. But,
despite that, its proving to be a successful profitable platform - being
profitable since 2008.
Im not sure where you get your WII numbers - could you
cite your source?
XBOX 360 currently enjoys about 30% market share compared
to WII at 36% and PS3 at about 32% (cite).
Thats not "two to one" - its 6 percentage points. If you look at the
numbers, the WII is loosing market share rapidly. 2010 was a
decent year for the Entertainment and Devices Business but revenues were down a
bit. You can read the gory (and boring) details in our
annual
report. Dont forget that the XBOX business is a systems business -
we make money many ways with the XBOX system. For example, in July 2010,
this article explains that XBOX Live is a $1.2 Billion dollar business.
Steam is close to that (cite).
Big companies can make costly mistakes and still thrive. Look at
Intels recent $1B problem with SandyBridge. Nobody seems to be
freaking out about that (will not too much anyway). There
stock price hasnt even really taken a hit.
Ok, thats a bit better. My apologies for misinterpreting your
use of the term amateur. I think you can see I
dont believe that any of our competitors are amateur - this includes FOSS folks. Its groovy that you didnt
curse this time, though the pejorative use of the term shill remains both
baseless
and crass.
I believe I addressed all your comments. Where do you belive Im
lying?
Im not sure why you think Im a "paid shill".
Could you explain that in a lucid fact base manner? Im a dev manger in the
windows org - my signature clearly points to
my wordpress site.
Im not the least bit anonymous. Do you have any evidence that Microsoft
has ever paid anyone to post anything on Slashdot? No? Yes? What
enables you to make that claim? Im pretty familiar with how we do PR and
marketing and Im pretty sure that never happens, though i must admit I do not
know that for a verifiable fact, but Id bet money on it...
Or, is that simply a hyperbolic baseless accusation? Or is that a lie?
Are you a "paid shill" simply because you post on Slashdot and have a job?
Speaking of pay and H1B visas - Im quite confident this your claim is 100%
baseless. Im a hiring manger and have
hired many developers. We pay
people on visas exactly what we pay everyone else. Microsoft is quite
competitive with overall rewards - that includes starting bonuses
and stock, base salary, yearly bonuses (cash and stock), and benefits. For example, our health benefits are fabulous - Microsoft very
literally pays for
my health care - nothing comes out of my paycheck. Ive never had a single
co-pay - ever (I have a family of four). I know for a
verifiable fact that not only does Microsoft health coverage do this for regular
things but also for very, very expensive things like cancer treatments.
Microsoft routinely pays 100s of thousands of dollars for peoples cancer
treatments - with no copay.
Microsoft
is responsible for enabling thousands of the smartest and best people from all
over the world to come to the United states and work for long periods of time.
Many of these people gain their citizenship. They raise
families here, pay taxes, and are exactly the kind of people we want to emigrate
to the US. Thats a bad thing how?
When we hire a person on a visa, we hire them "into the US". This
is in contrast to hiring people already here on a vista. That
does happen - for example, someone might already be working here (on a Visa) for
another company, or may be here on an educational visa. But most visa
hires are for people that we bring in from outside the US. By
"into the US" I mean: We pay all the expenses of helping them get the visa, we fill
out all the paper work have lawyers review it, we submit it to the federal
government for approval. Then we pay to move them here - this often
includes moving their family as well.
We hire these people simply because there are not enough qualified US based
people to
fill high tech slots in the US. There is intense competition
for the best and the brightest. We compete against Google, Apple, Oracle,
IBM, Facebook, and several other companies all the time for the best talent.
The need for, and use of, visas isnt a Microsoft thing - its an industry thing.
Name me one single company of significant size that doesnt hire people on visas. All the majors hire significant numbers of people on
Visas.
Given that level of competition, there is no way at all that we could use
visa hires to lower overall pay. Its just impossible. I know for a fact that MSFT pays, quite well -
especially at the
senior levels. Doing well at Microsoft is very lucrative.
Let me give you an example: Microsoft doesnt give people stock options
any more. Options suck. If the strike price is greater
than the market price, then the options are worth nothing. Seven
years ago Microsoft switched to giving people stock grants - its just stock.
There is no strike price. When I vest shares, I can sell them at
market
"Asshole", "shill" "Amateur"? Thats the best you can do? Really?
My phrase Foss Teams was not intended to be derogatory. I put it in
quotes because I wasnt sure what phrase to use. There are
companies
that provide FOSS products, some only do FOSS, some contribute to FOSS but also
sell proprietary solutions. Then there are groups of people that
develop FOSS products. If FOSS Teams is not a the right phrase,
then what is?
FOSS (LAMP) in particular in the sever space has a strong
presence. But, I maintain it is not dominant.
Microsoft sells lots of server products every year. Overall, the
numbers Ive seen are more favorable to Windows server and related
products. Of course, you
can look at narrower markets and show different numbers. For
example, in 2008, the super computer market was dominated by Linux (at like
90+%). It still is, but much less so today. Almost a
year ago, Computerworld published
this article, saying Windows Server had a 73.9% market share for the
fourth quarter of 2009. In June of 2010, Mary Joe Foley (who
loves to rake us over the coals) wrote
this article saying that PP
In Q1 2010, Windows Server was installed on 75.3 percent of the servers sold
worldwide. Linux was on 20.8 percent of the servers and Unix on only 3.6
percent. Both Windows Server and Linux grew in share from Q4 2009 to Q1
2010; Unix declined slightly
I found these two articles pretty easily. Im sure you can could
find some others. I suspect the data wont be materially different -
it is unlikely that, in aggregate, FOSS server software has a dominate market
position by any stretch of the imagination. Note, Im not arguing
that if you narrow things to specific sub-markets that FOSS will show much
stinger numbers, but dominant ones? In major markets (not just niche
things).
Said another way - what is your definition of dominant? Mine is dominate
like the iPhone, or Windows, or Office.
The major FOSS products, like Linux, the LAMP stack, and MySQL (there ere
others too...) are great products, developed by very capable and innovative
people. They are also free. But even in the face of those
characteristics, and the huge advantage of being free, MSFT has a solid and
profitable market share competing with FOSS in the overall server space - its a
$15 Billion market for us, and growing, and very, very profitable.
That is success by any measure. We sell stuff to millions and millions of
happy customers every year, year in, year out. Thats speaking with
actions.
We make some really great products. Weve also built some super-crappy
ones. Just like many other companies. We are a dominate
number one in some big markets and were a strong number two in many others.
We are committed to becoming so in some other markets (like search).
We are good at growing profitable business over time and pruning ones that fail.
Microsoft people almost universally have a strong and healthy respect
for the people and products we compete against. The Apple iPod, iPhone, and
iPad are insanely great products. Apple, Google, Oracle, and IBM all have
smart, capable, innovate people. So do many FOSS projects.
Its cool that you dont like Microsoft - its a free country. But do you
have such disdain for other major technology companies like Apple, Google,
Oracle, IBM, Amazon, HP, or Facebook? Is the company that employees you
any better? Or do you work for your self? If so, what do you
do that is more moral or better? What FOSS projects have you
contributed to in a material way? How many bugs have you fixed in
FOSS software? Did these fixes make it into actual shipping
releases? How many people did they help? 10s, 100s?
Millions? Or is a sneering, cursing, hyperbolic post the best you can do
to compete with Microsoft?
AMD as done well, so has NVIDIA, HP. Dell would have if they hadnt shot
themselves in the foot. So have many other OEMs and ODMs.
In the client space - it certainly isnt Linux or any other FOSS software
driving their business. Of course, Linux and LAMP are a strong competitors
in the server space - but certainly not dominant.
There are many, many Microsoft re-sellers and VARs that do quite well
working with Microsoft. By quite well I mean nicely profitable over long periods
of time.
While slashdotters often have Apple myopia, many cell phone vendors did quite
well selling Windows Mobile phones. Note that I completely, the
iPhone agree that the iPhone is awesome. It changed the game and MSFT is
playing catch-up.
There are literately thousands of Independent software Vendors that make a
good living of selling software that runs on Windows or integrates with other
Microsoft products. Most Microsoft products are extensible for just
this reason. (yes, sometimes we suck at making things
extensible....)
There are many service providers that make good money selling things like
exchange and SharePoint services.
Lets not forget game developers that make good money off PC and XBOX games.
One of Microsofts strengths is that we grok the ecosystem strategy.
Its very good for our customers and for us if other companies can run viable
business over the long term partnering with Microsoft, or otherwise leveraging
Microsofts products. Note, other companies and
some FOSS teams (is the right phrase?) get this too - but not everybody does.
Deride it all you want - thats just better for us when you mis-judge
Microsoft.
I don't think that's true. We have our own mapping technology. note, this doens't mean we may have used some Nokia stuff from time to time in one way or anohter. But bing maps isn't just re-packaged Nokia stuff.
-foredecker
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, that's just idiotic. Just stop making stuff up.
Quite a bit of Windows software is compiled using Intel's compilers...
Dear KiloByte, You clearly just made that up. That is a patently untrue statment. Both Windows and Office are bult with the Microsoft Compiler.
Don't make stuff up.
-Foredecker
Fair enough :) But I work there and I feel it is quite fair. Ill tell you
why: Microsoft treats me very well. I learn an awful lot working at Microsoft.
If (or when) I moonlight, Ill use this knowledge. This will benefit me greatly.
For me, its a fair deal.
What I feel people are assuming is that the assignment of any IP developed by employees by default to Microsoft is someone a problem. What many dont realize is that unless it directly negatively impinges on Microsofts business - you get the IP. In many cases you get all of it and Microsoft gets nothing. This is especially true when people come to work at Microsoft and they have projects in-flight, or products already in the market.
Here is another way to look at it. Lets say you were an employer - maybe you own a small software firm that specializes in writing software for robotic control in manufacturing plants. Lets say you took the route where you let Employees do whatever they want in their spare time and had no claim to anything done outside the office.
Now, Bob comes along and writes some cool new robotic control software. Its not exactly like your stuff, but kind of close. He puts it up on a web site and you notice some of your customers posting questions about it in his forum.
You pretty much have one recourse - immediately fire Bob and sue him for non-compete. But this may suck - Bob is a nice guy! Your wives are good friends, your kids go to the same school and both your families go to the beach every 4th of July. Bob was one of your first and best employees. You even give him generous profit sharing.
So, how would you feel Mr. Entrepreneur? What would you do?
Now, lets say there was an IP policy in place - similar to Microsofts and most other companies. In that case, Bob would have had to ask first and the conversation could have gone smiting like this "Hey! Thats a great idea. its cool if you want to spend your own time on this. I like it so much that well make it a company product and Ill give you 25% of the profits. Ill even loan you our spare robot for testing." Without that policy, that conversation probably wouldnt happen. Heck - Bobs spare time is his right?
Many commenters seem to feel that what they do on their own time is their own business - damn (or even fuck) their employer (go look at the comments). Employment is a two way street. If you want your employer to treat you fairly, then treat them fairly as well. Showing a modicum of loyalty isnt a bad place to start.
Ok - so there seem to be lots of Slashdot commenters that dont like this kind of policy. Ok, thats groovy. Everyone in the US is at liberty to work for companies that dont have those policies. Nobody is making them work for Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Apple, IBM, Facebook, Amazon, or HP.
-Foredecker
Hey! Thats a good one.
Serously though, my posts are not malformed until I publish it on Slashdot. :) For example, Slashdots submitter strips all the diacriticals
For example slashdot turns this <p>Don't</p> into this <p>Dont</p>
-Foredecker
Fair enough :) I think its accurate to say that Microsoft's policies are very liberal for the US. Its cool that in places like the UK employees are more at liberty to do things outside of work without any employer entangle ments.
Sure! I think that NHS is a gret enabler for individuals and entrepenureship. I'm somewhat of an oxymoron in the US. I'm quite conservative, but I'm highly infavor of President Obama's health care initiatives.
The absurd restrictions as you call them are the norm in the US, and for most US companies that have offices abroad - though local laws may enforce different employee and IP agreements. You may not like it, but if you refused to accept them, then you would have a really hard time working in the US. Which may be just fine for you. There are great places to work all over the world. With respect to funding - see my other post. Also, is "MS can go fuck themselves" really the best you can do? Really? -Foredecker
Really? Have you looked at your employment agreement or corporate policies carefully? Even if there are not any expclity restrictions in either place, there are state and federal laws that protect your eomployer against many employee behavirs they may not like. What would your employer do (and I'm not asking you to reval it, I know you don't want to be a paid shill) if you started competing directly with them in your off time? I suspect they wouldn't be too happy abou tit. I'm also pretty sure they could fire you for it (not that they would, they are probalby pretty groovy people). Like many other posters have pointed out. The vast majority of companies have very, very strict IP policies. For most, antying an employee does - work related or not - belongs to their employer. My point is that Microsoft's policis are very, very liberal and favor the employee. The only way they could be more liberal is if hey didn't exist. -Foredecker
It is highly unlikely that Microsoft would screw Bob (the real name of Paint.NETs author). Its just not the right thing to do. It is very unlikely that Microsoft would tell Bob to stop working on paint.net. First, it would make Bob very happy, second its very, very unlikely that Paint.NET would be materially impactful to anything Microsoft would do. Of course, I cant say this with authority, but I know Bobs management chain really well (I used to be his skip manger) and we just wouldnt do this.
I know slashdotters love to assume that being a developer at Microsoft is a mind-numbingly boring, tedious, manual, excruciating, soul-crushing bureaucratic exercise. This couldn’t be further from the truth – especially in Windows.
People that work at Microsoft , like Bob, work for real people. Human beings. Nice folks. Mangers, like myself enjoy treating people fairly, liberally, and nicely. It makes us happy. It engenders friendships. It is essential to making work fun and enjoyable.
I know folks just dont want to believe it, but Microsoft has some of the most liberal and supportive policies of any company, not just high tech companies. We treat our people really well. Yes, yes, not everyone is happy - just go read the Mini-Microsoft blog. But, I claim this is a very small minority - compare the number of posts on MM with the number of blogs on blogs.msnd.com and blogs.technet.com. Whats the factor? 1,000 to 1? Higher?
-Foredecker
Feh - I hit submit instead of continue editing. My apologies. I didnt address your comment "in whos universe". In the vast majority of these cases, nobody could quit their job and pursue their moonlighting work. This is especially true of for ad-hoc mobile app development. They only reason most people can do this kind of thing is because they have a day job.
In most moonlighting situations (not just at Microsoft), the moonlighter cannot just quit their day job and pursue their dream.
I think the moonlighting policy at Microsoft is more than fair - its excellent. As I said, it is very likely the most liberal of any high tech company. I know it is much more liberal than Google and Apples polices.
Remember, the 20% time thing at Google has nothing to do with moonlighting - its time spent on projects for Google. Its also worth noting that while Microsoft doesnt have an official delineated 20% time policy, that kind of time is common for many people. But, its different than Google. For example, when my team is in the middle of a Windows development cycle - we focus on that 100%. But, when we are not focused on finishing a coding, integration or stabilization milestone, we very often have time to work on 20% kind of things - often way more than 20%. We call this prototyping. It is quite common for prototype code to productized and used in products. Ive done this several times. So have many others I know. This is true for minor things and some big things. For example Superfetch was heavily prototyped. So where some key cold boot optimizations. We could not have included these things (and many others) in Windows without considerable prototyping time. Note that prototypes are very often the idea of a single person, or a small group of people. Program mangers often come up with great prototyping ideas. Prototyping ideas almost never come from management saying "Hey guys, go prototype this thing" (but that does happen sometimes).
As further illustration, many of the projects on Codeplex.com are from Microsoft people and are great examples of moonlighting and 20% time kinds of things. Heck, Cineplex itself started out (long ago) as an internal side project.
-Foredecker
Freelance is cool and I've done that in the past (liked it too...). But how good is your health insurance? Mine is pretty darn good. Working in a big company has its advantages. Its great for some poeple, not so good for others. Its great that you enjoy freelancing, but it certainly isn't for everybody.
Gah! This kind of thing drives me nuts!
Here is the truth. Microsoft has one of the most liberal employee moonlighting policies of any high tech company. This includes yours. Microsoft has long allowed moonlighting. There are many employees that moonlight. Of course, a lot of moonlighting is writing software. This is often to extend Microsoft products. But there are others as well, some people write books, some write and perform music, some build furniture and some teach.
I have first hand knowledge of several examples, one of which I can talk bout. I hired the guy that develops Paint.Net/a>.. He worked for me a while and we are currently on the same team. Getting permission for him to continue Paint.NET development was easy and a no-brainer.
The only things Microsoft has ever ask of any moonlighter is/p>
Again, moonlighging is very common at Microsoft. Our policies are quite liberal and have been for a very long time. I understand Bill put them inplace himself.
Here, Microsoft is simply making a very liberal policy even more liberal.
-a href="http://foredecker.wordpress.com/about/">Foredecker
Sure. Here are a few that are not obvious - or officially published - like Kenect.
II think some slashdotters assume that if its not some big earth shattering high PR value block buster thing, then it must not happen. My point is that this happens all the time. The benefits Microsoft Research brings to our products are many, but not necessarily highly visible.
Remember, we are a company. Our goal is to make money - great heaping gobs of it. MSR is a key part of this. MSR does exists to benefit our products. This often takes time and not everything MSR does gets into a product. But we learn a lot even from the things that dont help a product directly.
But, you are missing my other - and most important - point: Diegcog - very likey just made that statment up. Its called lying. Ill be interested to read his respsonse, if any.
-Foredecker
Dude, that is complete and utter BS. Did you just make that up? Or do you have first hand knowledge?
I actually have first hand knowledge: Many, many things make it from Microsoft Research directly into products. Im aware of many that are in Windows. We are really good at this.
Were not perfect, if you are going to be derisive about Microsoft, at least be original and accurate.
-Foredecker
No ACs here...
-Foredecker
Hi h4rr4r,
Ok! Now were getting somewhere. In your last post you didnt curse, and you didnt say anything insulting. You are getting close to a lucid and fact base conversation.
The idea that posting a positive comment about your employer makes someone a "paid shill" is just goofy, it is nonsensical. If you really believe this, then there are large numbers of paid shills posting on Slasdhot and in many other places. So, please be sure to critisize them as equally as you have critisized me.
I think you dont understand the labor market. My explanation that we pay people the same no matter if they are citizens or on a Vista doesnt prove your point - not even a little. We dont complete for labor with just ourselves, but with many, many other companies - the demand for labor in our industry is what sets labor prices - not what just what we pay. We compete for top talent every day with Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, IBM, Oracle, and many other companies (including small companies and startups). Its this market that determines the cost of labor - how much we pay in salary and the overall total rewards package.
The current labor market for they kind of people we hire - devleopers and technical people in particular - is currently tilted in dramatic favor of the candidates. Said more simply, the demand for top technical tallent greatly outstrips the supply. Im sure you understand basic economics to know what that means.
We simply cant pay less than the market rate or people that we wanted to hire would simply go to other companies that offered better packages. We see this all the time. For example, we recently lost a very good new-grad hire to Google. They simply offered the candidate a higher sign on bonus. He waned to buy a new car. He was very up front about it. He was talking to Amazon as well. Unfortunately, he accepted Googles offer before we had a chance to counter. He was new to this and didnt understand that he had a good negotiating position and very likely could have gotten more out of someone.
I dont like tax cheats either - they are breaking the law. I was really clear that avoiding taxes legally is good, right, proper and noble. If you dont like people and companies that do that then you really dont like a very large number of people and companies. Are you being hypocritical here? Have you ever taken a tax deduction? How about for mortgage interest? Or a home office? If so, how is OK for you to do that, and cheating if others do it? How do you judge a ligitmate tax reduction technique, or a bad one. Do you just know it when you see it - which is subjective relativsim at its worst - or do you have some more objetive criteria? You can I can agree to disagree here - but as long as its legal, its not cheating. I argue that it would be good to make it much simpler, and that it would be good for the country if some corporate and individual tax shelters were eliminated. But again, if its legal, its not only OK, its good, right and proper.
I searched, but I dont think anybody ever fussed at us about doing anything that could remotely be called bribing dell. Do note that we have long had a marketing program where we give partners marketing dollars if they meet a min-quality bar. You may be familiar with the Windows Logo Program. If they meet our logo requirements, they get some marketing money. This program changes a bit from release to rerelease. All OEMs are equally eligible .
My apologies for missing your comment about "calling Linux a cancer". Ballmer was widely misquoted here. If you read the articles (here is one), he was talking about the GPL - not Linux itself. Ive personally heard Ballmer talk about this internally, and it is the license he doesnt like, not the things that use the license. Now, you may believe that is splitting hairs, and if you take umbrage to Ballmers opinion here, then I suggest you have a thin skin and are more than a littl
How much of the money you earn are you selfishly keeping and not giving to one or more unemployed people? Do you tithe?
Nice post.
-foredecker.
How do you figure? Did you do any math actual math? If so - care to share it? Or cite an reputable article? What did you compare it to? Or did you just make that up?
-foredecker.
Yes, there was a $1B mistake with the early XBOX 360. That was written off and paid for a couple of years ago. But, despite that, its proving to be a successful profitable platform - being profitable since 2008.
Im not sure where you get your WII numbers - could you cite your source?
XBOX 360 currently enjoys about 30% market share compared to WII at 36% and PS3 at about 32% (cite). Thats not "two to one" - its 6 percentage points. If you look at the numbers, the WII is loosing market share rapidly. 2010 was a decent year for the Entertainment and Devices Business but revenues were down a bit. You can read the gory (and boring) details in our annual report. Dont forget that the XBOX business is a systems business - we make money many ways with the XBOX system. For example, in July 2010, this article explains that XBOX Live is a $1.2 Billion dollar business. Steam is close to that (cite).
Big companies can make costly mistakes and still thrive. Look at Intels recent $1B problem with SandyBridge. Nobody seems to be freaking out about that (will not too much anyway). There stock price hasnt even really taken a hit.
-foredecker.
Hi h4rr4r,
Ok, thats a bit better. My apologies for misinterpreting your use of the term amateur. I think you can see I dont believe that any of our competitors are amateur - this includes FOSS folks. Its groovy that you didnt curse this time, though the pejorative use of the term shill remains both baseless and crass.
I believe I addressed all your comments. Where do you belive Im lying?
Im not sure why you think Im a "paid shill". Could you explain that in a lucid fact base manner? Im a dev manger in the windows org - my signature clearly points to my wordpress site. Im not the least bit anonymous. Do you have any evidence that Microsoft has ever paid anyone to post anything on Slashdot? No? Yes? What enables you to make that claim? Im pretty familiar with how we do PR and marketing and Im pretty sure that never happens, though i must admit I do not know that for a verifiable fact, but Id bet money on it...
Or, is that simply a hyperbolic baseless accusation? Or is that a lie?
Are you a "paid shill" simply because you post on Slashdot and have a job?
Speaking of pay and H1B visas - Im quite confident this your claim is 100% baseless. Im a hiring manger and have hired many developers. We pay people on visas exactly what we pay everyone else. Microsoft is quite competitive with overall rewards - that includes starting bonuses and stock, base salary, yearly bonuses (cash and stock), and benefits. For example, our health benefits are fabulous - Microsoft very literally pays for my health care - nothing comes out of my paycheck. Ive never had a single co-pay - ever (I have a family of four). I know for a verifiable fact that not only does Microsoft health coverage do this for regular things but also for very, very expensive things like cancer treatments. Microsoft routinely pays 100s of thousands of dollars for peoples cancer treatments - with no copay.
Microsoft is responsible for enabling thousands of the smartest and best people from all over the world to come to the United states and work for long periods of time. Many of these people gain their citizenship. They raise families here, pay taxes, and are exactly the kind of people we want to emigrate to the US. Thats a bad thing how?
When we hire a person on a visa, we hire them "into the US". This is in contrast to hiring people already here on a vista. That does happen - for example, someone might already be working here (on a Visa) for another company, or may be here on an educational visa. But most visa hires are for people that we bring in from outside the US. By "into the US" I mean: We pay all the expenses of helping them get the visa, we fill out all the paper work have lawyers review it, we submit it to the federal government for approval. Then we pay to move them here - this often includes moving their family as well.
We hire these people simply because there are not enough qualified US based people to fill high tech slots in the US. There is intense competition for the best and the brightest. We compete against Google, Apple, Oracle, IBM, Facebook, and several other companies all the time for the best talent. The need for, and use of, visas isnt a Microsoft thing - its an industry thing. Name me one single company of significant size that doesnt hire people on visas. All the majors hire significant numbers of people on Visas.
Given that level of competition, there is no way at all that we could use visa hires to lower overall pay. Its just impossible. I know for a fact that MSFT pays, quite well - especially at the senior levels. Doing well at Microsoft is very lucrative. Let me give you an example: Microsoft doesnt give people stock options any more. Options suck. If the strike price is greater than the market price, then the options are worth nothing. Seven years ago Microsoft switched to giving people stock grants - its just stock. There is no strike price. When I vest shares, I can sell them at market
Hi Jonny, see my reply to h4rr4r above. -Foredecker
"Asshole", "shill" "Amateur"? Thats the best you can do? Really?
My phrase Foss Teams was not intended to be derogatory. I put it in quotes because I wasnt sure what phrase to use. There are companies that provide FOSS products, some only do FOSS, some contribute to FOSS but also sell proprietary solutions. Then there are groups of people that develop FOSS products. If FOSS Teams is not a the right phrase, then what is?
FOSS (LAMP) in particular in the sever space has a strong presence. But, I maintain it is not dominant. Microsoft sells lots of server products every year. Overall, the numbers Ive seen are more favorable to Windows server and related products. Of course, you can look at narrower markets and show different numbers. For example, in 2008, the super computer market was dominated by Linux (at like 90+%). It still is, but much less so today. Almost a year ago, Computerworld published this article, saying Windows Server had a 73.9% market share for the fourth quarter of 2009. In June of 2010, Mary Joe Foley (who loves to rake us over the coals) wrote this article saying that PP
I found these two articles pretty easily. Im sure you can could find some others. I suspect the data wont be materially different - it is unlikely that, in aggregate, FOSS server software has a dominate market position by any stretch of the imagination. Note, Im not arguing that if you narrow things to specific sub-markets that FOSS will show much stinger numbers, but dominant ones? In major markets (not just niche things).
Said another way - what is your definition of dominant? Mine is dominate like the iPhone, or Windows, or Office.
The major FOSS products, like Linux, the LAMP stack, and MySQL (there ere others too...) are great products, developed by very capable and innovative people. They are also free. But even in the face of those characteristics, and the huge advantage of being free, MSFT has a solid and profitable market share competing with FOSS in the overall server space - its a $15 Billion market for us, and growing, and very, very profitable. That is success by any measure. We sell stuff to millions and millions of happy customers every year, year in, year out. Thats speaking with actions.
We make some really great products. Weve also built some super-crappy ones. Just like many other companies. We are a dominate number one in some big markets and were a strong number two in many others. We are committed to becoming so in some other markets (like search). We are good at growing profitable business over time and pruning ones that fail. Microsoft people almost universally have a strong and healthy respect for the people and products we compete against. The Apple iPod, iPhone, and iPad are insanely great products. Apple, Google, Oracle, and IBM all have smart, capable, innovate people. So do many FOSS projects.
Its cool that you dont like Microsoft - its a free country. But do you have such disdain for other major technology companies like Apple, Google, Oracle, IBM, Amazon, HP, or Facebook? Is the company that employees you any better? Or do you work for your self? If so, what do you do that is more moral or better? What FOSS projects have you contributed to in a material way? How many bugs have you fixed in FOSS software? Did these fixes make it into actual shipping releases? How many people did they help? 10s, 100s? Millions? Or is a sneering, cursing, hyperbolic post the best you can do to compete with Microsoft?
Its trivialy easy to b
AMD as done well, so has NVIDIA, HP. Dell would have if they hadnt shot themselves in the foot. So have many other OEMs and ODMs. In the client space - it certainly isnt Linux or any other FOSS software driving their business. Of course, Linux and LAMP are a strong competitors in the server space - but certainly not dominant.
There are many, many Microsoft re-sellers and VARs that do quite well working with Microsoft. By quite well I mean nicely profitable over long periods of time.
While slashdotters often have Apple myopia, many cell phone vendors did quite well selling Windows Mobile phones. Note that I completely, the iPhone agree that the iPhone is awesome. It changed the game and MSFT is playing catch-up.
There are literately thousands of Independent software Vendors that make a good living of selling software that runs on Windows or integrates with other Microsoft products. Most Microsoft products are extensible for just this reason. (yes, sometimes we suck at making things extensible....)
There are many service providers that make good money selling things like exchange and SharePoint services.
Lets not forget game developers that make good money off PC and XBOX games.
One of Microsofts strengths is that we grok the ecosystem strategy. Its very good for our customers and for us if other companies can run viable business over the long term partnering with Microsoft, or otherwise leveraging Microsofts products. Note, other companies and some FOSS teams (is the right phrase?) get this too - but not everybody does.
Deride it all you want - thats just better for us when you mis-judge Microsoft.
-Foredecker
I don't think that's true. We have our own mapping technology. note, this doens't mean we may have used some Nokia stuff from time to time in one way or anohter. But bing maps isn't just re-packaged Nokia stuff. -foredecker
That is exaclty true.
See my answer on Quora
-Foredecker