> Wait, Microsoft makes chairs? No, not directly. But the part of that chair? Manufactured in facilities running on, you guess it, Microsoft software. Transported in trucks built by Microsoft software, on roads built by Microsoft software, sold by companies running Microsoft software.
The whole premise of this paragraph is wrong. Yes, most big businesses run Microsoft Windows, but most people hate and struggle with it. They run it not because it's the best, because it's not. They run it because monopolistic business practises forced out the competition. If he's trying to argue that Microsoft are misunderstood, that they do deserve respect after all, then maybe respect the hard-nosed business practises which have forced Microsoft products into every nook and cranny despite consistently having a shittier product than the competition.
That’s right. The worst part of working
at Microsoft has nothing to do with our
internal culture (that’s not quite true;
more on that in a bit). It isn’t stack
ranking or ship cycles or trying to get
things done. It is working at a company
that people don’t believe in, despite
the immense importance it plays in
their daily life.
n.b. I haven't worked there in six years (and in fact the ten year anniversary of my FTE interview was this week!), but my feelings on the matter have been confirmed in every conversation I've ever had with an ex-MSFT FTE. Call it survivorship bias if you want, but this has been consistent in every conversation I've had, regardless if the person left a year ago or five.
edit: and the in-fighting. and the backbiting... but I guess those are just politics by another name.
1970s-style PR. This mirrors the oil company messaging: "pay no attention to the oil spills and CIA-sponsored coups de etat, we're the swell people that make the petrochemicals in that ziploc baggie in your little girl's lunchbox." "We power the trucks that bring organic vegetables to your dinner table."
Microsoft: For the Children.
But the part of that chair? Manufactured in facilities running on, you guess it, Microsoft software. Transported in trucks built by Microsoft software, on roads built by Microsoft software, sold by companies running Microsoft software.
Imagine you got out of that chair for a second. Walked across the street to get a cup of coffee. Got hit by a bus. The ambulance that picks you up? Microsoft. The hospital that saves you? Microsoft. The doctor? Trained at a school running Microsoft, using delicate instruments running Microsoft. If you prefer not getting hit by a bus, think about the role that Microsoft has had in making sure your baby was born healthy.
All of those things existed before Microsoft! Certainly the ubiquity of MS software has resulted in efficiencies over the years, but does anyone really doubt that another platform (Classic Mac, GNU, *BSD, VAX, etc) would not have filled the void in a World Without Microsoft?
This is believable. It certainly mirrors my experience of the worst thing about being friends with people who work at Microsoft: the constant sense of insecurity and desire to be be trusted. I've been told countless times in the past 2 or 3 years that I should put all my money in MSFT because they're Coming Back in a Big Way(tm).
The story is always "this shit we have in the pipeline is going to blow everyone away! why are you snickering!?" or "the consumers just don't understand us / never gave us a chance. we could have never anticipated this."
I do feel sorry for them, it can't feel good. I mean, obviously they are making cash hand over fist, but I really get the sense that they aren't getting any gratification.
What's worse than working for Microsoft is ... being a shill for Microsoft.
In a weird way, minus the "but really we're great" part, it must be hell to spend your life touting Microsoft when they are so hated. Because in these networked days, a PR person can't go home and tell their friends "they suck, I just work there" because things get around much more quickly.
Pure rubbish. MSFT should have been split up for blatant violations of the Sherman Anti Trust Act but got a last minute pass by Bush. The company is nothing more than a drain on the technology industry in this country.
The worst thing about working for Microsoft? You have to run Windows.
The part about Microsoft being ubiquitous begs the question: is it actually good that Microsoft software is everywhere? The part that really gets me is schools.
I can't see pushing Surface/Windows 8/Office/insert MS product here on students (especially young ones) being beneficial to anyone other than Microsoft. As a student who was expected to format essays according to Word and to use (Excel, Powerpoint, even FRONTPAGE) extensively in K-12 education, I really can't see a way to put this strategy in a positive light. "ad-free" bing for schools? Really? What's more poisonous--getting students dependent on a stack of proprietary software, or a search engine with ads?
The ambulance that picks you up? Microsoft.
What a larf. Why did Forbes print this? No, man, Alcoa picked me up. And US Steel. And Con-Ed. And Exxon. And Starbucks! Oh, wait, the driver had Dunkin' Donuts. Whatever.
How about "People who answer legitimate questions with two non-answers"?
>> It is working at a company that people don’t believe in, despite the immense importance it plays in their daily life.
Very true, Microsoft's business level software does not have as much visibility IMHO. People underestimate the role their software plays.
>> Imagine you got out of that chair for a second. Walked across the street to get a cup of coffee. Got hit by a bus. The ambulance that picks you up? Microsoft. The hospital that saves you? Microsoft. The doctor? Trained at a school running Microsoft, using delicate instruments running Microsoft. If you prefer not getting hit by a bus, think about the role that Microsoft has had in making sure your baby was born healthy.
What role, Windows, SQL Server, Azure? Microsoft may have helped there but so has the janitor who keeps the hospital clean, the barista who makes coffee for the doctors. Doesn't mean I'm going to thank Microsoft for saving my life when I get hit by a bus. This is a valid argument, but a very weak one because Microsoft is one cog in so many that keeps a hospital running.
Rest of the arguments in the article are quite valid, but when some tells me my ambulance is running Microsoft software I have a horrible flashback with a BSOD.
The worst part about the stack ranking implementation at MSFT is that there will always be a bottom 10-20% who'll get fired in a couple of review cycles. If you're in a stellar team, you're pretty screwed (which is sad because now we'll eventually have rock stars looking for shitty teams or leaving). Stack ranking should rather be used to identify the top 10%
Can you really credit Microsoft with software running on production lines, and in hospitals, ambulances, etc..? Isn't that more of a result of market share?
Endless patronizing condescension to outsiders?
After years of bugs/viruses/bloat and what not, Microsoft finally got the OS right with Windows 7. I personally know many people (including myself) who were/are quite impressed with it. Then it goes ahead and inflicts Windows 8 on the users.
Just when you got something right, after over a decade, and had a chance to build goodwill/positive response from your users, you go ahead and royally screw it up. I won't even go in their predatory/arm-twisting business practices.
The worst thing about Microsoft is that they never seem to learn from their mistakes or, more importantly, care.
The question was "What is the most innovative company?" Innovation is different than market penetration. And this article seems to aim to fend off a self conscious thought. Nobody thinks that people who work for MS are jerks. That is the author's own thoughts about himself. People just don't respect MS because of the lack of efficiency. Nobody argues about penetration, I am wrting this comment on a computer that runs MS. That does not take away my right to criticze the product.
Stack ranking sounds a lot worse than other people doubting you.
You mean the worst thing about working at Microsoft isn't Steve Ballmer?!
No matter how good or bad Microsoft is, the workers there dont have a magic privilege that should force anyone to respect and feel grateful to their company and them...
Read the 100s of comments here, nothing positive! The hacker community hates microsoft, which is the biggest reason why you should not work for them.
What is the worst thing about working at Microsoft? My first guess is being forced to spend at least 8 hours a day developing on a windows machine.
Pretty funny to contrast responses to this with responses to the "Designed by Apple in California" video.
Classic PR stunt...
Thanks for building the bus that hit me!
Ok, many people here said it, but still.
"Asked to name the most innovative tech company, they’ll say Apple or Google. And they’ll do it with a straight face, while sitting in a chair made by Microsoft. Wait, Microsoft makes chairs? No, not directly. But the part of that chair? Manufactured in facilities running on, you guess it, Microsoft software."
Let's look at this statement. "sitting in a chair made by Microsoft". It's pretty clear what "made by Microsoft" should mean, shouldn't it? What do you think when I say "a smartphone made by nokia"? You surely think that the smartphone was manufactured in a facility that may or may not used some software from nokia, right?
So my issue with that article is very misleading language. Can I call it newspeak?
So "made by microsoft" means neither made by microsoft nor does it mean made with sotware made by microsoft. It means it was made in a facility that may or may not uses an operating system made by microsoft. Who actually made the chair is an ingenieur using software not made by microsoft but that for reasons decided to target the microsoft operating system.
And these reasons are not something anyone at microsoft should be proud about. They worked really hard at disabling their competition with unethical methods. It's not exactly secret, anyone can read about their history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107...
"Transported in trucks built by Microsoft software, on roads built by Microsoft software,"
Microsoft produces software for building trucks and roads?
"Trained at a school running Microsoft,"
Said as if it wasn't a bad thing microsoft is pushing educational institutions to use proprietary software.
"If you prefer not getting hit by a bus, think about the role that Microsoft has had in making sure your baby was born healthy."
Ok, do people really think that it's not a bad thing that (according to the article) the whole manufacturing chain is dependent on proprietary software made by one vendor? Is it not bad that fucking hospitals and their instruments "run on" proprietary closed source microsoft software? Again, this was achieved by becoming a (quasi-) monopolist by methods described in the links above.
"we’re only able to do so because of generations of Microsoft leadership in technology."
What gets me is the casual tone that (as I read it) sounds like microsoft had "generations of leadership in technology" on their own merits instead of because they disabled their competition by their business behavior.
"I run our Bing for Schools program. It gets hardware in the hands of kids, teaches them digital literacy skills, and creates a safe environment for them to practice in. And when we launched, the haters emerged from the woodwork with pitchforks and torches, growling “Google! Google!” Just for fun, see the comment stream on The Verge story: Microsoft offers classrooms free Surface RT tablets with ad-free Bing for Schools"
Again, as others have said. It's cool that children are introduced to technology. It's bad that it's proprietary technology. Especially at educational institutions. When I advocate that they get android tablets instead it's not because it's from google but because it is (mostly) free and open source. Meego/Sailfish OS/Firefox OS would be fine too. But getting taught proprietary microsoft software, possibly with their first contact to this technology? No.
"But think about the number of young people who make a face when you say Microsoft. That’s an entirely different problem."
Why is that a problem? Sounds totally healthy to me.
"Because even if you know that you are working on something that will help save lives"
Actually you don't do that. You are working on something that others will build something for that will save lives. And because you work for someone who has become a quasi monopolist with unethical behavior those others will have to give a lot of money to your employer even though without you we may or may not had a world running on free and open software by now.
"or make things better for humanity"
Again, look at the list of lawsuits microsoft was in and lost. And that's only the stuff that is actually illegal, there is a lot you can do that is not illegal but still unethical. There's everything from their faked "get the facts" studies to the plan to pressure hardware manufacturers to cripple absolute basic standard functionality just to make their competitors look worse http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/...
"I’ve pushed through a program that does good things for kids."
You mean the program that is designed to make children already dependent on microsoft software? It's called vendor lock-in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in#Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft#Vendor_l...
Tl dr; I personally don't see how anyone that thinks stuff like "know that you are working on something that will help save lives or make things better for humanity,", i.e. who has a heart and a conscience can work for Microsoft. I'm sure the working conditions aren't as bad as some people say and the products aren't as bad as people say either. For example the metro interface: I don't really see why microsoft thought it was a good idea, but I could certainly work with it with no problems if I wanted to. It'd be only a little bit annoying but as someone who has no problems with fluxbox/openbox, xfce4, gnome2, gnome3, kde4 etc. it'd be no big deal.
The thing is that it's not just microsoft, they "support" a whole industry intentionally or coincidentally designed to lock you in: Adobe Flash DRM, while atrocious, did work on linux. But it wasn't "good enough" or something. The media industry had to choose microsoft technology with silverlight. Result: netflix, lovefilm, ... only (officially) work on either microsoft windows or apple's mac os, both commercial proprietary operating systems.
I run our Bing for Schools program. It gets hardware in the hands of kids, teaches them digital literacy skills, and creates a safe environment for them to practice in
Yeah, all altruistic no doubt.
The author seems to revolve his article around MS software running manufacturing, ambulances, etc. This is only true in the most literal sense possible. The software that runs these industries just happens to be written upon an MS platform due to a number of unfortunate market incidences that forced other OS players out of the game for less than technical reasons. This trend is now rapidly reversing and new software being written for these industries today is now moving towards Linux instead.
Microsoft never did any of these industries any favors - they just managed to capture the market and extract a tax for a number of years. That is why the public does not like them. When they have to fight with Windows to log into their laptop and wait 20 minutes while it does so (Windows Vista?), they blame Microsoft. Microsoft's technical inabilities and millions of man hours wasted patching and rebooting their OS comes at the cost of most of the world's population being less than impressed by Microsoft and those who work there.
This whole post is written merely as a rebuttal to the widely publicized article about how Microsoft is telling lies about Bing. The rebuttal itself comes down to "he's lying, not us!" and "we don't track the results from the Bing It On challenge". Both positions are pathetic as the Yale article has no reason to lie, and the only reason a company would not track results is because the results are obviously unfavorable and so they cooked up their own favorable ones.
You want to know why nobody respects Microsoft? Because Microsoft employees post articles like this which are so far from reality it leaves you wondering how they drive to work.