QA engineer quits Google, joins Microsoft (!)

[SteveRiley]

Actually, "returns to Microsoft" would be a better description.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/a...ft-google.aspx

[Ole Juul]

Actually, "returns to Microsoft" would be a better description.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/a...ft-google.aspx

I read through some of the comments as well and ones like "you are at microsoft now...the graveyard of creativity" and "So... after all this self rightousness, you went to Microsoft?" echo my own response. I recognize that I don't really know what the working world at Google nor Microsoft looks like, and certainly one has to make a living. One can't always take the high ground when there's a mortgage to pay or kids to feed. I'd be curious what you (SR) have to say on that subject since, if I understand correctly, have worked at Microsoft.

[SteveRiley]

I'd be curious what you (SR) have to say on that subject since, if I understand correctly, have worked at Microsoft.

Indeed I did...from 1998 until 2009.

Microsoft is so large that any attempt to generalize the organization in one or two sentences will fail. Some areas of the company continue to do outstanding work. I'm very impressed with what I see coming out of the Azure groups; they have a degree of autonomy that allows for continued creativity. And Xbox remains a shining example. I hold the integration of system configuration tools and identity management technologies in high regard (Active Directory, group policy, System Center). Some of the networking stack built into Windows is really quite cool -- DirectAccess, using IPv6 and IPsec, is superior to traditional VPNs.

But not everything's unicorns and rainbows. The employee review system suppresses morale greatly, and it creates internal competition for an artificially limited quantity of good ratings and promotions. The senior leadership team needs to be completely replaced. Old guards clinging to 20th century technology need to be pushed out.

Just a few thoughts...

[dibl]

Senior manager/executives of large organizations, public or private, seem to eventually come to the "bell curve" theory of employee evaluation. I suppose it's a reasonable theory at that level -- is he/she really supposed to believe that all the employees are above average, like the children of Lake Wobegone?

But, when that policy is forced downward through the organization, goofy results can happen. I was the Director of a small, hand-picked group of contract management professionals at an aerospace subsidiary of Westinghouse in the late-1980s. I had three contract managers, a government property manager, and a secretary -- all hand-recruited and selected for their outstanding performance history. What a joke it was to lay the bell curve on that group! I resigned the next year, and bought a business of my own -- I could not stand the flowdown of corporate stupidity.

p.s. Check out where Westinghouse is these days, in aerospace.

;-)

[woodsmoke]

SR
Maybe you knew this fellow.

I refer to him in the future as "the JohnnieMan".....but his actual, physical, in this time frame, being name was..... Johnnie Jacka....

He actually showed me the contracts he signed to do all of the PHYSICAL WIRING....for Redmond.

Did you happen to run across him in the hallowed halls of the sanctum sanctorum?

He, sadly, passed last year.



woodmuchsaddenedsmoke

[SteveRiley]

No, I did not. My work there was almost all customer-facing and I traveled a lot, so I was away from Redmond most of the time.