So these kinds of peeks inside a large company are fascinating in a voyeuristic sense, but it's best to not to take them too seriously. Even somebody with no ulterior motives will only have a experience of a narrow slice of the company. And it's even worse when there is an obvious reason for bias.
Certainly much of what I've seen written about Google had little to with the reality I observed there, regardless of whether the source is a current Googler or one of the, err..., rather vocally dissatisfied ex-Googlers. So I don't see much reason to believe this story about Microsoft either.
Yes, rationality means that we don't believe everything we read 100%. That said, critical "insider" pieces are far in the minority, which means overly rosy stuff dominates.
Take for example Steve Yegge's accidentally public Amazon rant. He later said it was a mistake because it was "unprofessional"; it would be more professional to focus on positive aspects rather than negative. (https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV...) This ideology of professionalism dominates, skewing the news we get.
Personally, I don't like to talk much about the corporations I work with, either. But to succeed under their constraints, it's helpful to coldly analyze their many dysfunctions. Then adapt to the bizarreness. Though I respect those who don't adapt, and get filtered out.
BTW, Carrie Lane studied tech industry workers in _A Company of One_, and observed how they much rather blame themselves (and each other) for losing their jobs, rather than use institutional analysis. I think we see this phenomenon a lot in comments sections.
> Could we please somehow make these incessant ad-hominem attacks against michaelochurch stop?
Could we please somehow make these incessant off-topic google baiting posts from michaelochurch stop?
This thread about MS has like many other threads been hi-jacked. He knows it's going to happen; he's seen it happen before; he knows it's off topic, yet still he posts.
I happily accept that Googlers should spit the fucking hook.
I didn't see grandparent post as an ad hominem attack on me. Never would I deny that these companies are huge and that people can have widely differing experiences of them.
If you get into MSR, Microsoft is probably a great place to be. Working on the F# team? Hell yeah. Google has great projects as well. If someone ended up on one of Google's best projects and his Google account wasn't quite opposite to what I've described, I'd be surprised. You experience a radically different $BIG_COMPANY if you end up on the best projects or have someone powerful looking out for you.
For the record, the people I worked with in-person were mostly great. There were some unethical managers I encountered, and it seemed that the quality of people was lower in the managerial part of the organization, but I'd never hold that against the rank-and-file Googlers. I have nothing but good things to say about the vast majority of people I encountered at Google. The problem wasn't the rank-and-file engineers. It was a failure of leadership and a staunch resistance against doing the right thing.
Stories like the OP give us a sense of the average-case scenario-- what people who haven't established themselves yet will get. Big companies can be great places to work if you're an established researcher who has 15 published papers. If you're in that "good, working to become great" category that I think describes most of us, then your odds are best with something else.
Certainly much of what I've seen written about Google had little to with the reality I observed there, regardless of whether the source is a current Googler or one of the, err..., rather vocally dissatisfied ex-Googlers. So I don't see much reason to believe this story about Microsoft either.