Some Developers Leaving Google For Microsoft 685
recoiledsnake writes "We have heard about lots of talented developers jumping ship from Microsoft to Google, but is the trend beginning to turn? Dare Obasanjo (a Microsoft employee) writes about a few high-profile people picking Microsoft over Google — either making the jump directly, or choosing Microsoft after receiving offers at both. Sergey Solyanik is back to Microsoft and he primarily gripes about the culture and lack of career development at Google. He writes, 'Everything is pretty much run by [engineering] — PMs and testers are conspicuously absent from the process. Google as an organization is not geared — culturally — to delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications.' Danny Thorpe, who was the key architect of Google Gears, is back at Microsoft for his second stint working on developer technologies related to Windows Live."
In other news (Score:4, Funny)
Is that so? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Everything is pretty much run by [engineering] -- PMs and testers are conspicuously absent from the process."
Oh what a fucking nightmare!
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah! They should be run by marketing and management people, just like at Microsoft! Everyone knows that engineers can't be relied upon to produce enterprise quality software without marketing's careful guidance and input.
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. Where is this alleged paradise where Program Managers STFU and pay attention to the coders? Where testers don't get to touch it until it's ready for testing?
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at Microsoft on the other hand, they're extremely nested in processes and cannot get out.
As for the article, I'd say there's so much more to look at. Housing, as already mentioned, is only part of the picture. What about salaries and work environments (some people do like process more than working anarchy)? I for one understand the argument of being a god among insects.
No knowledge or real research done here, just thinking "outside the box". I hear Microsoft likes that.
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is that so? (Score:4, Informative)
As a fairly new Google employee, who is now bound by NDAs and thus probably can't say anything about our development process, I have chosen an alternate means of expression:
*grumble*
*grumble* *grumble*
*grumble* *grumble* *grumble*
This concludes the unit test of the Emergency Grumbling System.
Re:Is that so? (Score:4, Interesting)
A former boss of mine (which was responsible for implementing CMM at our place) used to say that Microsoft was the prime example of a CMM Level 1 organisation.
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the same place where nothing ever gets to ship because the coders won't let it go until it's perfect. Witness Gmail, being in beta for years as a perfectly fine 1.0.
Re:Is that so? (Score:4, Informative)
The later a bug is found the costlier it is to fix it. And if your projects run late (who are we kidding: WHEN your projects run late) the first two things to be cut down are documentation and testing. Do daily automated testing and you find many errors before they become critical.
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem really is when either function gets too much control. Marketing tends to get capricious about features and blows huge sums on "research" and end up with a Ford Fiero.
Engineering, well... I've seen low-level greatness that couldn't translate elegantly into customer-level value. I've seen projects never finish too.
The problem is probably management-level. *Someone* needs to crack a few heads together to get people back into reality. A good anecdote about the organizational problem was on /. a couple of days ago when the mighty Bill Gates was supposedly pissed about some feature/application/thing. He cracked heads near his level. One level below it turned into a managerial quagmire.
Re: (Score:3)
Pontiac, anyone?
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Insightful)
I so want to work there. I've seen both sides of this, run by engineering is 100000x better, if you're an engineer.
I agree if you're trying to get to management and NOT the alpha geek in the pack, then you are dicked. But then why are you in engineering at all? The hours are long, the people are socially clueless, failure to know some obscure piece of academia turd may brand you the retard of the group...why put up with that? You are GUARANTEED to get in to management (in the private sector) if you are even slightly responsible and care even a little bit about the company...outside of engineering. Inside engineering, you need to be in a Microsoft (or the N equivalents) that will dumb down engineering to level the playing field. A few companies can do that, but not many that are on track.
All this is peaceful bliss compared to being an engineer in an a business-oriented company. It's illogical, insane, dubiously profitable, hard in all the wrong ways...but yeah I could climb ye ole ladder and make mom happy. Somehow culturally incompetant middle management >> clueful engineer in the bragometer. Eh, I'll trade them my senseless business-driven engineering job for their engineering-driven engineering job.
Re:Is that so? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd much prefer working somewhere like NASA's JPL (Jet Propulsion Labratory) over either Google or Microsoft.
Dare Obasanjo may only be promoting himself. (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, the story lacks sufficient deep analysis to be sure we understand Mr. Solyanik's experiences.
I doubt that very many people are moving from "Do no evil" to "Doing a lot of evil is the only way we know to make a living".
What is Windows Vista but a rather unimportant update to Windows XP, that failed? Microsoft Word has new menus, but changing the menus also means that Microsoft now has two menu arrangement standards in use at the same time, and users must master them both. Internet Explorer version 7 has a third menu arrangement, further breaking the standard with which those who just want to use their computers are so familiar. TrueCrypt developers are talking about [truecrypt.org] suing Microsoft in European court because of anti-trust violations.
Is that the direction successful people want to go?
To understand this story, it's good to know more about Dare Obasanjo, in my opinion. He's intelligent, he's a good communicator, and he has a history of being very effective at promoting himself. To me, his story is just him being himself, and promoting himself to Microsoft. Maybe it is not very indicative of what is happening at Microsoft.
Dare Obasanjo's excerpts of Sergey Solyanik's blog start with, "Last week I left Google to go back to Microsoft".
In contrast, Sergey Solyanik says "There are many things that Google does really well, and I plan to advocate that some of these things be adopted at Microsoft."
Mr. Solyanik went back to Microsoft because he didn't like the openness and lack of structure at Google. He wants more structure. He doesn't want to be a manager, and he doesn't want to decide himself the direction of what he is doing.
Dare Obasanjo's excerpts are misleading, in my opinion. As I said, he seems to me to be promoting himself to Microsoft, rather than understanding anything about why a particular person would quit Google after only a year there and go back to Microsoft. Also, Mr. Solyanik may have been given a very sweet deal; that is not discussed.
More about "Do no evil" toward "Evil for profit!" (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote:
"It's sobering to realize that during Ballmer's term as CEO, MSFT has underperformed almost all of its top tech peers (including AAPL, IBM, HPQ, SAP, INTC, CSCO, SYMC, NOK, ORCL, ADBE, RIMM, QCOM, Ebay, and AMZN), and badly lagged the major averages. We may even see our third plunge to test the 2000 lows during his watch. Unbelievable. There may be another major technology CEO with an equivalent or worse track record who is still in power, but a name doesn't come readily to mind."
In my opinion, Microsoft depends for much of its profit on adversarial behavior.
What does Microsoft do to lure developers back? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dare Obasanjo may only be promoting himself. (Score:4, Funny)
>> He doesn't want to be a manager
That is, perhaps, why he got a title of "Principal Development Manager" when he returned. Man, there's a bridge I want to sell you.
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Informative)
Labels aren't better than folders?
Labels can functionally completely replace folders, and surpass them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Functionally" is not a synonym for "completely", "easily", or "seamlessly".
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Informative)
Let me restate myself.
They can seamlessly, easily and completely replace folders. You used to put items in folders. Put labels on them and archive. It is the same thing, but even better, now one mail can have multiple labels which solves the dilemma of where to file it.
There are also extensions I've seen to have sub-labels that operate the way sub-folders do if you really want an old school nest. Technically you don't need extensions for this, but it helps the appearance for those who want to hide sub-folders/labels until you navigate to them.
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that you've completely broken the file paradigm that's dominated people's understanding of information storage for the last several millennia. I'll use another webmail service, Yahoo Mail, as a counterpoint since I'm familiar with both (I assume you are; if not, they're both free to sign up for).
In Gmail, when I want to "move" an email to a "folder", I have to:
1: Open the file, or check the box next to it.
2: Click on 'More actions'
3: Click on the label I want to assign
4: Click on 'Archive'
In Yahoo Mail, to accomplish the same task, I:
1: Click on the message
2: Drag-and-drop it to the new folder
Half the number of steps, and it doesn't require learning a new paradigm.
You need to go relearn the definitions of "seamlessly", "easily", and "completely".
Tagging and searching paradigms are fine (Score:4, Insightful)
You might have dozens of folders for your bookmarks too. Well, del.icio.us uses tags and searching to organize bookmarks, and you may have noticed that has not held it back. Perhaps you have all your photos carefully organized into folders. Well Flickr shows us that tags and searching works very well to organize photos. Wikipedia pages are tagged. Everyone knows how to use Google to search for information. The metaphors in the Gmail interface are very well established in the populace.
In addition, I find your comment to be pretty pointless because it does not describe an actual need. "Moving an e-mail to a folder" is not an information- or user-oriented need, it is a tool. It is a means not an end. An actual user need would be something like "find this e-mail easily later" or "keep all e-mails from my bank together." Needs like these are easily met with labels and searching, used together.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When you use a feature to emulate another feature, it is "half-baked". Seriously, have you tried to manage a gmail account with several hundred of labels? With a real hierarchical organization (read folder) it can be done, but not with flat level labels, at least not with the current interface.
Anyway, as I said, the main problem is still the implementation of threaded conversation, which to me clearly shows incompetence.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, let's _really_ generalize it properly.
* Any object should be able to have an arbitrary number of 'links' to any other object (and we've just implemented an object-oriented database, but that's just outside the scope of this discussion).
* Labels are objects.
* Labels can therefore have links to other labels.
* Messages are objects.
* Therefore labels can have links to messages (and/or vice-versa, this gets into implementation details that aren't really impo
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is that so? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes you can. You need to read the post immediately above you.
First, you can create a label that you only use beneath another one.
Secondly, there are extensions that allow nesting to operate in a more traditional sense, where you navigate to sub-labels.
Re:Is that so? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what is rubbish?
A Fortune 500 company which tons and tons of public folders. Lord knows where any of the emails are. And people with gigs of email in a laundry list of folders. Who knows where the email exists.
With a greater number of emails, there is a greater likelihood that an email fits multiple categories, and the number of categories also goes up.
Folders don't work for serious email.
Nesting of labels is unnecessary but easy.
Label:
ProjectA
ProjectA-SubLabel-1
ProjectA-SubLabel-2
ProjectA-SubLabel-3
ProjectB
ProjectB-SubLabel-1
In the end however, I can label and search directly for SubLabel and skip the ridiculous names.
For instance, I recently was working on a large upgrade project with two outside vendors. In a folder concept the entire Aurosys upgrade project is one folder.
Dealing with Eckleman is a sub-folder and dealing with Man Roland is a sub-folder.
Instead of slowing navigating sub-folders, I can just skip that step and label Eckleman or Man Roland. Even better, if I deal with those vendors outside the ugprade, I can keep the labels.
I label an email today Aurosys Upgrade and Man Roland. Tomorrow, outside the upgrade a seperate issue with Man Roland is just labeled Man Roland. I can easily search for all email related to Man Roland, or Man Roland and Aurosys Upgrade. Even better I can search for emails labeled Man Roland that exclude Aurosys Upgrade.
The more case-scenarios you look at, more and more labels look better and folders look like rubbish.
Use both for three months. Trust me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Gmail: no folders? WTF is with that? Labels are not like folders, and they're not better.
A single message can have multiple labels. However, a message can only be stored in one folder.
Other then that, how are folders different from labels? They seem very similar.
Right.... (Score:5, Funny)
"Google as an organization is not geared - culturally - to delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications."
Whew, good thing Microsoft is.
Re:Right.... (Score:5, Funny)
And by the way, it's not enterprise-class, it's Constitution-class. Sheesh.
Re:Right.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah... sounds funny from the perspective of those of us who have suffered through the microsoft monopoly. But given that most organizations can't tell their asses from their elbows they may well be right. Google seems to grow and progress by throwing lots of young smart people at the problem, but the problem seems to be a moving target from day to day. But microsoft has managed to hold down a monopoly for 20 years.
Who are you going to take business process advice from? While microsoft's ethics are dubious at best it's very hard to argue with success.
-- godwin filter removed reference to unethical but successful leader --
Re:Right.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Who are you going to take business process advice from? While microsoft's ethics are dubious at best it's very hard to argue with success.
But why latch onto the tail end of a 20-year-old monopoly who by all rights is beginning to falter, and seems to have no vision at all for the next 20?
That's what would worry me more. It's not what a company has already done, but what they're wanting to do.
Re:Right.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Falter may not apply here. Most people see the consumer end of the business. They see Google Search, and Apple Macs & ipods. MSFT keeps delivering what businesses want. So you & I may be perplexed at say, SHAREPOINT, but right now if you know SP you're employed- it's hot beyond comprehension. You got another version of server and sql server (sales up 30% qtr over qtr)... Get the idea. Profits are likely to go up, not down. Server rooms are getting more licenses not less.
Google & Apple keep moving their targets and MS keeps moving theirs as well. They are just so huge that they touch everything. So they may not be the best at search or selling tunes, and that may make them look like they are faltering, but they have allot of other stuff to sell you that pulls you into the ecosystem.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
-- godwin filter removed reference to unethical but successful leader --
Since when is FDR part of Godwin's Law?
You beat me to it (Score:5, Interesting)
Everything microsoft does is geared towards department level computing. Their entire AD implementation is right out of 1986; Netware had better enterprise features. And somebody better tell Microsoft that had they simply used LDAP, they wouldn't have to blow billions on AD. Provisioning and employee lifecycle? They're the only major software company in the world with no solution there.
Their products ooze of something designed for a company with 100-1000 employees. Imagine that you have apps that when installed force servers to reboot. Imagine your major subsystems run as services so it becomes problematic when you what process level isolation of app server. Imagine to get an app server, you *must* install IIS. Imagine that when you want multiple versions of .NET, it's not as simple as just having multiple directories for each instance, you actually have to *install* it on the server with admin privileges.
My MS rep called the other day, and I said not interested since they have no enterprise architecture tools. He tried to sell me Sourcesafe and MS's IDE because "it has architecture tools in it". I pointed out that software engineering is not equal to enterprise architecture except in a most tangential way. He had no idea what I was talking about except to ask what "my definition" of Enterprise Architecture is. When a salesman has to challenge his customer that they don't understand, he/she is clearly not atuned to what's happening in the IT industry.
It goes on and on. It's like the entire thing at MS was designed by CompSci students who are killer coders, but don't have any idea of how to do things like master data management. They have no concept of a TDS versus an ODS. Everything at MS is a hodge-podge of cute little features that break down as soon as you try to do something more complex than "write a killer web page that pulls inventory in real time from a data base". Mind you, that's a great app for a small company, but stuff that you can do faster/cheaper with free solutions like linux/apache/mysql. I don't need to actually pay a large company for software licenses for crap like that.
Ironically, the scientists at MS have some great ideas and understand these concepts really well. The products, however, reflect none of that work. They're too busy locking in the OS with products. Like they're afraid their stuff won't sell on it's own, so you've got to buy the whole kit and kaboodle
I see MS as headed for a cliff as fast as their sales will take them. They're doomed in the same way IBM was doomed back in the late 80's.
Re:You beat me to it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You beat me to it (Score:4, Interesting)
They're doomed in the same way IBM was doomed back in the late 80's
In the late 80's IBM stock was in the mid $20s. Now it is 6X higher at $120. As a Microsoft stockholder, I sure hope you are right!
And how did IBM's price do from say May 1987 to August 1993? From a high of 41.9 to a low of 10.5.
IBM then changed its business drastically, going heavily into services, getting out of a lot of businesses (I can think of printers and PCs off-hand, but there were more) and turned around.
Even with the turnaround, IBM never really made up for the under performance. The price is up 685% since January 1980, but the S P 500 is up 1164% over the same period.
You are not going to be a very happy MS shareholder if it follows that path, are you?
Re:Right.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The quote about Google being run by engineers immediately caught my eye too. I've been a Microsoft employee for 2 years after doing contract jobs there since 1990. My perspective is that it has shifted from a being highly dominated by engineers to one that is pretty much run by HR and PMs, in that order. There is more focus on career development than I've seen anywhere else. There is a highly detailed process of setting and evaluating commitments, which is designed to give the review process greater transparency, and I think also to make the system more objective and foolproof. But a lot of a person's review consequently hinges on skillfully setting commitments rather than being talented. Toward the end of the fiscal year when many projects are in a crunch, I hear people say things like, "I don't care, I've hit all my commitments."
Microsoft is still a good company with lots of smart colleagues, a nice work environment and great benefits, but it's also a very large company that has reached the stage of having a hell of a lot of people who don't seem to do a lot and get paid a lot more than engineers. I had to chuckle when the blogger said he couldn't tell what Google managers did, because I often have that feeling at Microsoft.
Organization is everything... (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have to be, when the entire on-line world is your beta test laboratory.
Re:Organization is everything... (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between Microsoft and Google in this regard is that users pay to beta test Microsoft's sofwtare without being told it is, at best, in beta quality. Where as Google invites (initially selectively) people to try the product and provide feedback. They're in beta for a very long time because they want it to be stable before declaring version "1.0". Small contrast, but expectation goes a long way towards the perception of quality.
If I'm paying money for retail software, I expect a rock solid product, not the buggy POS that I have to wait for the first Service Pack to use even the most basic functionality.
Google is up front with the fact that their software is not necessarily ready for prime time and users can hedge their bets accordingly. That said, Google beta products are often many times better than the "final version" of software from other vendors.
Re:Organization is everything... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Organization is everything... (Score:4, Funny)
That's what my parents told me in slightly different wording when I moved back with them after college. I tried to explain to them that forking the codebase would be a waste of resources but my developers wouldn't have any of it.
Re:Organization is everything... (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think an 18,000 person company would be able to release a finished project once in a while.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd think an 18,000 person company would be able to release a finished project once in a while.
How do you "finish" a web based project? "Well, that's done, no one will ever think of anything new to do with this software, or any way to make it easier or better!" "Gee, we've indexed the entire Internet this month, so I guess we're done!"
Re:Organization is everything... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trying to make an argument in defense of slipshod work, but rather point out that any piece of software of any scope is hard work and in many cases the result of heroic individual efforts. Just offering a bit of perspective from a point of view people sometimes forget. Not asking for gratitude, here, just a little respect for the efforts of people often demeaned as code monkeys and asking for a bit of appreciation for those allowing the mostly free and unobstructed flow of information at a scale unprecedented in history. It doesn't matter which company is wrapping the output, this still holds true. Cool?
Money talks (Score:5, Insightful)
When I hear "...is not geared - culturally - to delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications" as a reason to leave a company that's NOT microsoft to go work FOR microsoft, I have to wonder exactly how large the dump truck full of money was.
Re:Money talks (Score:5, Funny)
You are thinking small. Ask how many dump trucks full of money.
Microsoft may consider it worthwhile to throw money at developers to keep them from working for google.
Of course some people are going to choose Microsoft over Google. Just like there are some people that like wasabi flavored ice cream. There are freaks everywhere.
Re:Money talks (Score:4, Insightful)
Hypocrisy or cluelessness? (Score:5, Funny)
"Google as an organization is not geared -- culturally -- to delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications." - Sergey Solyanik
As opposed to Microsoft, which seems to be not geared - professionally - to delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications.
I don't know what "PMs" are (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And while a good PM listens to (&understands) the engineers on the project, a good PM is also good at herding cats... and let's be honest here, not all engineers play well with others.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
PM = Project Manager. It is an engineer whose job is to understand what customers need and write the product specifications to meet those needs. But they don't have anymore authority than the SDE's (software development engineers). There is back and forth communication between PM's and SDE's (software development engineers) on the specification.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The other common use is "Product Manager" and that is in the Marketing organization.
The reason is obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
To waste time vs eyeballs (Score:5, Interesting)
but most of them primarily help people waste time online (blogger, youtube, orkut, etc)
No, these are things to sell eyeballs for advertisers. That's what Google is about, making money with selling ads around easy to use and "fun" tools.
Re:To waste time vs eyeballs (Score:4, Funny)
less microsoft bias please? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Exchange? Active Directory? Group policy? Try to find an open source replacement for those products?
How about a .45cal pistol and your foot? Has about the same 'user experience'.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you have no idea what Exchange is and how it's used, why even bother with coming up with a clever "replacement"?
Ditto for your other ones... seriously, you have no bloody clue what group policy is, do you? I'm continually amazed at how people actually swallow what sites like Slashdot tell them. It's a bit like Fox News. You know they're full of it, but sometimes you still watch it, for the comedy relief. But you know the real world is much different.
It's good to be useful. (Score:4, Funny)
I'd have figured that they were just leaving Google so they'd actually have something interesting to do. At Microsoft, there's still loads of core functionality missing from their software.
The myriad possibilities for improvement simply boggle the mind.
that'll teach me (Score:5, Funny)
Chair throwing please (Score:3, Funny)
Hopefully some of the google brass will have the humor to upload a video of themselves throwing a chair on youtube^Hgoogle video.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For once a chair related joke could actually be funny on slashdot. Yet,everyone is screwing it up. Incredible. It should be the opposite. What is the opposite of throwing a chair? Building a chair. Eric Schmidt should be happy someone who thinks microsoft is a better company is leaving his company. He should be so happy, he builds himself a celebration throne. or alternatively Balmer is happy and has a chair built.
Okay the joke still needs a bit of work, but its better than what was. Well, Sort of. I give myself a A for idea, but a C minus for implementation of that joke.
Building a chair is not the opposite of throwing it. You can do a simple Russian reversal test to see if it's truly the opposite.
In Imperialist Microsoft, a chair is thrown by YOU! is reversed to
So, ideally the employer should have thrown the chair at Schmidt when he left.
I've worked at both (Score:5, Interesting)
I've worked at both. In terms of working environment, I found them both to be good, though in different ways (better food, more excitement at Google; private office at Microsoft). In terms of quality of life, I prefer Seattle, but in terms of jobs and networking, the Bay Area wins. In terms of software development processes, Microsoft's may look better on paper, but Google's seems to be better at actually delivering. In terms of management... Ballmer makes me wince. So, so far, it's a toss up.
The question to me is where each company is going. When Google release a new product, there is buzz and excitement, and usually something expensive and complicated gets cheaper and simpler. When Microsoft releases a new product, people either shrug or shudder and hold on to their wallets. Microsoft keeps trying to change things (Zune, Live, whatever), they keep buying companies (Danger, whatever), and it just doesn't seem to be working for them. Given the choice, I'd probably choose to work for Google; I just don't see Microsoft going anywhere.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
...several sales associates left Walmart for Target.
Anecdote equals exodus? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also someone who complains when "Everything is pretty much run by the engineering" and who uses phrases like "delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications" is a marketing droid and should not be trusted. As a sidenote I find it funny that he criticizes Google's offerings with the statement "most of them primarily help people waste time online" listing Blogger as his first example, on Blogger itself.
Microsoft PR (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's why (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a system of levels at Microsoft, and the "interestingness" of work, range of influence and pay depend on the levels (within limits predetermined for each level).
It's a well known fact that the easiest way to get a level increase at the higher levels is to leave Microsoft and then come back. Some folks jump over two levels after just two years outside the mothership - this is simply not achievable if you're L63-64. Sergey returned as (at least) L65. Good for him. Skipping his blog drivel, let's not assume that he did it for anything but a bag of cash and a large signing stock grant.
That said, Microsoft _is_ a great place to work, if you can ignore the bureaucracy. The pay is good, the benefits are second to none (no free lunches, tho), you get your own office (most of the time, anyway), and if you have a family, there's simply no better large tech company to work for.
Guy moves to Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)
They are very similar... (Score:5, Interesting)
They are both huge huge corporations.
They both have a ton of acquired businesses, products, and services that are buried in their rubble of bloat.
And they both, to this day, only make money from selling what got them into the business in the first place. For google that would be Adsense, and for MS, Windows and Office.
So whichever company you choose, you probably won't make a difference, just like all the failed developers before you.
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
So Google isn't "geared... culturally" to deliver enterprise class reliability.
What's Microsoft's excuse?
Its a tough world out there (Score:5, Interesting)
I've worked at a number of big, slow, sclerotic corporations. Each time I've left, I've been told stories about how tough the world is on the outside and how others who have attempted to make a go of it have returned. When I look at the people who returned, it became clear that the big, cruel world is an excellent filter for the sorts of people who can take risks and produce results. Those who can't will return to the womb. These people returning make the 'mommy company' all that much slower and bloated.
I've been approached to return, but if the company couldn't make it worth my while to get me to stick around, things have only gotten worse since I've left.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:4, Informative)
It's not necessarily all about location... Microsoft's 2nd largest dev center (and in the interest of full disclosure, where I work) is less than a mile from the Googleplex, in sunny Mtn. View, CA. Much of Windows Live is developed here.
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact I can afford a house on a software engineer's salary in Seattle, but not San Francisco?
1) If we're limiting this to specific cities, then yes.
2) Otherwise, if we're talking areas, then not quite.
3) And you can always rent, which is much cheaper than a 30 year mortgage. If you want, save the difference and invest in CDs (the financial kind!) or another safe investment. In 30 years, just buy the property outright (or pretty close to outright).
They both have crappy weather, so everything else equal, Seattle wins.
1) Are we limiting this to specific cities?
2) Otherwise, absolutely no way. SF weather is uniquely SF. Go across the SF Bay to Oakland on the same day and it'll be nice and sunny. Cold in SF? Drive down to San Jose.
Plus, growing up in Oregon, I have an ingrained hatred towards anything California.
That really says it all.
Here's what I have to say about Oregon: Socialized gasoline pumps.
I drive up there, and when I go for gas (god forbid), I can't get an attendant to come out and pump for my car. But all hell breaks loose when I've waited for 20 minutes (after 2-3 waves of Oregonians are serviced ahead of me) and touch that gas pump. That's right! It's illegal to pump your own gas. For a state of people that are supposedly very constructionally conservative about the Constitution and taxes, you'd think people would be able to pump their own gas. Instead they've legislated into existence an entire labor class. So, whenever I see this hatred expressed toward CA, I just think, "hypocrites."
But yet, I don't hate entire states. I have better things to do.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
RE the gas thing about Oregon: If you don't specify, they'll fill you up with Super. Keep that in mind if you ever drive through Oregon. Especially nowdays.
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, it is illegal for a customer to pump gas in Oregon. Supposedly, gasoline is considered too toxic and dangerous for mere mortals to touch, and so it must be pumped and handled by highly trained staff (you know, that guy who dropped out of school in the 9th grade and you didn't see again).
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you put down enough capital and have good credit you can easily get a mortgage payment less than monthly rent, at least in a metropolitan area.
A house costs $700K+. Banks want 20% down right now, which works out to at least $140,000. Once you get past the "Who has that kind of money laying around?" you're now getting a loan on $560,000.
Seriously, good luck with that. I'm not being sarcastic.
Or, you can drive 2 hours each way M-F, for a place out in the middle of nowhere which still costs $350K. Now you definitely need a car because you're probably not too near other people who work in the same company for carpooling. If you're not burning $5/gal fuel and getting ulcers from the bad commute, then you're spending all your time on a train. Either way, that's 4 hours a day wasted on commute. Note that I haven't mentioned, until now, a spouse and kids. Forget being around for your family during the week. I know people who've done it (single and married w/ kids) but they have all burned out. I couldn't do that.
Once again, none of this is sarcasm or exaggeration. In fact, it may be somewhat conservative, even with this current blip in the housing market.
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can? Where do you work in Seattle? And what kind of engineer are you?
$100k/year doesn't get you into a house within a 30 minute drive of Microsoft's main campus.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Pity poor Bill. /.
Now that he is retired he has nothing better to do than troll
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Funny)
No doubt that's why the bookstores all have huge sections on 'dealing with depression' and great titles like 'bad weather, good mood' and 'gray skies aren't the end'.
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Funny)
As a resident of the weather-blessed United Kingdom, I say: "HAH!"
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Funny)
As a Seattle resident, I can tell you that 1) the bookstores have no such thing
Out of stock in Seattle isn't really a defense...
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Interesting)
the bay area is VERY cool. I live here, so I know.
but life at google is not life in the bay area. google is its own sub-culture in every way. note, I don't mean that in a good way.
what good is being in sunny calif when you are slaved (peer pressure) to work till 9pm? driving home at dark kills a lot of the fun of sunny california...
you want both weekends? to yourself? really? again, google is not the place for you.
if you want to ENJOY the bay area, google is not the place. free food != 'good lifestyle'.
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:4, Funny)
Eh, I won't claim that the cost of living in the bay area is good, but your comments about being peer pressured into working until nighttime and weekends at google, aren't true.
As you said "I work there, so I know".
Sure, some people work there late, some by choice, and others because they showed up at work after noon.
Sure, amongst 10K+ employees, you can find a few who are working late nights or occasional weekends, but those are definitely the exception more than the rule, and this is no different than your average company in the bay area.
Also, believe it or not, but some geeks actually work nights and weekends, not because they have to, or feel pressured, but because they really have nothing else they want to do with their time.
This has nothing to do with Google, some of the ones I know have always done this, whichever company happens to pay their salary at the time.
Oh, and I apologize for working there and having a good livestyle with freetime during which I enjoy doing other things. Really, I'm sorry.
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Informative)
- Seattle average home cost - 400kish
- Bay area home cost - 600-650kish
- WA state taxes - 0
- CA state taxes - pwned paycheck
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I didn't RTFA, but I'd guess the quality of life in Seattle is about, oh, one billion times better than the Bay Area.
Having lived at both places, being a native Washingtonian I would bluntly call BullS*** on the quality of life being better in Seattle than the Bay Area.
They are both over-urbanly developed, they both are full of self-egrandizing, gutless prigs who equally would be lost in the Cascades, regardless of their cozy home in Snoqualmie Falls or North Bend, et.al.
The problem with the IT Industry is that it has discovered that their centers for the Industry haven't changed in over 30 years.
Sure they've expanded into the suburbs of Portland, but on the West Coast you have Silicon Valley, Seattle and the LA region.
The East Coast is fixated with New York, Boston and various universities of reknown to be incubators for more startups stuck in what? Overly priced, pretentious cespools.
Look around. The best places to see growth aren't the sexy urban centers, or mystical retreat forrests in certain zones across the U.S.
They are in areas that offer actual growth and a solid standard of living, a variety of outdoor options and a midscale urban life.
The problem is they aren't saturated with every pindick fixated on the latest gadgets.
The Cost of Living in the Bay Area sucks big hairy donkey balls. It's sucked since the early 90s so that's nothing new.
The Cost of Living in Seattle has sucked big hairy donkey balls since 1996, as well.
Corporations would better serve themselves by providing regional zones where they develop centers for specific products/services and then use Networks to coordinate all this activity.
Dumping everyone onto Redmond's campus or Infinite Loop One's campus [my second favorite to work at next to NeXT], Google's et.al, aren't inherently going to produce think tanks of brilliance.
An example of an area that is burgeoning, but only in the BioMedical Fields is Spokane, WA.
If you're in these fields they've got jobs coming out of every orifice. Growth is strong, the summers are a scorcher [I grew up there] and the 4 seasons are solid. The city would have become a much larger hub if Expo '74 hadn't destroyed the second largest hub of trains west of Chicago but we can't go back in time to fix that mistake.
The bigger problem with the IT Industry is how many damn people do you need to write Web Services Applications? Really, now. How many? Every f'n device gets a rowdy two thumbs up if it has the ubiquitous Web Services, Web Browser, huge data plans and apps to show them where they can find the nearest movie, restaurant and more.
When is the IT Industry going to start seriously working with the traditional industries and streamline them into the 21st century?
I don't need multiple portable devices. I need solutions to improve a crumbling US Infrastructure, but instead we've got people just a year younger than myself whining about career growth differences between Google and Microsoft.
F*** OFF. Instead of being a Development Manager, actually find something that is screwed up that computers could fix and fix it.
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want cheap, you're looking at East Austin or Cedar Park. Unless you mean "cheap relative to the Bay Area", in which case all of Austin is bargain basement.
As for the weather...I'm tempted to give the nod to Seattle as well. Unless you really like 3.5 months of 95+ heat. Like Austin, Seattle has mild winters, but it also has mild summers.
Don't get me wrong, I like Austin. And I don't even mind that it's surrounded by Texas. But, objectively speaking, I'm not sure it's an automatic "win" when compared to Seattle/Redmond.
The worste? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seattle has extremely mild weather year round that rarely causes enough discomfort that proper clothing can't fix. At worst its just cloudy too many days of the year. If you think that's the even remotely close to the worst you really should leave your bedroom sometime. 1 month in Tokyo during the rainy season will show you what messed up weather really is. A down poor at 80 degrees with extreme humidity in June is a lot worse than 60 degrees with overcast. A monsoon interrupting 100 degree whether is messed up, especially when you aren't surrounded by palm trees and coconuts.
Re:The worste? (Score:4, Funny)
A down poor at 80 degrees with extreme humidity in June
... is called shorts weather
Re:The worste? (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, both of 'em.
Re:The worste? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, what did the Seattle guy say to the Pillsbury Dough Boy?
"Nice tan, dude".
Re:Cost of Living? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then try to explain why Vancouver BC is constantly ranked near or at the top of the most livable cities in the world. The northwest is a great place to live. The weather contributes to the variety of activities we have. You have snowboarding and beaches all in one city. It keeps things fresh. Sure a little more sun in the summer would be nice but when I add it all up, there isn't really anywhere else I'd rather live geographically. Disclaimer: I've only lived in Vancouver and Seattle though I've certainly traveled to the bay area.
Re:What's with the cheap shot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Standing out (Score:5, Interesting)
Could not the "wiz kid" with a few freash ideas garner much more attention in such an envirnoment. And perhaps in doing so come more to the attention of the offer makers at google?
From personal experience as an engineer within a top-heavy business (although not with Microsoft) is that really there's no way to shine. They want you to do the job they want you to do and if there's something wrong with the process, the app, or the architecture there's no recourse.
If you want to learn a lot, be challenged and be a star, you need to be in a startup atmosphere. While I am sure there are many companies with that atmosphere, currently it seems as though the most public large company like that is Google.
Don't look at anything outside of tech if you want that atmosphere either. Non-tech companies (insurance, credit card companies, etc.) are run by business people and programmers are always a red in their ledger, they don't have a clue on how to deal with them.