Life at Microsoft

Being from Seattle, I know and have known a lot of people who work for Microsoft. My dad worked for Microsoft. I’ve been to Microsoft campus several times, I’ve even played around with one of the early Vista betas.

So I’ve had a few opportunities to see what it’s like to work at Microsoft, and I have to say that this essay (February of 2005) by Michale Brundage seems to encapsulate most of the things I’ve heard and seen about the company.

There are a few points I think he nails pretty well:

Unreality: It’s hard for people who don’t work at Microsoft’s main campus to understand just how unreal the experience of working there can become. Some employees forget that most of the world doesn’t have broadband wireless networking, high-end consumer electronics, luxury vehicles, and enough money that they don’t need to live on a budget. Some employees spend so much time using Microsoft products, that they forget about the competition and/or lose touch with typical customers’ needs.

Microsoft is not evil: The reality is that Microsoft is made up of mostly honest, earnest, hardworking people. People with families. People with hardships. People with ordinary and extraordinary lives. People who make wise and foolish decisions. Some employees are bad apples, and some leaders make poor decisions (which their employees may or may not support). Both usually meet with failure. All the Microsoft employees I know are internally driven to “succeed,” where success sometimes means outselling the competition but always means doing your personal best and improving people’s lives with your work.

I found it a well written peice about how working at Microsoft apparently feels from the inside.

I also found an essay on his site called This is not a blog, where he describes at some length how transient and trivial blogging is. I was going to dedicate a separate post to knocking down his article point by point, but then I realized that (ironically, if you read it) it was written in 2004, and most of his points are either obviously wrong or irrelevant.

Ps. It’s 2:30am and I’m way too awake.