Why are so many people cribbing about Microsoft?
Have worked across variety of industries. Cant find more enticing place than Microsoft. I will say benefits and pay are among worlds top 10-20 firms. We should be thankful and proud of working here. Have seen so much focus on acquiring skills, learning etc. Been here for 1.5 years and find it amazing! Ok, I have not worked with the Google, FB etc. Still bit disappointing to see negative tone about MS. Hope we see positives.
I guess it's mostly the older parts of Microsoft that are hated on. But there are few companies that have stood the test of time.
I personally really enjoyed msft. Thought the work was more interesting than at fb, where you're a code monkey.
Itās all about perspective. Microsoft used to be a lot better 20 years ago. People, benefits, compensation, even the products were more respected. So itās not so much that it is a bad place now but the excellence has been diluted with a lot of mediocrity. š
This is it. And the 2x comp difference. 10yrs ago it was the best place to work, itās been on a slow decline since. I spent many great years there but Iām happy to have moved on.
blind is not the place to find positivity ! š
This is true. Literally every company is hated on blind. Amazon: desk crying sweatshop Facebook: useless social media Google: lul old search engine Airbnb: just a website Uber: taxi and women molesting company Lyft: Uber Copy
Surprisingly people like netflix even though itās just streaming
Itās much much slower than it used to be, and isnāt as relevant nowadays. As far as a place to work, itās good if you can handle the beaurocracy. But chances are good you can make 2x comp elsewhere, which is really why so many are leaving.
Because thats how human nature is. 'Good' is relative to your current life. You have a porche? Exciting for 6 months, then youll want a Ferrari. 150k tc? Youll want 250 elsewhere, and then 350... once you realize we evolved to run a rat race, you can ascend past it, and focus on things that matter long term (friends, health, stability)
It's how humanity works. People always compare themselves with their immediate surrounding. I read a study a few years ago about new Harvard students. The first week they are the happiest because they've been accepted into the most prestigious university in the world. But after the honeymoon phase, it becomes their routine and they compare themselves with the other Harvard students, who are very skilled and competitive. Even though they are in the "best" university, they're not more happy than a community college student who compares himself with other community college students. I guess Microsoft is like that. They're still considered a top company because their compensation is pretty high in the tech industry (they pay more than Amazon for new talent, for example, and way more than IBM or other companies of similar age), but it's smaller than Google, Facebook and unicorns. People don't compare it with 99% of the tech companies, they compare with the top 1% (random numbers BTW), even though it's a better company than all the shitty companies out there.
Iāve consulted at Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. What do you Microsoft naysayers think Google/Facebook have on msft in terms of innovation? Google cloud is garbage, google ML is way behind msft, what real world products is Facebook producing now that disrupt anything? In my experience, Microsoft is crushing most other tech firms in innovation. They did go through a lull but have come back quite nicely. Netflix? What are they producing in terms of innovation? Same question for Airbnb?
I'm not a naysayer, but the argument is usually that Microsoft is too slow and lagging behind other companies in almost every field because it's so big. Also, the name of the game nowadays is more "scale" than "innovation". Google, Facebook, Netflix are supporting so many users, but I don't know if Azure would be as reliable and performant as them if they had that many users. As for AirBnB and Uber or other unicorns, their prestige comes from their funding and the high entry barrier that they have, even if the products themselves are not really groundbreaking. Nonetheless, they can be picky about their engineers and therefore make sure that their products can follow good practices and follow some quality standards.
I donāt find the Airbnb and Uber developers any better than the ones I run into anywhere, even capital one. 90% of all SWE are really just code monkeys doing grunt work. There are very few actual engineers out there. Azure is the #2 cloud provider, so your comment about scale doesnāt really make sense. Facebook is quickly falling behind in scaling tech. They think their 300PB data Lake canāt be backed up because itās ātooā much data. That is hilarious as I know multiple companies managing more data and itās synced in near real time across aws regions. Many of these companies started out with top notch architects but as they grew, their quality has been seriously degraded through talent dilution. There really are only so many actual engineers, the rest are either too inexperienced to be effective at architecture or they just donāt have the talent.
Being happy is a habit. Most people will just crib out anything and everything. Numbers speak for themselves. All these tech firms (Google, FB, MS etc) are up there and not going anywhere.
It's all relative. In a pool of highly ambitious people who move across the world and leave their families behind for career, top 10-20 is just not good enough
Other side of argument is, life is such a random thing. I am a non immigrant. We could have been born in the warn torn country or poorest country with no opportunity to do better in life. We got the opportunity and here are we. I dont want to say, we should not be ambitious. Its natural but there are millions millions of people looking to be where we are right now.
That attitude will take you far young man, donāt lose it.