6 ms·

Ask HN: How valuable to my resume is 5 years at Microsoft?

• joubert 16y ago
  Being versatile is prized. I don't expect your MS work to count against you.
• jacquesm 16y ago
  Sounds like that's great to put on your resume, anybody that would not hire you based on it being microsoft where you worked before is probably best avoided anyway. Be proud of what you achieved in such a short time, not ashamed.
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  • GavinB 16y ago
    It doesn't hurt that Bing is highly regarded. You've managed to work on one of the best technical successes that Microsoft has pulled off in the last few years.
    • deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
• briandoll 16y ago
  It's not that big companies, or big companies some of us love to mock are always bad, it's that it can be very easy for mediocre programmers to fly under the radar in those environments for years, and never accomplish or learn much of anything. As you've done in your question, focus on your project experience and what you learned and the company where you worked on those projects becomes inconsequential.
• tptacek 16y ago
  Approximately as valuable as 2 years at Microsoft. No, it's not a negative, at all. Get out of the echo chamber. Mostly, the people with the loudest opinions about MSFT are the ones with the least influence over hiring.
  • spoon16 16y ago
    Good point about the echo chamber :) I think my purpose for posting this question was to provide myself with a reality check as I get more serious about my next career move. Do people just like to be negative about Microsoft because it's the cool thing to do or are there legitimate concerns that I will need to mitigate? Thanks for your perspective.
    • tptacek 16y ago
      Two "valid" concerns people will have about MSFT employees: * MSFT is a huge company, and is run nothing like a startup or a small software company. They'll be worried that you're processbound. * There's a perception that Microsoft is massive and loaded with middle management and that anyone with a "do-ing" role is pigeonholed very specifically, so you'll want to stake very specific and aggressive claims about the breadth of your get-shit-done experience. These concerns would also apply to anyone from IBM, Sun, or Cisco. Generally, compared to a recent CS grad, multiple years at MSFT doing real work is a huge win. My only big caveat is that 5 years is a long time to be at a BigCo.
      • earl 16y ago
        Ditto. Similar to tptacek's processbound argument, I'd be very concerned that you'd be dumped into an environment with very little supervision and flounder. My experience at four startups has been that they really mean it when they say they need selfstarters and you tend to get very little direction as compared to bigger companies. Instead, you're expected to jump in and find work yourself. Also, if you are interested in startups, remember that virtually none of us use MS tech anywhere in our stack. It's not a huge problem, but I generally prefer engineers that have put in a couple years somewhere else and aren't new to the LAMP/postgres/mysql/linux/java/ruby/rails environment. All the way from the different dev tools to the ethos of source distribution and the skills you pick up around installing and configuring software from source. As far as I remember, the MS stack generally seems to ship as binaries and have very little of the admittedly sometimes annoying issues that come with distributing software as source. That's a problem for you because I expect engineers to be able to install software from yum / rpms and deal with more common link / library / configuration issues that come up. Finally, it seems to me that MS typically has a blessed method of doing everything -- there is a preferred method to connect to MS SQL server, a preferred method of parsing xml, a preferred method of sending mail, etc. The open source / linux tech stack is nothing like that -- there are always multiple ways of doing anything and it's often an unwritten part of the job description to help sort that out. Finally, again specific to startups, I think you'll be shocked how different a 15 person company, or even a 100 person company, is to a 30K person company. For instance, there will often be no review process, etc etc. Depending on what exactly you've been doing at MSFT you should have some valuable experience, so don't be too pessimistic. Good luck.
• alain94040 16y ago
  5 years at Microsoft is boring. But you say: I pioneered the use of data semantics within Bing. That will get you a job interview anywhere where people care about search or semantics. You are now branded :-)
  • spoon16 16y ago
    I think at a company like Microsoft you have a lot to do with whether or not the work is boring. There is a lot of political/organizational dysfunction that comes with a massive company that can make things a little tedious or boring. My experience has been generally positive and I have been able to focus on interesting problems for most of my time here.
• risotto 16y ago
  I've ran across a couple ex-MSFTers that were way too expensive for their skill set. But I still wish I could have hired them, they were smart guys. Aside from that, if you are being interviewed by real tech people, not an HR machine, there's no way MSFT could ever count against you. Way more damning is if you only have experience with .NET or something like that.
  • spoon16 16y ago
    Good point regarding .NET. I have been working hard to have significant expertise beyond .NET even though we are rather .NET focused in my day to day work at Microsoft.
• aaronbrethorst 16y ago
  Potential employers perceived my four years in Microsoft as being extremely valuable when I left in 2007. Just make sure you leave on good terms. I still chat with my last manager on occasion, and expect that I could get back in without too much trouble if things ever got really hairy out here. Also, I looked at your LinkedIn profile, and recommend describing your accomplishments in less HR-centric terms: an 'exceeded' contribution rating is great, but it might not mean much to a hiring manager at a Madrona portfolio company. Like alain said elsewhere, be more specific with what you achieved.
  • spoon16 16y ago
    Thanks for that feedback. I do plan on a pretty extensive refactoring of my resume as I get closer to my 5 years.
• wanderr 16y ago
  I have some influence over certain hiring decisions at a startup. I'd look at experience like that and think "this guy is probably pretty awesome." The MS name might be a bit tainted, but there's no doubt that they have a lot of very talented engineers, and if you really did pioneer the use of data semantics within Bing, well that's pretty impressive. That said, we'd look at that experience and guess that you would probably not be interested in working at our startup-sized salaries, so I wouldn't expect much effort to recruit you in the first place. The other thing we'd need to make sure about is that you're not stuck doing things "The Microsoft Way (tm)"; you'd be joining a very different culture and if you're not going to fit in, it's not going to work.
• endtime 16y ago
  Having worked at Microsoft should get you an interview just about anywhere. And anyone who considers it a negative is, frankly, an idiot.
  • earl 16y ago
    Seriously? Working at MSFT can be a huge negative for us, for three specific reasons: * an entirely different software stack from the operating system to the web servers to the databases to the programming languages to the dev tools; * I've interviewed 3 different people from MSFT that were experts in eg a tiny area of DCOM; as startup needs generalists; * a 30 person company is nothing like a 30K or 60K or whatever they're up to these days and it seems that people comfortable in one are often not comfortable in the other.
    • InclinedPlane 16y ago
      Regarding point 3, MS isn't so much a 60K company as it is a coalition of variously sized groups, usually from a few hundreds up to low thousands.
      • spoon16 16y ago
        During my 4.5 years I haven't worked on anything but incubation projects. Meaning I have never been on a team with more than 20 full time employees.
    • endtime 16y ago
      I'm not saying you should hire anyone with MS on his resume. If someone doesn't want to work for a startup, don't hire him. If you think someone is overspecialized, don't hire him. But if your policy is just not to hire anyone who's worked for a big company, you're losing out...and even in that case, your prejudice is against all big companies, not Microsoft. If someone's worked for Microsoft, it means he's probably smart and probably has experience working with other smart people to release real software. That's exactly the kind of person I'd want to work with.
    • mikeryan 16y ago
• ams6110 16y ago
  Without college you will hit an HR brick wall at some employers, but likely these will be ones you wouldn't want to work for anyway. Sounds to me like your 5 years at MS is probably equal to or better than an undergraduate degree at least as far as technical competency is concerned.
• mwerty 16y ago
  Randomness dominates startups in a way that makes your concern about first impressions unnecessary.
• haily 16y ago
  I tend to judge people by what they have accomplished. With that said, I tend to favor consistency over a big grand accomplishment. It just show that you have sustaining skills. It's the knowledge that you've retained from your work at Microsoft that is of importance. Focus on that. Better yet provide some guidance in your domain of knowledge to the hacker community.
• spolsky 16y ago
  I almost always consider it a strong positive, because Microsoft has a strong selection process (everyone who works there went through a day of interviewing). That said, the way that Microsoft has been dealing with its extreme uncoolness lately has been by paying salaries that are far above market. With very few exceptions, every time I've tried to recruit a Microsoft veteran to a startup, they've started to pull out the spreadsheets and given me complicated sob stories about how they can make $1m in the next three years if they stay at Microsoft, whereas I'm only offering them, eh, a few % of a hot startup. The bottom line is that spending a lot of time at Microsoft could very well ruin you for startups. Even though I did it that way, there are two different ways of thinking about your career, and if you're REALLY a startup person, you're not going to be hedging bets by serving out your 5 year Microsoft prison sentence. If you're telling yourself that as soon as you're fully vested you'll leave, you have failed to take into account the new incentives that Microsoft will put in front of you by the end of the fifth year. And eventually you're going to be stuck in the $300,000/year treadmill at a life-sucking anonymous job with no chance of ever hitting it big (or making an impact on the world).
  • spoon16 16y ago
    5 years was a personal goal that my wife and I worked out when I started, we had just gotten married and she really likes consistency while I really enjoy ambiguity. It doesn't really have anything to do with being fully vested or not... I joke with some of my hacker friends that I'm sticking around for the glass statue that you get at 5 years. Really I'm spending my time (another 6 months) trying to push Bing to exercise the benefits of structured data and data semantics on the web. I'm also trying to convince SQL as a product to spend more energy focusing on this area. If I'm hedging my bets at all it's related to being able to come back to work at a life-sucking anonymous job at a mega software corporation :) I hope that I will not need to but if my wife or family needed the benefits and comforts associated with this type of employment and I could not work out how to get it done another way. I wouldn't hesitate to come back.
    • megablast 16y ago
      Wow, so you are just going to quit working at Microsoft because of some agreement you made with your wife. That concerns me that you aren't making decisions for the right reasons. Make sure you don't mention that in an interview. I would prefer someone to stay around because they like the job, or leave if they don't, not because there wife wants consitency. Apart from that, if you can talk about the things you achieved at working for such a huge company, that would be great. It is going to be a huge step moving to a smaller company, they way things work. Having worked at Microsoft for a shor time myself, the amount of organisational structure you have to go through to get the simplest of things done is insane, and a full time job in itself.
• sriramk 16y ago
  I did a double take when I saw this thread - I finish 5 years at Microsoft to the day today :)
• sauce71 16y ago
  No college and you got a jo at M. at 22? This was in the early eighties? Serious; the fact that they hired you at all implies you got some gift that any tech. company probably would value.
  • spoon16 16y ago
    This was not in the early 80s. It was the beginning of 2006.
• Todd 16y ago
  I worked at Microsoft for five years in the 90s. I dropped out of college prior to joining, so I was on the same trajectory as you are. I always say that Microsoft is a great place to have worked. It's great for learning how to ship real software (large and small) with all of the attendant processes and politics that go with it. You will learn what you think is important to take with you and what is important to leave behind. Both types of learning are important, because as you move to startups, you will have a hand in determining the equivalents in your new microcosm of that world. One interesting quality I see from many people who have worked there is that there is a perception that life after (i.e., outside of) Microsoft is scary. That's partly because you can change jobs there endlessly and never actually leave. You can go from working on operating systems to large binary (client) applications to Internet apps to video games, etc. I've had to assure several of my friends that were contemplating leaving that the water outside is safe and warm. Every one of them has thanked me afterwards. Another poster made a good point about some companies' HR departments not taking a second look at you. That's true. However, I generally wouldn't want to work at those companies anyway. I've never had a problem finding work at great places. In fact, I've never had to apply for a job since I left. If you're good, and your network is sound, people will reach out to you--degree or not. Microsoft is a great foundation on which to build your resume.
  • earl 16y ago
    ps -- MSFT has no clue how to ship software. At Scribd, we often shipped software ten times a week. That's slow compared to lots of web startups that deploy continuously -- see the advocates at IMVU for example. Nonetheless, most web startups deploy more than daily to production. I've worked on classic desktop software with a 6 month release cycle and it's very different. pps -- deployment process? hah. rake specs rake deploy production
    • jacquesm 16y ago
      > MSFT has no clue how to ship software. Come again ? Microsoft has shipped more software than any other company on the planet. > At Scribd, we often shipped software ten times a week. I'm not even aware of a single piece of scribd software that has been released, aren't you confusing server side deployment with shipping software ?
• iamelgringo 16y ago
  So, how about this for an answer: I'm the founder of http://Newsley.com http://Newsley.com, and we're pivoting away from being a financial social news site. We're doing a lot of semantic web using OpenCalais, and we're building the engine to process a bazillion financial news articles in real time and use semantic meta data as a basis for a search and recommendation service. If you want to see some of the semantic stuff we're doing click on the discuss link for any article: http://newsley.com/articles/one-tenth-of-all-us-banks-on-the-fidcs-list-of-problem-institutions-in-the-first-quarter/2154 http://newsley.com/articles/one-tenth-of-all-us-banks-on-the.... Those entities are all automatically extracted. It's pretty basic, but there's a lot more cool stuff we're planning. We're waiting to pursue funding until we apply to YC this fall. I'm sure we'll be hiring early engineers within the next 9 months or so... ping me: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=iamelgringo http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=iamelgringo
  • goodgoblin 16y ago
    Unrelated - but I love the look and feel of your site. It doesn't feel like a web page at all - more like a document. Its pretty striking.
    • iamelgringo 16y ago
      Thanks!
• AccordionGuy 16y ago
  If anyone wants, I'll write about my experiences going in the opposite direction -- from the start-up world to Microsoft.
  • georgieporgie 16y ago
    As someone who has worked at several small companies and a pseudo-startup, and who is tired of the lack of consistency, I would like to hear your story.
  • spoon16 16y ago
    do it, I'm interested
• stgarrity 16y ago
  I left MSFT at the end of 2008 after ~3.5yrs (search, Mesh, Azure), took 6 months off, and started my own company. In the processing of recruiting & fundraising, the experience at MSFT was almost always a good thing (people respect it)--but I got a couple of comments from investors saying "it's a good thing you left when you did, > 5 years is a red flag for us". I also have the same reaction hiring people now...a few years means I'll always interview them, MSFT's selection process is generally good. But after about 3-4 years, I've found most people (even the ones who express an incredible, proactive desire to "do a startup") never actually follow through on the decision. I think this is what Joel was referring to as the $300k/yr treadmill. Finally...a couple people pointed out that the skill set you develop at MSFT is of marginal utility externally in specific settings...the specific setting that most HN readers assume is Silicon Valley. :) Assuming that's your goal as well, .Net-specific and Windows-specific experience isn't highly transferrable to LAMP down here. Obviously good developers can pick up new languages pretty quickly, but you are missing some depth there. And clearly the MSFT process isn't going to be helpful in most companies < 10k people, or honestly most web companies (and I worked on services there :) ). Long answer short--I think 5 years is longer than you need or want if you want to go elsewhere, especially a startup...I'd vote for 3 years.
• achille 16y ago
  Side note: does anyone have a Quora invite?
• hello_moto 16y ago
  Keep in mind that Google and Amazon did hire a lot of MS employees (especially Google at Kirkland) a few years ago. I'm sure they're still opening their door for MS employees. I'd take Google or Amazon mindset than a cocky startup. Don't sweat over your 5-6 years experience at MS especially when your case is "special", you work at Bing and probably you work from the beginning until you launched. 5 years is not a long time to launch a product like Bing. In fact, you should be proud and feel a bit more comfortable with your resume so far. 5 years show determination, loyalty, and hard work. Like any other poster said, if a startup didn't like your resume because of your experience at MS, you wouldn't like them anyway. I've seen people who just talk about "how bad MS products" are after a link from Reddit/Digg showed up but they don't have anything to prove themselves. Good luck with your decision whatever that is and keep your mindset in a neutral zone.
  • earl 16y ago
    Google or Amazon are nothing like a startup, particularly a small one. We don't have time for 6 months or a year of ramp up time; instead, we need people to come in and start being productive far sooner than that. As I said upthread, this isn't insurmountable, but someone with 5 years in on .NET is going to have a rough transition to a rails/django shop.
• one010101 16y ago
  Goodness, how could that NOT be great? Did you steal from them or something? I can't imagine why you would ask this.