3 ms·

When you have a company wining/dining and paying kickbacks, or when Microsoft hires erotic dancers for their events, then the top executives with no technical k

When you have a company wining/dining and paying kickbacks, or when Microsoft hires erotic dancers for their events, then the top executives with no technical knowledge are happy to sign multi-year contracts that lock them into those vendors... if they don't, then Microsoft can always release their blackmail files.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Pardon? I have Office 365 and Adobe subscriptions and have never been blackmailed or signed a multi-year contract.
- techntoke 8y ago
  That's good. Do you have over 1000 accounts?
com2kid 8y ago
> or when Microsoft hires erotic dancers for their events, I worked at MS for a long time. I can say that sort of stuff hasn't happened for quite awhile, and people involved in it happening were fired, some of them rather publicly. Now days, expense reports are gone over very carefully. Everyone at Microsoft attends yearly ethics training, which covers all manner of topics, including what is and is not acceptable to do to win sales. Realistically, when it comes to cloud based productivity systems, the choices are Microsoft or Google. > then the top executives with no technical knowledge are happy to sign multi-year contracts that lock them into those vendors Any half decent company is going to have at least a CTO in charge of these decisions. The CTO should have multiple people working for them that are capable of making engineering decisions. If a company sends a bunch of non-technical people to a technical presentation to make a technical decision, that is the company's fault.
- dave7 8y ago
  > I worked at MS for a long time. I can say that sort of stuff hasn't happened for quite awhile, and people involved in it happening were fired, some of them rather publicly. 2016 isn't that long ago, and that's just one that was badly-judged enough to have made the news: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-18-microsoft-gdc-party-criticised-for-exotic-dancers-phil-spencer-apologises https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-18-microsoft-gdc-...
  - com2kid 8y ago
    And people internally were shocked at the stupidity of that event being put on. The overall feeling inside MS at the time was "wow, that was stupid, hasn't that team being paying attention to how the industry has been changing?" An even more formal policy change was then sent out, reminding people of dumb stuff they aren't supposed to do.
    - vetinari 8y ago
      Are they also shocked by stuff like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corruption_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corruption... It was nothing in-your-face like strippers, but still pretty immoral.
- jenscow 8y ago
  > Everyone at Microsoft attends yearly ethics training It must be a toxic environment, working with people who needed to be continuously trained on how to be ethical. Good on them for trying to do something about it, however.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Such regular trainings are quite common at many Fortune 500.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

Pardon? I have Office 365 and Adobe subscriptions and have never been blackmailed or signed a multi-year contract.

techntoke 8y ago
That's good. Do you have over 1000 accounts?

com2kid 8y ago

> or when Microsoft hires erotic dancers for their events, I worked at MS for a long time. I can say that sort of stuff hasn't happened for quite awhile, and people involved in it happening were fired, some of them rather publicly. Now days, expense reports are gone over very carefully. Everyone at Microsoft attends yearly ethics training, which covers all manner of topics, including what is and is not acceptable to do to win sales. Realistically, when it comes to cloud based productivity systems, the choices are Microsoft or Google. > then the top executives with no technical knowledge are happy to sign multi-year contracts that lock them into those vendors Any half decent company is going to have at least a CTO in charge of these decisions. The CTO should have multiple people working for them that are capable of making engineering decisions. If a company sends a bunch of non-technical people to a technical presentation to make a technical decision, that is the company's fault.

dave7 8y ago
> I worked at MS for a long time. I can say that sort of stuff hasn't happened for quite awhile, and people involved in it happening were fired, some of them rather publicly. 2016 isn't that long ago, and that's just one that was badly-judged enough to have made the news: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-18-microsoft-gdc-party-criticised-for-exotic-dancers-phil-spencer-apologises https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-18-microsoft-gdc-...
- com2kid 8y ago
  And people internally were shocked at the stupidity of that event being put on. The overall feeling inside MS at the time was "wow, that was stupid, hasn't that team being paying attention to how the industry has been changing?" An even more formal policy change was then sent out, reminding people of dumb stuff they aren't supposed to do.
  - vetinari 8y ago
    Are they also shocked by stuff like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corruption_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corruption... It was nothing in-your-face like strippers, but still pretty immoral.
jenscow 8y ago
> Everyone at Microsoft attends yearly ethics training It must be a toxic environment, working with people who needed to be continuously trained on how to be ethical. Good on them for trying to do something about it, however.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Such regular trainings are quite common at many Fortune 500.