5 ms·

This is my second internship at Microsoft. I worked on Office last year and now I'm working on Windows Live (though it gets kind of hairy since WL is getting ki

by rlu 14y ago

This is my second internship at Microsoft. I worked on Office last year and now I'm working on Windows Live (though it gets kind of hairy since WL is getting killed off and really my team interfaces directly with Win8 so I think of it as just building Windows services). This is why I like Microsoft: * You get to impact the lives of millions and millions of people. I find this really cool. I can't wait for Office 15 to come out and be able to see people in my class or on the bus or whatever using features I made. You feel a big (and mixed) sense of responsibility and pride. What we are doing really does matter. If you fuck up, millions of people are going to be affected. If you do an amazing job, the same thing happens but in a positive way. Just think about that for a second. * Microsoft is virtually involved in every market. Want to make an OS? Go work on Windows. Now you're working on a product with ~85% marketshare. That's pretty cool right? Want a change? Want to see what it's like to work on a product that is the underdog? Go have some fun in Windows Phone. After that, if you want to give search engines a try go ahead and work at Bing. If that doesn't work out, you literally have so many other options (Xbox, Azure, Surface, Visual Studio, Office, IE, etc.) * You can really feel that you're in an atmosphere of extremely bright and intelligent people (for the most part). This keeps you extremely motivated in case for whatever reason the above things aren't enough. * While this may seem silly and very minor compared to the above points, it's pretty fracking (sorry been watching BSG) cool to use software before it gets revealed or released to the masses. Knowing secrets is fun :)

wickedchicken 14y ago
> This is my second internship at Microsoft. I worked on Office last year and now I'm working on Windows Live real talk: have you ever worked on an 'embrace, extend, extinguish'[1] feature or are rank-and-file engineers shielded from that? the only microsofties I know worked at MSR and from what I understand that is a much different environment than actual microsoft. kind of curious what it's actually like in there[2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish [2] I tend toward the side of linux zealot so I'm trying to soften my tone here
- zheng 14y ago
  I can't speak for the grandparent, but I've encountered zero of the famous mindset here. There is a definite competitive nature, but customer needs, not business rivals, are what are pushed to even the lowest devs. I'm working on something that is pretty much an internal tool, but the level of emphasis of being able to use it for modeling the needs of real customers is quite high.
- adamnemecek 14y ago
  You should realize that even though MSFT was not the nicest company in the industry in the past, Embrace, extend and extinguish happened almost two decades ago and stuff like that does not really happen anymore (at least I cannot think of anything, but correct me if I'm wrong).
bcbrown 14y ago
"You get to impact the lives of millions and millions of people." That, plus "knowing secrets" was the coolest part of my time at MS. But after several years working on Win7 and Win8, I hated my job, and every week I thank my stars that I'm working elsewhere now. The bureaucracy was stifling and the product lifecyle is an eternity of sitting and waiting for plans to percolate down from on high. All the news about the company since I've left has validated my decision, and made me realize just how strong the reality distortion field or "Redmond bubble" is.

by rlu 14y ago

wickedchicken 14y ago

> This is my second internship at Microsoft. I worked on Office last year and now I'm working on Windows Live real talk: have you ever worked on an 'embrace, extend, extinguish'[1] feature or are rank-and-file engineers shielded from that? the only microsofties I know worked at MSR and from what I understand that is a much different environment than actual microsoft. kind of curious what it's actually like in there[2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish [2] I tend toward the side of linux zealot so I'm trying to soften my tone here

zheng 14y ago
I can't speak for the grandparent, but I've encountered zero of the famous mindset here. There is a definite competitive nature, but customer needs, not business rivals, are what are pushed to even the lowest devs. I'm working on something that is pretty much an internal tool, but the level of emphasis of being able to use it for modeling the needs of real customers is quite high.
adamnemecek 14y ago
You should realize that even though MSFT was not the nicest company in the industry in the past, Embrace, extend and extinguish happened almost two decades ago and stuff like that does not really happen anymore (at least I cannot think of anything, but correct me if I'm wrong).

bcbrown 14y ago

"You get to impact the lives of millions and millions of people." That, plus "knowing secrets" was the coolest part of my time at MS. But after several years working on Win7 and Win8, I hated my job, and every week I thank my stars that I'm working elsewhere now. The bureaucracy was stifling and the product lifecyle is an eternity of sitting and waiting for plans to percolate down from on high. All the news about the company since I've left has validated my decision, and made me realize just how strong the reality distortion field or "Redmond bubble" is.