5 ms·

It pains me that this story exists and that your misogynist comment got so many upvotes. Subtle form of astroturfing? It took about 10 seconds and some readin

It pains me that this story exists and that your misogynist comment got so many upvotes. Subtle form of astroturfing? It took about 10 seconds and some reading comprehension for me to understand that the site (and the interview) was sponsored by MS. And your subtext? I totally disagree. Just because it's a female writer (with a picture! Oh my!), it implies that she's some sort of developer concubine? WTF? If it was an attractive guy, would you start tossing out gay jokes? If it was an older woman, would you call her a cougar? Or are you suggesting that they hired her because she was cute over more-qualified male candidates? There are 120 zillion stories on what it's like to work at Google, and presumably many of these are launched and shaped by Google PR folks. You could take the same tone towards them: "The subtle implication is that Google people are buried in gourmet food, don't have managers, cash our as zillionaires in a year or two, go kayaking on their lunch hour all the time, and truly spend 20% of their work time on whatever they feel like." Sure there's a goal here-- to show that MS is cooler than most people think it is. Whether that's true or not is subjective (but I know a lot of pretty cool folks who actually LOVE(d) working at Microsoft).

endtime 17y ago
I'm working at Microsoft this summer, and it really is a fun place to work, especially compared to Goldman Sachs and AMD (where I've spent previous summers). People work whatever hours they feel like, they have fun (my team has "Scotch Friday" every few weeks, for example), and our boss is extremely bright (and amusing). I haven't worked for Google, so maybe that's even better, I don't know - but from what I've seen so far, there's nothing not to like about working for Microsoft. For what it's worth, just about everyone I've met will openly admit that the company culture was very different 15 years ago, and earned it some (deserved) negative reputation...but that's really not the company I've seen this summer. Anecdotally: I'm working on the Office web apps, and we fully support Firefox and Safari as well as IE.
- Andys 17y ago
  > the company culture was very different 15 years ago, and earned it some (deserved) negative reputation Market-wise, I perceived Microsoft as kicking ass during the mid 90's with products that were crushing the competition, whereas nowadays I see them as floundering ineffectively. If the workers weren't happy then, but are happy now, how does that fit with my perceptions?
  - endtime 17y ago
    I never said the workers weren't happy then - I said the company was a different place. People externally were less happy about Microsoft, because it was, as you note, more aggressive.
neilk 17y ago
I take exception to the accusation of misogyny, but perhaps I wasn't very clear. I'm sure that Ariel is a competent and intelligent person, and probably capable of a lot more than puff PR blogging for moribund corporations. I'm sure she put in an honest and significant amount of work setting up the site and the interview and so on. In fact, her competence is essential. The whole point of the exercise is to cast a character who can convey authenticity. It's like reality show casting. It's not scripted. The people are real. But they're in a role, to create a particular kind of scene. And the scene they probably wanted to create was "attractive+nerdy girl runs a fansite about our our awesomely cool developers and our cool corporate culture". Yeah, probably most smart people know that it's really an MS site. But branding exists for a reason -- it works unconsciously. If anything my comment isn't misogynist, it's anti-straight-male. I'm tired of how predictable men in our industry are. As for Google PR -- it deserves to be satirized too. Their thing is to have developers directly address the public, in relatively plainspoken videos. This entails yet more subtle distortions (mostly by omission), but it's not as flawed as the Microspotting approach.
- webwright 17y ago
  "And the scene they probably wanted to create was "attractive+nerdy girl runs a fansite about our our awesomely cool developers and our cool corporate culture"." Are you sure? You're assigning motivation here. What if she wasn't attractive? What if she was a guy? What if she was Robert Scoble (who got paid to interview folks at Microsoft, too)? What scene did they want to create with Robert Scoble? The motivation to me is pretty clear: People think MS is Bill Gates or (much worse) Steve Ballmer. Let's interview all sorts of folks here so people can see that we've got a pretty cool family. It's not subtle, but you can't pretend it is to prop up the complicated motivations you've created. First sentence, upper right: "Hey. My name is Ariel and I'm the person you thought would never work at MSFT." The about page talks about microsoft. The primary nav has an Apply link, for god's sake. Lots of companies create company-culture/jobs/recruiting sites that are branded in a different/fun way (note: my first startup was recruiting software, so I know the industry).
  - gruseom 17y ago

endtime 17y ago

I'm working at Microsoft this summer, and it really is a fun place to work, especially compared to Goldman Sachs and AMD (where I've spent previous summers). People work whatever hours they feel like, they have fun (my team has "Scotch Friday" every few weeks, for example), and our boss is extremely bright (and amusing). I haven't worked for Google, so maybe that's even better, I don't know - but from what I've seen so far, there's nothing not to like about working for Microsoft. For what it's worth, just about everyone I've met will openly admit that the company culture was very different 15 years ago, and earned it some (deserved) negative reputation...but that's really not the company I've seen this summer. Anecdotally: I'm working on the Office web apps, and we fully support Firefox and Safari as well as IE.

Andys 17y ago
> the company culture was very different 15 years ago, and earned it some (deserved) negative reputation Market-wise, I perceived Microsoft as kicking ass during the mid 90's with products that were crushing the competition, whereas nowadays I see them as floundering ineffectively. If the workers weren't happy then, but are happy now, how does that fit with my perceptions?
- endtime 17y ago
  I never said the workers weren't happy then - I said the company was a different place. People externally were less happy about Microsoft, because it was, as you note, more aggressive.

neilk 17y ago

I take exception to the accusation of misogyny, but perhaps I wasn't very clear. I'm sure that Ariel is a competent and intelligent person, and probably capable of a lot more than puff PR blogging for moribund corporations. I'm sure she put in an honest and significant amount of work setting up the site and the interview and so on. In fact, her competence is essential. The whole point of the exercise is to cast a character who can convey authenticity. It's like reality show casting. It's not scripted. The people are real. But they're in a role, to create a particular kind of scene. And the scene they probably wanted to create was "attractive+nerdy girl runs a fansite about our our awesomely cool developers and our cool corporate culture". Yeah, probably most smart people know that it's really an MS site. But branding exists for a reason -- it works unconsciously. If anything my comment isn't misogynist, it's anti-straight-male. I'm tired of how predictable men in our industry are. As for Google PR -- it deserves to be satirized too. Their thing is to have developers directly address the public, in relatively plainspoken videos. This entails yet more subtle distortions (mostly by omission), but it's not as flawed as the Microspotting approach.

webwright 17y ago
"And the scene they probably wanted to create was "attractive+nerdy girl runs a fansite about our our awesomely cool developers and our cool corporate culture"." Are you sure? You're assigning motivation here. What if she wasn't attractive? What if she was a guy? What if she was Robert Scoble (who got paid to interview folks at Microsoft, too)? What scene did they want to create with Robert Scoble? The motivation to me is pretty clear: People think MS is Bill Gates or (much worse) Steve Ballmer. Let's interview all sorts of folks here so people can see that we've got a pretty cool family. It's not subtle, but you can't pretend it is to prop up the complicated motivations you've created. First sentence, upper right: "Hey. My name is Ariel and I'm the person you thought would never work at MSFT." The about page talks about microsoft. The primary nav has an Apply link, for god's sake. Lots of companies create company-culture/jobs/recruiting sites that are branded in a different/fun way (note: my first startup was recruiting software, so I know the industry).
- gruseom 17y ago