This guy's report of his experiences at MS don't add up to me. My reply in the reddit comments...
> I still have the freedom to work on anything I want
I'm confused by this. In my 8 years at MS I have never heard of anyone being able to work on anything they want. Perhaps you are at MSR? At any rate being able to work on anything you want (full-time) is not typical of MS or most large corporations.
> They are out for blood in everything they do, and I've found that to be a surprisingly interesting motivator.
Also not my experience. People at MS are surprisingly normal, and the company has a pretty good track record of working with partners when it makes business sense. This comment strikes me as even more odd when coupled with the "I get to work on whatever I want" one quoted above.
I'm also puzzled that your reddit logon is "lnxaddct". I have nothing against Linux, but surely that is one of the things you can't work on at MS?
There may be a reading of 'anything I want' that the poster intended. I don't get micromanaged much. I do 'anything I want' as long as the end results are the results that my feature team is driving for. No one particularly cares what tools I use or what approach I use as long as it's going to get the job done.
The rest, I agree with you (JamieEi) about. People seem aware of the competition, but typically discussions are about how we can provide a better experience.
As for the username, I was developing on linux before I came to MS. Presumably the poster was a big linux fan before being hired at MS.
I'm not surprised that there are isolated groups at MS that use Python. (We have a .NET version after all.) I would be surprised if you said that you worked at both Google and MS and their use of Python was pretty much the same. In that case I'd say your MS experience was unusual.
He explains his name here: Heh :) We're generally called microsofties. I'm a big fan of linux, in fact the first time I used Windows in a serious capacity was when I joined Microsoft (they hired me knowing that I knew nothing about their products). We still joke about it.
They also require everyone to rotate being "on-call". I went to Amazon's party last week (the "100% Peculiar" party), which was awesome but it was a Saturday night at 8:00pm and one of my friends who works there got called in. They had on-call rooms at the party.
This is a great policy. At some companies there is a lot of finger pointing, but when the devs share the pain of the ops guys, everyone knows they're on the same team.
> I still have the freedom to work on anything I want
I'm confused by this. In my 8 years at MS I have never heard of anyone being able to work on anything they want. Perhaps you are at MSR? At any rate being able to work on anything you want (full-time) is not typical of MS or most large corporations.
> They are out for blood in everything they do, and I've found that to be a surprisingly interesting motivator.
Also not my experience. People at MS are surprisingly normal, and the company has a pretty good track record of working with partners when it makes business sense. This comment strikes me as even more odd when coupled with the "I get to work on whatever I want" one quoted above.
I'm also puzzled that your reddit logon is "lnxaddct". I have nothing against Linux, but surely that is one of the things you can't work on at MS?