

Forbidden Fruit - Microsoft Workers Hide Their iPhones - grellas
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703455804575057651922457356.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_tech

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sgk284
So I work at Microsoft. Specifically on the Windows team. I honestly can't say
I've ever had any issues using my iPhone or MacBook Pro there.

During my interview we joked about how I had not used Windows (or any
Microsoft product) in a serious capacity for over a decade. I run Apple on the
desktop and Linux on servers. They seemed to like this diversity coming in on
the team.

I joined a few months before Win7 shipped, and have to say... from day one I
was pretty impressed with Win7. It's actually a really nice OS, I just wish
the hardware it usually came on was as nice (I've yet to find a PC laptop as
well designed as my MBP). The new Windows 7 phones though... wow they are
amazing. Actually makes me consider replacing my iPhone, which Android just
couldn't do.

~~~
jf
I had the exact same experience joining Microsoft - I hadn't used Windows (or
any Microsoft product) for 5 years.

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aaroniba
When I was an intern at Microsoft in 2003, I brought my PowerBook into work.
Sometimes coworkers would give me shit, and I would offer to start using a
windows laptop once they used MSN Search instead of Google for all their web
searches.

At the time, MSN search was so bad that this proposition was ludicrous. In
fact, every Office developer I knew used Google with a
"site:msdn.microsoft.com" restriction to search their own API docs.

I wonder if Bing is now good enough that employees feel pressure to use it
instead of Google.

~~~
izendejas
There's no comparison. Search wasn't a big business for anyone then. Microsoft
has been in the smartphone business for a while and it's an extremely sore
subject.

It really comes down to this: why work at a company whose products you're not
excited about? This is part of Google and Apple's success. You were an intern
then, so you're fine, but more senior, high-level employees better be using
your company products--otherwise, they're doing a shitty job and need to be
fired.

~~~
InclinedPlane
_"why work at a company whose products you're not excited about?"_

Microsoft has _a lot_ of products. It would be unnatural for every employee
who worked there to be excited about every single one of those products. I can
understand the cognitive dissonance issues of working in a division that
produced products that you weren't excited about, but as for the entirety of
Microsoft I think that's an unrealistic idea.

The only way to be excited equally about all of Microsoft's products (in
preference to all of their competitors) is to have drunken the kool-aid so
deeply that you've lost the ability to judge anything fairly. This is a far
more dangerous scenario than a company that produces some products that are
second run in comparison to some of their rivals. The former is a recipe for a
company full of zealots who drive the company into the ground due to their
lack of fair judgement, the former is to be expected of any company that has a
huge and widely varied product offering spanning multiple industries.

~~~
ovi256
The former (a company full of zealots who drive the company into the ground
due to their lack of fair judgement) is a classic case of a late-stage company
overtaken by the clueless, who survives simply by inertia.

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endtime
>The perils of being an iPhone user at Microsoft were on display last
September. At an all- company meeting in a Seattle sports stadium, one hapless
employee used his iPhone to snap photos of Microsoft Chief Executive Steve
Ballmer. Mr. Ballmer snatched the iPhone out of the employee's hands, placed
it on the ground and pretended to stomp on it in front of thousands of
Microsoft workers, according to people present.

I was present for this. It was a self-deprecating joke, not an actual
admonition, and Ballmer later addressed the fact that Microsoft just isn't
competitive in mobile right now, and tried to hype up Windows Mobile 7 (as it
was then known).

I worked at MSFT last summer, and I had an iPhone. So did my (full time)
office mate. So did my mentor. I think my team's dev lead did too. Probably
around 40-50% of my team did. It wasn't frowned upon at all. I also used Opera
on my work machines and the most I encountered was curiosity.

Every time one of these "Microsofties can't use competitors' products"
articles comes up I find it really frustrating, because it's at best an
inaccurate generalization.

~~~
altano
Exactly one fellow MSFT employee has ever given me guff for using my iPhone. I
told him to shove it, and every other employee I've told the story to was
mortified that anyone would act that way.

In a 100,000 person company, you're going to have some douches, but the vast
majority of people couldn't care less what kind of phone you use.

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drawkbox
If Ballmer was smart he would encourage the use of the iPhone and other
competing phones, since that is the reality... Then tell employees to take
notes from the form factor, software, usability, developer market and
experience. He's completely backwards on this.

~~~
DeusExMachina
Right. I think that one thing is eating your own dog food, another is trying
to forbid employees using rival technology (hopelessly, as we can read in this
article).

I think this pisses off employees and this is the last thing Microsoft can
afford right now. The best for them is to use both the iPhone and some
Microsoft phone to take note of the differences and help improve the latter.

~~~
malkia
It's like forbidding one game developer playing the games of another, or even
discussing them. Stupid.

I work at game studio, and all designers are researching and playing other
games actively (be it owned by the parent company, or others).

I mean.... How else??

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jrockway
Steve Ballmer: What happens when the serial killer from "silence of the lambs"
becomes when he escapes from prison and takes on a new identity.

But seriously, does Microsoft buy its employees Windows Mobile phone? No?
That's why nobody has them; why pay money for an inferior product just because
you work there? At least Google buys everyone an Android phone.

I work for a bank. I don't put my money in this bank, because their fees are
outrageous and their interest rates are insanely low. ING Direct is a much
better product, so I use that instead. There is no incentive for me to use my
employer's product; it would cost me money. Why would I want to spend my own
money to make the executives feel better?

~~~
anigbrowl
I know it's off-topic, but why would you want to work for a company that
treats its customers so badly? I mean, if they don't care about their
customers they probably don't care much about you either, so it's entirely
likely that you could do better working for someone who actually gives a fuck.

~~~
ryanpetrich
ING Direct's quite a bit different than your standard bank. I know a girl who
works at Indigo (a book retailer)—she buys books via Amazon because she
doesn't need the aisles of books to leaf through, staff assistance or in-store
Starbucks or the markup associated with it.

------
abhay
I'm pretty sure this article is one of those filler pieces that are in the
writer's back pocket in case he can't think of something else to write about.

I take my iPhone and MBP up to the Bellevue and Redmond offices all the time.
I get some weird looks sometimes when I pull out the laptop in the cafeteria
but when they see I'm running Windows 7 and I'm doing stuff on the intranet,
their attitude turns to curiosity. I've had many questions like "How does
CorpNet work on your Mac?" My usual response: "Very well."

Sure you can eat your own dog food or whatever the cool new term for this is
but there's also something about using the tools that work well for the job. I
don't really run anything important for work on my Mac. All of my code
builds/runs on lab machines or a desktop that sits in the office which I can
connect to via Remote Desktop Connection. My Mac works great as a thin client
to these machines.

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anigbrowl
Microsoft seems a lot more tolerant of competing hardware than I expected.
Somehow I doubt they're as relaxed about it in Cupertino.

~~~
izendejas
That's a good question to pose to apple employees. I wonder if they can
comment at all. :p But to their credit, as I discuss above, their loyalty is a
big part of Apple's success.

~~~
malkia
Is that so? How about iTunes, QuickTime, WebObjects, BootCamp technologies?
Apple surely knows that Windows is, and still is the most used OS. (And, I'm
typing this from my MBP).

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patcdr
My first day at Microsoft, I was worried about this. This worry dissipated
once I saw my boss's boss pull one out in a meeting.

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jacquesm
Leaders are often insulated from reality by people around them, especially if
they have a penchant for violent outbursts.

See the 'chair' incident and the movie 'Der Untergang'.

I'm sure Jobs and others in the industry have similar reality distortion
fields around them.

But I _highly_ doubt that at the lower levels in the microsoft organization
they'd be this myopic, and a bunch of anecdotes here and elsewhere about
microsoft employees owning hardware produced by competitors and displaying
them openly at work seems to confirm that doubt.

~~~
hga
A note for those of us who perhaps know "unter" but not "untergang": the
official movie title English translation of _Der Untergang_ is _Downfall_. My
G<->E dictionary suggests setting, sinking, _fig._ ruin.

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swilliams
"Andy Lees, a Microsoft senior vice president who oversees development of the
mobile-phone software business... explained that Microsoft workers often use
rival products to better understand the competition"

If that was what he truly believed, then the mobile-phone division is in
trouble, because their leader is completely out of touch with reality.

