
Microsoft.com - Careers: Linux/Open Office - wglb
https://careers.microsoft.com/JobDetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=1&jid=9914&jlang=EN
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wglb
And joel weighs in with an analysis:
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/12/30.html>

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alanthonyc
_"Microsoft...[have] become so insular that their job postings are full of
incomprehensible jargon and acronyms which nobody outside the company can
understand."_

Sounds like something I heard about GM last year. Their managers had no idea
what the competition was like because they all "had" to drive their own cars.

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mbreese
_they all "had" to drive their own cars_

I can imagine that this must be a hard thing to overcome in a car company.
When you work for a car company, you want to be proud of your product so you
want to buy from your company. However, most families have at most 2 cars, so
you have very little incentive to buy and really understand a competitor's
product.

I can see how in Microsoft you have the same forces at work. When building
infrastructure or programming there is so steep of a learning curve regardless
of what technology you choose that it is all but impossible to really
understand all possible choices. Couple that with the inherent Microsoft
desire to dogfood everything, and you get a lot of people understanding only
the Microsoft way. Once you start going down that path, it's very easy to
create your own mini-languages. It's all very incestuous, and not a good way
to run a company. I think this is why Microsoft seems to have a hard time
understanding Apple and Linux.

~~~
endtime
>regardless of what technology you choose that it is all but impossible to
really understand all possible choices. Couple that with the inherent
Microsoft desire to dogfood everything, and you get a lot of people
understanding only the Microsoft way.

I don't actually think this is the case. More than half the people I met at
Microsoft over the summer use iPhones (the rest generally had a Palm Pre or an
Android phone; I met maybe 2-3 people with Windows Mobile), and many of them
have Macbooks for their personal laptops. It was also quite common for people
to use Google rather than Bing (though Softies are generally quite
enthusiastic about Bing). Linux use probably is lower, simply because they use
MS development tools to develop for MS platforms, but I certainly didn't get
the impression that everyone at MS only uses MS products.

FWIW, I _have_ heard from friends at Apple that using competitors' products
there is frowned upon...

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cabalamat
> _2\. Be a Perception Change Agent. The CSI Lead needs to drive perception
> across a number of key audiences (IT Pros, Government Elites, BDMs, IT
> Journalists, etc.) Ability to implement programmatic marketing that will
> CHANGE THE WAY PEOPLE think about Microsoft, specifically those with a
> ‘hostile’ or negative perception of the Microsoft platform._

If I was Microsoft, and I wanted to change perceptions of my company, I'd
start by changing the reality. Perceptions of MS are poor largely because the
reality is poor. But MS want to change the one without the other. This is
called bullshit, and is unlikely to work for an organisation as much in the
public eye as MS.

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wglb
Having worked for some large companies, the public perception of the
organization is thought to be subject to various PR and marketing efforts.
What MS has always excelled at, is the PR angle, relying less on advertising.
That is the #2 element you quote there.

Part of the reality of MS is that they have a very healthy cash flow from the
products that are sold in an institutional fashion, that is, to the enterprise
and preloaded on consumer devices. Any organization in that successful
situation can't innovate like we have come to expect small companies to do--
serious changes in their "reality" will threaten territories that are bringing
home the bacon.

And it has to be a difficult proposition to continue to convince people to pay
you money for software that, to a first order of approximation, costs nothing.

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motters
"Grow your US evidence" ??

Microsoft must have an interesting internal situation going on. On the one
hand they want to work with open source - at least, that's what they claim. On
the other they want to "compete" with Linux. Since there is enormous overlap
between open source projects and Linux projects, that must result in some
cognitive dissonance for MS employees.

~~~
jf
The words "evidence" and "compete" have special meanings inside Microsoft:

As I understand it, "evidence" is proof that your work was received well by
the community you are targeting. Rather than sales figures, "evidence" is the
currency of the division that this job is in.

"compete" is a blanket term for "not Microsoft": Mac OS X, Linux,
(Free|Net|Open)BSD, Plan 9 are all part of "compete".

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simplegeek
Damm, I don't understand a word of that job posting. "Compete muscle" and yada
yadda, I mean FTW.

~~~
brown9-2
Does Microsoft expect applicants to know what all these internal terms mean?
Or is this a listing more for internal candidates?

 _If you’re looking for a new role where you’ll focus on one of the biggest
issues that is top of mind for KT and Steve B in “Compete”, build a complete
left to right understanding of the subsidiary, have a large amount of
executive exposure, build and manage the activities of a v-team of 13 district
Linux & Open Office Compete Leads, and develop a broad set of marketing skills
and report to a management team committed to development and recognized for
high WHI this is the position for you! _

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imajes
looks like an internal job ad (to me) that got disclosed incorrectly.

~~~
endtime
Looks internal, but it also looks like they're hiring marketing folk, not
engineers. I think that's more likely the reason that it sounds like
gibberish. If a marketing person saw an ad looking for someone with experience
in T-SQL in Perl (or whatever), it would probably sound equally bizarre.

~~~
imajes
Lots of those acronyms and abbreviations are microsoft internal, i think.
They're not generic marketing. I also think they disclose a lot about the
nature of internal senior management structure- who reports to who.

An example: "KT and SteveB" are probably Kevin Turner (COO) and Steve Ballmer.

~~~
jf
You're right. Those are Microsoft internal jargon.

"compete": Term used for "not Microsoft" (I came from "compete")

"v- team": This position will have contractors working for them. Contractors
working for Microsoft have usernames in the format: /[a-z]\\-[a-z]+/.
Contractors or "Vendors" have usernames starting with 'v-'

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timcederman
It's a compete lead. The job is for competing against Open Office and Linux.

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wglb
Some analysis:
[http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?ent...](http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2712&blogid=14)

~~~
sriramk
I prefer Paul's post
([http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/12...](http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/12/29/and-
the-silliest-blog-post-of-the-year-is.aspx))

[disclaimer: I work for the company in question :)]

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FraaJad
Open Office != OpenOffice.org, AFAIK the trademark for Open Office is held by
some one other than OO.org

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nailer
You're technically correct - just like the the 'Linux is a kernel' people are
also technically correct.

However most people refer to 'OpenOffice' meaning OpenOffice.org, in the same
way they refer to 'Linux' and mean a Linux-based OS.

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andrewcooke
so what _is_ a v-team? vertical? victory?

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sjf
Virtual team, as in remote or distributed. (I assume.)

~~~
jf
Vendor. A team of contractors.

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moron4hire
Even if we dismiss the jargon, it still demonstrates some really bad grammar.

