
Working at (Google Vs Microsoft) - niyazpk
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/awqu6/things_ive_learned_at_google_so_far_not_me_the/c0jswdb
======
JamieEi
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?

~~~
Afton
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.

~~~
anc2020
The thing is that it's in the context of someone at Google saying they can
work on anything they want, meaning pretty much anything.

------
gaius
_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.

~~~
ja27
Yeah, just as long as the dev who caused the problem in the first place
doesn't get rewarded for working so hard to fix it when it's a crisis.

~~~
gaius
At 3am, he won't think about the rewards.

