

Microsoft: The "Velvet Sweatshop" (1989) - blader
http://www.krsaborio.net/research/1980s/89/890423.htm
Really illuminating article written in 1989 on Microsoft's culture. Any parallels you draw to large corporations of today are strictly your own.
======
iseff
It's shocking how well replacing "Microsoft" for "Google" and "1989" with
"2008" works.

~~~
timr
It's only shocking if you haven't lived through it before.

Google's growth will slow, and the most ambitious employees will move along or
retire (this is already happening), leaving the careerists to take over. As
the management structure of the company ossifies, the young employees will
stop working quite so many hours (why bother, if it's not going to make you
rich?), and a job at Google will become Just Another Daily Grind (tm). Over
time, the free food and massages will look as dated and manipulative as the
free soda at Microsoft, and the company will become an elaborate, kabuki-
theater version of its youthful mythology.

I think you know you're on the bad side of this narrative when you start to
see Audis and Volvos in the company parking lot. Clunkers are good (the
employees are young and hungry) and ridiculous sports cars are okay (the
employees are newly rich and brash), but luxury sedans are the death knell for
innovation. (And yes, in case you're wondering -- the lots at Microsoft are
positively _filled_ with them).

------
sutro
The image the author paints of Ballmer in a red bikini will haunt me for the
rest of my days.

