
Ask HN: How valuable to my resume is 5 years at Microsoft? - spoon16
There have been some interesting discussions here and on Quora (http://www.quora.com/What-companies-teams-are-toxic-on-a-resume) about certain companies not being good for your resume or two much time at one of these companies not being good for your resume.<p>I have no college education so when I first started at Microsoft when I was 22 I decided that I wanted to work there for 5 years and do well (best reviews possible, multiple promotions).  I also wanted to spend the time trying to influence Microsoft as an organization to do something interesting in the Linked Data/Semantic Web space.  I am now a Senior Engineer and have pioneered the use of data semantics within Bing. This experience feels extremely valuable as I pursue a longer career working with start-ups.<p>I am confident that I will complete my 5 years and meet my goals but I'm interested in better understanding how this experience will be perceived by members of the start-up community that I hope to be a part of in the future.<p>Is it really perceived as a negative to work at an engineering organization like Microsoft? What other things will be valuable to demonstrate on my resume as I look to enter the hacker community more actively?
======
spolsky
I almost always consider it a strong positive, because Microsoft has a strong
selection process (everyone who works there went through a day of
interviewing).

That said, the way that Microsoft has been dealing with its extreme uncoolness
lately has been by paying salaries that are far above market. With very few
exceptions, every time I've tried to recruit a Microsoft veteran to a startup,
they've started to pull out the spreadsheets and given me complicated sob
stories about how they can make $1m in the next three years if they stay at
Microsoft, whereas I'm only offering them, eh, a few % of a hot startup.

The bottom line is that spending a lot of time at Microsoft could very well
ruin you for startups.

Even though I did it that way, there are two different ways of thinking about
your career, and if you're REALLY a startup person, you're not going to be
hedging bets by serving out your 5 year Microsoft prison sentence. If you're
telling yourself that as soon as you're fully vested you'll leave, you have
failed to take into account the new incentives that Microsoft will put in
front of you by the end of the fifth year. And eventually you're going to be
stuck in the $300,000/year treadmill at a life-sucking anonymous job with no
chance of ever hitting it big (or making an impact on the world).

~~~
starkfist
I worked as an early employee (< 10) at 3 startups that were going to change
the world and hit it big. I now have tens of thousands of worthless stock
options.

Where do I apply for the $300K/yr life sucking anonymous treadmill job?

~~~
ajslater
I know several people in $300K+/yr treadmill jobs. I wouldn't trade places
with them for all the world.

I like to think that if I found myself with their salary I would have my
priorities in a different order, but there's no guarantee of that. My own
sense of avarice and comfort has changed a lot since my 20's.

~~~
GFischer
Try a $12K/yr treadmill job (see: World, Third).

(yes, I know I'm repetitive, but I can't resist putting things in perspective
whenever I see someone complaining about U$ 300.000 !!! )

------
jacquesm
Sounds like that's great to put on your resume, anybody that would not hire
you based on it being microsoft where you worked before is probably best
avoided anyway.

Be proud of what you achieved in such a short time, not ashamed.

~~~
GavinB
It doesn't hurt that Bing is highly regarded. You've managed to work on one of
the best technical successes that Microsoft has pulled off in the last few
years.

------
Todd
I worked at Microsoft for five years in the 90s. I dropped out of college
prior to joining, so I was on the same trajectory as you are.

I always say that Microsoft is a great place to have worked. It's great for
learning how to ship real software (large and small) with all of the attendant
processes and politics that go with it. You will learn what you think is
important to take with you and what is important to leave behind. Both types
of learning are important, because as you move to startups, you will have a
hand in determining the equivalents in your new microcosm of that world.

One interesting quality I see from many people who have worked there is that
there is a perception that life after (i.e., outside of) Microsoft is scary.
That's partly because you can change jobs there endlessly and never actually
leave. You can go from working on operating systems to large binary (client)
applications to Internet apps to video games, etc. I've had to assure several
of my friends that were contemplating leaving that the water outside is safe
and warm. Every one of them has thanked me afterwards.

Another poster made a good point about some companies' HR departments not
taking a second look at you. That's true. However, I generally wouldn't want
to work at those companies anyway. I've never had a problem finding work at
great places. In fact, I've never had to apply for a job since I left. If
you're good, and your network is sound, people will reach out to you--degree
or not. Microsoft is a great foundation on which to build your resume.

~~~
earl
ps -- MSFT has no clue how to ship software.

At Scribd, we often shipped software ten times a week. That's slow compared to
lots of web startups that deploy continuously -- see the advocates at IMVU for
example. Nonetheless, most web startups deploy more than daily to production.
I've worked on classic desktop software with a 6 month release cycle and it's
very different.

pps -- deployment process? hah.

rake specs

rake deploy production

~~~
jacquesm
> MSFT has no clue how to ship software.

Come again ? Microsoft has shipped more software than any other company on the
planet.

> At Scribd, we often shipped software ten times a week.

I'm not even aware of a single piece of scribd software that has been
released, aren't you confusing server side deployment with shipping software ?

~~~
gphil
> Microsoft has shipped more software than any other company on the planet.

Do you know this as a fact or are you just speculating? (I don't care if it
was speculation, I would just like to know if this is true and how it was
measured if you know.) I would imagine it would have to be either Microsoft or
IBM who have shipped the most software in history but I'm not sure the best
way to measure the "most" software (does one count titles, licenses, revenue,
etc.)?

~~~
jacquesm
Microsofts cumulative revenues since their start is roughly 390 billion
dollars, the vast majority of that was software.

[http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.h...](http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm)
(crappy, but convenient page and the numbers seem to be ok, it only goes to
2005, so I've added another 150 billion)

IBM has a much larger total revenue but the vast majority of that was hardware
leases during the mainframe years (and it probably still is), as well as
consultancy.

Software was a huge component compared to other manufacturers but I doubt it
comes close to what microsoft has made.

I can't find a good breakdown of IBM revenues that splits it out by category
though, if someone else has access to that it would be nice to know.

~~~
jwegan
Also IBM mostly does enterprise software. Microsoft has been successful in
many different types of products: video games, operating systems, software
development (IDEs, programming languages, etc), search engines, office
applications (word, excel, etc), just to name a few. I think regardless of how
much IBM has made from software compared to Microsoft, it is safe to say
Microsoft has been much more successful at delivering products in a whole
gamut of industries.

------
alain94040
5 years at Microsoft is boring. But you say: _I pioneered the use of data
semantics within Bing_. That will get you a job interview anywhere where
people care about search or semantics.

You are now branded :-)

~~~
spoon16
I think at a company like Microsoft you have a lot to do with whether or not
the work is boring. There is a lot of political/organizational dysfunction
that comes with a massive company that can make things a little tedious or
boring. My experience has been generally positive and I have been able to
focus on interesting problems for most of my time here.

------
tptacek
Approximately as valuable as 2 years at Microsoft.

No, it's not a negative, at all. Get out of the echo chamber. Mostly, the
people with the loudest opinions about MSFT are the ones with the least
influence over hiring.

~~~
spoon16
Good point about the echo chamber :)

I think my purpose for posting this question was to provide myself with a
reality check as I get more serious about my next career move.

Do people just like to be negative about Microsoft because it's the cool thing
to do or are there legitimate concerns that I will need to mitigate?

Thanks for your perspective.

~~~
tptacek
Two "valid" concerns people will have about MSFT employees:

* MSFT is a huge company, and is run nothing like a startup or a small software company. They'll be worried that you're processbound.

* There's a perception that Microsoft is massive and loaded with middle management and that anyone with a "do-ing" role is pigeonholed very specifically, so you'll want to stake very specific and aggressive claims about the breadth of your get-shit-done experience.

These concerns would also apply to anyone from IBM, Sun, or Cisco.

Generally, compared to a recent CS grad, multiple years at MSFT doing real
work is a huge win. My only big caveat is that 5 years is a long time to be at
a BigCo.

~~~
earl
Ditto. Similar to tptacek's processbound argument, I'd be very concerned that
you'd be dumped into an environment with very little supervision and flounder.
My experience at four startups has been that they really mean it when they say
they need selfstarters and you tend to get very little direction as compared
to bigger companies. Instead, you're expected to jump in and find work
yourself.

Also, if you are interested in startups, remember that virtually none of us
use MS tech anywhere in our stack. It's not a huge problem, but I generally
prefer engineers that have put in a couple years somewhere else and aren't new
to the LAMP/postgres/mysql/linux/java/ruby/rails environment. All the way from
the different dev tools to the ethos of source distribution and the skills you
pick up around installing and configuring software from source. As far as I
remember, the MS stack generally seems to ship as binaries and have very
little of the admittedly sometimes annoying issues that come with distributing
software as source. That's a problem for you because I expect engineers to be
able to install software from yum / rpms and deal with more common link /
library / configuration issues that come up. Finally, it seems to me that MS
typically has a blessed method of doing everything -- there is a preferred
method to connect to MS SQL server, a preferred method of parsing xml, a
preferred method of sending mail, etc. The open source / linux tech stack is
_nothing_ like that -- there are always multiple ways of doing anything and
it's often an unwritten part of the job description to help sort that out.

Finally, again specific to startups, I think you'll be shocked how different a
15 person company, or even a 100 person company, is to a 30K person company.
For instance, there will often be no review process, etc etc.

Depending on what exactly you've been doing at MSFT you should have some
valuable experience, so don't be too pessimistic. Good luck.

------
stgarrity
I left MSFT at the end of 2008 after ~3.5yrs (search, Mesh, Azure), took 6
months off, and started my own company. In the processing of recruiting &
fundraising, the experience at MSFT was almost always a good thing (people
respect it)--but I got a couple of comments from investors saying "it's a good
thing you left when you did, > 5 years is a red flag for us".

I also have the same reaction hiring people now...a few years means I'll
always interview them, MSFT's selection process is generally good. But after
about 3-4 years, I've found most people (even the ones who express an
incredible, proactive desire to "do a startup") never actually follow through
on the decision. I think this is what Joel was referring to as the $300k/yr
treadmill.

Finally...a couple people pointed out that the skill set you develop at MSFT
is of marginal utility externally _in specific settings_...the specific
setting that most HN readers assume is Silicon Valley. :) Assuming that's your
goal as well, .Net-specific and Windows-specific experience isn't highly
transferrable to LAMP down here. Obviously good developers can pick up new
languages pretty quickly, but you are missing some depth there. And clearly
the MSFT process isn't going to be helpful in most companies < 10k people, or
honestly most web companies (and I worked on services there :) ).

Long answer short--I think 5 years is longer than you need or want if you want
to go elsewhere, especially a startup...I'd vote for 3 years.

------
endtime
Having worked at Microsoft should get you an interview just about anywhere.
And anyone who considers it a negative is, frankly, an idiot.

~~~
earl
Seriously? Working at MSFT can be a huge negative for us, for three specific
reasons: * an entirely different software stack from the operating system to
the web servers to the databases to the programming languages to the dev
tools;

* I've interviewed 3 different people from MSFT that were experts in eg a tiny area of DCOM; as startup needs generalists;

* a 30 person company is nothing like a 30K or 60K or whatever they're up to these days and it seems that people comfortable in one are often not comfortable in the other.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Regarding point 3, MS isn't so much a 60K company as it is a coalition of
variously sized groups, usually from a few hundreds up to low thousands.

~~~
spoon16
During my 4.5 years I haven't worked on anything but incubation projects.
Meaning I have never been on a team with more than 20 full time employees.

------
aaronbrethorst
Potential employers perceived my four years in Microsoft as being extremely
valuable when I left in 2007.

Just make sure you leave on good terms. I still chat with my last manager on
occasion, and expect that I could get back in without too much trouble if
things ever got really hairy out here.

Also, I looked at your LinkedIn profile, and recommend describing your
accomplishments in less HR-centric terms: an 'exceeded' contribution rating is
great, but it might not mean much to a hiring manager at a Madrona portfolio
company. Like alain said elsewhere, be more specific with what you achieved.

~~~
spoon16
Thanks for that feedback. I do plan on a pretty extensive refactoring of my
resume as I get closer to my 5 years.

------
sriramk
I did a double take when I saw this thread - I finish 5 years at Microsoft to
the _day_ today :)

------
iamelgringo
So, how about this for an answer:

I'm the founder of <http://Newsley.com>, and we're pivoting away from being a
financial social news site. We're doing a lot of semantic web using
OpenCalais, and we're building the engine to process a bazillion financial
news articles in real time and use semantic meta data as a basis for a search
and recommendation service.

If you want to see some of the semantic stuff we're doing click on the discuss
link for any article: [http://newsley.com/articles/one-tenth-of-all-us-banks-
on-the...](http://newsley.com/articles/one-tenth-of-all-us-banks-on-the-fidcs-
list-of-problem-institutions-in-the-first-quarter/2154). Those entities are
all automatically extracted. It's pretty basic, but there's a lot more cool
stuff we're planning.

We're waiting to pursue funding until we apply to YC this fall. I'm sure we'll
be hiring early engineers within the next 9 months or so...

ping me: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=iamelgringo>

~~~
goodgoblin
Unrelated - but I love the look and feel of your site. It doesn't feel like a
web page at all - more like a document. Its pretty striking.

~~~
iamelgringo
Thanks!

------
risotto
I've ran across a couple ex-MSFTers that were way too expensive for their
skill set. But I still wish I could have hired them, they were smart guys.

Aside from that, if you are being interviewed by real tech people, not an HR
machine, there's no way MSFT could ever count against you.

Way more damning is if you _only_ have experience with .NET or something like
that.

~~~
spoon16
Good point regarding .NET. I have been working hard to have significant
expertise beyond .NET even though we are rather .NET focused in my day to day
work at Microsoft.

------
wanderr
I have some influence over certain hiring decisions at a startup. I'd look at
experience like that and think "this guy is probably pretty awesome." The MS
name might be a bit tainted, but there's no doubt that they have a lot of very
talented engineers, and if you really did pioneer the use of data semantics
within Bing, well that's pretty impressive.

That said, we'd look at that experience and guess that you would probably not
be interested in working at our startup-sized salaries, so I wouldn't expect
much effort to recruit you in the first place. The other thing we'd need to
make sure about is that you're not stuck doing things "The Microsoft Way
(tm)"; you'd be joining a very different culture and if you're not going to
fit in, it's not going to work.

------
briandoll
It's not that big companies, or big companies some of us love to mock are
always bad, it's that it can be very easy for mediocre programmers to fly
under the radar in those environments for years, and never accomplish or learn
much of anything. As you've done in your question, focus on your project
experience and what you learned and the company where you worked on those
projects becomes inconsequential.

------
hello_moto
Keep in mind that Google and Amazon did hire a lot of MS employees (especially
Google at Kirkland) a few years ago. I'm sure they're still opening their door
for MS employees. I'd take Google or Amazon mindset than a cocky startup.

Don't sweat over your 5-6 years experience at MS especially when your case is
"special", you work at Bing and probably you work from the beginning until you
launched. 5 years is not a long time to launch a product like Bing.

In fact, you should be proud and feel a bit more comfortable with your resume
so far. 5 years show determination, loyalty, and hard work. Like any other
poster said, if a startup didn't like your resume because of your experience
at MS, you wouldn't like them anyway.

I've seen people who just talk about "how bad MS products" are after a link
from Reddit/Digg showed up but they don't have anything to prove themselves.

Good luck with your decision whatever that is and keep your mindset in a
neutral zone.

~~~
earl
Google or Amazon are nothing like a startup, particularly a small one. We
don't have time for 6 months or a year of ramp up time; instead, we need
people to come in and start being productive far sooner than that. As I said
upthread, this isn't insurmountable, but someone with 5 years in on .NET is
going to have a rough transition to a rails/django shop.

------
joubert
Being versatile is prized. I don't expect your MS work to count against you.

------
AccordionGuy
If anyone wants, I'll write about my experiences going in the _opposite_
direction -- from the start-up world to Microsoft.

~~~
spoon16
do it, I'm interested

------
mwerty
Randomness dominates startups in a way that makes your concern about first
impressions unnecessary.

------
ams6110
Without college you will hit an HR brick wall at some employers, but likely
these will be ones you wouldn't want to work for anyway.

Sounds to me like your 5 years at MS is probably equal to or better than an
undergraduate degree at least as far as technical competency is concerned.

------
haily
I tend to judge people by what they have accomplished. With that said, I tend
to favor consistency over a big grand accomplishment. It just show that you
have sustaining skills.

It's the knowledge that you've retained from your work at Microsoft that is of
importance. Focus on that. Better yet provide some guidance in your domain of
knowledge to the hacker community.

------
sauce71
No college and you got a jo at M. at 22? This was in the early eighties?
Serious; the fact that they hired you at all implies you got some gift that
any tech. company probably would value.

~~~
spoon16
This was not in the early 80s. It was the beginning of 2006.

------
achille
Side note: does anyone have a Quora invite?

------
one010101
Goodness, how could that NOT be great? Did you steal from them or something? I
can't imagine why you would ask this.

