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Comment by jamesaguilar | Hacker News Reader

If only someone had warned him of their secretive culture before he started.

Is a warning even necessary? I am fairly certain every company works this way.

Nah, Microsoft wasn't like that. I've always joked that if you wanted to do corporate espionage, you should either ride one of the local commute lines (the 245) or just sit around pretending to drink coffee at the Redmond Town Center Borders.

I certainly used to regularly chat about bug burndown rates, joke about ship dates, and play that old game of "how many release candidates" with other managers. And I overheard more new feature discussions in public from folks on other teams than I can possibly imagine.

But, it was part of the culture. Love it or hate it, most members of the dev organization who are successful long-term at MSFT talk about their work all the time, everywhere they go. I've overheard heated arguments in public about Windows servicing patching strategies, and been in ones about such nits as whether the VS solution explorer should be on the left or the right in the default profile.

Umm.. no they don't

Many companies encourage people to talk about their work. See, for example, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Twitter etc.

Obviously they have some restrictions - but nothing like Apple.

Google certainly doesn't encourage people to talk about their work--it's one of the things that puts me off the thought of working there.

http://www.google.com/events/io/2011

There are 25,000 Google employees, how many of them do you think are attending IO (total attendance 5000), let alone speaking there.

That's a stage managed corporate event announcing new products and initiatives, it's no more a display of openness than Steve Jobs' keynotes.

Not really a representative sample of corporate culture. It's almost three years since my last job, and maybe I can talk about what I did there or get a job in a similar industry as of November.

Talking about your work is one thing; talking about what you’re working on, that’s something else entirely.

I believe it is typical of engineering R&D firms that you can't talk about the details of what you do, or the products that are coming out.

Some of what can be produced is patents (describing the mechanisms), papers at conferences, and white papers.

Essentially, any special technology - anything providing competitive advantage - is kept under lock and key.

At least this is what I understand from talking and reading. Please feel to correct me with facts if I am wrong. :-)

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