And here, ladies and gents, is why companies like Microsoft, will eternally resist getting aligned with internal employee groups Resisting selling to government entities, whether ICE or the Army.
There is way too much money to be lost.
There is way too much money to be lost.
I think there's room for debate on each contract's potential value to civilians, but at a high level I see so many technologies in our world today that just simply wouldn't exist without the US defense budget. Employee groups like the ones you refer to above have an overly simplistic lens of the world. Even if I think a tech is dubious doesn't mean posterity will always agree.
Did we understand the value of technologies like radar, GPS, ARPANET when they were simply dollar figures getting thrown at military contractors?
[1] yes, I know about global offices and global workforce. But it is still an American company in terms of leadership, culture and values.
And that someone else is an authoritarian, one-party state that has a completely different set of values from the West.
Of course, military efficiency can be made better, but it's super important to keep tabs on the 'enemy,' so to speak. We're in an arms race, whether we like it or not.
What nation should do if another nation decides to impose tariffs on resources that does not belong to them ?
Army is about readiness to use directed violence to stop people/organization/nations taking what does not belong to them, there also support functions related to emergency services in case of natural, technological or other emergency situations.
People who never experienced emergency situations, don't even think about what they would do and how they should they be prepared in case of fire in there own house. State of safety and security processes is taken for granted, unfortunately, by most people.
The voices aren't suppressed at Microsoft, because there're no avenues to raise them anyway.
Yammer, Satyas QnA - which I'm glad you mentioned because organized groups send a representative every time to talk about government contracts - quarterly all hands, etc. Not to mention the Surface/Hololens org, the org responsible for the tech, holds all hands for their teams very frequently. Sometimes, your org head could be sharing your floor, they don't have special offices.
No one's voice is suppressed and no one is being meek, I don't even know how leadership would be able to control that anyway. The simple facts are - 1) there's a small coalition of employees who feel one way about it, 2) not all concerns raised are valid ones and has a need to be addressed - because frankly, it's really a good thing leadership can stand their ground and not sway on the voices of a few employees, no? The proactive action being taken here is the ability to stick with a common sense perspective, not proactively fire your employees for saying mean things about their employer.
And then you justify leadership standing their ground. Ha. So Microsoft leadership is all benevelant, never wrong. There's a reason 99/100 make the move from Microsoft to G.
No need to cherry pick my previous reply, I'll restate since some parts must have flew by :). Higher ups are very accessible to each individual employee because you really can just go up to them. Back then, the CVP always swung by our office to say hi pretty frequently. The message boards exist. And people group up for QnA because it's effective. Employees pranked their bosses without retaliation.
I don't even have a reason to justify leadership anymore. Just stating the clear facts, that the majority trust them to the right thing. Beats me why C-level is popular internally. They respond to employee concerns when it mattered, and stood their ground when it didn't. No need to make assumptions here about people being meek, lets use facts.
https://www.wired.com/story/google-shakes-up-its-tgif-and-en...
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/27/googles-thanksgiving-four-pr...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/23/google-...
>No company is perfect. Look inside yours before always finding flaws in one.
I don't owe Google and any trillion dollar company anything, especially not the benefit of the doubt. All these companies are evil but only Googlers seems insistent on convincing themselves about how good and moral they are.
Also about salaries, try creating a spreadsheet for salaries at Microsoft. I guarantee you, you will be fired within the week.
When I was there, I can't even recall someone getting fired for any reason - lots of employees have been there for decades and not at all 1) keeping their head down or 2) worried about job security. I have no idea where the stigma comes from of Microsoft employees keeping their heads down, or why they would have any reason to? And especially, I really cannot recall Microsoft firing anybody for voicing ethical concerns - so why in the world would employees feel like they would be putting their job on the line?
You don't say.
Your original claim was that people get fired for this within the week. I refuted that I don't recall any sort of event. There weren't announcements for mass firings of 310 employees. If you have more details on this, please share. You seemed very convinced of your initial claims on how Microsoft reacts to contentious acts by employees against the company, so I imagined it must be evidence based. I really would like to know.