Hacker News Reader

Comment by locusofself | Hacker News Reader

It kindof sucks waking up every day, checking HN or YouTube to see one or several new posts bashing on your employer. Not that many of them aren't warranted, and that a multi-trillion market cap company isn't fair game for criticism.

I've surveyed the market pretty heavily, and given my specific credentials, experience, and risk tolerance, unless I got really lucky, I don't know if I could find a better place to work. I live near Redmond and have a small family to support.

View on HN

Microsoft have been bashed on the daily since forever. There's no way you joined the company without knowing it was happening prior to you joining, at the time of you joining, and after you joining.

It's true. As a matter of fact I credit a lot of my career to being made fun of on IRC in the 1990s for running mIRC client for Windows, because you were not "leet" if you didn't run Linux or FreeBSD, which took my down a huge rabbit-hole of Linux and coding for many years, which is how I know anything in the first place. I'm in the tiny minority of people in big tech who didn't go to college.

The bashing on MSFT has really ramped up in the last 6 months though

Rather than saying that microsoft bashing has ramped up, I'd say that it is getting closer to it's standard levels.

Microsoft experience a sort of reputational resurgence in the tech world these past few years with some commitment to open source contribution and a really nice pivot towards linux and cloud.

Their pivot to AI is much less popular!

The AI stuff and Windows 11 have been big drivers of bashing

Yes and you're in a unique position to influence the internal culture. Not saying send emails to executives but talk about things during lunch with coworkers?

The Xbox division, too, if you pay attention to the gaming world. Then again, never pay attention to gamers. They just like to moan for sport.

If moaning were DLC, they'd get a monthly subscription.

Ah, is that not going to college part why you're loathe to give up such a good gig? Surely by now your CV speaks for itself, although I suppose in Redmond, where else are you going to go.

It is, although considering my age (41), I would hope the college thing is not very important anymore. The only time in recent history that I've been ghosted after mentioning no degree (when asked) is ByteDance a few years back, and I don't think I'd want to work there anyways.

Google has offices in Kirkland. Amazon and Meta are big employers here, with Meta paying the best, but both of those companies have their own issues which are probably worse than just being made fun of ..

I propose let's break up a bunch of these monopolies to give you and your colleagues more options, more competition for your resume.

For what it's worth, my take is Microsoft is the one Big Tech most aligned with us and the rest of the world, though HN is too Slashdot-pilled to accept it.

The primary reason being their business model relies mostly on making people productive, rather than getting people to click on ads or buy stuff, which as we're seeing, is much more damaging to the social fabric.

People don't like your company.

But they'd probably like you.

There can be quite a big difference on the reception of a product and the working conditions. I think that's nothing too out of the ordinary in a lot of cases.

It apparently used to be even much better to work here. I've been here 6 years now. There is naturally a lot of "talent" exchanged between here and Amazon, which has influenced the culture.

Why is it so important though? Your employer is not you. I regularly bash on my own employer too :) Which is not Microsoft but also big.

I don't care about them or their goals, I'm just there for the money. And trying to not show it too much while I'm rolleyeing through corporate PR crap :) All that fake cardboard feelgood propaganda. It's just theatre to hide the reality: they will do anything to make more money.

I used to be more aligned with the company but with a recent internal leadership change and more sucking up to Trump I've lost a lot of my respect for it. But it's not really an impediment for working there. I just go through the motions. Corporations love their employees chanting how much they care (for us it's even mandatory to make a show of it for our performance review) but in reality most of us just fake it. As a result I don't take any criticism personally, even on my direct work.

Don't forget there is no team play, not really. They will dump you as soon as they see fit. All big publicly traded companies do. They care a lot more about their shareholders than they do allot you. The only goals that matter are your own, like supporting your family.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com