Hacker News Reader

Comment by numbsafari | Hacker News Reader

The way these things read... I wonder if people are getting paid an extra bonus to have PR write up a "why I left the other guy" post and put their name on it as way to just bundle up a bunch of FUD in one place.

I'm not a big fan of either Google or Microsoft, so I don't really care about what they say. It's just that these "why I quit" letters have become boilerplate PR pieces that don't really offer anything new or interesting.

View on HN

I look at it as a more public exit interview. I don't doubt that his expressed concerns were part of why he did leave (I also don't doubt that there are other factors)), and by making those concerns public there's a chance that more people may see it and try to rectify the problems.

Yeah, but in the entire history of people quitting and writing "letters to the editor", has any manager ever actually read it and thought anything other than "whatever, dude wasn't on board, glad he left"?

Do you really think Sergey Brin or Larry Page or Eric Schmidt are going to read this and think "oh man, we better change what we're doing".

Nope.

People who are fans of MS are going to read it and say "yeah, see, I told you google is evil. Even his 15 year old daughter had a poignant critique of Google+ that shows she's not only wise beyond her years, but that Google+ sucks just like I always thought already."

It just doesn't sound genuine.

If they are hearing the same complaints murmured (muted, more anonymized and filtered) inside the company, but saying, "whatevs, they'll stay for the paycheck", and people start walking away from the paycheck and announcing it, it might sink in.

Of course, when leaving Google for Microsoft, it's hard to claim that culture/mission/vision are really the reason for leaving, as opposed to: MSFT offered $X,000, and GOOG managers said "you're not worth that to us"

It sounds genuine to me. He articulates a lot of the same reservations I felt during my brief time working there.

Given how transparent Microsoft's "Scroogled" campaign is and how closely the reasons given here skew to the Scroogled message, I'd wager you're pretty close if not bang on.

They probably genuinely believe what they write though, at least on some level. You'd have to, or go mad.

EDIT: I also feel mild antipathy towards both parties.

That sounds a little paranoic. I imagine the negative PR a company would get if this gets known would be far worse that whatever they could gain with a small blog post like this one.

I remember reading this story when it came out and reading this comment: So what made you join Microsoft?

Still no answer from the guy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com