Hacker News Reader

Comment by papercruncher | Hacker News Reader

I spent 5 years at Microsoft as a dev and share almost none of the author's sentiments. I had very few meetings, my manager went out of his way to make sure that I was not blocked, code reviews were mandatory, blogging on technical aspects was ok, had ample free time to work on any side project I wanted (even encouraged to work with MSR on things that were more researchy), etc etc... I could go on for a while.

Sure, there was a huge emphasis on shipping rather than spending days space architecting the codebase and sure, not every piece of code was a stellar example that would show up in a college textbook but I'm having the exact same problems while doing my own startup, where at times I knowingly incur some technical debt in order to ship on time.

View on HN

I worked at Microsoft as well (and even on the Azure team as little as 2 years ago) and I agree, none of this sounds like any of the teams that I worked on. I'm guessing it has more to do with his perception as a junior dev suddenly working on a large team than with reality.

I think on a large corporation like Microsoft, both your cases can happen at the same time. The OP wouldn't blatantly lie and I assume you are not lying too...

This huge disparity between teams are normally a sign of very big management issues.

which is why blogging this is dangerous for him. First off, it his team reads it what will they think? He is inadvertally calling out problems with his management team and got a lot of exposure.

honestly, i'd love to have this guy in my team at Microsoft. its good to have a reflective nature on what's not working.

Also, worthwhile to note that this guy is an SDET and not an SDE at Microsoft.

VAST difference in quality between the two disciplines.

T for testing?

Not everyone is familiar with Microsoft's acronyms, I had to google it.

For others: SDET: Software Development Engineer in Test

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44623/microso...

Hey there, author of the post here. Yes I believe there are different realities in Dev and Test organizations and this may be the pure source of my experience (in both positive and negative aspects). Thanks for pointing that out.

You should add that to your blog :)

I have a gut feeling that he works as an SDE in Test (SDET). I have been through the same experience in my first 2 years. SDETs go through a very different experience as compared to a PM or SDE at Microsoft.

Any chance you could shoot me an email through the contact form on my website? I have some questions.

Hey there, author of the post here. Yes I am an SDET but what does this change? Are SDETs supposed to go through all this experience? Why nobody is fixing this? So if people are escaping from being a Test engineer, what can we infer about current test engineers?

I tend to agree with your post as I have been through what you are going through. I still regret taking the SDET role. In general SDETs do a lot of janitor kind of work. Cleaning up after the Devs and PMs. At the end of the day what everyone cares is that you have tested everything and not how you do it. I used to do a lot of system admin kind of work i.e. setting up machines, installing OS, running scripts, running existing test suites, etc. instead of writing new tests or new test frameworks. I am afraid this will take a long time to change. The only thing we can do now is move away from the SDET role. I can't guarantee if it'll be any better but it won't be as worse as being an SDET.

I spent 3 years as an sdet; loved it! Know for sure that my dev skills were superior to the senior sde's. know this coz I wrote their code on more than one occasion.

Been at msft twice - first team was shit, second was awesome. Impossible to make blanket statements, the org is just too big.

Also if you get a chance read this blog post written by a Microsoft Dev Manager.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/eric_brechner/archive/2011/05/01/tes...

Out of curiosity, which division were you in? Given the size of Microsoft, I'm not surprised there would be some major differences between different teams.

He said Azure.

How long ago? Do you think it was different when you were there, that it was better in your group specifically, or that it's better in most other groups?

I was in Online Services (aka Windows Live) about two years ago. Some groups are obviously better than others, that can be said for any company. I think the problem here is that the author does not realize that unlike college, corporate world requires you to be a bit more proactive. Large companies may suffer from bureaucracy but on the upside, they have vast resources and smart/accomplished people you can tap into if you check your ego at the door, don't expect everything handed to you in a silver platter and tone down the poisonous attitude.

I'm actually in the windows services group now (no longer called Live). I can confirm that the author's experience is quite different from mine. Papercruncher's assessment is pretty much spot on.

Given there are 10k's of employees here in Redmond, it's not surprising that different groups are, well, different. I've noticed that rather large subcultures emerge in different areas. Once you're in the door, there's encouragement to move and find your "fit". All this blog post taught me is that I probably wouldn't be a good fit for Azure :)

I got that encouragement too, after I realized I was never going to be happy at devdiv, but I still don't understand how it was ever supposed to work. It's not like you get special visibility into the working conditions you would encounter in some other group just because your badge will get you into their building. I just said "fuck it" and quit, and I've never regretted that decision.

This seems extraordinarily unfair to the author. Being "proactive" can't retroactively make your team write documentation, make them care about engineering quality, or stop them wasting time in meetings, it's just a lame, corporate-speak, equivocation; the kind used by managers in reviews, and nowhere in the real world.

Kids fresh out of college may need to adjust their expectations to the real world, but most of his complaints are legitimate problems if true, and accusing him of having a "poisonous attitude" for raising them is exactly the kind of oppressive, censorious behaviour that allows such mediocrity to exist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com