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Comment by Elepsis | Hacker News Reader

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.

Look, why is it so strange that Microsoft has a blog profiling people around the company who like their jobs? Are we supposed to cut ourselves every morning because we work for the "evil empire"? I don't understand why you think the site is somehow ridiculous, evil or insane. You know, of the 90,000+ people Microsoft employs, most of them actually like what they do.

Astroturfing implies that something is not true. Are you seriously arguing that people who work for Microsoft cannot possibly actually enjoy it?

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The idea is fine. It's the implementation that makes it seem like a parody.

I honestly did have to check whois. When I first saw this, I thought it was someone making fun of Microsoft.

The ironic thing is, if it had been a parody, I'd have killed it, because it was (or would have been) so heavy handed. But since it's really from Microsoft, it's on-topic, because it's an interesting data point about how completely the company has lost its way.

Microsoft has always had a tendency to "not get it" on a grand scale, when it comes to stuff like this (advertising, social media, demo and marketing videos, etc.).

It goes back many years:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7107499611244156089

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZvhPGXrg0g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A_Kkb9w5bw

They're all pretty uncomfortable to watch, and are like a parody of someone trying to be funny.

However, I don't think Microsoft not getting it is sufficient reason for us to ignore them. They've done something really right somewhere along the way. I'm not sure exactly what it was, or if they're still doing it, but perhaps staring at it from multiple angles will help figure it out.

It just shows how culture always trickles down from the top. Gates, Ballmer, etc are all tremendous dorks, and their dorkiness pervades the Microsoft brand. I suppose Steve Jobs' smartest move was recognising the importance of style, and having faith in his own good taste.

Jobs is a huge dork. You just haven't actually looked at the guy. Black turtlenecks, jeans, and white sneakers? Really?

What's wrong with that? So he looks/dresses like one of those people who thought there was a spaceship hiding in the tail of a comet. If a certain type of clothes makes you feel comfortable, then wear them.

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance.

He has his own style, which is way less dorky than boring old business suits. It works for him.

Astroturfing implies that something is not true.

Not at all! Astroturfing is not about lying, it's about creating a false impression of disinterested third party opinions, when the whole thing is controlled by an interested party.

This site straddles the line. They're not hiding their MS affiliation, but they're not drawing attention to it either. The suggestion is that there's this cute emo girl who wanders the halls of Microsoft because she just loves being around guys like this. Let's face it, having a girl like this be fascinated with the details of our work probably ranks pretty high on (male, heterosexual) hacker fantasies. And that was the whole point.

Furthermore the probably astroturfed comments also give us a false impression that other people think MS developers are pretty rad.

I don't think pg himself used the word "astroturfing," although other people here did.

The reason this site looks fishy is because it is pretty far from the way Microsoft usually presents itself. This blog seems to be going out of its way to find people who don't look like typical Microsoft employees, the interviewer asks them non-Microsoft questions, and so on. It's trying way too hard to present Microsoft as being a place that employs cool, edgy people.

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