It's been about five months now that I've been at Microsoft and people often ask me how it's going and what it's like. I started thinking about this in earnest well over a month ago and something that really got me thinking was a post back in January by Jeremy Zawodny entitled What if Microsoft Bought Yahoo?
So here are some random thoughts on this.
The Job
First, I actually love the job I have at Microsoft, I'm actually paid to be an evangelist for User Experience. This job is a great forum to represent the value of design, usability and be an advocate for the profession and vocation of design. Some of the more cynical among you may interpret the word 'evangelist' as 'apologist' for some of Microsoft's past missteps in these areas but you'd be wrong. Microsoft is on a journey right now (with a new focus on User Experience just being one of many). You may still encounter alot of folks in Microsoft that don't 'get' design, User Experience, or even value it. But what you also won't get is alot of people saying we've automagically mastered User Experience either. Rather, it's an area we are focusing alot of attention on and that means good things for designers and developers everywhere.
But, this job is hard. This is a new space for Microsoft, in alot of ways it's like being (I suspect) in a start up. We have no, or little, credibility and it's an entirely new space for us. My work life balance is lousy right now (most of this as me as it's been lousy at every job I've had). I need to find a way to be a bit more balanced and Microsoft has actually encouraged me to do that. I also travel alot, to cool places and to meet with cool people, but a big part of my job appears to now be booking travel and filing expenses, I'm one of those people that was never wired for this, it's the least favorite part of my job and while the corporate travel policies are decent the shear volume of travel can be overwhelming. At least I get to dictate when, where and how I'll travel.
There's not alot of structure in what I do, this provides a great deal of freedom but also uncertainty, this can be a good or bad thing depending on how you are wired. I thrive in enviroment of ambiquity, but some people don't like it.
The people I get to work with are awesome. I say this after having been fortunate enough to work with awesome people in my other jobs too. I'm sure they're are bad apples at Microsoft but I haven't met them yet, honestly. But Microsoft is a competitive company and there's a degree of insular culture at corporate versus the field, I feel on occasion that we're talking past each other sometimes but I've also found that stuff seems to get worked out most of the time. Even in my short tenure here I've never felt I couldn't get in touch with someone I needed to or didn't have a voice with folks that mattered. I find this VERY different that other places that I've worked.
You get alot of flexibility at Microsoft, but with that also comes accountability. I'm not sure how I feel about that process at Microsoft yet in terms of measurement because I haven't been through it. I'll revisit it after I have.
The Culture
Microsoft isn't as buttoned up as IBM was in terms of its culture and how it trains and orients people (but realize that my personal experiences at past employers like IBM probably wasn't the same for everyone--in my case I had a great experience at IBM with this). But there's something different at Microsoft and I'm not quite sure if I'm using the best words to describe it but the culture at Microsoft just seems more real, honest and self-critical. I was expecting a degree of self-absorbtion and arrogance that I really haven't encountered--much. The training, organization and structure at MS is very loose. There's a decent amount of process that one has to go through here that interferes with ones reall day to day activities but I found it far less onerous that other big companies. One of the most surreal moments for me was going to an event called TechReady. Along with 7000 other Microsoft employees from around the world I got to go to a five day conference that is focused on readiness and training. It's one of the bigger conferences I've been to and there were over 1100 session and 3 keynote sessions. It was a truly awesome event and as someone that has always been a designer in technology companies versus a pure technologist I finally got a sense of my Microsoft is so highly regarded by alot of technologists. I was actually surprised by how moved and excited I was to see Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. I think much of this was more in how people around me reacted to seeing them then just my own emotions. I never got the sense of global scale in IBM that I got at this event with Microsoft even though IBM has four times as many employees. It was a great experience and I quite frankly was amazed at how slick the event was. All the conference content is actually recorded and put online and on DVDs so you can refer to it throughout the year and every employee goes to a TechReady (or can go) at least once a year.
There's a healthy set of communities and debate that occur in Microsoft, the mechanisms for this aren't always the best but I've found that the level of discussion around trends, technical topics and the like that occur inside Microsoft to be just as stimulating and relevant as the conversations that occur outside of Microsoft. Most of the people that I know in Microsoft seem to have feet planted firmly in both worlds and although alot of Microsoft folks blog I think that sometimes Microsoft folks simply get tired of having to justify or defend absolutely every decision or comment that's made in the blogsphere and in the mainstream print media. I've been here only five months and I read everything but I simply don't have the energy or the time to participate in all the discussions that occur about Microsoft. From a design perspective I've actually found that most of the design community is much more willing to engage Microsoft than the developer community that is not already using Microsoft technology. This kind of surprised a bit but then most designers I know are agnostic towards technology choices, or at least more agnostic than many developers I know (and that goes both ways as I'd like to see a little more of than inside Microsoft too).
The Environment
Microsoft lets me work where I want to and when I want to and doesn't get real tactical or micromanage what I do. Microsoft has by far has the most generous health insurance and life insurance programs I've ever seen. I'd honestly suspect that they have perhaps the best program in the country that any compnay offers and they are certainly the benefits that all individals and families in this country deserve. I have a PPO for myself, my wife and my three children and I pay nothing. I don't have to worry about referrals and I don't have to worry about hospitals or paying for medication. I can't tell you how many stories I've heard about Microsoft employees becoming ill or having children with hard to diagnose medical problems and how appreciative they are of Microsoft's benefits and the companies flexibility in letting folks deal with the unexpected. I used to chuckle a little bit about Microsoft's 'people first' positioning when I was at IBM, I don't anymore, this is a company that walks that walk and takes care of people. One other thing that I found striking when I started here is that Microsoft has an obituary feature on the home page of its intranet.
But back to Jeremy's question. Microsoft seems to have some obvious fear with large aquisitions--and quite frankly most big companies should. But if Microsoft ever did decide to do a big company aquisition I think they'd think long and hard about it and be committed to making sure that it would work if they went down that path. I've worked at both big and small companies throughout my 15 or so years as a designer. Microsoft is a good mix (at least around my current role) of being a great balance of opportunity and stability. It's a company that is evolving and it more self-critical than people give it credit for and it's got some incredibly passionate and excited people that are committed to making great software and changing the world.
Great post. Fantastic example of transparency, or at least on the individual level we can call it by an old word "honesty."
Good insight into your experience, but also an amazing insight into YOU and what YOU are like. I really appreciate this.
Posted by: Steve Portigal | March 04, 2007 at 10:47 PM
That is a fantastic post and being another relatively new guy at Microsoft - I whole heartedly agree with Chris on everything said. I don't have the IBM experience that Chris has - but the experience has been fantastic.
Posted by: Josh Holmes | March 06, 2007 at 10:07 PM