Some Microsoft employees showed up at an Open Source event dressed as Darth Vader and a pair of Imperial StormTroopers. I can’t say that I’m surprised. Working for Microsoft pretty much means that you learn to expect attacks on the company and even you as an individual. You either learn to live with it and see the humor or, well, I don’t know what “or” is in this case. All the Microsoft employees I know seem to take this sort of thing in stride. Or at least if it does upset them they keep it under wraps.
Those things should be hurting a lot…
When I interview Microsoft bloggers many talk about their desire to show human faces behind the “evil empire” image. I thought that the “showing human face through blogging” was a corporate strategy, but, even if it is, behind it are the strong emotions of people working for the company.
I was on another side of the fence, now I have an opportunity to be inside. Last week I was proof-reading my own story about doing internship at Microsoft Research (did an interview). I realised that I was very positive about my experiences here and I felt kind of guilty about it – as I had to explain how I actually could be happy working in this company…
It’s not the first time when I feel happy working for a company, but never before I felt the need to explain and excuse it. I wonder why I read Liz Lawley explaining why she wants MSN to succeed and don’t see danah boyd telling why she spends her time contributing to Google and Yahoo (I was wrong). I wonder how much it has to do with learning “to expect attacks on the company and even you as an individual” and preparing your armors…
Tags: blog research, citedCh6, MicrosoftArchived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/08/19.html#a1637; comments are here.
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