They told me, “All of their employees work nights and weekends.” They cautioned, “Haven’t you been watching Microsoft stock lately? The company is on its decline, and not headed back up.” They questioned, “I thought you would be avoiding static companies – why aren’t you looking for more innovative opportunities like Google or Apple?” Oh yes, there were plenty of critics ready to speak out against the company infamously nicknamed the software industry’s 800-pound gorilla.
Since I have joined Microsoft, I have seen a very interesting trend among my co-workers and the speakers. Many of them, including the very successful ones, had no plans to actually accept an offer from Microsoft when they flew to Seattle for the interview. I’ve heard reflections like, “I wanted to see the ‘Evil Empire’ from the inside,” or “Who would turn down a free trip to Seattle?” Yet somehow, Microsoft works its magic to change all of their perceptions (including my own) in a day of interviewing. How do they do this??
The answer is obvious: Microsoft is simply NOT the Dark Side from the inside. After observing the campus and people, that fact becomes immediately clear. I believe that if you took pictures of the meeting rooms, people’s offices, and the buildings (there are literally hundreds in this area), you would not be able to tell the difference between them and Google buildings. Everyone in my hallway listens to music loudly. The lady in the office next door, Michelle, has a dog which she brings to all meetings. In a department meeting the other day, I watched an 8-months pregnant woman surf her facebook account. On my team of 8 people, we have 3 women, a man from Bulgaria, a man from China, a woman from India, a man from the UK, and a partially blind man. Microsoft bought over 100 Toyota Prius hybrids to provide free taxi service to all its employees between buildings, for goodness sake. Despite popular opinion, Microsoft is not full of employees that sleep here on weekends and never see the light of day.
Let’s be honest, though. A company which employees more than 95,000 people worldwide (41,000 at my location!!) can’t gain the reputation of 800-pound-gorilla unless SOME of the rumors are true, right? The truth is this: Microsoft, Windows, Office – it is EVERYWHERE. A couple years ago, our CEO Steve Ballmer was quoted to say, “The install base of Windows computers this coming 12 months will reach 1 billion. If you stop and just think about that, parse that for a second, by the end of our fiscal year '08, there will be more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles.” (Curious how all Operating Systems stack up to Windows worldwide? See graph below.)
ONE BILLION WINDOWS COMPUTERS. No matter how you twist it, one billion is massive. It is humbling to spend my internship working in the Windows organization, on a product that affects hundreds of millions of people every day. It is ironic that the same success that grows Microsoft also traps it from being “Apple innovative”; when you are designing an operating system across 96 countries, in hundreds of languages and cultures, you cannot just make a “cooler” looking UI with all-new graphics whenever you feel like it.
You also can’t just cater to the American teenage population. Some of my favorite commercials on TV are those “Mac vs. PC” commercials put on by Apple. You know the scenario as well as I do: a classic “cool kid” is the Mac and a “washed-up business nerd” is the PC. My generation latches to these kinds of campaigns … which brings us full circle. These commercials, and other media sources, do a brilliant job painting Microsoft as the static Evil Empire. It is perhaps the reason there are so many critics out there who warned me before my internship. People would shake their head and say, “Joining the 800-pound-gorilla, Katie? Really?” Well all I can say is, the closest thing I have seen to an 800-pound gorilla is the occasional hefty employee who decided not to shave that morning. Everything else feels as though I am working in one of the most pioneering, omnipresent companies on the planet. Oh, right. I am.
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