What Is The Worst Thing About Working At Microsoft?

Answer by Matt Wallaert, Behavioral psychologist, entrepreneur, mad scientist, on Quora.

Matt Wallaert, Behavioral psychologist, entrepreneur, mad scientist

Matt Wallaert, Behavioral psychologist, entrepreneur, mad scientist

I have two very different answers, but I'm going to lead with one and then give the second as a bonus.

(In first place) The worst thing about working at Microsoft is the number of people outside the company who doubt us.

That's right. The worst part of working at Microsoft has nothing to do with our internal culture (that's not quite true; more on that in a bit). It isn't stack ranking or ship cycles or trying to get things done. It is working at a company that people don't believe in, despite the immense importance it plays in their daily life.




Google's business model is ads. Apple is consumer electronics. And Microsoft has consumer devices and Bing sells ads, so we could have a reasonable argument about whether those other two companies are doing a better job in those two spaces. But we should recognize that while we're having that argument, we're only able to do so because of generations of Microsoft leadership in technology.

Which isn't to say there haven't been other leaders or to detract from Apple or Google (both of which are doing interesting work, in my opinion). But when you talk to most people, at least in the US, most are unaware of the role that Microsoft played in their life.  Which isn't a bad thing on its own; there are many important supportive structures that are mostly invisible until you think about them.

But Microsoft is a little different from most of those invisible structures. Because instead of being invisible, people are acutely aware of it and many have openly negative feelings about it.

I run our Bing for Schools program. It gets hardware in the hands of kids, teaches them digital literacy skills, and creates a safe environment for them to practice in. And when we launched, the haters emerged from the woodwork with pitchforks and torches, growling "Google!  Google!" Just for fun, see the comment stream on The Verge story:  Microsoft offers classrooms free Surface RT tablets with ad-free Bing for Schools

Now if this were an isolated opinion held by a few fanboys, I'd get it. Truly, there are room for true fans who deny that competitors might have any positive benefits. But think about the number of young people who make a face when you say Microsoft. That's an entirely different problem.

And because Microsoft employees go to work every day faces with a world that refuses to believe that they could possibly admit to doing anything innovative, it makes going to work that extra bit painful. Because even if you know that you are working on something that will help save lives or make things better for humanity, you also know that the moment you release it, the vast majority of the tech community to which you belong will ridicule it for no other reason than it says Microsoft on it.

Most folks recognize that when you think negative things about a group of people, it causes not only hardship in their lives but also stunts their ability to achieve. For me, the worst thing about working at Microsoft is that this is also true of the group of people you are talking about when you talk about a company.

This leads somewhat into my second answer.  But fortunately, after 11 months, I continue to enjoy coming to work. I've pushed through a program that does good things for kids. I'm excited by the enhancements that colleagues continue to bring into the marketplace, those things that move humans up and to the right. You asked about the worst, but I experience the best on a daily basis.

EDIT: Sadly, we've had a few "worst" days recently, but they provide a good example of what I was trying to describe in this.  Essentially, a Yale Law professor did some stunningly incomplete research, didn't ask us for comment, and then took to a prominent blog to blast Bing. Leaving aside the bad science, he specifically suggested that we intentionally manipulated the experience so as to lead people to our conclusion, because he believes that's the kind of people who work at Microsoft.

His post: Challenging the Bing-It-On Challenge

My response: Challenging the Challenge to the Bing It On Challenge

From an interview I did on this: "People have leaped all over different aspects of this, but to my mind, the thing to do here is assume both parties are telling the truth, then look at the experimental design.  If you can do that, see my previous statement.  If you can’t do the first part, then you’re forced to decide who you think is lying: me or Ayres.  Because it is not just Microsoft you are questioning when you question our study results: you’re calling me, Matt Wallaert, a liar.  People forget that companies are made up of people and let themselves get distracted by how they feel about Microsoft the brand.  But I’m here; I’ve spent valuable time refuting Ayres that I could have spent building Bing for Schools.  So if people want to call me a liar, then there just isn’t much I can do about that."


(In second place) The worst thing about working at Microsoft is working with people who are obsessed with this question.

A couple of notes: I've only been here for 11 months now. I'm still finding my way, and I don't have the burnout expressed by some on this thread. I love working here. I acknowledge some of that is having great bosses, some is coming in with some cred already, and some is the privilege in being a white male in an industry dominated by white males. And what I'm about to say is something I think is true at just about every big company I've ever worked with.

As evidenced in this thread, there are a lot of people who think that work is about the review you get. And as my first place answer said, it is tough to get a bad review when you're doing good work (be it from the public or from a colleague). But the whole point is that as much as those reviews may be painful or unfair, they don't have to define the work that you do or your feelings about it.  And the moment that they do, you cease becoming much fun to work with.

Stack ranking is common at basically every Fortune 500 company. People complain about it almost everywhere. And I could do an entire post about how it isn't the problem. But for this answer, the point is that people who believe it is the problem are incredibly unpleasant to work with.

There is a great study in psych about performance that is relevant here. Imagine a two by two: HighLow vs MoneyMeaning. You measure how much people are motivated by the financial benefits of being in an organization, and how much people who believe in some deeper meaning to working and are motivated by it. Then, you look at performance.

The first results are unsurprising: people low on both don't do very well. And meaning alone surpasses money alone - no big shock there. What is surprising is the last result: that meaning alone beats money plus meaning. You'd think the more someone is interested, the better: two factors should be better than one. But it isn't true.

This implies that the people at Microsoft who love what they do and ignore stack rank will outperform those who love what they do and attend to stack rank. And they're way more fun to work with.

Imagine we phrased this question differently: what is the worst thing about being alive?  Now imagine the person who actually spends a bunch of time thinking about that question. Would you want to work with them?

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