That said, the way that Microsoft has been dealing with its extreme uncoolness lately has been by paying salaries that are far above market. With very few exceptions, every time I've tried to recruit a Microsoft veteran to a startup, they've started to pull out the spreadsheets and given me complicated sob stories about how they can make $1m in the next three years if they stay at Microsoft, whereas I'm only offering them, eh, a few % of a hot startup.

The bottom line is that spending a lot of time at Microsoft could very well ruin you for startups.

Even though I did it that way, there are two different ways of thinking about your career, and if you're REALLY a startup person, you're not going to be hedging bets by serving out your 5 year Microsoft prison sentence. If you're telling yourself that as soon as you're fully vested you'll leave, you have failed to take into account the new incentives that Microsoft will put in front of you by the end of the fifth year. And eventually you're going to be stuck in the $300,000/year treadmill at a life-sucking anonymous job with no chance of ever hitting it big (or making an impact on the world).

One year at 300K and i'd never need to be on a treadmill again -- 30k to build a house, 50k for land, probably still 70-100k left over after taxes to start my next business.

So I'm gonna assume that was a joke... I'm equally lost on how to read the comment by the next clause, which seems to imply that the only way to make an impact on the world is through your job. Maybe hanging out on HN skews your perspective about living-the-dream, but i'd wager it's only one in a hundred who ever are lucky enough to work for a job that isn't life-sucking or anonymous -- if that many! As near as i can tell, for the rest of the world "compensation" is exactly what it sounds like, and satisfaction & contentment about your purpose & work in life have to come from other things.

So anyway, sorry if this reads like a flame, but the last sentence really threw me for a loop and made me re-evaluate the rest of the comment. From where i stand 300k/year would completely change every aspect of my life -- but then again, i took a huge cut to work at a green energy startup, living the dream atm & working for peanuts :)

I guess i'm saying "it'll only ruin you for startups if you let it!"

Especially recurring. Makes me wonder if the GP isn't really a microsoft recruiter in a very complex disguise ;)

I think there will be a large number of applicants to the treadmill because of that comment.

Where do I apply for the $300K/yr life sucking anonymous treadmill job?

Predictable :)

GP owes me a clean keyboard.

Really, it's hilarious to put treadmill and $300K / year in one sentence. That's one for the book.

I realize they're separate concepts, but most start-ups would be pretty happy if they had that kind of money to divide up between the partners. Sure, the hours are longer and the food is worse so there is compensation, but still, you know.

I like to think that if I found myself with their salary I would have my priorities in a different order, but there's no guarantee of that. My own sense of avarice and comfort has changed a lot since my 20's.

(yes, I know I'm repetitive, but I can't resist putting things in perspective whenever I see someone complaining about U$ 300.000 !!! )

If I'm hedging my bets at all it's related to being able to come back to work at a life-sucking anonymous job at a mega software corporation :)

I hope that I will not need to but if my wife or family needed the benefits and comforts associated with this type of employment and I could not work out how to get it done another way. I wouldn't hesitate to come back.

Apart from that, if you can talk about the things you achieved at working for such a huge company, that would be great. It is going to be a huge step moving to a smaller company, they way things work. Having worked at Microsoft for a shor time myself, the amount of organisational structure you have to go through to get the simplest of things done is insane, and a full time job in itself.

Maybe I wasn't completely clear though. My staying at Microsoft even at times when I have been frustrated with management or direction is related to my personal goal (which my wife helped me to define). I am thankful that I have stayed, my team has done some really good work and I have influenced direction at a level which I never thought I would get to. My leaving Microsoft is not related to that goal or to my wife, except that meeting that goal allows me to more easily justify looking at new opportunities.

I am getting close to my 5 year goal and I am starting to seriously evaluate my future opportunities and trying to figure out what I want to do. It's possible, though unlikely, that I will stay at Microsoft. The job I have now is a great job and I have worked hard to obtain the influence that I have within Microsoft.

I left startups when I got married to provide my new family with some consistency and with the goal of really building out my resume with time spent influencing key projects at a strong industry leader. I feel that achieving that goal is a strong accomplishment. I am now well equipped to be a much stronger contributor for future employers and have the maturity to push through difficult times without bailing.

Yes, just imagine that his wife should have a say in their future. Unbelievable.

That said, I do agree with this point of view. If he really wants to jump out of Microsoft into a startup and it would make his wife feel uneasy, its better to have that talk, explain why he wants to make the jump, and hopefully get her support.

> so you are just going to quit working at Microsoft because of some agreement you made with your wife.

Besides that, there would be something to be said for the opposite argument, but the way I read the OP he has made a deal with his wife that said "Ok, I'll work for 'the man' for 5 years to give us stability, but after that I'll want a change of scene, and more risk", and she said "ok, that's fine with me". Now they're approaching the end of the 5 year period and he's checking out to see what his options are.

The biggest single risk in stepping down from a behemoth like microsoft to a much smaller company is that you can't rely on other people to do the mundane stuff for you (so that means you have to provision your own machine, set up your desk and so on), you are expected to self-motivate and work unsupervised for longer stretches. There is a big cultural difference and people working for large companies can get institutionalized to some extent.

But judging by the OPs responses that is not the case with him. Not by far, he seems to have his stuff together pretty good.

Are they still paying that much for say a ten year engineer? Or was the outsized pay just a 90's/bubble thing? Or was that compensation coming form stock options that kept paying off (which no longer happens as MSFT has been pretty flat for the past ten years)?

Although... none of the Microsoft people I know seem to be doing significantly better than anyone else I know. Maybe it's a local to Seattle thing, but the MSFT people near me are still driving Hondas to work.

Be proud of what you achieved in such a short time, not ashamed.

I always say that Microsoft is a great place to have worked. It's great for learning how to ship real software (large and small) with all of the attendant processes and politics that go with it. You will learn what you think is important to take with you and what is important to leave behind. Both types of learning are important, because as you move to startups, you will have a hand in determining the equivalents in your new microcosm of that world.

One interesting quality I see from many people who have worked there is that there is a perception that life after (i.e., outside of) Microsoft is scary. That's partly because you can change jobs there endlessly and never actually leave. You can go from working on operating systems to large binary (client) applications to Internet apps to video games, etc. I've had to assure several of my friends that were contemplating leaving that the water outside is safe and warm. Every one of them has thanked me afterwards.

Another poster made a good point about some companies' HR departments not taking a second look at you. That's true. However, I generally wouldn't want to work at those companies anyway. I've never had a problem finding work at great places. In fact, I've never had to apply for a job since I left. If you're good, and your network is sound, people will reach out to you--degree or not. Microsoft is a great foundation on which to build your resume.

Come again ? Microsoft has shipped more software than any other company on the planet.

> At Scribd, we often shipped software ten times a week.

I'm not even aware of a single piece of scribd software that has been released, aren't you confusing server side deployment with shipping software ?

Do you know this as a fact or are you just speculating? (I don't care if it was speculation, I would just like to know if this is true and how it was measured if you know.) I would imagine it would have to be either Microsoft or IBM who have shipped the most software in history but I'm not sure the best way to measure the "most" software (does one count titles, licenses, revenue, etc.)?

http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.h... (crappy, but convenient page and the numbers seem to be ok, it only goes to 2005, so I've added another 150 billion)

IBM has a much larger total revenue but the vast majority of that was hardware leases during the mainframe years (and it probably still is), as well as consultancy.

Software was a huge component compared to other manufacturers but I doubt it comes close to what microsoft has made.

I can't find a good breakdown of IBM revenues that splits it out by category though, if someone else has access to that it would be nice to know.

Of course it is software, but it is not shipped to anybody in a sense that I understand the term 'to ship product'.

Whether by download for installation on end-users computers, cd, dvd or papertape is not the issue, the issue is whether or not the software remains installed on the users machine when they are not using it.

Key difference between a web application (even one with a bunch of client side scripting such as scribd) and a product that actually ships is that you can't modify it as easily (even with auto-update) as you can with server side deployments. If you mess up with a web app, no big deal, fixes are minutes away, hours at worst. When you've shipped product to a few hundred million installations all over the globe and you find a problem, you have a problem.

If you're lucky it isn't going to end up as a 0 day exploit, and it won't nuke your customers machines.

So Q&A in that situation is a lot more involved than it is for most webapps, and the penalties are significantly larger.

For the OP to compare scribd with microsoft in this way and to claim that 'microsoft has no clue how to ship software' is downright silly.

You are not helping yourself and I think that by dragging scribd in to it you are also not helping them.

You are not making a coherent argument by any stretch of the imagination and people mights start to think that your attitude is representative of scribds. I take it that is not the case, but you really should have left them out of it.

So please, take my advice and let it go.

I'm not aware of that use of the word but I'll amend my dictionary, here we call that 'deploying'.

I had to look up what a 'concern troll' is, I can't really understand which part you refer to, the wikipedia entry writes:

"A concern troll is a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to the one that the user's sockpuppet claims to hold. The concern troll posts in web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group's actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed "concerns". The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt within the group."

Are you telling me I am using a pseudonym ? A sockpuppet ? Am I sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt ?

Or do you think it was bad advice that he should stop posting dumb stuff ?

A person who posts on a blog thread, in the guise of "concern," to disrupt dialogue or undermine morale by pointing out that posters and/or the site may be getting themselves in trouble, usually with an authority or power. They point out problems that don't really exist. The intent is to derail, stifle, control, the dialogue. It is viewed as insincere and condescending.

It was completely sincere and I don't give a rats ass about whether you, PG or anybody else for that matter believe me or not.

It wouldn't be the first time I receive an email a day after an exchange like that when it turned out someone was roaring drunk behind the keyboard.

This comment is the one that prompted it:

"Please -- the company that bought is vista and can't even get critical patches for 0days out in less than a month?"

I can't even parse that. So I suspected the OP may not have been entirely sober. I can't tell from here of course so that's purely speculative but people that post with the names of their employers in their comments should be a bit more circumspect of how they present their arguments.

Feel free to disagree, as you can see above you're in good company. But that won't stop me from speaking my mind.

I wonder if the 'no name calling' on HN goes for the boss himself as well.

shipping software -- the time interval between "git push" and features live in users' hands is less than 30 minutes. Lots of companies do it. MSFT doesn't come close.

Just... not cool.

And it isn't cool, agreed.

Those that can't are the reason why we get overly paranoid corporate communications departments, which is why it's virtually impossible to talk to an actual human being at many big companies.

No, what made Scribd look stupid was that they decided to replace one flawed Adobe technology (PDF) with an even more flawed Adobe technology (Flash). At least they rectified that eventually.

But if it makes whiners happy, I could add something like this:

The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employers'; past, present, or future; views in any way. Etc etc.

I could go on in that vein at length or, you know, people could be adults.

You are now branded :-)

No, it's not a negative, at all. Get out of the echo chamber. Mostly, the people with the loudest opinions about MSFT are the ones with the least influence over hiring.

I think my purpose for posting this question was to provide myself with a reality check as I get more serious about my next career move.

Do people just like to be negative about Microsoft because it's the cool thing to do or are there legitimate concerns that I will need to mitigate?

Thanks for your perspective.

* MSFT is a huge company, and is run nothing like a startup or a small software company. They'll be worried that you're processbound.

* There's a perception that Microsoft is massive and loaded with middle management and that anyone with a "do-ing" role is pigeonholed very specifically, so you'll want to stake very specific and aggressive claims about the breadth of your get-shit-done experience.

These concerns would also apply to anyone from IBM, Sun, or Cisco.

Generally, compared to a recent CS grad, multiple years at MSFT doing real work is a huge win. My only big caveat is that 5 years is a long time to be at a BigCo.

Also, if you are interested in startups, remember that virtually none of us use MS tech anywhere in our stack. It's not a huge problem, but I generally prefer engineers that have put in a couple years somewhere else and aren't new to the LAMP/postgres/mysql/linux/java/ruby/rails environment. All the way from the different dev tools to the ethos of source distribution and the skills you pick up around installing and configuring software from source. As far as I remember, the MS stack generally seems to ship as binaries and have very little of the admittedly sometimes annoying issues that come with distributing software as source. That's a problem for you because I expect engineers to be able to install software from yum / rpms and deal with more common link / library / configuration issues that come up. Finally, it seems to me that MS typically has a blessed method of doing everything -- there is a preferred method to connect to MS SQL server, a preferred method of parsing xml, a preferred method of sending mail, etc. The open source / linux tech stack is nothing like that -- there are always multiple ways of doing anything and it's often an unwritten part of the job description to help sort that out.

Finally, again specific to startups, I think you'll be shocked how different a 15 person company, or even a 100 person company, is to a 30K person company. For instance, there will often be no review process, etc etc.

Depending on what exactly you've been doing at MSFT you should have some valuable experience, so don't be too pessimistic. Good luck.

Working 5 years at Microsoft says, "I'm perfectly happy doing solid software engineering/management work at an enormous company." If that's the image you want to project, then go for it. Just remember that the companies that are most impressed by that are the companies that are most similar to Microsoft.

That said, if you don't want to continue working for companies like Microsoft/IBM/whatever, you should probably start branching out now. Looks like you're finishing up 2 years by your linkedin profile. That's actually a great time to move on. As the grandparent said, what you get out of working for Microsoft for 2 years is basically what you would get from working there for 5 years. The difference is you have 3 extra years to improve your resume at other companies.

I also have the same reaction hiring people now...a few years means I'll always interview them, MSFT's selection process is generally good. But after about 3-4 years, I've found most people (even the ones who express an incredible, proactive desire to "do a startup") never actually follow through on the decision. I think this is what Joel was referring to as the $300k/yr treadmill.

Finally...a couple people pointed out that the skill set you develop at MSFT is of marginal utility externally in specific settings...the specific setting that most HN readers assume is Silicon Valley. :) Assuming that's your goal as well, .Net-specific and Windows-specific experience isn't highly transferrable to LAMP down here. Obviously good developers can pick up new languages pretty quickly, but you are missing some depth there. And clearly the MSFT process isn't going to be helpful in most companies < 10k people, or honestly most web companies (and I worked on services there :) ).

Long answer short--I think 5 years is longer than you need or want if you want to go elsewhere, especially a startup...I'd vote for 3 years.

* I've interviewed 3 different people from MSFT that were experts in eg a tiny area of DCOM; as startup needs generalists;

* a 30 person company is nothing like a 30K or 60K or whatever they're up to these days and it seems that people comfortable in one are often not comfortable in the other.

If someone's worked for Microsoft, it means he's probably smart and probably has experience working with other smart people to release real software. That's exactly the kind of person I'd want to work with.

The first two should never get through a resume filter, and the last seems something to be caught in an interview. Are you saying you wouldn't hire someone from Google because that company is too big?

Just make sure you leave on good terms. I still chat with my last manager on occasion, and expect that I could get back in without too much trouble if things ever got really hairy out here.

Also, I looked at your LinkedIn profile, and recommend describing your accomplishments in less HR-centric terms: an 'exceeded' contribution rating is great, but it might not mean much to a hiring manager at a Madrona portfolio company. Like alain said elsewhere, be more specific with what you achieved.

I'm the founder of http://Newsley.com, and we're pivoting away from being a financial social news site. We're doing a lot of semantic web using OpenCalais, and we're building the engine to process a bazillion financial news articles in real time and use semantic meta data as a basis for a search and recommendation service.

If you want to see some of the semantic stuff we're doing click on the discuss link for any article: http://newsley.com/articles/one-tenth-of-all-us-banks-on-the.... Those entities are all automatically extracted. It's pretty basic, but there's a lot more cool stuff we're planning.

We're waiting to pursue funding until we apply to YC this fall. I'm sure we'll be hiring early engineers within the next 9 months or so...

ping me: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=iamelgringo

Aside from that, if you are being interviewed by real tech people, not an HR machine, there's no way MSFT could ever count against you.

Way more damning is if you only have experience with .NET or something like that.

That said, we'd look at that experience and guess that you would probably not be interested in working at our startup-sized salaries, so I wouldn't expect much effort to recruit you in the first place. The other thing we'd need to make sure about is that you're not stuck doing things "The Microsoft Way (tm)"; you'd be joining a very different culture and if you're not going to fit in, it's not going to work.

Don't sweat over your 5-6 years experience at MS especially when your case is "special", you work at Bing and probably you work from the beginning until you launched. 5 years is not a long time to launch a product like Bing.

In fact, you should be proud and feel a bit more comfortable with your resume so far. 5 years show determination, loyalty, and hard work. Like any other poster said, if a startup didn't like your resume because of your experience at MS, you wouldn't like them anyway.

I've seen people who just talk about "how bad MS products" are after a link from Reddit/Digg showed up but they don't have anything to prove themselves.

Good luck with your decision whatever that is and keep your mindset in a neutral zone.

Sounds to me like your 5 years at MS is probably equal to or better than an undergraduate degree at least as far as technical competency is concerned.

It's the knowledge that you've retained from your work at Microsoft that is of importance. Focus on that. Better yet provide some guidance in your domain of knowledge to the hacker community.