How common is that at Microsoft? My perception is that few Microsoft employees participate in projects not directly related to their work, even if it's Microsoft technology. Take for example F#. I haven't seen much from Microsoft employees other than from the F# team (who do a great job) and (paid) evangelists.
If it's Microsoft technology, people do try out things (it is hard to avoid it - dogfooding is a big part of MSFT culture. What they don't do as much is talk about it in public or share the code out (it typically lives on some internal site). Look at people trying out Silverlight or VS 2010 or .NET 4 for example.
When playing with non-Microsoft tech, people are much quieter. There are too many people who would love nothing more than to say "Look there - a Microsoft employee using an iPhone/Google/Linux/whatever" and cause a few headaches. The truth is that a lot of Microsoft employees are just plain geeks who like to try out things.
Dogfooding is a way of life at Microsoft. Sometimes to very painful degrees. We've been using Exchange 14 as our one and only email server solution for quite a while, and yes it has gone down a fair amount and cost a ton of productivity, but it also gave the Exchange team invaluable feedback. I've also got some very painful personal experiences of dogfooding Team Foundation Server in its early days. It's not like we can say "eh this early build sucks, let's go back to X for now", because there is no X, it's been completely removed. The dogfooding is hardcore on purpose.
But the "MS employee using non-MS tech" myth is really a myth. At least nowadays it is. MS employees will and do use anything and everything. As a simple example, I personally know at least 20 MS employees with iPhones (including myself). We also have no problem pointing out to teams when their competitors are better (there are certain teams at MS that really get a whipping, from both the public and the rest of MS, I don't envy them at all.)
I went pretty far (for me, anyway) into the Microsoft bubble last month when I did a small demo as part of a PDC keynote and I noticed that there is a love that dare not speak its name, and that name is iPhone.
I met one guy who would use an old crappy phone during the day and swap sim cards into his iPhone when he knew nobody was around. Another guy wanted to snap a picture of something and send it to me, but was hesitant to take his iPhone out of his pocket, not knowing who might be around to see him using it.
I'm sure some of it is joking, some of it is half-joking, but there is some anxiety around being seen internally using a competitor's winning product.
The funny thing about Microsoft is it has always looked to me like a great environment for a developer to enjoy his work and life. It seems like a good place to have a career.
But at the same time... I would almost never use any Microsoft products. So I have this weird schizophrenic attitude towards them.
The only MS products I can stomach using is Word and the XBOX. Everything else is yucky compared to the competitors. It makes me wonder how the Microsoft devs can stand it.
>I wonder what happens if Steve Jobs catches you with a Zune at Apple? My guess is, nothing.
Really? The impression I've got from Apple employees I've met is that there would be quite a reaction indeed.
BTW, I worked at MSFT last summer and everyone seemed to have an iPhone. A lot of people used Firefox as their primary browser, and I used Opera. There was nothing impolitic about it. In fact, the only time people mentioned it was to ask me what browser I was using, if Opera's visual tabs caught their eye.
From what what I know about both companies, Steve Jobs' reaction would be much more severe than MS management. Apple doesn't seem to tolerate "different" much - it's either the Apple way or the highway.
His reaction would be severe if you tried to pitch a Zune at him. I don't think he'd feel threatened by seeing an employee using one, the way Ballmer clearly is when he catches somebody with an iPod.
"Hey, I know neither of these guys, have never met either of them, and wasn't actually at the event where the infamous 'Ballmer mocks iPhone guy' incident happened, but clearly Ballmer is threatened and Jobs isn't!"
Plenty of Microsoft employees have iPhones. Microsoft makes several iPhone apps. I know several people whose work laptop is a Mac (usually running Windows). And--as you might expect at any good technology company--Microsoft employees are some of the first to try out any new software or gadget.
Ballmer feeling 'threatened' by the fact that an employee is using a non-Microsoft product? Don't be silly.
How common is that at Microsoft? My perception is that few Microsoft employees participate in projects not directly related to their work, even if it's Microsoft technology. Take for example F#. I haven't seen much from Microsoft employees other than from the F# team (who do a great job) and (paid) evangelists.