Things I like about working @ MSFT (part 3)
growled on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 3:28:47 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
barked at microsoft | ramblings

Self-critical. 

As an organization Microsoft is definitely the most open and honest I've worked for with regard to observing itself in a constructive manner.  Most of the people that work here are more than willing to stand up in the middle of a meeting or reply-all to an email thread with their own opinion and constructive criticisms/suggestions even if it goes against popular opinion.  I love that!
 
As Adam states in his post, Six Months with the Borg: First Impressions (via Heather):
The most shocking thing by far - and I mean shocking - is the level of openness at Microsoft. This company is the most self-critical group of individuals I have ever seen. You can't imagine the expression on my face the first time I saw dozens of emails sent to thousands of employees with the subject "why msn search sucks". If you think Microsofties are a bunch of uptight, conservative, greedy, businesspeople, think again.

These are ex-newsgroup junkies, ex-BBS junkies, ex-debate team leaders, ex-hackers... They tell it how it is - no BS, no dancing around pink elephants, and then they fix it. And from what I've seen so far, 90% of the time, the voice of reason, not the voice of authority, wins out. It is a true meritocracy, and I love it.
At our annual company meeting a few months ago one of our senior VPs even announced exactly how much corporate traffic goes to Google versus MSN Search. How many other companies out there want to even admit that their employees prefer are using a competitor's product to their own?
 
This attitude seems to permeat even at the individual level.  I have always given honest, direct, respectful feedback to my managers regardless of the content being positive or negative and I think it has actually helped my career versus hurting it.  Most people within Microsoft respect others who aren't afraid to speak their mind and share their opinions in a respectful manner.
 
In my opinion, most of the time we [the royal we of Microsoft] see what competitors are doing, what we're not doing, why we're doing it and how we need to improve...and we're not afraid to talk about it.  That's one of the things that makes it so great to work here!
 

Previous "Things I like about working @ MSFT" posts: 1, 2

 
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