welcome to pirate king i'm daniel a
software engineer at microsoft
ex-software engineer and amazon and ebay
and also a software engineering mentor
at two education startups in this video
i'm going to talk about what many of you
guys have been waiting for what it's
like to work at microsoft
and here's what i'm going to do i'm
going to be brutally honest about what i
think of working here most importantly
i'm not going to take sides i'm not
going to blatantly talk favorably about
microsoft just because i work here nor
talk adversely against it when i do
believe it's noteworthy i'm a guy who
hates bias myself i always try to think
objectively and rationally wherever i am
and whatever i do and neither of you nor
i have the time for any other
than the fully disclosed transparency
here this is what i think what i feel
exactly how i see it through my lens so
enough talking let's dive into it so i
work at microsoft in redmond washington
which is where the headquarters is
although the office has been closed for
more than a year and a half now due to
the pandemic i still remember vividly
the day i first stepped my foot in
building 50. one of the buildings in the
campus it was a cold day in january of
2018 and it was raining as always i mean
this is seattle i was here for the final
onsite interview and the first thing
that blew me away as i entered the
office building is all these private
offices lined up in the hallway that's
right although microsoft is also
shifting towards an open space work
environment thanks to companies like
google and facebook quite a good number
of buildings in the campus are still
packed with private offices that are
meant for each individual employee now i
don't know about you guys but i've never
heard about a company that provides a
private office for each employee
especially for an ordinary non-manager
unimportant individual contributor like
me i was like wow i get my own office
when i work in microsoft in fact that's
how the interviews were like a
one-on-one interview in each of the
interviewer's own room do you now get
why i tried so hard to ace my interviews
at microsoft don't get me wrong it's not
like i set up my productivity couch
setup
in my private office at microsoft but
for a guy like me who likes to work
quietly alone by himself it definitely
was mind-blowing not to mention that my
dream was short-lived and shattered soon
after i joined microsoft because about
three months after i joined the company
a massive rework happened and my team
relocated to an open space my life the
second thing i realized that i thought
was completely opposite to amazon is the
average length of tenure where
presumably half the population quits
amazon within about a year check this
video for details on that all five
employees who interviewed me that day
had worked for microsoft for more than
10 years again draw a contract with
amazon because they even give you
different color badges starting with
more than five years of tenure the
interviewers at microsoft were all
senior levels too whereas some of those
at amazon had even less experience than
i did back then and you can immediately
tell just by looking that the average
age group is much younger at amazon a
lot more singles at amazon a lot more
people with a family and microsoft now
that i think about it it may be obvious
why i feel microsoft takes better care
of your family than amazon here's what i
find similar for both microsoft and
amazon you know the co-workers in both
microsoft and amazon
are no fun hear me out though they are
no fun for different reasons amazon
co-workers are no fun because simply
there's no time to be we were never
co-workers in the first place constantly
competing against each other the people
in amazon are a lot more stylish than
those that microsoft you know they're
all young more hip cool swag fancy and
all that but there's simply no time to
enjoy all that you're either too busy
fighting the work or fighting each other
they're simply too cool for you in
contrast co-workers at microsoft are no
fun because
there's simply no fun i think they
honestly and sincerely believe that they
are fun you know hip cool swag fancy and
all that but i honestly don't find a
single one of them funny at all they're
simply no fun one of my interviewers at
microsoft i honestly thought he was a
robot disguised as a human
no offense and you know what's funny the
microsoft employees especially the
engineers who are watching this are
probably thinking this guy's joking i'm
not one of them he's making this up for
laughs well you know what i'm talking
about you
you know if there's one thing that
working from home has drastically
improved upon the quality of my life is
the fact that i don't have to fake my
laughs anymore because
i no longer see them in person all right
enough about the people let's talk about
the technologies all the employees at
microsoft are given a pc no mac i guess
that's obvious right here's a list of
some of the technologies and products
that microsoft is working on windows
operating system productivity suite you
know things like microsoft office teams
outlook onedrive power bi azure for
cloud computing xbox for gaming consumer
hardware like the surface lineup
linkedin for professional social
networking github for source control
development software such as visual
studio and visual studio code
programming languages like c-sharp
f-sharp and typescript and some things
even their own employees try to avoid
such as cortana bing edge and hololens
etc as you can see there's a lot of
stuff going on here and for your
information i'm part of answer for all
software engineers out there here's the
tech stack microsoft uses for most of
web development let's start with the
front end only until a few years ago we
used a thing called razor it's an
asp.net programming syntax to fabricate
html and css using c sharp it was all
right until the micro service
architecture paradigm dominated the
current industry and laid out a clear
distinction between front and back end
but then came google's angularjs and
microsoft began to slowly adjust to the
new paradigm and when the time came for
all of us to celebrate the successful
transition and migration to angular for
the major web front and revamp lurking
facebook with react.js quickly rendering
all our efforts of lead why because our
goal now is to successfully transition
and migrate everything to react from
angular among developers there's a
saying that your product is deprecated
as soon as it's released i think it's
true in most cases but maybe not for
rhea given its vast popularity long
story short i think it's quite safe to
say that microsoft has accepted the
current trend and adopted react.js as
the main framework for front end oh i
almost forgot it's angular and react
with typescript not javascript because
it's good for maintaining large
applications plus microsoft develop
typescript so that's frontend what about
the back end microsoft gave birth to
asp.net and c sharp and again for the
same reason pretty much every backend is
written in c sharp that means no no js
no spring no ruby on rails and saying
goodbye to python's jingle and flask
just c sharp i'll list out the pros and
cons of this later in this video but to
be honest though i really think that c
sharp is a very good language i honestly
think it's the best strongly and
statically typed language out there even
better than java it's a little out of
scope to talk about the reason here i'll
maybe talk about it in some other video
but the reasons why i didn't include it
in this video the best programming
languages to liquid width are because
one the community resources including
the solutions at c sharp are still
relatively scarce and two there's no
built-in library for a priority queue
nonetheless there's still an ongoing
effort to migrate and host every
back-end on azure internally so every
team is responsible for budgeting their
own cloud usage even for internal
microsoft only services now let's talk
about the perks in microsoft you can
check them out yourself too if you want
they're all available in public link in
the description below and by the way
when employers say they care about you
your well-being and your family's
well-being etc you can estimate how much
they mean it by simply looking at the
company's benefits if they're serious
about you and your family's wellness if
they truly care about you there's no
doubt that it should well be reflected
on the company benefits whether that be
medical financial time-offs etc that's
the metric i use to measure the degree
of how sincere a company is about why i
work from one in the first place to
protect my family at least that's what i
think
having said that let's see if microsoft
truly cares about me i'll leave the
decision up to you guys and here they
are the best medical dental vision
healthcare i've seen so far the company
pays for a hundred percent of the
insurance cost which is well over
fourteen thousand dollars a year for my
case thanks microsoft
a paid annual gym membership or up to
twelve hundred dollars reimbursement for
wellness related expenses per year i
honestly would have built my own gym if
i owned a house but sadly i live in an
apartment
and i use this money instead to give
myself a new snowboard 15 paid vacation
days 10 paid u.s holidays two personal
time ups every year 10 paid sick leaves
per year banked on day one of employment
and you don't have to be sick yourself
to go on a sick lease here's the
definition you can use sick and mental
health time for the fallen family
members spouse or domestic partner
parent and child parent-in-law
grandparent and grandchild siblings
spouse of a spelling or grandparent and
even guardians no wonder why people here
get sick every once in a while 401k
matched 50 up to the irs basic deferral
limit in 2021 that's 19 500 so if you
contribute that amount microsoft matches
9
750 allowing you to save 29 250 towards
your retirement every year espp employee
stock purchase program which allows you
to buy some microsoft tickers at 10
discount employee discounts on microsoft
products for example about 80 discount
on software such as office and windows
about 15 discount on hardware such as
surface and xbox three product keys for
most microsoft software and 150 azure
credit every month which i use to host
my own personal bookkeeping ad on the
web link to the video in the description
subsidized food breakfast and lunch free
coffee free soda a bunch of retail shops
on campus including haircut postal
service telecommunications bike shops
etc on campus basketball court soccer
field table tennis foosball table a tree
house private office if you're lucky
enough to avoid open space office
buildings all of which don't really
matter right now since they're all
closed or unusable due to the pandemic
also contrary to the popular beliefs
there's no free food no internet no
phone nor netflix reimbursements lastly
i've been saving this for the last
there's one very unique benefit and
culture that microsoft cultivated and
one i've never seen anywhere else before
and that is giving basically they match
dollar for dollar on what you give as a
donation to eligible charity nonprofit
organization for example if i donate a
hundred dollars to fight racial justice
such as black lives matter microsoft
will match another hundred dollars to
the same organization that i donate to
allowing me to contribute a total of 200
bucks to the same cause it's something
very unique and special about microsoft
which i honestly believe makes the
company stand out more and shine
brighter you know whether you're real or
disagree with gideon or not isn't it
just heart warning to be a part of the
world's greatest philanthropy minds
reflected in the company's very own
benefits and culture technically you
lose your own money when you give but
it's a benefit when you share all right
lastly let's quickly talk about the pros
and cons of working at microsoft let's
start with the pros one competitive
salary i'd say it's all right i mean
there are a number of other companies
that pay you better such as google and
facebook and numerous other silicon
valley startups two great benefits three
private offices if you like working
quietly alone and if you're lucky enough
to avoid open space offices four great
work and life balance it's quite chill
and relaxed here five great name value
the company name speaks for itself and
provides a substantial protection six
great growth opportunity i've grown and
learned a lot since my day one at
microsoft although i think that growth
has stagnated now
what about the cons one there's not much
freedom in choosing the tech stack
because the company builds the tech
stack themselves we have no option but
to use the ones they designate it's like
how you won't get a mac in microsoft or
a pc at apple similarly you're stuck
with typescript c sharp and azure for
your tech stack that means saying
goodbye python node.js express.js django
flask aws heroku docker jira etc there
are teams that use those languages or
frameworks but are very limited in
numbers two you basically become a lab
rat to test out microsoft us products or
updates just before or shortly after
their release which obviously still need
a lot of work you have to deal with the
software's malfunctions and bugs
yourself report them if necessary even
though these have nothing to do with
what you do three bureaucracy there are
so many freaking rules and pipelines
that i honestly think are there simply
to make your life more miserable i need
an approval for this a sign off for that
a permission to deploy send a request to
access certain resources blah blah blah
what's worse you send out a request for
a sign off but no one does it for hours
or even days and hey who's still held
accountable if you can't complete the
work because no one's responded to your
request
for security now i'm not going to dive
into detail because you know i can't
disclose the confidential stuff but let
me just tell you that i thought this was
pentagon when i first came here there
are so many authentications passwords
combinations mechanisms i need to
remember and install to do whatever i
mean that's how serious microsoft is
about security and that's how miserable
our lives are due to it five work is so
chill and relaxed that nobody will
answer your emails or ims you know it's
simply none of their business
lastly six you have to deal with all
sorts of non-coding related these
are the stuff that i hate most even more
than working on front end infrastructure
setups configurations project settings
security compliances all sorts of other
random what's worse dealing with
bugs will have no knowledge whatsoever
here they hire an engineer paying six
figures in salaries to help them fix
broken pipelines and clean someone
else's oh actually seven too many
meetings we even have meetings
to discuss how to reduce the number of
meetings i actually can dig deeper into
these cons and talk more about it i'll
maybe do it later in another video if
you guys are interested
all right this is what i think about
microsoft i tried my best to be 100
transparent honest and objective in the
end overall i think it's a great company
but as we all know no company is perfect
so what do you guys think about
microsoft is it a great company to work
for do you agree with all or some of the
things i've outlined let me know in the
comments below so that i can learn from
you and gain as much insight as possible
myself lastly i thanked you guys in my
previous video a week ago for helping me
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thanks for watching i'll see you next
one
bye
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