From my earliest years, I’ve been under the impression that Microsoft was as big a deal as the cathode ray tube monitors of the era. All machines, regardless of their manufacturer or location, were Microsoft. All software was written to run on Windows. Many of the most popular applications out there, like Word, Internet Explorer, and 3D Space Cadet Pinball, were Microsoft’s. Nearly all keyboards that I saw had an entire button dedicated to this behemoth company. Bill Gates (“Weird Al” Yankovic calls him “money” for short in “It’s All About the Pentiums”) was the world’s wealthiest man. Perhaps a little later, I would have also realized that Microsoft was as uncool as the steaming whirring laptop of the era, too. I always wondered how much more incredible an expensive, elegant, virus-free Mac could be to use, and I ditched IE for Mozilla Firefox and later Google Chrome on the advice of multiple family members.
Fast forwarding to this morning, I perceived that the emergence of Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple (again), Netflix and whoever else had reduced Microsoft to merely a major player in tech rather than the evil empire. I discovered today that this has, to an extent, been a deliberate internal cultural shift spearheaded by current CEO Satya Nadella. Deserving of some kudos during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Nadella is not the iconic cultural figure of Bill Gates, but Nadella actually still works at Microsoft today. My enthusiasm is tempered by the awareness that we did not exactly receive the information from a neutral source, but I am liking this sustainable, balanced, open culture in Sandyford. Speaking of which, I was blown away by the global expanse of the talent on hand. We saw Germans, French, and especially Dutch, but I do not think that we actually spoke at any length with an “Irish” Microsoft employee. And with its distance from the Spire, Microsoft has created a more European campus than an Irish one. Rent increases must be localized in Dublin, though.
Thinking about Microsoft from the perspective of a potential employee is something that I have not been doing for nearly as long as from an end-user perspective. It could be nice working there, although could I ever escape the feeling that my work as a “business” person would be absolutely trivial compared to that of the engineers, scientists, and programmers. I could imagine myself holding onto whatever limited power bases I had in a toxic, old-school fashion, like client preferences, to ensure that I brought value to the company. Another fear is I may have to perform web searches with Bing.
Tomorrow, I can ask a question to a human search engine: Dr. Kelley. Perhaps I will ask about the absence of any prominent Microsoft signage in Croke Park, or if Ireland is confident enough in itself to start cranking up the taxes at some point.