Microsoft needs Wizards: A 1984 Microsoft job posting

http://groups.google.com/group/net.jobs/msg/4f2cf440919eeda9

by scommab • 14 years ago

207 92 14 years ago

groups.google.com

marcusf• 14 years ago

It sounds like a fun place to be, and just reinforces that this industry seems to endlessly spin around in circles.

I mean, when you read this and compare it to what you hear of MSFT today (via Mini, for example), it's not far off to compare it with Google who seems to be shifting from this to something more disciplined with Larry as the CEO. Extrapolating to what might happen to Facebook isn't far off either.

petenixey• 14 years ago

I know, I was thinking exactly the same thing as I read this.

I wonder which large companies have held out against this type of decay through the decades and how they managed it.

nazar2• 14 years ago

Whether that indeed a decay is questionable.

Sony had its own approach to this(citing Yoshide Nakamura): Our company management felt that to prepare the company for the digital network era of the 21 century, it was important to have the most appropriate organizational structure in place. That was the core reason why we created our new structure. Sony is a large company now. Our worldwide consolidated sales are over $56 billion, with 170,000 employees, but in spirit we always try to be small venture company. We want to maintain this, So when Mr.Nabuyuki Idei became president in April 1995, he gave us two slogans: "Regeneration" and "Digital Dream Kids." Thats the spirit of being small and going back to when we started Sony in 1946. So we want to make Sony smaller. Instead of having this huge corporation, he wants to organize Sony into four divisional companies so that a small venture capital spirit can be brought into management

meric• 14 years ago

"The technical hierarchy is kept very simple and 'shallow' so that there is minimal bullshit and over-organization."

With this posting it seems like deep hierarchy bullishit and over-organization is inevitable in any growing organisation.

KaeseEs• 14 years ago

If you read a bit of Brooks, you'll see why this is indeed more or less inevitable - the addition of hierarchy reduces the communication costs in a growing organization.

kenrikm• 14 years ago

Exactly, two things came to mind when I read that.

First: Sounds like a great place to work!

Second: What happend?

dasil003• 14 years ago

Success.

Wasn't it pg who said that in early-stage startups you attract people who want to build a great company, but in later stage companies you attract people who want to work for a great company?

icegreentea• 14 years ago

I think that cyclical is a much more accurate description than 'endlessly spin around in circles'. The latter implies no net progress, which I don't believe is really true.

Maxious• 14 years ago

Is rockstars the new wizards?

drats• 14 years ago

Speculation: you could easily get to the #1 spot on HN with a blog entitled "From Wizards to Rockstars: what's wrong with the motivation of the current generation of technologists".

bwarp• 14 years ago

Ha that is so true.

Ironically I just posted a rant against that crap:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3628371

InclinedPlane3• 14 years ago

Rockstars are not such a bad model to emulate for hackers. Most rockstars are talented, passionate about their craft, spend at least a decade just honing their abilities through constant practice, spend years grinding on their projects in relative obscurity and poverty until they finally find something that resonates with the public and/or gain enough exposure to attain popularity and success after which they work even harder to capitalize on it making art and experiences that stand the test of time and attain a commensurate level of recognition, appreciation, and financial reward.

The cartoon image of rockstars as the idle rich with some inborn exceptional talent or some luck of fate that allows them to attain a life of fame and fortune with very little effort is, of course, a much less noble behavioral model to want to emulate.

rplnt• 14 years ago

I have the feeling that Ninjas are. And I really hate these jobs postings. Whether it's ninja, wizard or Speedy Gonzales.

mrspeaker2• 14 years ago

They had me at "private offices (as many with windows as topology permits)" (assuming topology permits at least 1)

drostie• 14 years ago

Microsoft is infinite: it has no walls, and therefore, no windows.

The Microsoft that can be known is not the eternal Microsoft. The wizards that can whiz are not the eternal wizards.

RyanMcGreal• 14 years ago

On the contrary: Microsoft is almost all windows, but they all look inward.

Splines2• 14 years ago

I've heard that the original set of MSFT buildings in Redmond (were they there in 1984? I don't know) were designed with maximizing the number of window offices in mind. They are shaped like an "X".

kooshball• 14 years ago

People on most teams still get their own private office, at least in Redmond and Mountain View.

What other place in the valley has private offices?

dsolomon3• 14 years ago

I'd love that.

I've seen cube sharing and even PC sharing.

I interviewed with one company where the developers sat in some leftover space between a cubical wall and a real wall.

Another company I worked at a 3 to 4 person "suite" measured in at 10ft x 12ft.

mrspeaker2• 14 years ago

I thought I was reasonably savvy of old-school tech, but what is this type of address? decvax!Microsoft!joannr

harrigan• 14 years ago

I think it's a bang path: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Bang_path

InclinedPlane3• 14 years ago

Yup. It's basically a route described as a list of hosts. One of the hosts is actually on the internet proper, and then the message would be transferred to each successive host along the way using whatever local links were available (including dialup modems) using a store and forward protocol.

As dedicated internet access became more common UUCP became obsolete.

mbowcock• 14 years ago

decvax was DEC unix engineering groups vax on uucp/usenet. I believe it was the first system to move email in realtime. Microsoft must have been linked through this vax.

thomasjoulin• 14 years ago

"we never do anything stupid because some manager/MBA/suit-type has power without knowledge". Sounds like Steve Ballmer, right ?

yuhong• 14 years ago

This was back in 1984. I wonder what led Bill Gates to choose Ballmer as the new CEO.

sriramk• 14 years ago

Ballmer was back in the company then. People outside MSFT underestimate the technical know how of SteveB - he ran release management for the first version of Windows. He understands software. He might be doing a terrible job the last decade but that is not due to him being some 'MBA' stereotype.

Also - BillG really trusts Steve. They've worked together for over 25 years.

statictype• 14 years ago

I wonder what led Bill Gates to choose Ballmer as the new CEO.

Probably counting the number of zeroes in his account balance and realizing that he's answerable to stock-holders now.

JanezStupar• 14 years ago

In hackerspace its so cool to rail against MS and especially against Steve Ballmer.

The truth is that MS has always been a great company, on all accounts I have ever read on the matter it appears to me that MS is a kind of organization that any hacker would love to work for.

But its been a fifteen years from when MS was considered cool. Hip kids don't want to look at it. They don't even want to educate about it. So they go and work and sing praises to Google and FB, who have just now started to show their different, corporate nature.

And geeks have gone and given them the scepter of Power. And I find it ironic that these new hip companies represent a greater danger to computing, freedom and privacy than MS ever has.

They say that he who fails to learn the lessons of the past is doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

laconian2• 14 years ago

Obviously someone who hasn't worked at MS before.

pjmlp• 14 years ago

Yeah the good old days when everyone still wanted to work there (me included).

Lets see how many of the "good" companies of today will turn in future dark side companies as Microsoft is usually associated nowadays.

Drbble3• 14 years ago

Eh, Google went evil, Facebook was chartered evil, Msft overflowed and is back to good.

dsrguru• 14 years ago

Being too young to remember a world without the Internet, I'm surprised to see that the terms "venture capital" and "startup" were in vogue in 1984.

petercooper2• 14 years ago

Internet for the masses, perhaps, but that job posting is from a Usenet post nonetheless :-)

I miss the Usenet of yesteryear, nothing now comes close, but even I was surprised to look it up just now and see it started in 1980!

pferde• 14 years ago

You might find http://olduse.net interesting, then.

irollboozers• 14 years ago

I am by no means an old-school software guy, but I have distinct memories of when my dad worked in emerging software companies. And more importantly, back when Microsoft was 'cool'. It was like having free soda in the break rooms and awesome company picnics was -the- status symbol of a fun career.

Now, people much more junior expect all of that, plus crazy workplaces, free meals, free babysitting, free carwash, free haircuts, etc. I wonder what the current entry level software engineer ad at Microsoft looks like. Which is weird, at my school UW, they weren't even there at the CS career fair. Meanwhile FB was there with free t-shirts, Google had a giant android costumed guy waddling around, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. They all made it seem like you weren't even applying for jobs, and you weren't even expected to actually have to work.

Microsoft definitely helped define the techie dream workplace, even after they got 'huge'. Why did that have to change?

nadam2• 14 years ago

"Now, people much more junior expect all of that, plus crazy workplaces, free meals, free babysitting, free carwash, free haircuts, etc."

Junior or not, only a tiny percentage of people can get these perks. For example google recieves 1 million CVs a year approximately 5000 of which get a job offer (0.5%). (approximately 35% of those who are allowed to have a phone interview are allowed to the onsite interviews and approximately 25% of the 'onsite-interviewed' people get a job offer.)

alexis-d2• 14 years ago

Do you have any sources for those numbers? Thanks!

alapshah• 14 years ago

That is totally true, but a very large percentage of those 1 million are people who simply have no chance of getting the job. Google is seen as a hot company and place to work for so it attracts a lot of resumes, much more than microsoft ever was...

And they make it pretty darned easy to apply. There are some other interesting numbers in this infographic - salaries and such: http://img.gtricks.com/2011/10/job-in-google.png

dsolomon3• 14 years ago

UW reporting in (87-91)

Way back when ... there weren't really career fairs. The big 4 (Microsoft, Boeing, Safeco, and Weyerhaeuser) just advertised in the paper.

If there was a cool time to work for them it had to have been before then.

postit• 14 years ago

Back in that day they offered private offices, now you can barely have a place to call your own.

dpark4• 14 years ago

They still put their SDEs, SDETs, and PMs in private offices. There are some cubicles on the Redmond campus, but they are the exception, and I've never talked to anyone who who had a cube.

muyuu• 14 years ago

I wonder if it's this person: http://www.classmates.com/directory/public/memberprofile/lis...

cpach• 14 years ago

The message is posted by Gordon Letwin.

aurelianito2• 14 years ago

If I see a job posting with the exact same wording Today, I will apply for the job. So much better than the standard "looking for a (ruby|python|c|javascript) (rockstar|ninja)" than it makes me cry!

verelo2• 14 years ago

I hate the term rockstar, and i dont think ninja's are good communicators...always sneaking about.

Seriously though, think of what a rockstar is like. High maintenance, on drugs, performs for a short period of time then expects a high payout, goes out late and misses gigs...i dont want a rockstar.

I want a WIZARD! I'm pretty sure wizards are reliable and old school...

wonderyak• 14 years ago

Wizards are certainly never late.

In seriousness; all job postings should be written by a member of the department hiring for the position.

amcintyre• 14 years ago

Every time I've gone for an interview after seeing "rockstar" in the job description, it's gone poorly, and usually because I saw enough in 5 minutes (or less) to know I didn't want to work there.

Half the time the recruiter is so excited about the opportunity to bring "rockstar" candidates to such an awesome company that they seem to forget to actually read my resume, so I'm interviewing for a position that doesn't match my skill set at all.

leo79• 14 years ago

I email my resumee to decvax!Microsoft!joannr. No response so far.

aurelianito2• 14 years ago

I wonder if joannr@microsoft.com would work.

dlokshin• 14 years ago

What struck me most is that the following was clearly a pride point of the culture at MSFT:

"The company is owned (a key issue) and operated by software wizards: Bill Gates and Paul Allen."

Not anymore. Company is now run by a professional bean counter brought into that position by the former software whiz.

sauravc• 14 years ago

http://peteandcarol.com/msft.htm

duxup• 14 years ago

I think this Microsoft company is going to really take off.

verelo2• 14 years ago

Those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it, given all the startups that exist today i'm very glad people are reading this job posting.

Your cool company today can change significantly, and maybe thats ok...but it is a little sad, i think you'd struggle to get a similar recommendation for MS these days.

jgfoot• 14 years ago

Mike Maples talks more about Microsoft back then: (http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107465/1/oh387mm.pdf ):

"""I can remember going to the first Microsoft Company picnic in 1988. There were only two children. Microsoft had 1,800 employees and there were only a couple of them that were married. You had all these young kids who weren't married and were right out of school. IBM had conventional dress codes; Microsoft - it was very much like a college campus. The only difference in how they lived, the hours they kept and the way they dressed, between a college campus and Microsoft was that Microsoft bought the equipment. They all wore their shorts and half of them wore sandals or no shoes. Microsoft bought a lot of T-shirts and things for them. There weren't set hours - the management system was to let people pick or sign up for what they were going to do, and it was up to them to do it. So there was very little management attention over directing people or telling them what to do - it was a very empowered work force. And my suspicion was that that was the way IBM was in the 1930s and 1940s. They were much more formal, because the time was much more formal in terms of dress. But in terms of the ages and the attitudes and the mission the people were on - I think it would be a lot the same."""

untog• 14 years ago

I think it's an inevitable transition that Google is going through right now. Probably Facebook, too.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

Perhaps it is as simple as a direct consequence of the average age at the company?

chollida12• 14 years ago

Wow, that pdf is a gold mine.

I especially liked the section where he hi lights Microsoft's hiring practice as one of the main differentiators from its competitors

""" So we had a very intensive interview process. The last interviewer was called the hiring manager, but after every interview, as the candidate left the office, the interviewer sent out an email and wrote the result of the interview. So by the end of the 6th interview, the hiring manager had all reviews but the one where the guy was at that time. The first word on the write-up had to be “hire” or “no-hire”. There wasn't any "maybe" or... "This guy would be good in some other group". It was ... “I would work with this guy” or not. “I think he would work into my group” or not. So the hiring manager then had all of these write-ups and all of these decisions or recommendations. And he would decide whether or not to offer the guy a job. If we offered the guy or gal a job, then the next day would be spent in trying to talk them into realizing how good it was to work at Microsoft; that it's a good place to live and all those things…being nice to them for a change.

Of the 10 we'd bring back, we'd hire one. So we hired about 1 out of every 100 that we initially interviewed. So the total picture is: we've interviewed 10 guys, 8 times each - 80 interviews. We interviewed 100 guys one time, 100 interviews − so we've done about 200 interviews for every person we hired. If you think about hours - that's a lot of hours, and recruiters aren't going to do that. Recruiters aren't going to test coding ability. We had recruiters who managed the logistics and managed the reference checks. We also did aggressive reference checks − we had a whole series of questions we'd ask. Most people doing reference checks are trying to be kind and nice and so people aren't as accurate as you'd like them to be. So you come up with a whole set of questions like: “I know this guy is really good, but what is the one thing you'd counsel him to improve?” Or you'd try to get them to reveal what were some of the deficiencies"""

spitfire2• 14 years ago

That description sounds exactly like what Facebook PR is bragging about now. The heads of the company even seem very similar.

krobertson• 14 years ago

"Your work won't be canceled due to some political/financial upheaval"

Don't think that is true anymore.

Wasn't there a post by a former project manager of Silverlight a while ago? While that may not be representative of Microsoft to that degree, I've worked with enough former Softies to know politics play a big role. Especially in the war between Office and Windows.

nazar2• 14 years ago

Can you elaborate about the war? I thought Office and Windows are kind of Siamese twins, unable to survive without each other.

dsolomon3• 14 years ago

Look how well things turned out for the PM of BOB!

johnx123-up• 14 years ago

   James Gordon Letwin (born July 2, 1952)is an American 
   software developer and one of the original twelve Microsoft
   employees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin

jdp23• 14 years ago

Back in the 1980s, research showed individual offices for developers resulted in significantly higher productivity. [Peopleware has a good chapter on this, if I recall correctly.] This was a core part of MS culture until the mid-2000s, when overcrowding led to office sharing.

I intereviewed at MS as I was graduating college in 1983. My interview loop included Charles Simonyi and Steve Ballmer, who had just gotten a prerelease of the Tandy Model 100 mentioned in the OP and demoed it to me in the interview. It was definitely a programmer-centric world, in the best way; but people I talked to also had a very strong business focus as well. I turned down the job offer to go to grad school ... by the time I wound up there in 1999 after selling them my startup, it was a very different place.

CosmicShadow• 14 years ago

How many of you heard Dire Straits in their head when you read that they had Microwave ovens? I would even go so far as to assume that some rooms had colour TVs.

blafro• 14 years ago

with guitars playing on the mtv.

Microsoft needs Wizards: A 1984 Microsoft job posting

Related Stories