Ever wonder what the differences between working at Google and Microsoft are? One of the things everybody seems to mention first is that at Google you get free food while at Microsoft you don’t. That’s really just a difference in perks between one and the other, but have you ever wondered what some of the other non-perk related differences are? We’re able to get a few ideas of some of those differences thanks to a former Microsoft employee named Sergey Solyanik who left to go to Google, but now left Google to go back to Microsoft. He recently wrote up a pretty balanced post on some of the differences between the two companies and why he’s going back to Microsoft.
One of the differences he sees is that at Google, they value “coolness” while at Microsoft, they tend to value “reliability.” We’re sure there’s plenty of room to argue that statement, but in several ways, we can see what he means. Google does try to be “cool” and they try to portray an image of being young (they are, compared to Microsoft) and hip. Microsoft on the other hand has to focus a lot of attention on the reliability factor because people pay for most of the software that they develop. Once it ships and hits the shelves at the store, there’s not a whole lot they can do to fix something if it breaks.
Sergey talks about the “coolness” factor and makes an observation saying, “This orientation towards cool, but not necessarily useful or essential software really affects the way the software engineering is done. Everything is pretty much run by the engineering - PMs and testers are conspicuously absent from the process. While they do exist in theory, there are too few of them to matter.” The benefit to those at Google because of this though is that software ships quick.
He also said something that we agree with and that is that Google Docs really isn’t a viable competitor to Microsoft Office because those who use Google Docs really wouldn’t be the type to buy Microsoft Office anyways. He says, “Google as an organization is not geared-culturally - to delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications.” Certainly Google Docs has a lot of amazing features, but we can’t see a major corporation using it over Microsoft Office because of the reliability factor.
At the end of the day, for Sergey Microsoft turned out to be the right place for him and that’s why he left Google to return to Redmond. He says, “Since I’ve been an infrastructure person for most of my life, I value reliability far, far more than “coolness,” so I could never really learn to love the technical work I was doing at Google.
If describing working for Google and Microsoft was as simple as saying one is cool and the other is reliable (we know it’s not), who would you be working for?
Enjoyed the post? Subscribe to our feed to get a daily dose of CyberNet!
Tags: Google, Google, Microsoft
Related Posts:
- Logo/Homepage Creator Logogle Gets Shut Down By Google
- Bored? Browse The 3D Google Warehouse
- Now You Can Add More To Your Google Personalized Home Page
- Microsoft Promotes IE 7 With An Interesting Video
- Microsoft Employees Use Google To Search
I don’t know much about both companies, except what you read in the papers, magazines and the Web. However, I’m slightly oriented towards Google, mainly because they have a more user-friendly culture.
Microsoft has demonstrated over and over again being arrogant and rude and has paid a price for it. Having Bill Gates out of the picture, I feel SB will further enhanced the bully attitude.
I don’t think Google’s products are unreliable. Take for instance GMail. It’s one of the best e-mail clients around and its search engine towers high above all the rest. Yep, I’ll take Google as my company over Microsoft.
Although Gmail has had plenty of outages and dataloss in the past. I use it on a regular basis, but I also backup my emails using an email client on my computer to be on the safe side. Heck, the service is still in Beta after how many years?
A computer user for years, with a dad who retired from IBM, I had no idea that Free Software existed until about a year ago. My software was installed on my Dell. End of story, I now enjoy several of Google’s offerings, but I depend on Microsoft. When I have a tech problem, I need someone to call. Recently Microsoft support solved an outlook problem for me with a short hold time and real person. Who do I call at Google? Sure its cool to feel lucky–but I guess I am to much of a grownup to want to depend on luck.
Usually computer problems can be fixed with a quick Google search. No luck required.
Microsoft reliable? HA! Try telling me that when Vista crashes every other second! I don’t use a lot of Google’s software (Google Gears, Desktop, Sketchup ETC) but I have not had any problems with there web side of things.
Disclaimer: Yes I do use Vista on my Mac and I have personally experienced these crashes myself this not just some fanboy rant.
Google aim for cool and Microsoft aim for reliable?
Pretty clear who’s succeeded there!
WHEN, really now when, does Vista crash for you? Have you sent in a bug report? Would that not go further?
I would take a Microsoft product over Google any day of the week.
Although I like Google, I think I’d prefer to work in Microsoft, the Google culture can be a bit weird, if those stories about them are true.
Besides, they’re a bit too secretive ala Apple, which is effectively reflected in what their employees can say out of work, and I don’t like that too much.
In the end, there are better companies to work in out there, anyway
I agree with that, but the problem some people have is knowing what to search for. When I tell people that I found their problem online they always ask what I was searching for.
That’s gotta be software/driver related then. I used Vista for well over a year, and it froze on me once or twice, blue-screened once, and started acting weird just a handful of times where I’d have to restart it. On my Mac Vista runs really well in Boot Camp, and I’ve had a few instances in the last few months where my Mac has acted up forcing me to restart it as well. All in all I can’t say that the stability of Mac has really prevailed over Windows from my first impressions.
Since I use Vista just for gaming, I’m thinking about switching over to SP3 until Microsoft can sort out these problems. I know they will, it’s just it takes them longer then it should be.