Working at Microsoft Canada in Mississauga last work-term has taught me many lessons. Lessons that weren’t directly applicable to my job title at the time, but lessons on where I want to be in terms of my career and what I want to do. Also, my work-term showed me just how much I hate the corporate culture – the cubicle job, the many politics, the fake smiles on people’s faces and so much more. It really got to me midway through.

Now, instead of continuing on with my complaints (there are many) there are some good aspects to working at a big company, especially for a marketing position. For one, the larger the company, the bigger their spending on advertising. So, as someone interested in getting his foot in the door with marketing Microsoft was an ideal place for me. Or so I thought…

The thing with big corporations is that their culture has matured to the point of saturation. At some point in time, Microsoft’s culture became a staple. If you didn’t think like them, you weren’t hired or kept for long. A company’s culture is extremely important and Microsoft failed to create a sustainable culture.

Microsoft’s culture is pretty obvious. One can smell it in the air upon setting foot in their premises. Many programmers know it, and try to avoid it – bashing Microsoft’s brand in the progress. What is Microsoft’s culture? I’ll put it in 2 short sentences: Microsoft’s culture is aggressively business-oriented. It is dominated by old-fashioned behaviour along the very tall hierarchy chain. 

Microsoft’s culture is aggressively business-oriented.

Microsoft, a software development company (now branched into hardware development, as well), has non-technical staff in all positions. At Microsoft Canada, I would say most employees were non-technical. I don’t expect the marketing division to have programmers, but  they should at least hire people who understand where technology is heading and the current internet phenomenon. So many project managers didn’t understand what Twitter is, let alone how to use it. There were even senior staff who don’t know how to copy and paste, resulting in tons of wasted time just re-typing everything.

It is dominated by old-fashioned behaviour along the very tall hierarchy chain.

I found this incredibly interesting. A few weeks into my work-term, I was happy to hear that Microsoft had recently replaced its staff with younger employees. I was expecting the workplace to be buzzing. Instead, it was stiffling. Senior staff did all of the talking and decision-making when it was clear that they weren’t the experts. I felt this first-hand. In one of my team’s monthly meetings, the higher-ups were discussing Microsoft and Google’s position on the market. I had a few inputs on this since I update myself daily with both companies, and plus I follow tech-internet news. I decided to send an email to the entire team, including the director of my work division to discuss an article I had found online. It was entirely appropriate since a few days before the team was scratching their heads on how to proceed. I received no replies back. It was after my work-term ended that I had found out the higher-management found my email to be (and I quote): “Inappropriately written for communicating with senior staff.” I believe I’m pretty good at writing emails. In fact, I’ve received several compliments before. The issue with my email wasn’t that it sounded “rude” but rather it was coming from a lowly co-op student.

Another fascinating event was when I had written a similar email (but of a different topic) regarding one of the emails another director had written. I was respectively opposing her point by writing to other Microsoft co-ops to initiate a discussion. Instead of a discussion, one of the co-ops told me that the director was way up there and that I shouldn’t be questionning her decisions. I should accept that she knows best and leave it as that. There was so much backlash that I just had to continue the debate. It was too interesting to just let it die off. It was clear to me that these students would be hired as full-time employees at Microsoft and continue the downward spiral of the company. They understood so little about their industry, yet they will dedicate years of their lives to it. Instead of spending time to learn more, they reject any ideas except those proposed by their immediate bosses. This was a trend with full-time’s as well.

Man, I can keep going on and on but I’m just going to cut it short. Microsoft is a dinosaur kind of a company: Ancient, big and slow.

Does the pride of a successful company always take over it’s culture? Is this the precursor to a lack of innovation that so many big firms face? As always, let me know what you think.

To cap it off, this is a print-out I scanned:

But Microsoft employees DO use Google Maps!

I had printed this off and someone at the printer picked it up and wrote a note. Funny thing is…everyone at Microsoft uses Google, they just don’t admit it infront of their bosses.

- Peter Kao