An anonymous blog entry, “Life at Google – the Microsoftie Perspective,” has been widely linked in developer circles in recent days. It purports to be a report by a Microsoft manager of an interview with an ex-Google employee, comparing the working environment at those two high-tech powerhouses. Let me throw a third data point into the comparison: the life of the independent web-working consultant.
Culture and workload: The Google and Microsoft folks are both expected to spend 8 hours plus a day physically present on the job, and after hours answering email. Me? I spend more than that physically present – but only because the boundaries between job and home are very fluid. I’m not tied to a desk or a cubicle, and I frequently take a break of hours to homeschool, go grocery shopping, or just relax. The culture of continuous work has long since left my blood. So, while I do manage to get in a reasonably long work week, I don’t do it in concentrated blocks of office time any more, and I like it this way.
20% Time: The fabled Google innovation: they’ll pay you 20% of your time to work on a project of your own choosing. Whatever it is, the fruits of your labor are still owned by Google. On the independent side, I can take whatever percent of my time I want to work on any personal project I want, and I own it. This year, for example, I invested a huge chunk of time retooling myself from C# to Rails development, and another chunk exploring Second Life. The downside: nobody pays me for this; it’s truly my own investment in the future.
Office arrangements: The Microsoft manager is all happy because Microsoft people have three times as much space as Google people, and nicer offices. Yeah, well, you know what? I’ve seen and worked in Microsoft offices, and I’ve got much more space than senior managers at Microsoft get, and it’s laid out just the way I like it. Plus I’ve got 87 acres of land around it. I win.
Management hierarchy: Very flat at Google (with the drawback that line managers can have an incredible number of direct reports), increasingly baroque at Microsoft as the years go by (with the drawback that office politics are getting worse and worse). Here: One level. For really huge decisions, like what city to relocate to next, my wife and I hold a shareholders’ meeting around the kitchen table. I don’t know about you, but I prefer this ultimate simplification of management.
Career development plans: Allegedly none at Google. Microsoft has a whole formalized annual review process, which some people dread or treat as a joke. My own career development plans consist of trying to keep an eye on the tech landscape and figure out which way to jump next. Some people thrive on the structure of an external annual review, but I’m not one of them.
Food: Microsoft gives employees “free” drinks. Google gives employees “free” meals. Note the quotes. I spend less on groceries than Google figures it spends per employee, and I eat well. I’m better off to take the money and buy my own food. If Google would drop the free food, they could boost salaries substantially, but then they wouldn’t be getting naive kids to come in early for “free” breakfasts. Of course this means I also spend time cooking. Fortunately, I like to cook.
Other benefits: This is where the big companies have a substantial advantage. I’m not talking about free t-shirts and laundry service, but about health insurance, retirement plans, and people to supply and fix computers. Here, I think, is where you’re making the real decision when you go for independent web work: can you do without big company support services, notably in the critical health insurance area? If you can, then choosing between Google and Microsoft is like choosing between hamburger and canned tuna: any sensible person would take the sirloin steak of web work instead.
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2007\/06\/28\/google-vs-microsoft-vs-me\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_88c0fbba39b464befac315f9bc9c9ecb","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}