Roughly 10% of Microsoft employees said to be iPhone owners - Page 2

I worked with a woman whose husband worked for Pepsi. She wouldn't drink any Coca-Cola product even 1500 miles from home.

The Pepsi employees (and I think Coke employees too) don't drink or buy the other's product period.

Now, if you do tech support for X-Boxes, what brand of phone you use at home is up to you.
If you are on the Windows Series 7 blah-blah-blah team - likely iPhones are not welcome.

That's long gone history, maybe it was relevant when my grandfather was working. The unions of today aren't the unions of that era. I highly doubt that any currently working UAW union member worked under those times. Now, quite a lot of union members working at GM put in about two hours' worth of good work in a day, lounge around and complain about having to do those two hours of work, even ask them.

It's getting to the point where it's just not so much fun to beat up on Microsoft anymore....\

Get into the brewing industry sometime: getting caught with a competing brand will get you fired on the spot. You don't work for one and drink another.

As for iPhones at MS, I think that's hilarious (esp. in those numbers!) Gotta wonder how many Widows Mobile phones are hidden around Apple...

Try crossing say the Ironworkers sometime. (Seriously, for your own safety, don't).

You'll find them every bit as old-fashioned as your grandfather's.

I want to know how many Micosoft employees use non-Microsoft OS phones, not just iPhones.

I know my brother-in-law is one of them. He works at the Redmond Campus, and he's told me one of his greatest fears is being caught with it on him at work.

Shouldn't Steve Balmer use this as an opportunity to step back and wonder why 10% of his employees would risk such alienation and backlash ... I'm sure there are even more MS empoyees that would buy one if they weren't so worried about being caught with one at work. I remember an article I read months ago about Bill Gates' wife, and how she said Bill forbade iPhones in his house, but that she secretly wanted one so bad (so far as to say she was "jealous" when she saw her friends with one). Wouldn't you sit back and start asking yourself what Apple was doing right ...?

On the other hand, after you sue them you'll be all set for a while.

Oh, that's a different industry. I was talking more about the "big 3" and the unions associated with them.

There's a slight difference between a Microsoft employee liking the iPhone so much they're willing to risk harrassment and career by using it at work, and a family member of an Apple employee begrudgingly using a Windows PC at work because they have no choice in the matter.

I have owned Pepsi stock for 15 years, but I prefer to drink Coca-Cola!

Unless you are a taster, I think that drinking on the job could get you fired no matter whose brew you are drinking at work.

So true...

I would MUCH rather use a Mac as a school computer as opposed to those HP piles of crap...

I worked for Microsoft, and half of that is wrong. Yes, there are a lot of Microsoft employees with iPhones (even back in 2008 when I was working for them), but they hardly go to great lengths to conceal them. If you're not on the Windows Mobile team, no one really cares - certainly not your direct managers.

I know several people on my team who actually watched the iPhone 3G announcement live, at work, during the day, using Microsoft's Internet connection.

I also know that many members of my team regularly used Google and Firefox. Again, unless you were on the IE or Bing (Live Search at that time), no one really cared.

The interesting thing is that you could tell the 'true believers' from the people who didn't live in the Microsoft bubble by what they thought about Windows Mobile. If they thought it was a good product (or tried to excuse its flaws by calling it "good for business"), they were a true believer. If they realized that the iPhone was going to kick their butt (in 2008 Windows Mobile was still ahead in market share, but it was clear that it wouldn't last), then they were a pragmatist.

It's the latter people (pragmatists) that drove Windows 7, Windows Mobile 7, and many of Microsoft's other successful products. It's the former people that resulted in huge missteps like putting IE development on hold from 2001-2004, Windows Vista, and UMPCs.

Apple seems to be much better at avoiding the bubble. They launched the iPhone without third-party apps (except for the silly web-app strategy), but when it was clear that the market wanted more, they were able to add apps in a big way just a year later. They released the iPod touch when it was clear that users wanted a device without a phone.

Microsoft tends to keep pushing their failures even when they don't work out. Tablet PC is a great example - no one wanted a low-powered, short battery life laptop in 2002, and they don't want one now. Tablets did OK in some markets like medicine, but the reality is that you can't shrink a PC and deliver a powerful-enough machine that's also small, has good battery life, and is cheap. It seems that Microsoft has figured this out now, but it took Apple to kick them in the ass before they realized it.

Uh, 10% is a rounding error, only if you're in binary.

I use the old-phone ringtone as well. Someone commented about it, in a good-natured way. Later on, I placed a call using the rotary-dial app; I had the sound turned way up so they could hear me dialing. I thought my boss was gonna have a heart attack he was laughing so hard!

Only 10%. Heck they are more backward than I thought!

It has nothing to do with what the employer requires. It has to do with "fellow" employees being vandals.

No, that's really an old-style phone ringing and everybody thinking (hoping, praying) it's a call actually getting through in NYC.

I have no issue using products and services of rival companies to the one I work for, if they are superior to the ones my company is offering. I do however let people in my organisation know of shortfalls, so that they have the opportunity to improve things and make then products and services I would like to have.

There is nothing wrong with making a statement that you think you own companies products need improving.

If Ballmer sees his employess with iPhones, he should simply ask them what is it offering that a Windoze Mobile doesn't. That will give him the intelligence to improve his offering.

There is no point in being totally loyal to your employer. At the end of the day, there is always a chance they will terminate your contract. Is that loyalty??

Phil

Maybe Microsoft will merge with Massive Dynamic in order to become a stronger competitor with Apple.

Just goes to show you a number of people who work at MS are only there because it is a job and it pays the bills.

I personally do not understand people who would work for a company and did not believe in what they were doing. Either you like their product or you do not if you do not like it why work for them.

No wonder why there are so many people dissatisfied with their work and do not like their jobs.

I would image at Apple that most everyone if not everyone who works there use nothing but Apple products and not the competitors products. I know when I was there I never heard of anyone who used anything but Apple products. There was a running joke at the time if it was not for the employees and their families Apple would have gone out of business.

I have spoken with our TAM from Microsoft. Things have changed since 2008. They have gone to requiring the employees to use BING over Google and to report the issues they are having so that it can be fixed. He actually told me with a straight face that Bing had finally surpassed Google over a year ago. And he followed it up by immediately saying he was not a Microsoft Schill...

The iPhone issue is also true, it was very heavily frowned upon at the time. This is totally believable.

Not everybody that works at Apple likes it there.
Employees and temps working untold hours on the development of a new product and watching it become successful are lucky to get a 4% raise with no bonus. And the temps get nothing.
I forgot, temps can buy Apple products at a 10% discount.

So if you work for a TV network, you should only watch programmes on that network, and miss great programmes on other networks?

If you work for an airline, do you plan your trips solely around where your airline goes?

If you work for a sports car company who doesn't make family cars, do you squeeze your family into a sports car?

If your employer offers products and services that meet your needs, then yes, go for it, but why use them if they don't suit your needs.

Phil

Microsoft sells software for the Mac, you know. And does a lot of other stuff. Not everyone who works there works on Windows.


The Apple employees I know love their jobs and buy Apple products by the ton, but they also use Microsoft Pro trackballs and MS ergo keyboards and when they go home, they play games on XBoxes or on gaming computers that most assuredly aren't Macs.

So I'm not surprised at all that Microsoft employees use iPhones. In fact, 10% sounds pretty low for such a technophile crowd.

I think you're probably lucky, that is, if you really are doing work you like for a company you like, I don't think very many people manage to achieve that. It's life.

Having an interest in something gets old when you have to do 40, 50, 60 hour work weeks doing it, and having to deal with typical work interpersonal issues, it takes a toll. I think that's why Google has their 80/20 program, where 80% of the work is stuff that needs to be done, and 20% is some other project that's diversionary. From the people that talk about it, it seems like it tends to prevent burnout.

This number is even higher among people in the Windows Phone team. And here's why: there was a tradition in the team to dogfood its own product on dogfood phones. Employees were given dogfood phones for free and the wireless plans were free as well (including data and everything). When the team was struggling to produce a decent product, there was also a crisis with the supply of the dogfood phones. Whoever was responsible for dogfood phones made one bad deal with manufacturers after another. Each time dogfood phones were so bad, they couldn't run the software.

Obviously, no meaningful dogfooding was possible. The people responsible for making deals with manufacturers screwed up badly. But instead of firing those people, the upper management decided to stop dogfooding altogether (brilliant, huh?). So they terminated all free wireless plans, but offered to reimburse the data part of the employees' own wireless plans. And immediately half of the Windows Phone team bought iPhones! When forced to make a decision with their own money, employees made the best choice available at that time.

So there you go.