I came across this article via Slashdot. It is primarily crafted at trying to improve working life inside Microsoft, but some of the insights are quite interesting.
The free food and clothes is well known, but the idea that there is no real career advancement is interesting. After all, is there a need for defined career advancement? Surely, the fact that you get paid better for being a better employee is equivalent? After all aren't titles meaningless without the associated salary increases? Maybe I am missing something - after all I have no corporate experience!
2 comments:
I was planning on writing a long rant about this on my own blog, but since I never got around to it and saw your post on it I'm gonna attack it here. :P
I was there for a brief time period and I found that while there weren't many different titles, your reputation within the company counts a lot more. So you don't see someone's title and thin "He must be good and him stupid", but you rather find out by word of mouth, by reading up on the work they've done and even by reviewing their code.
The lack of titles allows for a much speedier flow up the chain as it occurs naturally and doesn't necessarily require a select few to take notice. You also don't feel as nervous asking someone better than you as effectively their title is the same. I always give the example that I happily chatted away with the author of vim, and I don't know if that would have been so easy had he had a much higher title.
Enough rambling, I'm sure that's enough to explain what I mean.
I understand what you are saying, and I agree. I was just commenting, that without actual corporate experience, I can't really comment on whether it is better to have defined career paths or not. But the Google approach is definitely more natural, and more friendly.
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