Happy at work at Microsoft - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Happy at work at Microsoft - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Michael Brundage has written a very interesting piece on what its like to work at Microsoft. The good includes personal freedom, the top leaders, free soft drinks and the fact that Microsoft contrary to popular belief is not evil. For instance: Microsoft gives software developers a lot of personal freedom over both the work and the work environment. I order my own supplies, customize my office as I see fit, schedule my own trips and meetings, and select my own training courses. I choose when I show up for work and when I leave, and what to wear while Im there. I can eat on campus or off, reheat something from home in the kitchen or scavenge leftovers from meetings. I can even work remotely from home (within reason). The bad: mid-level managers, internal cults and bad work-life balance. Compare this with Paul Thurrotts highly critical analysis of Microsofts failure to deliver Windows Vista on time or even with all the feature they promised. Two and a half years later, Microsoft has yet to ship Windows Vista, and it wont actually ship this system in volume until 2007 Microsofts handling of Windows Vista has been abysmal. Promises have been made and forgotten, again and again. Features have come and gone. Heck, the entire project was literally restarted from scratch after it became obvious that the initial code base was a teetering, technological house of cards. Windows Vista, in other words, has been an utter disaster. And its not even out yet. What the heck went wrong? It almost seems like Microsoft is an example of a company that has a huge, tremendously talented and motivated staff, but still manages to create enormous problems for itself. Does this contradict my claim that a happy organization is also a successful one? UPDATE: John Dvorak weighs on on the issue. All of Microsofts Internet-era public-relations and legal problems (in some way or another) stem from Internet Explorer. If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column?billions. So theyre happy at Microsoft but they make really bad top-level decisions..? Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related