Word: microsoft
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Chinese-American graduate student named Dongxia is strolling through what has become a springtime mating ritual at the nation's top schools of engineering: the tech job fair. In an attention-grabbing booth on one side of the gym at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recruiters from Microsoft make work for the software giant seem like a highly paid extension of college life: a video shows young men and women at the Redmond, Wash., headquarters playing with Nerf toys between all-night bouts of writing code. Nearby, the Boeing booth touts its work on the space station. But Dongxia (pronounced...
...Microsoft cafeteria in Redmond, Wash., the government's antitrust suit against the company is frequently discussed among people who (like me) have no inside knowledge of what is actually going on in the negotiations. Slate, the online magazine I edit, is owned by Microsoft, so discount anything I say accordingly as you please. But having lived and worked among them for four years, I have found the attitude of folks inside the company pretty interesting, and maybe you will too. Not people like Bill Gates, or those who write the legal briefs and press releases, but the ordinary software developer...
...many stock options his interrogator had and whether that number had any impact on his decision to come to work every day. The human capacity for grievance is deep and universal. Even among these most rational members of the species, grievance seems immune to the reality that "unfair to Microsoft" is the world's least sympathetic cri de coeur, even if it's true...
Nevertheless, it surely counts for something that the typical 'Softy truly doesn't recognize himself or his work in the description of Microsoft promulgated by the company's critics. He probably hasn't read the legal documents in the case, and is unqualified to judge the legal issues anyway. Even hardened criminals may concoct some innocent rationale for their crimes and believe it themselves. So the fact that my colleagues feel innocent doesn't mean they are innocent. But it surely complicates the issue. These people honestly believe they are promoting innovation, and they genuinely sense rivals at every turn...
...moment crystallized the bitterness here, it was the day after Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's findings of fact last November, which, despite its label, was widely interpreted as meaning that Microsoft was "gonna get nailed." Newspapers across the country carried pictures of the Department of Justice litigators smiling and laughing about the judge's ruling. For the supercompetitive Microsoft types, this was rubbing salt in the wounds. And it confirmed their suspicion that the government was unfairly "out to get" them. It's one thing for an official agency to conclude solemnly that you have violated a vague and complex...