<story><title>Microsoft needs Wizards: A 1984 Microsoft job posting</title><url>http://groups.google.com/group/net.jobs/msg/4f2cf440919eeda9</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jgfoot</author><text>Mike Maples talks more about Microsoft back then:  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107465/1/oh387mm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107465/1/oh387mm.pdf&lt;/a&gt; ):&lt;p&gt;&quot;&quot;&quot;I can remember going to the first Microsoft Company picnic in 1988. There were  only two children. Microsoft had 1,800 employees and there were only a couple of them that were  married. You had all these young kids who weren&apos;t married and were right out of school. IBM had  conventional dress codes; Microsoft - it was very much like a college campus. The only difference in how they lived, the hours they kept and the way they dressed, between a college campus and Microsoft was that Microsoft bought the equipment. They all wore their shorts and half of them  wore sandals or no shoes. Microsoft bought a lot of T-shirts and things for them. There weren&apos;t set hours - the management system was to let people pick or sign up for what they were going to do, and it was up to them to do it.  So there was very little management attention over directing people or telling  them what to do - it was a very empowered work force. And my suspicion was that that was the way IBM was in the 1930s and 1940s. They were much more formal, because the time was much more formal in terms of dress. But in terms of the ages and the attitudes and the mission the people were on - I think it would be a lot the same.&quot;&quot;&quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Microsoft needs Wizards: A 1984 Microsoft job posting</title><url>http://groups.google.com/group/net.jobs/msg/4f2cf440919eeda9</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>irollboozers</author><text>I am by no means an old-school software guy, but I have distinct memories of when my dad worked in emerging software companies. And more importantly, back when Microsoft was &apos;cool&apos;. It was like having free soda in the break rooms and awesome company picnics was -the- status symbol of a fun career.&lt;p&gt;Now, people much more junior expect all of that, plus crazy workplaces, free meals, free babysitting, free carwash, free haircuts, etc. I wonder what the current entry level software engineer ad at Microsoft looks like. Which is weird, at my school UW, they weren&apos;t even there at the CS career fair. Meanwhile FB was there with free t-shirts, Google had a giant android costumed guy waddling around, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. They all made it seem like you weren&apos;t even applying for jobs, and you weren&apos;t even expected to actually have to work.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft definitely helped define the techie dream workplace, even after they got &apos;huge&apos;. Why did that have to change?</text></comment>