Hey, that is sort of a sensationalist title I guess.
But now that I have your attention…
This is about an employee who left MS because he was successfully recruited by Google. Microsoft turned around and immediately started suing, the latest article is here where it talks about MS successfully winning the first round of the battle.
I argue they lost the first round. The first round was prior to the employee leaving and they lost when the employee left. This person was obviously good enough for someone else to want him and had enough knowledge that MS considers the person dangerous if working for someone other than MS.
Well how is it that MS screwed up and let him go in the first place? Now MS is on their heels and throwing money that should go into salaries and R&D into the great big legal machine they have. It starts to make you wonder if MS is more of a legal company or an innovative software company? I knowI know, many of you out there already have your opinion on that one…
This is a problem that I think is all over our industry. Companies feel like, so and so xyz employee won’t leave, where would they go? They will just be treated the same or make the same or whatever. The company continues to do things because they have that opinion and then bam, someone leaves and then the company is sitting there threatening or in actual fact starting litigation to staunch the bleeding and maybe dissuade others from doing the same.
MS *had* the upper hand. They *had* the employee, they let him go because the grass was greener somewhere else and he made the realization that everyone needs to take care of themself.
Instead of attacking the employee, because that is what is going on here, MS should be looking at why they lost him in the first place. Was it money? Was it something else? Who else can they expect to lose? No threat of a lawsuit or even the actual thing is enough to make me not consider leaving a company I don’t want to work for anymore or prevent me from looking at or taking a better offer than what I currently have.
It is due to this lack of being appreciated and compensated by companies that cause a lot, if not most people to do something bad when they get a position. They realize that there is no point in going hogwild in work and what they accomplish so they just exist. Companies like MS do not sue people like that, they just let them wander away when the choose to leave. However that person who is just existing is probably treated quite similarly to the person next to him who is busting his ass who would get sued if they tried to leave.
That makes no sense to me. Microsoft makes a lot of money, they talk about profit and money in the bank that is in the billions and they are a company that is entirely dependent on the quality of their people. They don’t always seem to be cognizant of that fact. Without the great people of MS, MS is not a company worth anything, see a previous blog entry I wrote on that subject. MS didn’t become top on the block because of the company itself, it did it because of the people that are the cogs and make it go.
I have been approached by MS Headhunters and Managers a number of times who really want to bring me on board because of what I have done in the past and the knowledge I hold now but mostly because of my ability to learn new things and apply them in different unusual ways and well, just the fact that a lot of my ideas just seem to come out of left field but tend to make sense in some odd light.
The talks go well with how cool it would be to work for MS and the ability to make a difference and etc etc etc ad infinitum of all things that don’t put steak on the table. Then it all dies when the talks of huge amounts of travel and relatively poor salaries[1] makes me think, why would anyone do this unless they really didn’t know what else was available or didn’t have faith in themselves outside of MS or possibly they had some misconstrued opinion that they may be one of the next Microsoft Millionaires?
I could be wrong, but I really don’t expect many Microsoft Millionaires to be popping out of the new batches of employees. When I look at a job, I look at the salary, what can I expect to really get paid. Everything else you can’t depend on and you have to wonder how stupid you will feel if you put in a hellacious year and despite that, all of those cool bonuses get cut for some reason for that year.
Anyway, to wrangle this back around. As a result of my experiences, it never surprises me when someone leaves Microsoft. If someone is really good, I sort of expect it. Instead of suing, Microsoft really needs to make sure they understand why Dr. Lee left. Then work on identifying others they don’t want to leave and in a positive way, work on making it so employee doesn’t want to leave. The whole sueing thing isn’t going to stop the good ones, it is just going to spread bad feelings around and maybe prevent someone else from joining MS if they think it might happen to them or even worse, make others stop being so cutting edge so they can blend into the background so when they choose to leave, it isn’t such a difficult legal thing.
I admit that Microsoft has trade secrets and Intellectual Property that could be abducted here. But it isn’t like MS hasn’t done that themselves. If MS had taken better care of Dr. Lee, it is probable none of this would have come up.
I wish all the luck to Dr. Lee. I don’t know him but I expect he is a standup guy and knows where the line is on what he should or shouldn’t share with Google. I have that faith in him because he did a great job at MS (as evidenced by MS’s response to all of this) and people who really do a great job tend to have a good sense of right and wrong. I know if I were in his shoes I would be very particular what I shared and didn’t. What pride can you take in stealing a method to do something versus coming up with a better method yourself.
I think overall this is about a couple of things. The first being MS wants to maybe curb the thinking of others that may look over at Google or someplace else and think, hey, I might be treated better there. The second being that they aren’t nearly so afraid of what Dr. Lee knows now, but what he can figure out for Google down the road that MS will have lost from letting him go in the first place.
joe
[1] It seemed the MS salaries at the low end of the range I am used to making all required Doctorates and I don’t even have an Associates. I spent a couple of years at Michigan State, ran out of money and had to leave and do real work. Most computer jobs really don’t need a degree. If you are in a heavy duty R&D position, maybe, most others, I don’t think so. It certainly didn’t hurt billg to not have a degree. In fact with that history, it kind of confuses me why a degree is a requirement on anything in the technical parts of their company.
One company I worked for back in the 90’s lost me because they required a degree. They had me on board as a contractor and loved me, told me I was amazing, etc etc. However they couldn’t hire me unless I got a degree. I wasn’t willing to go do it for them to hire me into a position where I would take a pay cut and get additional responsibility. Finally, I got fed up with my contract house, put my resume out and within a week had a job offer for double what I was making. All of a sudden the company realized I was really leaving so offered me a full time employee position making about 60% more than I was making as a contractor, no degree required. It was too little and way too late not too mention a very poor and inconsistent message.
