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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I always thought about MSFT as like working for the government: A somewhat boring, stable, 9-5, predictable workplace, but you're exchanging that for lower total compensation. But you can stay there for an actual career, family and all that.

Whereas the more "fun" companies like Google/Facebook/Amazon will chew you up and spit you out, and you just have to make as much money as possible in your 20s/early 30s before you burn out.

This could be a slightly unfair stereotyping of these companies, but from the people I've spoken to it rings true.

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You can stay at Google or Facebook forever, it's just a matter of finding yourself on the right teams with the right work-life balance. If you chase the most exciting projects at any company, it's a recipe for burn out because you'll be working a lot more than you would be on a "necessary, stable, boring" project/system.

I agree! I have not had the opportunity to work at Google or Facebook but at my current job I always take up forsaken projects as that usually has a lot of up potential and very less down potential. Everybody wants to work on the shining new tech but no one wants to work on that maintenance project which is actually is creating those new tech opportunities in the first place.

> I always thought about MSFT as like working for the government: A somewhat boring, stable, 9-5, predictable workplace

That obviously wasn't true in the 90s (see the famous Microserfs book), but might be true today, so I would argue against the "always" for those of us around then.

To be clear: working at Microsoft is a hell of a lot better than working in government. You're generally fulfilled creatively and paid extremely well - at least in comparison to everywhere but the very top paying tech firms.

What the commenter is saying is true though, Microsoft is a place where you can have an actual career and great work-life balance. It's been that way for at least a decade now.

One thing I liked when I was there, which was wow, 15 years ago, now... everyone[1] got their own closed-door office. It was a lot more like academia or how I might envision a Japanese corporation.

[1] Depending on your department and logistics, the definition of 'everyone' occasionally varied.

I can't really judge that, I mean, I've worked for Microsoft but not the government. Just that...the "work-life balance" thing wasn't anywhere near the stereotype when I was school in the 90s (but I did not work for them then either).

Google has pretty good work/life balance - it's much more of a "lifestyle" company now than Apple/Facebook/Amazon. I get the sense Netflix is heading in that direction as well.

You're still working on pretty complex codebases and tough technical problems though, so while you usually do not need to pull extra hours outside of business, you really do need to concentrate intently while working.

That hasn't been my experience at Google. I feel like the work life balance is pretty good, and I typically work under 45hr/wk.

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