Readit NewsAlso, this monopolization is driving me mad.
Good for him. Google is now excluded from the "dream" companies I'd want to work for.
I was interviewed by engineers who were all just recent college grads, no managers, tech leads, or anyone I felt were probably more qualified to interview me. The environment felt toxic. Most people I talked to looked unclean, like they just got out of bed to work. Had red eyes like they were tired. And the workplace was just not as clean as I was hoping. There were a set of dirty plates in the conference room I was interviewed in, and no one bothered to remove them the entire time.
From people I have talked to, my experience was pretty unique, and most people have had good interviews there. But even as an outlier, I don't like the chance of it being exactly like my experience. Things like this really put stuff in perspective for me though. I still went through the entire process, but in the end, rejected the offer. I wouldn't want to work in an environment like Google's, it feels toxic, and engineers feel like they are overworking themselves to death.
From my perspective, all the streaming services should be working together to create a healthy marketplace for independent music, and providing every opportunity they can for musicians to avoid signing a big-four contract. If Warner and Sony, and UMG get their act together and create a joint venture streaming service that's the exclusive host of the content they own, Spotify, Google Music, and Apple Music are screwed.
Unfortunately for music, the exclusivity has started to show up in some cases. Artists that own the Tidal service don't allow any of their music on competing services, and Apple has been signing contracts with musicians to have new content show up on their service several months in advance before it does on other services (like Jay Z and Kanye).
The thing that stands out to me is how much more successful product and project managers are at my company, and they are doing much less work and have less hectic jobs. Software dev is interesting, but I plan to transition into management because I think a software development background can actually help me propel much further in the career than just sticking to programming will. And the other thing is that as a developer, I have to continue to keep up with newer technologies and make sure that I know what's new, or be at the risk of being replaced eventually.
CS is a great field, but I think that the pace at which most big companies hire and lay off employees is too significant to ensure a stable job for too long.
As someone who does a lot of work with Intellectual Property, I am amazed that this product name is not protected, and even if it's not (because of the broad applications of the concept), I am disappointed by a company like Microsoft for essentially "stealing" another company's product name and releasing it a few days later. It feel very unclassy and I lost a lot of respect from Microsoft from this announcement.
I'd like to hear everyone else's viewpoint on this. Is Microsoft breaking IP laws here, or is this just something unethical?