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I usually don't cross-post Seattle Anti-Freeze events, but this one's for a good cause...

Drink for the Cure / Bid for the Cure - Charity Auction
Oct 1, 2008 at 8pm (Location TBD - Belltown / Downtown)

Every three minutes, a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer. One out of every eight American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives. Seattle Anti-Freeze invites you to make a difference.

On Oct 1st, please join Seattle Anti-Freeze members for a silent auction to benefit Susan G. Komen foundation. Mix & mingle - drink & bid.

There is no cost for this event, but donations at the event for the Susan G. Komen foundation are, of course, appreciated.

DONATING ITEMS
Got something cool, funky, unique or useful that you'd be willing to part with? It doesn't have to be anything fancy - all donations are appreciated! In return, you receive good karma, and two free tickets to a Seattle Anti-Freeze event of your choosing.

If you have something you could donate, I'd really appreciate it :-). Click here (or just shoot me an email).

Want to come? Join the Seattle Anti-Freeze list.

One week in Buenos Aires really makes you appreciate the things the U.S. gets right - simple things, like safety regulations. The sidewalks are uneven and have gaping holes. Lane dividers in the road are mere suggestions. Steps are barely large enough for your foot and often vary in size. Building doors frequently open inwards. I've only seen one person in a wheelchair in this city, but I can't imagine how he gets around this city.

My apartment building, like many others here, actually requires a key to exit. Yes, that's right - in order to get out of my building and onto the street, I have to unlock the building door with a key. Crazy. And dangerous. Picture what would happen in a fire: the tenants all rush to the door, and the person at the front doesn't have a key. Even if they're lucky and someone passes them a key, the stampede of people rushing the door could make it impossible to open. The U.S. vividly learned its lesson on exit doors in 1911; Argentina has not.

This weekend, at a club called Crobar, I noticed another regulation that is apparently missing here in Argentina: railings. The bar probably had about five feet of standing room and then a two foot drop into the dance floor. As you might imagine, with people pushing to get a drink, it's very easy to fall off the ledge. A club in the U.S. would put a railing between the ledge and the dance floor, but why would you do a silly thing like that in the land of no negligence?

You know, maybe lawyers do add value to the world?

Yes, folks, it's true. April 11th, almost three years after my first day as a Googler (or "Noogler"), was my last day. Did I hate it? Did something go horribly wrong? Did the company completely change? No no, nothing like that.

I loved Google. It's a fantastic company, particularly for engineers. You're driving the products, it's growing quickly, and you get to solve challenging problems all the time. I learned a ton and I'm really glad I had that experience.

But, with three years at Google and four internships between Microsoft and Apple, the experience I'm missing is a startup.

With that said, let me answer some questions:

Q: So, now that you're not there, you can tell me what you were working on, right?

No, silly, that's not how NDAs work! :-) I'll let you know when it ships though.

Q: Well, what are you doing now?

At this very moment? Sitting in a hotel room in Buenos Aires. I'll be in Buenos Aires for the next three months, learning Spanish, drinking wine, eating good food, and playing around with some startup ideas. I'll be back in Seattle on August 1 and I'll eventually join a startup.

Got suggestions about what to do in Buenos Aires? Let me know!

Q: What startup will you be joining?

I'm not sure. Since I wanted to travel for a few months, I really had to do that first and then look once I get back to Seattle.

But... if you have suggestions, here's what I'm looking for:

• Project management / business role at a small company, or development for a startup
• Seattle based (or allow me to work remotely). I like Seattle and I'm not planning on leaving anytime soon.
• Ideally consumer or mobile apps, but I'm open to other ideas.

Coming soon -- Fun stories from Google: Pink Princess and the Annoyatron :-).

More than one friend has read my blog and asked, "when did you become such a feminist?" The assumption is, of course, that all feminists must be bra-burning and man-hating lesbians. Having never observed me actually burn a bra, universally hate men, or, well, "swing the other way" (much to some people's disappointment), you can see their confusion.

Out of the 100 or so RSS feeds I read, Feministing and Feministe are two of the more interesting ones. Feminists are not man-hating - they're pro-equality. They're not anti-sex - they're believe in each person making their own choice. They are women and men. If I had to generalize about the actual beliefs of feminism, I'd say that they don't believe in generalization. They believe in the individual.

They believe that pharmacists should not be able to deny contraception to women.

In Indiana, the state senate passed a measure that would allow pharmacists to refuse to do their jobs. If a woman wants contraception (including emergency contraception), pharmacists would be within their rights to refuse to fill her prescription. The bill’s sponsor initially said that it wouldn’t apply to contraception, only emergency contraception — a statement he later had to backtrack on, probably when someone informed him that emergency contraception is the exact same thing as standard birth control pills, just in a higher dose. Plus, you know, it’s contraception. And yet, “he claimed this week that it would not apply to birth control pills.”.

They believe that it's wrong that teen girls in the media are either sexualized or picked on for being ugly (think: Chelsea Clinton in the 90s vs. the Olson twins)

So there it is: ugly and worthless, or live bait/freak magnet. Those are the choices patriarchy offers to our girls. Picking on young girls for being awkward is cruel; so is sexualizing them. Men should just leave them alone until they’re grown up. But apparently that’s too much to ask.

They believe that women should not have to live in fear in Iraq.

The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion — some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.

The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other “rules” that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.

They support Clinton and Obama's views on reproductive rights - they do not support McCain's. They do not believe that you should support Clinton because she is female - in fact, many even support Obama.

They believe that abortion saves lives - literally and figuratively.

I have been an abortion provider since 1972. Why do I do abortions, and why do I continue to do abortions, despite two murder attempts?

The first time I started to think about abortion was in 1960, when I was in secondyear medical school. I was assigned the case of a young woman who had died of a septic abortion. She had aborted herself using slippery elm bark.

They believe that teens should have comprehensive sex education. Abstinence-only programs don't work.

And Republicans have… outlawing abortion and telling people to keep their legs closed until they’re married. The very things that never work. And they oppose the measures that have been proven to decrease the abortion rate. Because they’re pro-life like that.

They believe same-sex marriages should have the same rights as heterosexual marriages.

They oppose the harassment of abortion doctors.

They’re going after Dr. Tiller, a Kansas abortion provider, for approximately the 340,986th time. Dr. Tiller is a favorite of theirs because he’s one of the last abortion providers in Kansas, and he provides late-term abortions. One of their followers shot him in both arms a few years ago, his clinic has been vandalized on numerous occasions, his workers are regularly harassed, and he’s Target #1 for a “pro-life” movement that murders doctors. Tiller’s home address, family members’ information, and pictures are all posted on “pro-life” websites. For protection, he lives in a gated community, has a high-level security system surrounding his home, and wears a bullet-proof vest to work every day.

They know that rape and assault happen to women everyday, and is often covered up. They believe that it must change.

Jamie Leigh Jones was raped by her American co-workers in Baghdad. She was then imprisoned in an effort to cover up her assault.

They believe that sexism is rampant in this presidential election.

Using overtly sexist language, he has referred to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) as a "she devil" and compared her to a "strip-teaser." He has called her "witchy" and likened her voice to "fingernails on a blackboard." He has referred to men who support her as "castratos in the eunuch chorus." He has suggested Clinton is not "a convincing mom" and said "modern women" like Clinton are unacceptable to "Midwest guys." He has called her "Madame Defarge" and "Nurse Ratched."

They believe that domestic violence is very real in the US - and it affects both men and women.

The CDC said 23.6 percent of women and 11.5 percent of men reported being a victim of what it called "intimate partner violence" at some time in their lives.

The CDC defined this as threatened, attempted or completed physical or sexual violence or emotional abuse by a spouse, former spouse, current or former boyfriend or girlfriend or a dating partner. The CDC estimates that 1,200 women are killed and 2 million injured in domestic violence annually.

They believe that calling teens who are having sex "sluts" does not solve the problem. Shame does not effectively discourage sex - it discourages teens from getting help.

A state lawmaker used a derogatory term Wednesday to describe unmarried teen parents as sexually promiscuous and complained that society condones premarital sex.

"In my parents' day and age, (unmarried teen parents) were sent away, they were shunned, they were called what they are," Republican Rep. Larry Liston said during a GOP legislative caucus meeting in Denver. "There was at least a sense of shame."

Liston continued: "There's no sense of shame today. Society condones it ... I think it's wrong. They're sluts. And I don't mean just the women. I mean the men, too."

They believe that sexism is alive and well in the US - even in children.

Men presidents only

I think that having a woman president would be a bad idea for our country. Women are not meant to rule countries and be in charge. They are meant to make decisions but not confirm them.

Our president deals with some countries that don't respect or allow women in leadership positions. I wonder if the United States would have more terrorist attacks because we would be seen as weak with a woman leader. I agree that women can do many things, but leave the ruling of the countries to the men.

BRITTANY BAYLES, 13, Kennewick

They believe that "gray rape" is a myth and it condones rape.

Rape can be confusing, it doesn't make it "gray." Feminists have long fought to dispel the myth that initially consenting to one form of intimacy does not make it okay for someone to force another kind on you. In this case, the young woman was hooking up with her eventual-attacker when he forced her to perform oral sex on him.

They believe there are tough decisions in gender equality. Should you segregate buses by gender in Mexico to make them safe?

They believe that women's rights are changing each and every day.

Feminists believe in equality for men, women and transgendered individuals. They are pro-choice. They believe that teens should receive comprehensive sex education. They do not believe in shaming women on the grounds of their sexual decisions. They believe that sexual violence is a very real problem in the US and beyond. They believe that sexism - and many forms of prejudice - permeate the world.

So am I a feminist? Well, aren't you?

DISCLAIMER: No group can speak for the views of all its members. Opinions vary. Not all feminists are pro-choice, etc.

My laptop, which I fear is on its last legs, got a little servicing today from Dell. It'd been blue screening frequently since, well, since Dell last visited me two months ago (broken fan -> overheating laptop). I'm going to assume that's just a coincidence, although the timing is suspicious...

I tried reinstalling windows first, of course, but then it blue screened when I tried to reinstall. Excellent! At least Dell can't tell me it's a software issue...

I ran some tests and then Dell ran some more tests, to discover that absolutely every test passed. Wonderful! (Paraphasing)

Gayle: "All the tests passed."
Dell: "Ok, well we'll send out a technician to replace the hard drive and the CPU."
Gayle: "Ok, but we ran two separate hard drive tests and they both passed."
Dell: "Sometimes the tests skip over things."
Read: Dell is taking shots in the dark right now. Excellent.

One new hard drive and reinstall later, I'm in the process of getting my computer back up to a liveable state. It's much easier now than it was a year or two ago. There's less to install because of web-based apps, and it's easier to reinstall those few things.

• Pictures: I use Picasa. Quick, easy install. Man I love Picasa / Picasaweb - have I mentioned that? More on that another time :-).
  
• Word Processing: Somewhere, amongst piles and piles of CDs, I have the Word and Excel. I think. Google Docs & Spreadsheets works better for most things anyway (since I can access my files from other computers), so I'll hold off on installing Office for now.
  
• Email: I weened myself off Outlook years ago (I used to be a big fan, but then it broke on me) and have been using Gmail for a long time.
  
• Calendar: Google Calendar. Love it!
• Web Browsing: Firefox. Installed.
  
• Programming: For non-work things, I use .NET and Visual Studio. I recently moved my two websites (Social/Conduct and CareerCup) over to ASP.NET 2.0, which means that I can just use Visual Studio Express. Good thing too - the regular Visual Studio took sooo long to install.
  
• IM: My friends are split between Google Talk, AIM and Windows Live Messenger.
  
• Google Talk: I do prefer the windows client, so I downloaded that - small, quick, easy.
  
• AIM: While a lot of applications don't significantly improve with each version, AIM was one of the few which actually got worse. Installing was always a hassle because you have to find the appropriately old version of AIM and then match that to the right version of DeadAIM (a plugin that adds some nice features). Gmail Chat now has AIM integration - I think I'll just stick with that.
• Windows Live Messenger: Oh my this was hard to install! I download the installer (WLInstaller.exe) and open it. It starts a webpage with my default browser (firefox, of course) and then tells me that I need to use IE 5.0 or greater. Well, damn. Do I really have to change my default browser just to install Windows Live Messenger? Come on now. I eventually track down another site that offers the install file directly.
  

I'll probably get around to installing Office at some point, and maybe AIM as well. But if I had to pay a few hundred bucks for Office, would I buy it? Probably not. We really are getting increasingly close to the idea of the dummy terminal.

I just started subscribing to Microsoft's Job Blog - I figured it might have some info related to CareerCup (my own site related to interviewing, with lots of technical interview questions).

The most recent post gives a Top 10 No-No's when you contact a recruiter. The basic points are:

1. Do your homework. Call with relevant specific questions.
2. Customize your letter. Address it to me.
3. Don't treat your recruiter like they are stupid. They are your advocate, if you want them to be.
4. Know when to back off.
5. Don't lie.
6. Don't make excuses like "I'm sick."

Good advice. From an engineer's perspective, let me give some advice to recruiters (yes, you'll notice the high degree of overlap):

1. Call your relevant positions. If I'm a Software Engineer at Google who already turned down a development position at Microsoft, I'm probably not interested in your testing contractor development position in Everett. Sorry.
2. Customize your letters to me. And please spell my name right.
3. Tell me how you got my resume. Did you find it on my blog? On another website? A recommendation from a professor? The more specific you can be, the less I think it's spam.
4. Know when to back off. Yes, I'm speaking to you, Friendly Microsoft Recruiter. I really don't need to be contacted every month. You're hiring! I get it! :-)
5. Call for a specific position - at least if you want to increase your chances of being interested. I'd have to be pretty desperate for a job to be excited to hear about a "development" position at some unnamed company - and is that really the person you want?
6. Don't call me for a position I already have. Ok ok, this only happened once, but it was still pretty funny:
   

   Recruiter: "Hi Gayle, would you be interested in a Software Engineering position at Google? We have offices in Mountain View, New York, Seattle, ..."
   Me: "um, I work for Google."
   Recruiter: "What do you mean?"
   Me: "I mean... I'm sitting here, as we speak, at my desk, in Seattle, at Google."
   Recruiter: "Oh."

7. If you leave a voicemail, leave your name, number and company. Speak slowly and clearly. I recently had someone leave two voicemails and each time I couldn't hear the phone number. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have called back anyway... but still. My point remains. The same person also claimed to have sent me an email. She probably didn't spell my email address correctly.

Sigh... the fact is that this happens to the same reason that spam happens. Responses are low. Email is cheap. Personalization is expensive. What can you do?

Sigh... why do I always get sucked into these things?

By now, it seems like everyone has read Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective. And now, I too am getting sucked into this discussion...

1. The email pretty much states that one of the primary goals of this article is to give pointers for how Microsoft can convince candidates to come to Microsoft. eg, how can we spin Google's perks the other way? Keep that in mind. These are not necessarily things he does or doesn't like about Google.
   
2. People are walking away from this article thinking "oh my god people at Google work really long hours." That's not actually what it says. It actually says that people work 10am - 6pm, but also spend time working from home. 10am - 6pm is an eight hour day - including lunch. Not bad. I work for Google, used to intern at Microsoft, and most of my friends work at Microsoft. I've seen no difference whatsoever in working hours.
3. "Nearly everyone is on e-mail 24/7". Microsoft employees tend to have SmartPhones with work mail on it, Google employees don't. Also, Google employees tend to use separate accounts for personal and work emails, whereas Microsoft employees tend to use their work address for both (not sure why). So actually, Google employees can more easily stay away from their work email.
4. "Your [20%] project needs to be tacitly approved by your manager." Heh. That's not true.
5. "Most managers won't remind you to start a 20% project." That's true. Google has a more hands off management style. They don't babysit you.
6. "Google doesn't seem to think that private offices are valuable for technical staff. They're wrong." Ah, yes, the often discussed "open office" vs "private office" issue. There are pros and cons for each. The pros for a private office are pretty obvious, so I won't go into them. I think people overlook the pros for an open office: everyone on your team is right there. Have a question about the system architecture? Just ask. Everyone's right there. You don't have to call a meeting. You don't have to run down the hallway. You don't have to make a phone call. It saves a lot of time - and avoids unnecessary meetings.
   I actually had my own office for a few weeks when I first started at Google, and after that I shared an office with just one other person. It seemed cool at the time, but now, I actually prefer an open office plans. If I'm getting distracted I can put on my headphones, but normally, it's just nice to have everyone right there. (I've heard that the Bungie team at Microsoft was encouraged to switch to private offices when they were acquired. They declined. I didn't understand why they wanted cubes when I was at Microsoft either. It makes sense now.)
   
7. "My manager had over 100 direct reports and is the common case for managers at Google." A slight exaggeration on the reports, but anyway... The email discussion on management only tells one side of the story. You might think, for example, how can a manager with 100 direct reports review you? Well, they don't, your peers do. That's just one example. I guess what I'm saying is that you can't apply Microsoft's management structure (eg, reviews by managers) to Google's numbers (100 direct reports) - that's mixing and matching, and it doesn't work. The structure is very different between the two companies.
   
8. "Oh and conflict resolution between team members is very complex." Not complex, just different. Instead of some PM or manager coming down and saying "this is my decision - now go implement!", decisions are made more as a result of team discussion. A manager could step in, but usually a group consensus is better than just one person's decision.
9. "Of course, if Google handles everything for you, it's hard to think about leaving because of all the "stuff" you'll need to transition and then manage for yourself." Heh. Now you're just being silly!
   

Is he happier at Microsoft than Google? Why did he leave Google? I'd be curious about those two points which are never addressed.

In my mind, there's one pretty powerful fact in Google's favor: many people have left Microsoft for Google. Microsoft would be more than happy to take them back. If they were happier at Microsoft, don't you think they would return? I don't know anyone who has.

And... I really have to stop getting involved in petty debates :-)

When I joined Google last year, I was simultaneously thrilled to be building innovative applications and bummed to be leaving behind my college years. No, I'm not talking about dorm life and late night pizza runs - I'm talking about teaching.

I started teaching as a Sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania and loved every minute of it. At first it was leading smaller sections of a larger lecture, but I later created the curriculum for a new course titled Software Design and Development and taught this in my final two years. As graduation neared, I toyed with two career choices: teacher and software engineer. I loved both but, since I had to pick just one, I decided to join Google as a Software Engineer.

Once I joined Google though, I realized that I didn't have to pick just one: I could do both! Google's 20% Time allows engineers to spend 20% of their time working on something outside of their main project. Long story made short, that's how I wound up teaching Software Design and Development at the University of Washington in Spring 2006.

Thirteen freshman and sophomores spent the quarter learning how to design and implement large software projects. Each project involved a graphical user interface, although the priciples and techniques learned would apply to a variety of topics.

In the final four weeks of the course, students had the opportunity to build any application of their choosing. These projects clearly reflected each student's individual passions and strengths - which, being college students, meant music, games, pictures, and chat.

Andrea Parkhill, a drama major who was interested in both music and computer science, wrote MelodyScript, an application which allows the user to compose music by adding notes to a musical staff. Alan Fineberg's project had some similarities, but his was specifically focused on generating music loops. Andy Peck, however, created an application which would enable users to search their music collections and create playlists based on a variety of categories.

Julia Schwarz, a sophomore who excelled in user interface design (and in a number of other areas), created a beautiful chat client that allowed Tablet PC users to chat with hand-written text and drawings. Nathan Weizenbaum's application also supported chatting, but was instead focused on collaborative drawing of images (complete with layers, history, and all that fun stuff!). Alyssa Harding also did something image related, but her application instead acted as a photo organizer and uploader.

The popularity of arcade-style games is never a surprise: Daniel Suskin wrote Pacman, Paul Beck wrote Bejeweled, Peter Beckfield wrote Snakes, and Peter Miller wrote a networked 2 player version of Tetris.

The final three students, Cosmin Barsan, Dayne Wagner and Eli Williams, implemented a file encryption application, a peer-to-peer file synchronizer, and a personal calendar, respectively.

While students were pushed to design applications with a clear user interface and clean, well-written code, they were still offered the opportunity to design and implementation an application that matched their passions. For me, however, this course offered me the opportunity to merge my passion for teaching with my passion for software development. I thought when I graduated from school that I had to pick one or the other - I never would have thought that I could pick both!

Being a woman in computer science, I can't deny that I've seen some sexism over the years. Not the blatant "you can't do this" sexism that was prevalent thirty years ago, but rather subtle assumptions from people within the industry.

I've noticed, for example, that if I say that I work for Google and a male friend says he works for Microsoft (most of my friends in Seattle work for Microsoft), someone is much more likely to ask me what my position is - that is if they haven't just assumed outright that I'm in HR or marketing. When I say I'm a Software Engineer, many people are visibly shocked and almost skeptical.

A few months back, I went to an event where all of the 16 guys there happened to work for either Microsoft or Amazon. Guy #1 says to me after introducing himself, "So I assume you don't work for Microsoft." Guy #2 says "It must be great for you to meet all these techies... at least you have someone fix your computer." Guy #3 proceeds to explain to me what "beta" means. Thanks, boys, but I work for Google, I can fix my own computer, and I know all about "beta" ;-).

In truth, I really don't get offended by this kind of sexism; statistically, women in the US are much less likely to go into engineering and it would be difficult for anyone to be blind to this. The question is, why are there so few women in Computer Science and what can we do to change it? Actually, let's start with this: is the percentage of women in Computer Science that low (given our society, the times, etc)?

The Male / Female Ratio in Computer Science

I believe Computer Science is currently around 15% female. That figure alone doesn't worry me (hey, times change, it'll grow, right?). The problem is that the number has actually declined since 1980. Yikes.

Furthermore, I've been told by several people that parts of asia actually have very close to a 50/50 ratio. Why does the US lag so much?

Additionally, recall that fields such as medicine and law were at one point in time a male dominated field, but now have at least as many women as men - if not more.

So while things have gotten better in other fields or in other countries, it seems to have gotten worse within the US. So, yes, there is a problem... and time isn't just magically fixing it.

Why Aren't Women Drawn into Computer Science

This is a big question with many possible answers, but one important one is that women tend to be drawn to more social fields. From a young age, girls are taught to work together whereas it's seen as more "ok" for a boy to show off. As girls get older, it's almost difficult for them not to be social. Think of the uber-nerdy anti-social guys you know: how many women are equally anti-social? I can't think of a single one. Computer Science has an impression of cube monkey staring at their computer all days, and, if you're lucky, talking to those uber-nerdy engineers. That's just not that attractive of an industry to women who emphasize social interaction.

What can we do to change it?

Wish I knew... here are a few of my thoughts though with respect to this:

• Women in Computer Science clubs: I'm honestly not sure how I feel about those clubs. Personally, they're not for me. I don't feel any need for this support network, and I worry that they promote a victim mentality to both to the women in the clubs as well as to men. But, perhaps if other women need this support network, then ok...


• Developing an awareness of subtle sexism: Just because it's statistically true that a woman you meet is less likely to be an engineer doesn't mean that it's ok to make that assumption. While I'm not personally offended by these assumptions - I actually think it's somewhat amusing - it does affect the way you view women in the field. If you look at a woman and assume she's not an engineer, then you're more likely to assume that female engineer is less technical... and that's where the problem is. But, if you can consciously recognize that you make this assumption, it's easier to overcome it.


• Turn it social: If women are less interested in computer science because it's less social, make it a more social field in college. Encourage students to work together and set up study groups for freshmen. Create social activities that people want to go to so that students meet each other. Assign team projects where different teams need to work together (for example, defining common protocols). Turn it into a social field.

Does being female hurt you in Computer Science?

There are pluses and minus. Sure, more people will know who you are, but people know you for the wrong reasons. It's probably easier to get an interview, but probably tougher to get the job (it's tougher to convince someone that you're technical if you're female). I'm not really sure how it all evens out, but here's what I will say:

Everyone will be judged prematurely for something. If it's not your gender, it's your race. If it's not your race, it's your sexual orientation, how you dress, what school you went to, what degrees you have, how much money you have, etc. At the end of the day, does it really matter what people are judging you for? Everyone's going to face prejudice; you just have to learn to shrug your shoulders and develop a thick skin.

The front page of the Seattle Times today featured an article on me (and some other people) in reference to employees leaving Microsoft to go to Google. After three internships at Microsoft and a two year stint as a Microsoft campus representative, why didn't I go to Microsoft?

I went to Penn's career fair yesterday representing Google and that seemed to be the popular question there as well. I guess most people just assumed that I'd go back to Microsoft.

So what happened?

It wasn't a clear cut decision. My offers at Microsoft were from Mobile Devices and Windows Media Player, and I was really excited about Mobile Devices. At Google, I didn't know what I would be working on, and I'm not that interested in server-side or web programming.

But, there were lots of little things that made me lean away from Microsoft:

• I wanted to do some feature design work, and Google lets developers help drive the product. At Microsoft, while developers can be "in the feedback loop," they're not driving the product - they're just giving occasional feedback. No, it's not the same thing. The PMs at Microsoft do all the design. Yes, there are some group that are very technical (aka, compilers) that are more dev driven, but those aren't groups I'm interested in.
  


• I'd been getting this vibe from people that Microsoft's culture was changing... for the worse


• Microsoft, in my experience, seemed to take a "good enough" approach rather than truly driving for excellence. I didn't really recognize this until I went to Apple and I saw the contrast between the two attitudes. Apple really seemed driven towards perfection, where Microsoft would shrug its shoulders and say "eh, good enough." Google's attitude, although I had never worked there, seemed more similar to Apple's.


• Microsoft was cutting back on benefits whereas Google seemed to be expanding their benefits. Sure, maybe Google will change, but there's nothing holding me to stay at Google forever if it does.


• My last summer at Microsoft just wasn't much fun. I didn't exactly have the best manager, and I just wasn't that into the product I was working on. While that may not have been representative of Microsoft, I can't say that didn't make Microsoft a little less glamorous in my eyes.


• Microsoft didn't really seem to work together as a company; instead, it seemed to have a "not my team, not my problem attitude."


• How many products are Microsoft do people say are just "awesome?" Not that every product is bad - I'm not one of those people that sits and complains about Windows. But really, how many products are customers really excited about? Xbox, maybe. What else? If your customers aren't excited about what you're doing, will you be?


• And finally, let's face it: it's nice not working for the "evil" empire. Microsoft is a monopoly - maybe not in the technical sense of the word (it's debatable), but in the sense of it making it damn tough for anyone to enter the industry because Microsoft can always bundle software. It's nice working for a company that you can really feel good about - and that actively remembers to not be "evil."

So those were all the little things that were going on in my head when I was debating the offers. I guess what it comes down to is that once I spent sometime at Apple, I realized that Microsoft is not as great as it seems.

Meanwhile, Google had these great things about it: the 20% time projects (engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their time on a different project), free lunch, different locations, etc.

For some reason though, it still wasn't clear cut. I really was seriously considering the Mobile Devices offer. In the end though, I realized that I was simply more excited about Google, and nothing Microsoft could offer me could make up for being excited about your job.