Comment by stackghost
19 hours ago
>How do we get to gigs?
Microsoft, who has owned LinkedIn since 2016, has recently been making headlines because recently they fired a lot of their engineers and QA staff and are now essentially vibecoding huge chunks of their enterprise.
What's more, Microsoft never paid the really big bucks like the FAANG companies, and so it's more or less an open secret that at the height of the tech hiring frenzy Microsoft had to fight for B-tier engineers that weren't good enough to work at e.g. Apple.
So, it's been 10 years, which is long enough for that trademark Microsoft mediocrity to seep into LinkedIn. And they're probably vibe coding everything. That's how you get to gigs.
"What's more, Microsoft never paid the really big bucks like the FAANG companies"
I never knew this open secret. In my day msft was very glamorous and I guess something like oracle played the role you're ascribing to msft now. I wonder what their strategy was? (I tend to doubt this was a careless/unexamined decision.) Maybe they figured that paying extra for individuals doesn't get you much if you have enough structure in place? A Bill Bellichik approach to hiring. Is the relationship you're making (FAANG salaries == better products) accepted as true?
I only have my own observations of their products and secondhand info but my understanding is Microsoft simply doesn’t care about engineering. They have a sales pitch (product idea), then they build and ship the MVP that can earn money. If something sells, they figure they can solve scaling by throwing enough money at it. Classic b-tier tech company (and startup) garbage. They never work out the unit economics, etc.
FAANG (at least the few I’m familiar with) tend to be engineering companies. They hire talented engineers who can work from first principles and build products with profitable unit economics that solve interesting new problems. I don’t think Microsoft even knows what software engineering would mean.
Good question. For a long time I think the justification was location: Microsoft is in Seattle, and it’s only the Bay Area that is getting inflated salaries.