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have a couple friends now who have gotten dev jobs at microsoft. I've since turned down their offers to apply and have them vouch for me twice now - not sure if their recommendations would mean anything to begin with at such a place.

this has gotten me a lot of criticism from peers and mentors who have chided me for "throwing away a golden ticket" on my resume.

at first I declined because I sure as fuck did not believe I had the skills to last very long there - and truth is I probably still don't.

but now I see it as a case of the cliche "corporate devil" that everything I believe in in terms of software freedom is squarely against.

I mean, I don't really think I have the chops to make it far with the open source and free software communities either, but if I had to pick a dream or a goal to move towards, that would be it. I don't want money or reputation. I just want to be free to tinker with the world as I please.

maybe I'll have the courage next hacktober... but until then, I'm just gonna focus on learning and self-improvement. no one can ridicule me for being a dumbass if I'm actually putting in the effort to learn and improve, right?

would welcome any advice for aspiring open source contributors, as I'm not really sure where to begin that wouldn't make me look like a total hack (pun not intended)

Comments
  • 0
    Maybe I'm missing something but as far as MS goes these days... I don't really see a lot of moral dilemmas as far as working for them.

    In the tech community a lot of tech 'choices' get lumped together as 'evil' and I might not agree with them but that doesn't make them serious moral or 'i wouldn't work for them' type issues for me... that I know of.
  • 1
    My advice if you’re not afraid of life, write lots of code and live your life not life of others. Work where you like, do what you want, make mistakes, fail as much as you can as long as you’re young and if you have money or family that supports you.

    If you want to live like others, take corporate job, get married, take mortgage, buy house, buy wagon, raise children, plant tree.
    Most people are happy when they achieve that - that’s how corporate engines work.
  • 0
    Just to let you know, developers who have said ms and Google evil and all that, ask them which company they work for. Do their company have 100% satisfied customer.

    No company is evil. MS, Google, fb, Apple these are global companies. Thir user base is larger than population of countries. Do the no of users who hate or not satisfied is also large.

    But then again, this doesn't make them good or bad company. Treat them as a software development company.

    At the same time, whatever I said about devs in first para, that also don't mean they don't have right to criticise or put their opinion against these if their company is not good. They have all the right to that.
    But then again it your choice to understand, that's their opinion, even if they are in a group.

    Your opinion should be yours.
    (these are my opinion)
  • 1
    I work for MS.

    First of all internal recommendation means alot.
    Alot of starters here have imposter syndrome so you fit well. Noone expects you to know it all, but rather to keep self improving. You can do that at MS.

    Btw. You can freely tinker around as long as you don't do competition to your job or MS. Moonlighting is not uncommon.

    Give it a shot! And yeah for a dev this is gold in a resume/CV.
  • 0
    I'd say a year or two in the company would teach you a lot while getting paid. After that you can still decide if you want to stay or move on.

    Moving out of your comfort zone is exactly the right thing to do if you want to learn.
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