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Working at the company whose products you don't want to buy with your own money

YS2003

YS2003

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Dec 24, 2004
2,138
0
Finally I have arrived.....
As the title suggested, I am interested in your choices.

My choices of working for the company whose products I don't want to purchase:
Microsoft (I don't like Windows as that OS is simply just so messed up to the core)
Ford (Ever since I made an error by getting the Escort when I was a college freshman, I am not keen with Ford; Ironically, I now drive the RX-8, which is a Mazda division of Ford).
 
If I had to choose between the two, Microsoft no doubt. Just for the job security. The auto companies are barely staying afloat. Microsoft isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Plus, with Ford being union, you'd basically be forced to buy an American car. I've heard some bad things from people who work at auto companies and parked their foreign car in the lot. Let's just say the cars didn't leave the lot in the same condition they came in. The union guys don't take too kindly to foreign cars. And the morons who do that crap are too stupid to realize your RX-8 is built by a division of Ford. At least with Microsoft, you could continue to use a Mac at home. You might have to invest in a Zune and a Windows Mobile phone though ;)
 
clearly microsoft. Ford has lost money for a few years now, and I would imagine be slashing jobs. Microsoft has many benefits as well. I hear the health insurance plan there is amazing.
 
Koodauw said:
clearly microsoft. Ford has lost money for a few years now, and I would imagine be slashing jobs. Microsoft has many benefits as well. I hear the health insurance plan there is amazing.
Click to expand...

If what I hear is true, Microsoft also pays more then Apple. That being said, sorry Apple... But I would not and will not buy any Microsoft crap.
 
shfreelance said:
If what I hear is true, Microsoft also pays more then Apple. That being said, sorry Apple... But I would not and will not buy any Microsoft crap.
Click to expand...

You can't compare salaries for jobs in different regions of the country. I make good money doing what I do, and it's plenty for me to live off of in St. Louis and I have enough spending money left over to enjoy my time when I'm not at work. Now say a company in Silicon Valley wants to pay me $5,000 more a year to do the same thing. On paper, this company would pay more, but I can guarantee you that the salary I'd be making over there would barely be enough to get by, since everything costs so much more in the Bay Area. So yes, technically, I'd be making more money, but in reality, I wouldn't be.

That said, I'm not sure which has a higher cost of living....Cupertino or Redmond. The entire west coast is pretty high when it comes to COL
 
yg17 said:
That said, I'm not sure which has a higher cost of living....Cupertino or Redmond. The entire west coast is pretty high when it comes to COL
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Microsoft isn't just in Redmond. I'm sitting in my Microsoft office in Mountain View, California (just down the road from Google and Intuit). There are offices elsewhere, too. There's even an office in Fargo, which makes this California girl shiver just thinking about it. :eek:

For that matter, Microsoft isn't just Windows. It's a huge company, there are lots of different pieces of it. Most people think of either Windows or Office when they think of Microsoft, but there's more to the company. There's all of the web stuff (Hotmail et al), there's the hardware (mice, keyboards, etc) guys, there's Xbox, there's stuff like Microsoft Money or Visual Studio. There's even Mac development (and hey, we're hiring developers, testers, program managers, user experience designers, and .

Plus I drive a Mercedes, so I don't think you can work for that other car maker. ;)

Seriously, if you do want to know more about working for the evil empire, feel free to PM me. :) I'd rather work with people who want to be here, so I'm not going to try to convince you to work here if it's not the right thing for you to do.

Regards,
Nadyne.
 
I worked for Sprint, I wouldn't want to buy their products/services after seeing how messed up the company was for myself. That and I wouldn't want to pay the roaming charges since I live outside the US :D

Prior to working for the company I heard all over the internet that Sprint sucks "because of Customer Service", but I saw it for first hand, it's so very true.. Making an upsell on text messaging was more important than fixing the customer's problem(s).
 
A job is a job. If you work somewhere where you are passionate about what you are doing than that is even bettter; however, if you need to make money and a company that you might not like is going to pay you the most money I would think that working there for a few years wouldn't be a bad idea and then take your savings and go do something that you really want to do.
 
I don't think I would buy a software package from the company I work for, costs around $500,000 so probably a bit pricey for me :)
 
you know, regardless of your choice, it will be a good experience. it might help you see what you really want to do, what you're really passionate about, and what you really don't want to do, ever again.
 
SilvorX said:
I worked for Sprint, I wouldn't want to buy their products/services after seeing how messed up the company was for myself. That and I wouldn't want to pay the roaming charges since I live outside the US :D

Prior to working for the company I heard all over the internet that Sprint sucks "because of Customer Service", but I saw it for first hand, it's so very true.. Making an upsell on text messaging was more important than fixing the customer's problem(s).
Click to expand...

I also worked for Sprint. I agree with you 100%. The downside with Sprint is that if you want to use your phone outside the US, and a few cities in Canada, you won't be able to since Sprint uses CDMA which is only in the US and a few cities in Canada. This year I went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on a company function with Sprint. Sprint sends the top customer service agents from their call centers on a special function every year. Most of the customer service executives were there. They spent upwards of $2.5 million on that function, and also they had to build a few cell phone towers to have coverage there. We were the top 1% of the customer service agents Sprint had. I'd like to point out that I wasn't trying to be nice to customers, in fact I'm really mean to the customers. I just fixed their issue and let them go. If I was in the top 1% of their customer service representatives, how bad do you think the other 99% of them are?

The only way I'd use Sprint is if they paid me one million dollars a month to use their service.
 
maestro55 said:
A job is a job. If you work somewhere where you are passionate about what you are doing than that is even bettter; however, if you need to make money and a company that you might not like is going to pay you the most money I would think that working there for a few years wouldn't be a bad idea and then take your savings and go do something that you really want to do.
Click to expand...

You could break it down into three groups:

job - Pays money. Work is tolerable
job with company you love - Same as above but the company you work for gives you warm fuzzies.
career - You love what you do. Doesn't matter so much how you feel about the company.
 
Microsoft is a good company in my mind. Even if you don't like Windows (personally I don't dislike it, I just don't prefer it) they are a clear driver in the technology industry and do produce a lot of very good products, including products for the Mac!

So, yeah, I'd have absolutely no problem working for MS.

Course I wouldn't have a problem working for Ford either, but to me MS sounds more interesting. Oh, and Redmond, WA is way nicer than Detroit (no offense to any Detroiters!)
 
yg17 said:
And the morons who do that crap are too stupid to realize your RX-8 is built by a division of Ford.
Click to expand...

I think that it is pretty common knowledge that Ford has controlling interest in Mazda and has for many years. I drive a 2008 Ford Fusion, great car, but I know deep under the sheet metal it's a stretched Mazda6. The Ford Taurus and Lincoln MKS are actually a Volvo S80 underneath.
 
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