[jwestbury]

Have you worked at Microsoft? I have. Their engineering practices are suspect at best. Nobody in Office actually knows what's going on -- it's difficult to find anyone who actually understands more than a tiny, tiny fragment of the stack. And the not-my-problem culture from the days of Gates and Ballmer stack-ranking is absolutely still present -- I found what looked like a pretty major security bug (expired user certs being accepted, including those for a service admin account), and was told by multiple long-tenured, senior engineers, that since it wasn't our service misbehaving, I shouldn't worry about it. (I ignored them, dug in more, discovered it was a totally unrelated -- and less scary -- bug, and still found the owning team to let them know.)

I've worked at -- including Microsoft -- three major tech companies and a quant hedge fund, and Microsoft's engineering practices -- at least within the Office org, where I worked -- are appalling by almost any measure, in comparison with their competitors. Their success is largely down to three things, IMO:

1. First-/early-mover advantage in many spaces.

2. Excellent business management.

3. Some very, very strong engineers at the principal level and higher.