Microsoft HR can get Very Very Mad at You

Microsoft – the great empire of the Pacific Northwest.   Free drinks and snacks, huge discounts at the company store, and rain.   In an attempt to keep my secret identity as a vampire, I needed a summer job where there was never the possibility that I would be exposed to sunlight.   My first choice was a city at the bottom of the sea, or a coalmine, but I settled for Seattle.  Since I had no skills as a lumberjack, barista, or airplane mechanic, I was lucky to find gainful employment at Microsoft.  More specifically, I was part of the prestigious ‘business summer internship’ program for MBA students.   Fifteen students from the bestest business schools were selected to spend a summer helping Microsoft dominate everything that they didn’t already dominate.   Rock-ON.  I mean, these are the smartest people around -  right?

Fast -forward to the last week of my internship.  The summer hadn’t quite evolved as I had hoped it would.  Surprisingly, it started to go downhill the day I met ‘my boss’.  Or, more specifically, the person who “got stuck” with the summer intern and  had no interest in ‘finding work’ for them to do nor ‘guiding them in the Microsoft workplace’.   So after leaving me on the doorstep of the Microsoft Project Group, she was gone.  Of course her bi-weekly updates were very detailed and specific about what tasks I was to complete and when I had any problems she was always there to help and clarify things for me.  Which is true, except for the help, management, guidance, or interest in making my internship something that would be valuable to myself and Microsoft.  I can’t really blame her, I mean she had the corporate ladder to climb so having some whiny MBA student to babysit really cramped her ‘upword mobility’.

In talking with the other vampires interns, I found out that most had the same experience that I was having.  Specifically, most of the interns were ‘assigned’ to bosses who had no real time or interest in managing them.

So after squishing shaking Bill Gates’ hand at a meet&greet, I felt compelled to help Microsoft improve their intern program.  How was I going to do this?  What about an email survey to all the business interns asking them about their summer experience, what was good, what was bad, and what could be improved?  Great idea – I mean who wouldn’t want to get some hard data on how the business internship program was doing?

Apparently Microsoft HR is ‘who’.  They really really really didn’t like the fact that I had decided to try to ‘help’ Microsoft and got VERY ANGRY.  I got an email from someone very high-up in HR basically telling me that I had absolutely no business trying to help the internship program and that I needed to (I kid you not) wait at my office for someone from HR to come over and confiscate my survey, all data, and to make sure everything was erased from my machine.

So when the HR droid came to collect-everything, I got another lecture about “my job” and how I was hurting the company with my rouge actions.

Of course, I am sure that they have improved the program considerably since my tenure in Seattle, but it always astounds me when ‘smart people’ think that they can try to push convoluted stupidity down the throats of others – particularly those whom you have selected for being ‘the best and brightest’.

Needless to say, I wasn’t asked back.