Ex-Microsoft employee tells you all about what is wrong with Microsoft

An urge to make a difference in the world through his work prompted Alfian Tan to quit Microsoft and join Silicon Valley based start-up Mavin as its CTO, after serving the Internet giant for 13 years. The ex Microsoft Principal Development Manager would not go back there, willingly, even though a start-up life is insecure and scary, he said to Business Insider India.

Why did you quit Microsoft?

In Microsoft you are basically working for a big organisation. You are basically working for someone else’s vision. I wanted to do something different and make a difference.

And, hence he jumped at the first opportunity he got from his primary school friend, Shailesh Nalawadi, co-founder of Mavin.

Would you ever go back to Microsoft?

I wouldn’t go back willingly. If Microsoft bought our company, maybe then I would go back.

What disturbed you the most at Microsoft and no matter how hard you tried, you could not change it?

Bureaucracy! When you are working for a big product like Office and Bing, there are only so many new things that you can attempt to do. It is like trying to steer big ships and may be once a year you can throw all your political capital behind a feature you like and try to get it ship but it is quite exhausting.

You are also working for a sea of user base and the minute you have to deal with it, that just limits how much you can innovate.

In Bing, we tried to show the actual lyrics in the search results page. We built the feature and we were about to ship it and then the legal department came down on us and said you can’t.

How is working in a start-up better than working at Microsoft?

First, when you work in a big company, there are multiple layers of approval that you have to pass. If you want to ship something, the next thing you know you are in a room of 40 people, trying to get approval. In a small start-up, you move very quickly. This week I and my team shipped two features and that was really nice and empowering.

Secondly, you move faster as there is less bureaucracy.

Next is you are working for something you truly believe in. You are not working because your manager says it is the most important feature. You are working on a product that you create from your own thoughts.

The downside of working in a start-up is security. In a start-up you are building a feature but you are spending half of your time ensuring that you get the correct funding.

Would you ever quit a start-up for a big organisation after this?

It is going to be hard, to be absolutely honest.

What do you miss about Microsoft?

What I miss about Microsoft was it hires great people. When I was working in Microsoft’s search engine Bing, I was leading a team of 30 people in Redmond USA and also a team of 20 people in Hyderabad, India. In a start-up there is a much smaller team so there are limits to the amount of work you can do. Like, it is very difficult for a start-up to build a search engine but Microsoft has the resources to solve this problem. The scale is a big thing for a feature and Microsoft has it.

The second thing I miss, which we don’t normally realise, is that no matter how small a feature we build in Microsoft, it would go to millions of users. So your impact is immediate. Even if you make a small change to the small widgets at Bing homepage, you know you are going to impact hundreds of billions of users right away. That makes it much easy to go to work. The smallest thing you do will impact lot more people. This is very difficult for a start-up to achieve.

Do you see yourself making a difference in the world after 3 years in Mavin?

Our product is trying to lower the cost of mobile data. It is slowly making an impact. Our user base has grown we are getting positive feedback from them. This is something I could not have achieved in Microsoft.

(Image credits: boringbrands)