How Microsoft is Powering the People Business
Microsoft has and will for some time be one of the most recognized brands in the world.
From Windows to Xbox to all things in the middle, Microsoft is used at a basic consumer level down to core level programming software. My 8 year old son does not quite understand the company, history, or dynamics of Microsoft, however, he crushes me on the game NHL ’16 on Xbox. He does not know (or care) that Xbox is a Microsoft product. He cares only that it works properly and has cool games. There is, however, a feature which allows you to bring the game to control levels of NHL ’94. If we go there, I can take him down single-handedly considering I minored in video games in college. It is a little feature that easily bridges the technology gap between generations. The uniqueness of their operating system is that it is used by parents, grandparents, and everyone in between. Of course there are other operating systems and techie tools out there, but most people interact at some degree with Microsoft, and many without even knowing it, on a daily basis. It is a widely recognized name, but also embedded deep into the technology world.
Employment
According to their website, Microsoft directly employs approximately 118,000 people. That is nearly 100,000 more people than my home town in Maine. They have a full work campus with more amenities than most universities. It drives a large portion of the NW US economy, directly related to their main location in Redmond, Washington. While that number of internal employees is extremely impressive, the amount of people whose job entails working with actual Microsoft Technologies is significantly greater. Greater as in millions of people.
When speaking about being lodged in the tech space, we are referring to ALL the tools of Microsoft has that people work with regularly. I can’t go as far to say all corporations, but can confidently say most organizations have Microsoft as an element of their technology, whether it is on the hardware or software side. That is pretty imposing when you really think about it. I am not a programmer, so I will not get into the extremely technical details.
What I can speak about is my perspective on the employment side of Microsoft technologies. Being in the technology staffing business for 20+ years has given me a decent amount of insight to the most emerging and ever changing technologies. Being in the “people business,” I get to learn about emerging technologies that people want to work on, what technologies are dying, and what might be the “next big thing” on the database side. Lately, I’ve seen that SQL Developers and DBA’s are a significant need in the marketplace. Within the infrastructure world, Microsoft plays a large part in talent for Desktop and Windows Administrators. Add in other Microsoft technologies like Dynamics and SharePoint, and they seem to have covered a wide spectrum within multiple skill sets.