Scott Berkun

#41 – Why I left Microsoft

By Scott Berkun, May 2005

My reasons for leaving Microsoft were the opposite of why I went to work there. I arrived at Microsoft a scared kid just out of college. I was desperate to start my life, and get out of debt. During my senior year I interviewed with every software company I could find and was rejected by every one. When graduation came I had no where to go so I moved into my girlfriend’s apartment. My friends left for new cities and the start of their adult lives, or swallowed more of their pride than I could, and moved in with the parents. Soon my girlfriend left for the summer, studying half a planet away in Australia. My only companion was my dog Butch. We lived cheap together: ramen noodles and dog bones. I paid the bills writing chapters for technical books, and essays for magazines. At night I’d escape by poking at a novel that would never see the light of day.

For years I’d been following the plan given to me: go to high school, go to college, get a job. From day one of kindergarten onward there was always a next step waiting. The choices were easy and safe: which classes, which activities, which universities. But an hour after my college graduation, sitting alone in an empty apartment on Beeler street in Pittsburgh, there were no more choices laid out for me. There was nothing. I confronted my future as a kind of void for the first time and was terrified. I’d never understood that emptiness, despite seeing its effect on older friends and my older brother. Until I was sitting alone surrounded by it, without the defense of a plan or a friend, I had no idea how frightening it was.

So that July, when I was invited to Seattle for a second chance at Microsoft (I’d been rejected the first time), it was a godsend. No one else was calling. The night before my interview, too nervous to sleep, I drove my rented Geo Metro all over Seattle. The long stretches of tall pine trees and the wide clean streets looked to me, a boy raised in Queens, like a foreign country. Everything in Seattle was neat and safe, and so quiet. I drove slowly through the night, afraid of getting in trouble just for being there. Before heading to my hotel, I went to the Microsoft campus, a long stretch of 3 story buildings on shallow green hills, laid out between forests and sports fields. I stopped by one of the basketball courts and stepped out of the car, taking it in. I doubted I’d ever see that place again.

After a year at Microsoft, around 1995, I became a program manager on the Internet Explorer web browser project. I was paid well to lead smart people in the making of software used by millions of people. Some of the dreams I had as a computer science student, the idea of designing something many people would use, had come true. Before I knew it I was in my mid-twenties, was promoted to a team leader, and was rewarded for being as smart and creative as I could be. Soon I managed others, and years later would have the role of teaching other teams of engineers what I’d learned.

But when my ten year mark at Microsoft wasn’t far away, I felt the return of the emptiness I’d felt on graduation day. This time the void wasn’t about what was outside me, it was about what was going on inside. I questioned what I was doing with my time on the planet. Dreams of my college years had been fulfilled, and if I didn’t make big changes soon, I knew I’d be repeating myself. There were other challenges I wanted, and I became terrified of spending my life like a sad, confused bird of prey, circling the same territory over and over again, never understanding why there was nothing new to find. I needed a new situation to jump into and despite what my manager’s and peers said, I knew I couldn’t do that while working in the same place. I had to move on. I was surprised to find that even though I was ten years older, my fears about the big unknowns were just as scary as before. But when I measured my fears about staying, I found they were stronger than those about leaving, so I left.

So I chose to leave Microsoft less for reasons of escaping a particular place or group of people, but more to seek out a new set of circumstances to live in. Just like I sought out Microsoft to escape my fears of the post-college emptiness, I looked to leave Microsoft to create not a void, but a new space to grow in: one of my own choosing. I ran to Microsoft to escape my fears of failure. I left Microsoft to define my own idea of success. I pulled out the beaten up novel, and the half written essays, and planned a life around the writing of things, the deepest, scariest, truest dream I had. How long I’ll last, I don’t know. Success with a writing life, even on my own terms, is harder to come by than with software. But its been over a year now and I haven’t looked back.

26 Responses

• 
• Phil Simon - June 24, 2009 at 3:02 am #

• This is one of my favorites, man.

  
  

• 
• Ali - June 25, 2009 at 11:54 am #

• i just read the myths of innovation. you have done a awsome jobs. this is now one of the best book i ever read
  thanks
  keep up the good work

  
  

• 
• Niko - August 20, 2009 at 4:12 am #

• Great essay! Your books are ones of my favorites… can’t wait for a new one.

  
  

• 
• claymm - January 18, 2010 at 9:00 am #

• You lived in Seattle for 10 years without learning the difference between pine and cedar and Douglas-fir. Them trees ain’t pines.

  
  

• 
• Mackenzie - January 18, 2010 at 9:39 am #

• Hello Scott :)

  Sorry I do not know much about your previous blog posts. This one caught my attention through Twitter.

  As a 15 year old Sydney school student heading into grade 10 this in the coming few weeks I have decided that when I leave school I want to move to Seattle and work for Microsoft. I m not sure what position I want inside the company though.

  My question is, what is Microsoft like to work for? Do you think that the company has a long future ahead of it and would you work for them again? Also anything else useful you can think of :)

  You are probably thinking ‘Why is a 15 year old boy thinking about what he wants to do hen he leaves school? He should be out with friends!’ I am really passionate about the future of technology, epically the future of the Windows operating system and I want to be a apart of it.

  If you are unable to answer these questions that is fine, I just thought I would try.

  Thank you for your time,

  Mackenzie.
  @mackenziepricee

  
  

• 
• Scott Barstow - January 18, 2010 at 10:22 am #

• Scott –

  I have just stumbled onto your blog via YCombinator Twitter feed. I really enjoyed this article, and it hits very close to my personal position at this time.

  I have spent a lot of time thinking about why I made the decisions I made in the past regarding career, and they were very much along the lines of what you articulated here. It was the expected thing to do, for the most part.

  Even though your post is 5 years old, it was really timely for me personally.

  
  

• 
• Omkar dash - January 18, 2010 at 11:06 am #

• Very Very moved by this piece of writing. Bookmarked you! I can related myself, somehow.

  A Fresh engineering graduate who just started working at Asia’s largest IT company.
  Twitter: @OmkarDash

  
  

• 
• Omkar dash - January 18, 2010 at 11:08 am #

• Very Very moved by this piece of writing. Bookmarked you! I can relate myself, somehow.

  A Fresh engineering graduate who just started working at Asia’s largest IT company.
  Twitter: @OmkarDash

  
  

• 
• Shadow14l - January 18, 2010 at 11:23 am #

• Bullshit, you got fired for not doing your job.

  
  

• 
• Scott Berkun - January 18, 2010 at 11:27 am #

• To Shadow14l: Interesting. I’ve actually never been fired. I suppose that has more to do with the good fortune of never working for a company that was falling apart, or for managers who were unfair, but every single job I’ve left in my life, so far, was by choice.

  
  

• 
• Eddi Hughes - January 18, 2010 at 12:27 pm #

• I feel inspired to look down the path of the future.

  The last part about taking on writing reminded me of Californication.

  
  

• 
• Maintenance Man - January 18, 2010 at 12:28 pm #

• This seems strange. I thought it was very hard for developers to get a job at Microsoft. To think that they were the only one who offered you a job back then.

  As an aside, did you make any money off Microsoft stock options. I know their stock has been stagnant recently. But if you had some old options priced low…

  
  

• 
• Stephen Lloyd Webber - January 18, 2010 at 7:34 pm #

• Way to go. I’m a similar kind of guy. Goodbye to the University – hello to living in Italy and teaching online!

  
  

• 
• Pankaj - January 18, 2010 at 8:23 pm #

• hi scott,
  nice explanation of the various phases of life & inspirational too that u had gone through. I just wish and pray that you scale new heights while doing something new and creational in your life.
  Your New Friend.
  Pankaj

  
  

• 
• Sachin - January 18, 2010 at 10:59 pm #

• is this the base for your new novel???

  
  

• 
• Scott Berkun - January 18, 2010 at 11:00 pm #

• Sachin: No. Although I would like to write a book about my time at Microsoft, I doubt I’d make it fictional.

  
  

• 
• Sachit Gupta - January 19, 2010 at 2:49 pm #

• Scott, really like this post. About to graduate from college, this is exactly how I feel.

  
  

• 
• Leann - January 21, 2010 at 4:43 pm #

• Love it! That’s why I left Microsoft ;-) Good for you for living with courage and conviction (even when it was scary) and thanks for your MS contributions!

  
  

• 
• Mita - January 22, 2010 at 2:35 pm #

• Hi,

  Reading this today, seven days before I am going for most probably the most important interview of my life, gives me great hope and comfort.

  Its nice to read about your amazing journey, your courage to write about your feelings, and for being able to leave a place like MS for chasing your dream…

  Great work and I know you are a survivor, so all is well…

  R/
  - Mita -

  
  

• 
• Doug Thomas - January 25, 2010 at 12:43 pm #

• I have no doubt you will find that “success” isn’t what you seek, but when you find it- whatever “it” is for you- you will know it, and you will smile! For me it was retiring over a year before I turned 62, using after tax funds to pay for the first year and a third of a frugal but satisfying life of blogging, volunteering in my community, and rescuing a pound cat I call Louie. I type this as I smile. “It” for me was removing myself from the poisoned world of office politics and change programs that each promised to be am improvement over the one before. Yeah.

  
  

Links to this article

• scottberkun.com » Blog Archive » I need your help with the new book - May 22, 2007 at 1:20 pm

• [...] you may know, I quit my job 4 years ago to write full time. It takes about two years to write a book, and my second, The myths of [...]

  
  

• links for 2010-01-18 « that dismal science - January 18, 2010 at 12:30 pm

• [...] Why I left Microsoft (tags: microsoft writing life career essay scottberkun) [...]

  
  

• Leaving your job to follow your dreams at Nick Carroll, PhD - January 18, 2010 at 6:25 pm

• [...] Hacker News on a daily basis. You find lots of gems that keep you going, like this article on why Scott Berkun left Microsoft. Scott left Microsoft “less for reasons of escaping a particular place or group of people, [...]

  
  

• Closer To The Ideal » Blog Archive » The sensation of not knowing the next step in life, feeling lost - January 19, 2010 at 1:20 am

• [...] Scott Berkun writes about feeling lost after graduating from college: For years I’d been following the plan given to me: go to high school, go to college, get a job. From day one of kindergarten onward there was always a next step waiting. The choices were easy and safe: which classes, which activities, which universities. But an hour after my college graduation, sitting alone in an empty apartment on Beeler street in Pittsburgh, there were no more choices laid out for me. There was nothing. I confronted my future as a kind of void for the first time and was terrified. I’d never understood that emptiness, despite seeing its effect on older friends and my older brother. Until I was sitting alone surrounded by it, without the defense of a plan or a friend, I had no idea how frightening it was. [...]

  
  

• Christians dagbok – 2010-01-19 | En sur karamell - January 19, 2010 at 2:03 pm

• [...] Shared Why I left Microsoft. [...]

  
  

• Microsoft Mouth for Hire Forrester Research Becomes Even More Discreet | Boycott Novell - February 12, 2010 at 2:05 am

• [...] is having trouble and its financial results are constantly declining [1, 2, 3, 4]. Scott Berkun, a former employee of Microsoft who is known to many, has just responded to the claim from a former Microsoft vice president, who [...]