Sharing the Pain
Saturday night’s reception at Interaction 08 was hosted by Microsoft. Aside from the four Xboxs that were set up (one of which was running Rock Band… with a stage!), the event was marked for me by a discussion I had with three Microsoft employees (well, one was a former employee). I found it quite interesting that they are in an identical situation to my own. While they have a large group of designers in the company, they are a miniscule percentage compared to the number of developers. They have trouble keeping ahead of the game. As one of them said, when there are 500 developers ready to start on the next version of Windows, they aren’t going to sit around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the designers to give them specifications. My company has far fewer developers, but only one of me.
I can’t decide whether to feel comforted or depressed that designers at one of the most successful companies on the planet (financially speaking) have the same complaints and frustrations that I do myself.