What It’s Like To Work At Microsoft vs. IBM (Data)

Culture Analysis of Engineering Teams at Microsoft and IBM

In our first installment of the Good.Data series, we delved deeper into the company cultures at Apple and Google by sharing proprietary data on the differences between their employees. [Click here to view Apple vs. Google]

This time around, we’re exploring the difference between the company culture at Microsoft vs. Google. For these two companies, the picture is intriguingly similar to what we found when comparing company cultures at Apple vs. Google.

Team Culture at Microsoft

Much like Apple, Microsoft employees fit a classic Straight Shooter profile. In comparison to their IBM counterparts, Microsoft employees are more competitive and driven, assertive and dominant. They yield to no one. On the other hand, this unflinching confidence doesn’t mean Microsoft employees are stuck in their ways: they also rate as more flexible than their IBM counterparts, which means they’re not only dishing out the punches, but rolling with them, too!

Team Culture at IBM

The personality profile of IBM’s employees paint a much different picture. Overall, IBM employees are more easygoing, collaborative, and empathetic than Microsoft’s hammer-wielding thunder-gods. A healthy dose of intellectual curiosity helps IBM folks see others’ perspectives and keeps them more open to new approaches and ideas.

Microsoft vs IBM

It’s a bit like comparing warriors and wizards (if you’re a massive geek, that is) – but who wins?

There are advantages and disadvantages on both sides. The might of Microsoft employees is in their competitiveness, self-assurance, and ability to seamlessly switch tactics when the other side is showing signs of winning. However, this comes at the expense of the kind of cohesive, mutually supportive team structure to which IBM’s aggregated personality profile lends itself.

Put another way, Team Microsoft’s powerful thrust and offroad driving skills gives them a tough-to-beat early start in the race. Meanwhile, Team IBM is applying its collective genius to equip its psychedelic Volkswagen camper-van with a nitro-injection engine. Halfway down the field, Team Microsoft screeches to a halt arguing over who gets to make the speech when they win, while Team IBM is zooming by towards the finish line, happily waving their love beads. Then again, Team Microsoft probably has a rear missile launcher… so it could really go either way.

Like Apple and Google, the average FitScore between each company’s employees and their organization tell an interesting story. IBM employees fit about as well to Microsoft as they do to their own organization – perhaps reflecting their greater level of (social) flexibility – while Microsoft employees fit better to Microsoft itself than IBM.

Check your fit score with your company and peers. Download the app here.

These findings provide yet another reminder that overall organizational culture is a lot more than the sum of its parts, and doesn’t reflect a single group mind. Rather, it’s a collaboration between different, complementary sub-cultures brought together by a unified goal. It’s a little like the states of the US, or the component countries of the EU: we don’t always understand each other’s dialects or tolerate each other’s food, but we’re all equally important components of the overall national identity… and equally baffling to anybody outside our respective countries.

Whether high-tech corporations or political unions, organizations hang together not despite their differences, but because of them.

Based on this data, which team would you prefer to work on?

Come find out at Good.Co