I Worked at Microsoft Cloud and Google Mobile for 3 Years — Here Are the Differences in Ecosystems

Why working on cloud vs. mobile (Edge) is so different?

Photo by Fernando Hernandez on Unsplash.

I recently hit my third work anniversary at Google!

It was on the 21st of May. I had a couple of colleagues and my wife congratulating me for this. That made me wonder if this is really something that deserves praise. Somewhere down the line, it took me on a retrospective journey, and here we are — with a long essay!

I joined Google on the 21st of May 2019 and before this, I spent three years working at Microsoft.

For me it wasn’t just a change of employer or tag, when I made the switch I:

• Moved from India to Singapore.
• Moved from working on the cloud to working on mobile / camera technologies.
• Moved from thinking about powerful distributed systems to thinking about low-powered edge devices.
• Moved from building for enterprise customers to building for end users.
• Moved from working more or less independently to leading others.

So in a way I just got 50–50% experience in all these verticals. Although I must confess, the second half benefitted greatly from all the…