Question

Microsoft OS team is a group of very respected and talent software engineers. They have worked together for 10+ years in most cases and typically deliver on-time and on-budget. The team tends to exclude younger engineers and other members of the Microsoft community from joining their team, projects and even social events. You are assigned to project manage an small piece of the next OS update. You rather new to Microsoft but are aware of the team’s reputation. What obstacles could this team face and how would you manage around them?

Answer 1

The Microsoft team uses experts from all over the world in different fields. However, the company tends to only focus on old aged employees because of their perception that younger employees lack experience and cannot work effectively. Nevertheless, the perspective is wrong in many ways. The younger employees have in-depth and recent knowledge in the respective fields. The younger employees bring new energy and new perspectives, as the younger people have a different mindset, and way to complete their tasks. They also bring the new thinking in the organization.

Moreover, they also bring inefficiency and increased productivity. Hiring older employees will bring in redundancy and routine operations. Hence, older employees have less motivation to complete the tasks efficiently.

Moreover, the older employees might criticize the new technology and innovation. Old employees might bring experience, but they do not tend to adopt cost-efficient technology. Hence, it also increases the costs. The other challenge is that they can act as per their experiences, and they can also ignore the needs of the organization and employees. The solution to these challenges is to hire new and younger employees. The solution is useful because the younger employees are affordable and easy to hire. The younger employees can adapt to the new technology and innovation. Hence, it is the only solution applicable to the employees at Microsoft. Younger employees will help them to achieve their goals and aims.

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