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Microsoft Security Makes "Worst Jobs" List

Posted by kdawson on Wed Jun 27, 2007 01:06 AM
from the whale-meat-and-blubber dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Microsoft Security
Stony Stevenson asks, rhetorically, "What do whale-feces researchers, hazmat divers, and employees of Microsoft's Security Response Center have in common? They all made Popular Science magazine's 2007 list of the absolute worst jobs in science." Quoting: "The MSRC ranked near the middle as the sixth-worst job in this year's list.. 'We did rate the Microsoft security researcher as less-bad than the people who prepare the carcasses for dissection in biology laboratories,' Moyer said. Moyer didn't have to think long when asked whether he'd rather have the number 10-ranked whale research job. 'Whale feces or working at Microsoft? I would probably be the whale feces researcher,' he said. 'Salt air and whale flatulence; what could go wrong?'" Here's the Popular Mechanics list all on one page.
+ -
story

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Microsoft Security Makes "Worst Jobs" List 50 Comments More /

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  • Odd... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ForumTroll (900233) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @01:11AM (#19659741)
    Microsoft actually has security researchers? What do they actually do?

  • I call whaleshit (Score:5, Informative)

    by jomama717 (779243) * <jomama717@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 27 2007, @01:14AM (#19659757) Journal
    Support sucks no matter what you're working with - I've been there - this is a Microsoft slam piece from an unlikely source.

    For giggles, here's the list:
    • Number 10: Whale-Feces Researcher
    • Number 9: Forensic Entomologist
    • Number 8: Olympic Drug Tester?
    • Number 7: Gravity Research Subject
    • Number 6: Microsoft Security Grunt
    • Number 5: Coursework Carcass Preparer
    • Number 4: Garbologist
    • Number 3: Elephant Vasectomist
    • Number 2: Oceanographer
    • Number 1: Hazmat Diver

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by butlerdi (705651)
      How about Proctologist or as they are currently known (in the PC world) colorectal surgeons.

    • Forensic Entomologist I can relate to, sorta (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iHasaFlavour (1118257) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @01:48AM (#19659935) Homepage
      Many years ago in my former career I had to treat a guy who had been in a ditch comotose for so long he had maggots well established in every available cavity. Took a while that did.

      Not, it has to be said, my fondest memory of that time. It ranks right up there with the odd fact that all tramps poo contains giant lentils.

      • Re:Forensic Entomologist I can relate to, sorta (Score:5, Interesting)

        by misanthrope101 (253915) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @03:32AM (#19660437)
        I work in a hospital, and ER docs like to swap stories. The worst I've heard is of a woman who was kidnapped, beaten, repeatedly raped, and thrown into a ditch to die. She didn't die, but she did land on a fire ant mound, where she stayed until someone found her, which was not enough time for her to die. Tragedy happens, crime happens, but sometimes you just have to think "that's not fair." I always think of that story when I hear someone say "well, everything happens for a reason."

          • Re:Forensic Entomologist I can relate to, sorta (Score:5, Interesting)

            by misanthrope101 (253915) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @04:34AM (#19660677)
            About 70% of the people who are released from death row after being exonerated by DNA evidence were convicted on eyewitness testimony. The death penalty is bad because witnesses lie or are mistaken, cops lie or are mistaken, cops torture/beat confessions out of people, jailhouse snitches are allowed to testify to reduce their own sentence, evidence is planted (or hidden, if exculpatory), and so on.

            We think we have a god's-eye view and we just know that someone is guilty, but the case is stacked to look that way, and we don't really know, not definitively. Very seldom is there videotape of a crime like this--usually we have to rely on people whose careers are built on getting an arrest and a conviction. People will send you to death row just to help their own careers, even if they have to intimidate witnesses, supress contradictory testimony, or reduce someone else's sentence for their "testimony" about the night you confessed to them.

    • Is threefold:

      1) Because Windows is so prevalent it gets hit with more attacks than anything else.

      2) Along those lines, it always makes the news, at least tech news, when there's a Windows bug. If you read security focus or the like you discover there's really quite a bit discovered in all OSes, including MacOS, Linux, Solaris and so on. However it rarely hits tech news and almost never mainstream. No such luck for MS.

      3) People like to blame all their problems on MS. You get hacked because your password was

      • Re:I call whaleshit (Score:5, Interesting)

        by BlueTrin (683373) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @01:53AM (#19659965) Homepage Journal
        From http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Technology/Story?id=32909 63&page=4 [go.com]

        2. Oceanographer: Oceanographers' jobs are "getting harder and harder every year," said Ward. Faced with the predictions that by 2048 seafood will no longer exist, coral reefs will vanish in the next decade and that an ever expanding mass of garbage the size of Texas in the North Pacific has caused irreparable damage to the world's water supply, these scientists are charged not only with protecting the health of the ocean, but also with turning the prognosis around.

        "Oceanographers are really tasked with just analyzing sad facts on deoxygenating oceans, increased pollution, whole masses of garbage swirling in the middle of the ocean. What it really is, is a testament to how devoted and loyal a bunch of people they are.

        "They're working extremely hard on a very difficult problem, but they also are very optimistic people. They believe that we can turn it around and the ocean is a very dynamic living environment and they feel that with the proper care, we can turn it around, but so far that has not been the case," said Ward.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jomama717 (779243) *
        That struck me as odd too...according to the article it's due to the amount of "bad news" that oceanographers have to deal with (overfishing, pollution, etc.):

        With so much going on, there's plenty of work for oceangoing scientists--if they can stomach bad news.
        That's a stretch in my book, *everybody* has to deal with that bad news, the oceanographers just deliver it - while cruising the world's oceans on state of the art research vessels...

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ozmanjusri (601766)
          That's a stretch in my book, *everybody* has to deal with that bad news, the oceanographers just deliver it

          Some people put their hearts into their jobs.

        • Re:I call whaleshit (Score:5, Interesting)

          by DrMrLordX (559371) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @03:45AM (#19660483)
          Oceanographers are dedicated to the study and, ideally, salvation of numerous aquatic ecosystems that are in a rapid state of collapse. It's one thing to deal with "bad news" on a regular basis. It's quite another to watch the sea dying right before your eyes. Most of us have become comfortable with our oceans' plight by ignoring it; that is a comfort not easily afforded to oceanographers.
  • just so NO to crappy articles and blogs. here the link you really want.

    http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/0203101256a23 110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html [popsci.com]

  • Time to rethink OS's (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tablizer (95088) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @01:19AM (#19659789) Homepage Journal
    When staff is short I am sometimes stuck with help-desk duties of late. I am appauled by the lack of transparency when trying to troubleshoot Windows. There is no easy way to "X-ray the pipes" to see what is going in and out and where it is getting stuck. Thus, one ends up having to play Sherlock Holmes to figure out the crime based on random clues scattered here and there. One cannot open the blackbox, but rather has to tweak the front knobs, trying a Cartesion Join of all possible combos, or at least a random sample as an approximation.

    It does not have to be this way. The OS should be broken up into fairly independent services and the protocol of each service known, shown, and loggable. One could thus isolate oddities. If a peice of software I build constantly has problems (or confusion) with certain processes or steps, I make trace modes and special reports that can echo and document the process as it is taking place. OS's don't seem to be built this way, you have to randomly tweak stuff until the problem (hopefully) goes away. It is like banging the Mellenium Falcon when it stalls. In the digital age I am stuck with analog-like troubleshooting techniques.
       

    • OS's don't seem to be built this way, you have to randomly tweak stuff until the problem (hopefully) goes away.

      I never just randomly tweak stuff until the problem goes away. I don't use Windows or OS X though so pretty much everything I use is open source and reasonably well documented. {Open,Free}BSD, Solaris and Linux is built much the way you describe. Important aspects of the OS (using the term loosely) are almost always broken down into relatively small, independent services that have established

    • Re:Time to rethink OS's (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ozmanjusri (601766) <(aussie_bob) (at) (hotmail.com)> on Wednesday June 27 2007, @02:10AM (#19660045) Journal
      The OS should be broken up into fairly independent services and the protocol of each service known, shown, and loggable.

      Trouble is, that model's incompatible with Microsoft's business, and it's customers' requirements for DRM.

      They need the OS to be black boxed and inscrutable to prevent people hacking things like WGA and product activation. They also need obfuscated protocols and formats to stop people like WINE from reverse engineering their APIs.

      The clearer and easier to understand MS makes it's system, the worse it is for their business model. That's why there's no way they'll do as you suggest, despite being ordered to by the DOJ and the EU.

    • It does not have to be this way. The OS should be broken up into fairly independent services and the protocol of each service known, shown, and loggable. One could thus isolate oddities. If a peice of software I build constantly has problems (or confusion) with certain processes or steps, I make trace modes and special reports that can echo and document the process as it is taking place. OS's don't seem to be built this way, you have to randomly tweak stuff until the problem (hopefully) goes away. It is lik

    • Re:Time to rethink OS's (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mastershake_phd (1050150) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @02:30AM (#19660135) Homepage
      Every now and then my harddrive will start whirring away, when it shouldn't be, and as far as I can tell there is no easy way to tell which process is the culprit in XP. Hell, you ever get one of those "this file is being used by another program" messages and have no idea what program is responsible? I've had to boot into safe mode just to delete a file. And it was an .avi not a system file or anything.
    • Now you know why I took the conscious decision to do everything in my power to avoid going anywhere near a Microsoft OS ever again.

      Unfortunately it's practically impossible to make that 100% and still hold down a job in IT, but it's quite possible to get to the 80-90% point.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by hairyfeet (841228)
      While it is true that there is no real way to "X-ray the pipes" here are the tools the Microsoft Technet guys use and I've found can be very good at hunting down the bugs.http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals /default.mspx [microsoft.com]

      • Re:Time to rethink OS's (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jimicus (737525) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @02:40AM (#19660197) Homepage
        So your solution to any random problem is "run it under a debugger"?

        Would it really be so hard for the software writers to, oh, I don't know, USE THE LOGGING FACILITIES THAT ARE BUILT INTO THE OPERATING SYSTEM??. Windows has a perfectly good Event Viewer and APIs for writing to it, so how come hardly any software ever logs what it's doing?

        • Re:Time to rethink OS's (Score:4, Insightful)

          by geekoid (135745) <dadinportland.yahoo@com> on Wednesday June 27 2007, @08:47AM (#19662257) Homepage Journal
          Because more windows programmers are not engineers. They want to get it done as fast as possible with as little understanding as possible.

          So when they can be bothered to log an error, it's usually done after the programmer looks for the word 'write' in the help system.

          Every shop bigger then 20 people I ahve worked at is like this, very few of us actually study the OS. Of course, it is possible thatevery place I have been at is the exception.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by jimicus (737525)
            Mostly Linux.

            For application logging, while the OS provides a logging facility through syslog, it's down to an application (such as Apache or OpenLDAP or Postfix or what have you) to actually use it - the OS doesn't force the issue. Thankfully, most Unix applications are actually pretty good at doing so therefore getting everything configured properly is seldom a big deal - you can just check what went wrong in the logs.

            Windows has a logging facility as well, but it's remarkable how few things actually use

  • Popular Science and Popular Mechanics (Score:3, Informative)

    by johnny cashed (590023) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @01:27AM (#19659811) Homepage
    Are two different publications.

  • Juvenile and unfunny (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm starting to wonder if Mike Judge's 'Idiocracy' may have been a serious film. The articles that make it to the front page on this site have gotten progressively worse over the years.

    I fully expect a 'Microsoft = Ass' article by 2010.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by BiggerIsBetter (682164)
      I fully expect a 'Microsoft = Ass' article by 2010.

      After reading this, I fully expect one by lunchtime tomorrow.

  • They don't sound so bad... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pbaer (833011) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @01:53AM (#19659961)
    Am I the only one who thinks those jobs sound fairly interesting? The NASA 0g tester would be miserably boring but it pays great, over 120k for 21 days of work. All the other jobs seem pretty interesting and don't seem to be exceedingly dangerous. Considering this is their "worst" job list, I'd love to see their "best" job list.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by AngryJim (1045256)
      Hmm, where did it say $120,000 for 21 days work? What I read said $6,000.

      Even $120,000 might not be worth it. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to use a bedpan in a bed sloped 6 degrees toward my head, let alone while being observed by NASA engineers.

  • Plus, to most hackers, crippling Microsoft is the geek equivalent of taking down the Death Star
    Umm... is there a NON-geek equivalent to "taking down the Death Star"? I would have thought that particular analogy wouldn't transfer into non-geek realms...

  • Uh.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mark-t (151149) <markt@@@lynx...bc...ca> on Wednesday June 27 2007, @02:04AM (#19660025) Journal

    Number 3: Elephant Vasectomist
    Last time I checked, Elephants were endangered.

    So why on earth would anyone be sterilizing an endangered species? How to make a situation worse, or what?

  • "'Whale feces or working at Microsoft? I would probably be the whale feces researcher,' he said. 'Salt air and whale flatulence; what could go wrong?'""

    Quite a lot if your standing near a naked flame when one of them big boys "Breach" 0.o
  • Seems to me, with the depth of exploits coming in, you could learn so much from working that job, after a few years you could write your ticket to a good job in security at another company.

    Not sure Id call a hardworking job like that a bad job, digging in a whale or crap would be allot worse....

    • Re:Humm. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by timmarhy (659436) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @03:14AM (#19660349)
      why would you need to? i know people who have worked for MS and they all say it's a brillant place to work. highly paid as well. i don't by that MS security is a bad place to work, in fact a lot of these are crap examples of a bad job. ones i will pay are hazmat diving for the danger factor and 0g tester for sounding like some kind of middle eastern torture method.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by acidosmosis (972141)
      You have to realize that Slashdot is filled to the brim with users that follow stereotypes. There are no leaders here. Only followers. They don't know about the concept of thinking for themselves.

      Microsoft on your resume, yes, that would be one of the best possible things you could ever have on an IT resume as previous job experience. Anyone in IT with common sense would kill for that job, if only to have it on his or her resume.

      If anyone doesn't agree with that, they lose all credibility.

  • Misnomer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DynaSoar (714234) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @03:38AM (#19660461) Journal
    I know science. I do science. Microsoft security response is not science. It's the intelligent design contingent of the IT world. It can call itself science all it wants but it can't act like science. Sooner or later they'll tell you that you just have to believe them, while they're busily cooking up the next, more complicated batch of the same old same old and collecting more people with impressive credentials to preach it at you.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pimpimpim (811140)
      I was also wondering since when solving your self-created problems had become science... Oh, wait, maybe they have a point ;) In any case, I would call it engineering. Or just support. It's not easy work, I wouldn't say that, but science it is not. I think the difference lies in the point that science pursues the mostly detailed understanding of something with not so much a time pressure (just think about it: can you plan scientific progress in advance? On week 4 we will discover this-and-this?), whereas th

  • Mike Rowe (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tracy Reed (3563) <.treed. .at. .ultraviolet.org.> on Wednesday June 27 2007, @03:48AM (#19660497) Homepage
    Maybe Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel can spend a day working at MS. It might top the time he had to wade through 3 feet of bat shit. I understand Ballmer goes bat shit all the time over there at MS. Of course, they might not let a fellow named Mike Rowe into their facilities after someone pulled this cute little trick. [cnn.com]

  • Taking Down The Death Star? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Odin_Tiger (585113) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @09:58AM (#19663177) Journal

    Plus, to most hackers, crippling Microsoft is the geek equivalent of taking down the Death Star,
    Really? I'd think it's more like kicking an evil, rabid puppy. I mean, sure, it is an evil little bastard and probably deserves to be kicked...but it's still kicking a puppy, and it's still not something to be especially proud of.

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