I'm actually in the windows services group now (no longer called Live). I can confirm that the author's experience is quite different from mine. Papercruncher's assessment is pretty much spot on.
Given there are 10k's of employees here in Redmond, it's not surprising that different groups are, well, different. I've noticed that rather large subcultures emerge in different areas. Once you're in the door, there's encouragement to move and find your "fit". All this blog post taught me is that I probably wouldn't be a good fit for Azure :)
I got that encouragement too, after I realized I was never going to be happy at devdiv, but I still don't understand how it was ever supposed to work. It's not like you get special visibility into the working conditions you would encounter in some other group just because your badge will get you into their building. I just said "fuck it" and quit, and I've never regretted that decision.
Given there are 10k's of employees here in Redmond, it's not surprising that different groups are, well, different. I've noticed that rather large subcultures emerge in different areas. Once you're in the door, there's encouragement to move and find your "fit". All this blog post taught me is that I probably wouldn't be a good fit for Azure :)