本文是微软元老级员工Philip Su在2010年离开微软时写下的离职信。信中字字珠玑，回顾了自己在微软工作的12年所感受和领悟到的职场真谛。无论你是职场老手还是职场新人，相信都能从中获得一些启发。
Today was my last day at Microsoft, after 12 years straight out of college. I will start at Facebook next week as a developer in its Seattle office。今天是我在微软的最后一天。自从大学毕业，过去的 12 年里我一直都在微软工作。下周起，我将以一个程序员的身份在Facebook西雅图的办公室重新开始。
Below is the email I sent to Microsoft colleagues on my last day. I loved Microsoft, every one of the past twelve awesome years. Here’s to new adventures!在微软的最后一天，我给同事们发了以下这封离职信。我爱微软，过去12年都是如此。现在将会迎接新的挑战！
### Original email below ###离职信原文
Microsoft has been an awesome place to work over the past twelve years. Today is my last day。过去的12 年里，我一直很喜欢在微软工作，但是今天是我在微软的最后一天。
I’ve always been somewhat random, so I’d like to end this whole adventure true to form: quirky, controversial, optimistic, seat-of-the-pants, with rarely a satisfying explanation。我一直是一个比较随意的人，所以我希望今天的信也一样是有个性的、有争议的、乐观的、凭感觉的，而可能没有让人读后很满意的答案。
Don’t look for coherence below – you won’t find it. And if parts of this offend you, it’s probably because you don’t know me well enough – I offend people inadvertently all the time, almost as a rule。请不要在我的信里找连贯性，因为你是不会找到的。如果有内容冒犯了你，那你可能不太了解我，因为我经常会在无意中冒犯到别人，几乎已经成为了定律。
Thanks for everything。谢谢所有的一切。
In college, I never thought I’d work for Microsoft. Then I interned in 1997 and fell in love: free sodas, individual offices (with doors!)， Pentium 66’s – what more could a coder ask? Years later, my manager from the internship quit suddenly when his hard drive crashed, erasing weeks of code that hadn’t been checked in. He said it was a sign from God. I have no idea what he’s doing these days。上大学时，我从来没有想过在微软工作。但我1997 年的时候在微软实习后，就对它一见钟情：免费的饮料、自己的办公室、奔腾66... 一个程序员还能要求什么？几年后，我实习时的老板突然离职了。他电脑的硬盘当时发生了故障，丢失了几个月的工作。他说这是一个来自上天的征兆。我不知道他现在人在哪里，在做些什么事情。
People often complain after getting a “bad” review that their manager has a distorted and inaccurate view of them. Don’t you think that, of all the people in the world, the person reviewed would have the most biased view of their own performance? I sometimes gently suggest this. People don’t believe me。人们在拿到一个不好的业绩审查后总是会抱怨老板和上级不公平而且不客观。但是你不觉得，每个人对自己的评估其实是最不客观的吗？我有时会平和地告诉别人这一点，但是没有人信。
Choose carbs. Eat dessert first。吃点碳水化合物。吃饭时先吃甜点。
Use Occam’s Razor in interpersonal relations: look for the simplest, most straightforward explanation that assumes the best of everybody. Stay away from people who always have a conspiracy theory involving twisted office politics, unfulfilled Machiavellian ambitions, and unspoken agendas。在处理人际关系是，我们应该运用奥卡姆剃刀原理(小编注：奥卡姆剃刀定律又称“奥康的剃刀”，是由14世纪逻辑学家、圣方济各会修士奥卡姆的威廉提出。这个原理称为“如无必要，勿增实体”，即“简单有效原理”。)，也就是对于别人的行为，找到最简单，最信任别人的解释。对那些爱搞办公室政治，勾心斗角的人敬而远之。
Anonymous college course evaluations often ask for the student’s grade in the class. Turns out that there’s a strong correlation
between a student’s grade and their assessment of the professor’s abilities. I don’t listen too carefully when a poor performer tells me how awful their previous manager was. My ears perk up when a star performer constructively criticizes their management。大学里的教授评估往往会参考学生在那门课得到的成绩，因为学生的成绩与他对教授的评价有很明显的关系。我一般不会认真听一个业绩不好的人对他老板的吐槽，但是如果一个业绩好的人批评他的老板，我会洗耳恭听。
Bias towards action. “Litebulb” will drain your soul。不行动的话，闲聊会耗尽你的生命(Litebulb是微软内部的一个广泛话题讨论组)。
Words matter. Connotations matter。字有表意，也有隐含的意思。
If you consistently deliver what the business needs most, and you do it well, it’s impossible not to get promoted.
People tell me this isn’t true, that it’s all about the people you know and about “visibility。” I have no idea how to consistently deliver impactful business results without becoming visible as a side effect. I hate it when developers ask me how to become “more visible。” They hate it when I tell them to “do great work。” They think I’m mocking them。如果你不断做公司最需要的事情，你是一定会被重用的。有人说，不是的，人际关系和在人前表现自己更重要。我不明白，如果你持续做对公司意义很重大的事情，怎么可能不被别人注意到。我很讨厌程序员问我怎么才能在人前表现自己。他们也很讨厌我的答案“把事情做得更漂亮”，觉得我是在讽刺他们。
Be genuine. Never give advice for your own advantage. I’ve never once counseled a person to join my team or to stay on my team because I needed them。做一个真诚的人。给别人建议时不要考虑自己的利益。我从没有说服过任何人加入我的团队，或者说服他们不要走，仅仅因为我需要他们。
Listen to understand. Speak to be understood。听人说话时尽量理解，讲话时尽量容易让别人理解。
Good ideas are a dime
a dozen. Great ideas are usually laughed at. Neither sees the light of day without you taking action. Do the work to prove your idea, or stop talking about it. In an entrepreneurship class in college, I pitched the idea of an online grocery delivery service and got laughed off stage. Hurt, but convinced of my great genius, I returned the following week to pitch the idea of online movie rentals using the postal service. I called it NetVideo. Everyone thought it was absurd. I used to tell this story to bolster what I thought was my streak of unrecognized, prognosticating technical genius. These days, I tell the story to remind myself that in the end, only action and execution matter。好的创意很多。伟大的创意常常会遭受嘲笑，除非你去实现它。不要光说，用行动来证明你的点子。在大学的一门创业课里，我讲了一个网上租看和邮寄电影光碟的点子，我当时把它起名叫“NetVideo”，所有人都觉得很荒唐。以前我讲这个故事是为了炫耀我当时多么有远见(指后来用相同点子起家的上市公司Netflix)，但是现在我讲这个故事是想告诉你，行动和执行是最重要的。
What’s your final level at Microsoft? Please don’t say CEO or Technical Fellow – I can almost guarantee you it’s not. A realistic appraisal
helps you aim for the right things, and is also essential to happiness. A VP once told me that he had already attained the highest position he’d ever reach at Microsoft. It wasn’t false humility. It wasn’t sour grapes. He was confident in his abilities and ambitious about doing great work. He was just more grounded and self-aware than many, and thus more content. Don’t give up or sell out. Just know yourself。你在微软最终的职位级别是什么？请不要说 CEO 或科技院士，因为我几乎可以保证你达不到。对自己能力更现实的认识会帮助你更准确找到目标，而且也会让你更加快乐。一位副总裁曾经告诉我， 他已经做到了他在微软能做的最高职位。这不是假谦虚，也不是抱怨。他对自己很自信，而且很有事业心。他只不过是对自己有很清楚的认识，而且懂得满足。不要放弃，也不要出卖自己。但是你要正确认识你自己。
If you only ever implement feedback that you agree with, you probably don’t need the feedback in the first place. For feedback to be useful, you must at least occasionally consider implementing feedback that you don’t initially agree with. How else will you discover your blind spots?如果你只采用你赞同的反馈，那很有可能这些反馈从一开始就不是你需要的。真正有价值的反馈是那些你在一开始并不赞同的反馈。要不然，你怎么去发现你的盲点？
Good people with good process will outperform good people with no process every time.–Grady Booch有流程规划的人通常比没有流程规划的人能够做得更好。——布奇(美国Rational软件工程公司的首席科学家和Booch方法的主创人)
Don’t fear process. Fear bad people dictating process. Fear process trying to make up for bad people。不要害怕流程。害怕人们不能够很好的执行流程，害怕不合适的人去执行流程。
I’ve managed almost 150 people across dev/test/PM. I estimate about 60% of employees think that they belong in the top 20% when ranked against their peers. I have never once had a person say that they belong in the bottom 10%。我管理过150 人的开发团队。我估计60% 的人觉得自己应该是排名在前20%。我从来没有遇见过认为自己是排在最后10% 的人。
What would Mini do? (Incidentally, one of my managers once asked me, in all seriousness, whether I was Mini-Microsoft. I guess you’ll find out after I leave。) Mini 会怎么做？(一个经理曾经很严肃的问我，我是不是Mini-Microsoft。 等我离开微软后，你们就会知道了。)(小编注：Mini-Microsoft 是一个写微软内情的匿名博客，在微软内部有很大影响力)
In a company as large as Microsoft, I guarantee you’ll find someone higher level than you who you think is worse than you. Don’t get stuck in this mental trap – it won’t motivate you to be your best. Look instead towards the person you admire most at your level. What can you learn from them? What unique strengths might you have which they don’t have?在微软这么大的公司中，你一定能够找出职位比你高，但你认为能力却不如你的人。但是你不应该钻这个牛角尖，因为这只会让你气馁。你应该做的是找到和你级别差不多的，但是你很佩服的人。你能从他们身上学到什么？你有什么他们不具备的优点？
A person is either passionate or they’re not. People who expect their manager to make their jobs fun and interesting won’t get far。一个人的激情是无法替代的。一个总是需要经理告诉他去做什么的人是无法进步的。
Once, at a Pizza Hut counter, I noticed that all the pens meant for signing credit card receipts had little flowers attached to their tops. Stuck together in a cup, the bunch of pens looked like a bouquet. I asked the cashier whether this was a new Pizza Hut policy. She said no – she had done it on her own. What would you pay to have her in your company?有一次在必胜客，我看到所有签信用卡的笔上都插上了小花，放在一起的时候看起来像一束鲜花。我问服务员，这是必胜客的新政策吗？她说不是，是她自己弄的。你是不是也很想聘用这样的员工？
