The Story
In preparations for opening its new retail stores, Microsoft is grabbing up employees from Apple stores. The incentives are essentially more money for Apple store managers. And those who go over to the Microsoft side are told to call up the most talented and affable employees from their old stores and offer them jobs. As Ars Technica puts it, this makes a whole lot of sense as “retail employees with some decent technological knowledge are hard to come by.”
Culture Poaching
Grabbing up Apple store people is sort of brilliant because it means that Microsoft is largely drawing from a body pre-screened for various qualities. At least in my experience, Apple retail store employees are generally very good with people, and more so than the normal tech employee. The other characteristic, and this is certainly true of the retail stores in New York, is that Apple’s retail staff has that same aesthetic attractiveness (yes, they’re pretty people) and fun vibe that Apple likes to put into its product lines.
That is the exact image that Microsoft has been trying to play up for itself. We’ve all seen the Apple attack ads with John Hodgman. Apple says that Mac is the fun, sexy platform, whereas PCs are plain and dull. In addition to running advertisements and building products which make the PC seem cool, Microsoft is now grabbing up a retail staff with that same kind of spirit. It’s a pretty smart move.
