Microsoft employ over 100,000 engineers. I'd advise against assuming that everything produced by any of them is bad because of bugs in Windows.
Microsoft employ over 100,000 engineers. I'd advise against assuming that everything produced by any of them is bad because of bugs in Windows.
I spent 15 years as a senior dev on the Visual Studio team followed by 5 years on the Xcode team at Apple.
Individual engineers can be talented, professional, and end-user focused. Most of that effort gets lost when PMs refuse to work with each other in a coherent manner. Most of the major issues we ran into weren’t engineering bugs per se, they were the result of management refusing to allow teams to communicate effectively.
When we were first building out the original C# functionality, the C# team refused to talk to the existing compiler teams. I spent more time acting as a go-between than I did solving actual technical problems.
Good people can produce crappy software in that environment.
Not op, and I generally agree with your assumption but not for Microsoft, as I don't think it's limited to Windows:
Teams, Office (especially online), One Drive, SharePoint, Azure, GitHub, LinkedIn, all became very shitty and partially unusable with increasing number of weird bugs or problems lately.
And it's not just Microsoft. Apple and other are having the same issue. Something fundamental seems to have happened post Covid but before AI.
WFH, flood of Dev hiring, increasingly hostile worker relations, a bunch of web 2.0 folks finally retiring, VC money drying up...
take your pick.
Software is just crappy these days.
> Something fundamental seems to have happened
It just became more visible: testing _is_ expensive and time consuming.
But M$ share price goes up! Investors are smart as they are rich! And they do believe in this all!
/sarcasm
The criticism was directed at the company's product, not the employees...
I always wish that people would make this distinction more often ... the people=good, the product=bad ... people!=bad
If product->quality_x, I'm okay with employee->?quality_x — but not with either employee->quality_x or employer->!quality_x. A better thing to remember is that people have themselves to feed. Of those 100k engineers, how many can say "no, you don't, Satya, ain't no besmirching my code with slop"?
The response appears to be pointing out that with so many employees (engineers), it's unlikely that they all work on Windows.
Maybe. But interpreting it thus requires too much charitableness for it not to have been uncharitable, whether intentionally or otherwise.
You mean interpreting it honestly. Yeah. I caught that.
Don’t the best of the best typically work on OS fundamentals though?
OS is such a broad term, especially when applied to Windows which is closer to a Linux distro. Is it the kernel? Windows is fine there as by all accounts the issues are higher up. They’ve had some problems with their update process which is surprising - historically that team would have been populated by the better engineers. most of the other problems have been in the shell and UI where good engineering discipline is not to be quite as expected.
Yes, but the OS fundamentals are for Azure first, Windows last.
Azure makes money, 50% of Windows computers are basically free and need to get you to sign up for a subscription some how. The other 50% are Windows Pro/Enterprise, but MS assumes they'll get that money forever so doesn't put any resources into that. In 10 years the kids switching to Linux on desktop today will be in charge of the business deals and switch corporations to linux because they're not scared of it like the current business IT leaders
They are not free. OEM costs money. Hence with every laptop with Windows preinstalled, you pay a fraction to Microsoft, even if you immediately uninstall and add Linux.
But probably only $10
I don't argue with that. But every cent paid to Microslop is a cent too much.
Maybe not, there are plenty of hard things to do at Microsoft scale, hypervisors (which I guess could count as "OS" but maybe not "Windows" in the consumer-product line sense), compilers, languages, hardware since Microsoft is doing that too, browsers (although the hard part is chrome-based, probably they contribute to it), databases, distributed systems for cloud products, etc. Plenty of hard things to do.
The windows kernel is great. It's the stuff built on top of that that sucks. I doubt MS puts the best of the best on coding the start menu
Which developer has the best of the best on operating systems?
And yet they still work for a company that has shown it isn’t overly concerned about quality or reliability in its products.
I don't think people typically have so much choice about it. Everyone is just trying to feed their families and enjoy their life. The job market is a little tough right now, I think, for software engineers. No?
I know a few personally that left their stable job to be hired and fired in the same month and remain unemployed six months later. Very sad.
What a ridiculous excuse. People who join ICE to brutalize minorities and protestors are just trying to feed their families too, then. No?
Working for Microsoft doesn’t make them bad engineers or bad people, but it does make them Microsoft employees. And they get to bear its reputation whether they want to or not. If it makes them uncomfortable then they should make a change or grow thicker skin.
Oversaturation of the labor supply for software engineers has been looming for a while now. Gen Z was sold on infinite growth in the ZIRP era which was never going to happen, but everyone still jumped in. What we’re seeing is structural unemployment. Not everyone’s gonna make it.
Do you have kids? If not, I agree with you. Make the hard decision and take a loss. And thank you for your sacrifice.
If you do, I can't agree with you.
Also I wouldn't compare software development for a marketing company with a violent disagreeable effort. There's bad and there's worse, objectively.
Anyway, not saying you're wrong, but I'm not so quick to judge someone by a job that they probably hate.
Or to wrap 100,000 people in the same blanket. We're all individuals. No one should be judged by the actions of others.
There are companies I wouldn't candidate for, even with kids I think, although it's hard to say, I don't have kids, and apparently there is a mind-shift happening when you get one. Oracle, Palantir come to mind. But maybe not Microsoft, I don't know about that one. It's probably bad, but maybe not "I prefer to watch my kids starving" kind of bad.
Having kids is also a bullshit excuse. Choosing comfort over conscience is your prerogative but you’re just teaching your kids the same values.
Yeah, tech monopolist that enables genocide to contemporary gestapo isn’t an equal comparison. But my point was that you can’t ignore the moral hazards of employment by handwaving “gotta eat somehow”. There are a million ways to feed your kids. Saying you have to work a high paid job to feed them non-GMO certified organic produce from Erewhon because that’s the only standard of living you can possibly survive with, that’s a choice.
I also want to reiterate that I’m not judging the people who choose to work there. I’m just saying that by signing the employment contract they accept the reasonable public perception that the products they work on are shit. And to some marginal degree, they are complicit in all their employer’s wrongdoings.
Your commentary doesn't come off as honorable or righteous in any way to me. It comes off as self centered and self righteous. As if we all owe it to you to put you before our children.
I don't know if that's your intention but that's what I'm reading.
I genuinely hope you don't agree with that reading, because I doubt you'd have a nice life with that outlook. You'd be very unlikable.
What I’d consider unlikable is implying that someone might have no choice but to work for Microsoft in order to provide for their family. It carries with it an air of privilege and condescension implying that working a lesser job or for lesser pay would be insufficient to provide for a family’s basic needs.
What lesser job? People are unemployed after six months. Meanwhile MS hired other people for less to replace those that left. Nobody won here.
It's not about "lesser" jobs being actually lesser. The point is that you don't actually have a choice. Big companies that nobody likes are in control of the economy and you can't do anything except join the unemployed until you get rehired from the pool of desperate people willing to do their bidding.
(All of this with a grain of salt. Not literally everyone is in this situation, but there are certainly many who are.)
I'm just saying, maybe don't be so quick to judge.
I’m not sure why you’re so set on taking away free will.
> you can't do anything except join the unemployed until you get rehired from the pool of desperate people willing to do their bidding.
So there is a choice then. Does unemployment kill you in some way? Is going to a food bank a death sentence? Can you not adjust your lifestyle spending to match a lower salary if it means getting a job sooner? Is there no way to save up for periods of unemployment so you can be choosy about your next job?
Everything you do in life is a choice.
It's not a choice. Making kids eat from a food bank and sleep in a shelter is morally inferior to working at Microsoft. You're saying, repeatedly, that they should make your morally inferior choice and they deserve to be judged if they don't. Only a monster could call that a choice.
Look at yourself: >Having kids is also a bullshit excuse. Choosing comfort over conscience is your prerogative but you’re just teaching your kids the same values.
Your conscience tells you that children should be forced to sleep in shelters and eat from food banks just so that you won't have to see ads when you use Microsoft Windows.
Please DON'T teach anyone your values. Your moral compass points to the trash.
I'm out bro. Cheers.
> People who join ICE to brutalize minorities and protestors are just trying to feed their families too, then.
1400 ISIS (the islamist state) terrorists who made their way to the US, identified by the DHS.
https://www.dhs.gov/wow
Look at the list here. 2084 pages already, 12 entries per page: that's 25 000 criminals. They're listing their crimes. 25 000 criminals already arrested is a huge lot.
Be honest with yourself and think about the victims.
I'd say a lot of the people joining ICE do believe the US has already enough criminals that are US citizens and want to help stop the insanity that is mass uncontrolled migration.
Out of 600 000 people arrested by ICE, as I understand it already 25 000 are violent criminals that we know of. That's more nearly 5% of all those arrested. 1 in 20 people.
Where do you draw the limit? You want full open borders, but at what cost?
I read a lot of "Arrested for: kidnapping, rape".
Is, say, 1 in 100 people coming in being a criminal OK?
Where do you draw the line?
Dems are literally fighting so that sanctuary cities do not hand over convicted criminals to ICE: so that one day they can be released in the streets.
Is this what you want to fight for?
Are you that convinced, from your moral high ground where you judge Microsoft employees and ICE agents, that you'll be on the right side of history?
You are missing out the entire point. In a justice system, a single innocent in prison is a thousand times worse than a free criminal. This is where most people draw the line if they think about it. Because when you put innocents under arrest, suddenly you are no better than dictatorships and terrorist state.
The real justice is investing in a security system that tracks, investigates, and condemn actual criminals, in a targetted way, so that honest people can live securely and free. Believe it or not, plenty of countries manage to do that pretty well.
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> Are you that convinced, from your moral high ground where you judge Microsoft employees and ICE agents, that you'll be on the right side of history?
Yes.
It really isn't difficult to figure out who the bad guys are, at the moment.
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Well considering the administration has repeatedly called Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good "TERRORISTS", I would consider "1400 ISIS terrorists" a highly dubious statistic, in fact in a brief search for a reputable source of your claim of "1400 ISIS terrorists" I've not found any source for that, link???
You ask "Is, say, 1 in 100 people coming in being a criminal OK?"
Well considering that about 1.4% of the overall population is current incarcerated in our "Land of the Free", yeah 1 in 100 would be an improvement!
People are against ICE in growing numbers because of their tactics of run around hide their identities like bandits and gestapo thugs. Their ignoring of court orders, constant lies, constant blatant violations of the 1st, 2nd, 4th amendments constantly, and violations of rights of people such as immigrants following the processes of asylum, several citizens that have been arrested wrongly, and the terrible tortuous treatment an the joy and pride this corrupt disgusting administration takes in being cruel to people!
If you were wrongfully arrested at a DUI checkpoint one night, but hey, 1 in 20 people arrested there are drunk drivers! Would you be okay with that? I certainly wouldn't.
If SWAT started driving around gunning people down in the street but every last "victim" turned out to be guilty of murder would that be okay? I certainly don't think so. There's a legal process that needs to be followed.
Blackshirt elegy over here folks.
Thaaat's capitalism
Skilled engineers in an environment that doesn't care about quality may become dull, or simply be forced by the system they are in to not care. In practice they are just like us and so I assume they would find outlets in their free time.
I haven't spoken to a Microsoft developer in a while because there are few in the hacker communities I'm around (go figure?) so not entirely sure though. I want to understand.
These giant firms aren’t uniform monoliths, especially MS.
Microsoft has some clear ‘A’ teams (compilers, industry leading languages, F*, pioneering web tech, OS innovations, etc), but also ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ teams, and MS is often reactively chasing industry trends. They’re industry leaders, but also victims of their Office, Windows, and Cloud teams pooping on one another at critical market junctures.
In .Net land we can inspect their library code. A number of these ‘Enterprise’ packages around their ‘Enterprise’ solutions are … just passable. Often something you’d write a proper version of to avoid clear issues. When our juniors are delivering better than their official offerings, in light of wizardry being displayed elsewhere, I think we are seeing systematic effects of corporate culture and customer base.
They seem to be alienating a lot of their users right now in a lot of different products. There's a significant surge in open source software right now and Linux and all the people that are coming over are a bit more than usual. Their customer base seems tired of the game.
This is not about individual employees. It’s in the nature of being an employee to be beholden to what’s incentivized by their company’s management and structure.
Don’t employees have any say in some of the design , implementation, and quality bar? Management folks are employees as well. But perhaps they prefer the paycheck to voicing concerns around bad decisions. Nothing wrong with that but throwing all the blame on faceless management and structure seems not right since it evolves from collective activities.
“Show me the incentives and I’ll tell you the outcome” is exactly about this situation. People who do what they feel is right may be able to do so as long as it doesn’t conflict with company policy, but when it does (say you spend a little more time on perfecting a feature), it gets noticed and eventually corrected.
The problems with Windows today have nothing to do with bugs but with the strategic vision of Nadella.
And it’s the employees that’ll be laid off if the strategy doesn’t succeed because they just didn’t copilot hard enough or something.
This is also still small/unimportant enough not to be poisoned by their broken corporate culture.