7 ms·
I hope this will usher in an era of less unethical behaviour from the company under new leadership. Congratulations to shareholders. Anyone know why they'd neg
by nevi-me 10y ago
I hope this will usher in an era of less unethical behaviour from the company under new leadership. Congratulations to shareholders.
Anyone know why they'd negotiate an all cash settlement?
- flyinghamster 10y agoI'm not so hopeful. Given that Microsoft pulled out every dark pattern in the book for Windows 10, I can only think things will get worse.
- simonswords82 10y agoJust because one team on Windows 10 made a huge mistake doesn't mean the entirety of Microsoft is full of people looking to fill the world with dark patterns. They employ about 50,000 engineers last time I checked...
- cm2187 10y agoI don't think it was a "mistake" by an isolated team. I don't think the Windows team would change that fundamentally Microsoft's core product without the management's OK.
- simonswords82 10y agoI agree that a manager somewhere in the organisation did OK this change but that's one person. I don't believe he or she is representative of the hundred thousand people that Microsoft employ.
- rhizome 10y agoI'm having trouble parsing the concept of an "isolated team" at a company like Microsoft, especially where a major OS revision is involved.
- stevekemp 10y agoYou could say something very similar about LinkedIn itself, albeit on a slightly smaller scale.
- Sylos 10y agoIf this would have been a mistake, the executives at Microsoft would have heard of it by now, no matter how disconnected they are from the world, and then they would have reverted it. Which they didn't.
- simonswords82 10y agoHave you any idea how difficult it is to revert something like that? It doesn't sound like a trivial Cmd + Z to me. It sounds like a lot of work with limited upside for the team that implemented it. Nobody likes undoing their own work... Anyway, I'm not saying it wasn't a dick move by Microsoft. I just don't think it's representative of their entire company.
- pbarnes_1 10y agoIt's pretty trivial: turn off the push messaging that makes it auto-update. The forced updates definitely got CEO approval. No question.
- lagadu 10y agoI suspect you're wildly overestimating how much direct involvement the CEO of a medium or large company has on product development. Obviously this can depend strongly on each company's culture (Apple is one of the most extreme examples of CEO involvement) but very often CEOs are glorified managers, involved mostly in dealing with the strategic side of things, and that kind of decisions only reach the head of R&D or CTO at most. This has been my experience from working in medium and large companies for the past decade at least.
- CamperBob2 10y agoA barrel of apples rots from the top down. No, wait, that's a fish. Either way, their Windows 10 deployment strategy stinks.
- themartorana 10y agoSo people can cash the fk out, baby! (If I could negotiate $26B in cash, I would.)
- vthallam 10y agoyeah you would! But why would MSFT accept a all cash deal. All they key employees holding the matured options mighy cash out and leave?
- jacquesm 10y ago> I hope this will usher in an era of less unethical behaviour from the company under new leadership. /s ?
- SixSigma 10y agoI'm still wondering which company is which in that.
- nevi-me 10y agoNot sarcasm, I'm thinking MS purchases the company knowing what its issues (or perceived) are. I see MS as the lesser of 2 evils, a company I can generally trust with my data. The 'Dark Patterns' that LNKD employs would hurt the rest of MS, so this less unethical behaviour would be as that result. Also helps that LNKD will be consolidated with MS in future, so maybe less pressure on the bottom-line as they'll be a part of the MS group instead of shareholders expecting certain EPS from them.
- jacquesm 10y agoI thought the 'less unethical' was the giveaway, as if you expect them to still be unethical.
- Kliment 10y agoWith a culture as deeply infused with an utter lack of respect for user privacy, reputation or safety, I would expect them to be unethical in essentially all cases, short of, perhaps, a complete management purge.
- forgotAgain 10y agoBorrowed it cheap, makes for a fast close. Maybe looking to pad the MS revenue numbers later in the year due to less growth in cloud infrastructure. (Straight out of IBM playbook.)