4 ms·

I live in PNW and have lots of friends working at Microsoft. Despite the whole "One Microsoft" drumbeat, they're pretty much still the MS of old with little tri

I live in PNW and have lots of friends working at Microsoft. Despite the whole "One Microsoft" drumbeat, they're pretty much still the MS of old with little tribal infighting trumping customers' needs. Windows in particular feels like a captain-less ship with no one overseeing the big picture and every little group pushing their own little shitty features to prove their raison d'etre and their budgets and promotions. It's pretty sad really; they used to have a monthly "town hall" where the leadership team was answering real (sometimes tough) questions from employees, but they replaced those with fake / pre-scripted casts with softball "Q&A" meant to introduce a team or a feature instead of answering an employee's concerns; meanwhile, real employee feedback and questions are left to fester in the Yammer echo chamber. Lots of people leaving core products, but hard to say if that's MS-specific or the industry-wide recent trend. I'm told managers recently did a "stay interview" asking ICs really weird questions about why you're staying at MS, why you'd be leaving, etc. so it's likely the attrition problem is pretty bad.

paulryanrogers 5y ago
> ...they're pretty much still the MS of old with little tribal infighting trumping customers' needs Do you mean that have much infighting?
- gota 5y ago
  Maybe little was meant to be 'petty'
  - vinay427 5y ago
    I happened to read it correctly, but it’s definitely ambiguous. Little can describe the locality of the infighting or the amount of total infighting, where the former was the intended meaning.
    - gigel82 5y ago
      Sorry, I meant insignificant / petty; little/small groups fighting each other instead of working together.
- proc0 5y ago
  Yep. https://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-org-charts-2011-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-org-charts-2011-6
pram 5y ago
I read recently MS executive bonuses were tied to metrics like Teams adoption. Big surprise it worked its way into Windows 11 by default eh?
- windows2020 5y ago
  When I was younger, I saw companies as infallible constants. After being in the field for a while now I see that isn't so. Legitimate software can carry only so much bloat. We're witnessing the downfall of MS (Windows) and no one seems to realize. A new player will emerge to fill the void.
  - devwastaken 5y ago
    Mostly Mac. If apple were to come out tomorrow with friendly repair, driver support, and can be deployed on any hardware - Microsoft would be done. It would only be Google and apple. If I could simply just install osx on my desktop PC, I'd use it.
    - flohofwoe 5y ago
      macOS (and Apple's macOS applications) have been on a slowly accelerating downward spiral too for the last 5..7 years, maybe not as obvious as Windows, but for a long time Apple user it's definitely noticeable.
    - FractalHQ 5y ago
      Apple won’t touch windows until they have an affordable option and support the gaming ecosystem.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
As a consumer I never felt Microsoft was great at making software, They used(& abused) their monopoly position to stay relevant or perhaps even ubiquitous for software until the likes of Yahoo, Google and other members of FANG showed up and proved that they could make better software. Now a 25 member startup (or) an alturistic/idealistic individual(s) sitting in the basement of their parents house does indeed make better software than MS to solve various problems. But as an Entrepreneur I do have to acknowledge that making bad Software hasn't impacted Microsoft's ability to make money, Google although features in the aforementioned list of `Good software makers` has supposedly made lesser direct revenue with its own products(android) than MS made through it(patents) and Of course what's happening with GCP vs Azure is for everyone to see. Perhaps that's why MS makes bad SW, It concentrates on making money through where it matters for it and an average consumer don't even know that the MS software they're using is buggy (or) will put up with it unless they have an opportunity to try something else.

paulryanrogers 5y ago

> ...they're pretty much still the MS of old with little tribal infighting trumping customers' needs Do you mean that have much infighting?

gota 5y ago
Maybe little was meant to be 'petty'
- vinay427 5y ago
  I happened to read it correctly, but it’s definitely ambiguous. Little can describe the locality of the infighting or the amount of total infighting, where the former was the intended meaning.
  - gigel82 5y ago
    Sorry, I meant insignificant / petty; little/small groups fighting each other instead of working together.
proc0 5y ago
Yep. https://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-org-charts-2011-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-org-charts-2011-6

pram 5y ago

I read recently MS executive bonuses were tied to metrics like Teams adoption. Big surprise it worked its way into Windows 11 by default eh?

windows2020 5y ago
When I was younger, I saw companies as infallible constants. After being in the field for a while now I see that isn't so. Legitimate software can carry only so much bloat. We're witnessing the downfall of MS (Windows) and no one seems to realize. A new player will emerge to fill the void.
- devwastaken 5y ago
  Mostly Mac. If apple were to come out tomorrow with friendly repair, driver support, and can be deployed on any hardware - Microsoft would be done. It would only be Google and apple. If I could simply just install osx on my desktop PC, I'd use it.
  - flohofwoe 5y ago
    macOS (and Apple's macOS applications) have been on a slowly accelerating downward spiral too for the last 5..7 years, maybe not as obvious as Windows, but for a long time Apple user it's definitely noticeable.
  - FractalHQ 5y ago
    Apple won’t touch windows until they have an affordable option and support the gaming ecosystem.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

As a consumer I never felt Microsoft was great at making software, They used(& abused) their monopoly position to stay relevant or perhaps even ubiquitous for software until the likes of Yahoo, Google and other members of FANG showed up and proved that they could make better software. Now a 25 member startup (or) an alturistic/idealistic individual(s) sitting in the basement of their parents house does indeed make better software than MS to solve various problems. But as an Entrepreneur I do have to acknowledge that making bad Software hasn't impacted Microsoft's ability to make money, Google although features in the aforementioned list of `Good software makers` has supposedly made lesser direct revenue with its own products(android) than MS made through it(patents) and Of course what's happening with GCP vs Azure is for everyone to see. Perhaps that's why MS makes bad SW, It concentrates on making money through where it matters for it and an average consumer don't even know that the MS software they're using is buggy (or) will put up with it unless they have an opportunity to try something else.