4 ms·

My current gig is an MSFT shop and when I joined I was genuinely excited to find out just how far that universe had come in the 20+ years since I last worked in

My current gig is an MSFT shop and when I joined I was genuinely excited to find out just how far that universe had come in the 20+ years since I last worked in a corp environment that uses it. The Ballmer days are long behind and there's been some genuinely cool stuff coming out of MS since. I don't think I was ready for how bad it is. Not going to go into an inventory of it all, but I'll admit I genuinely lost it when I discovered that the terminal -- the terminal! -- freezes after staying open several days, and you need to kill it and restart it. The worst part, I think, is how the brokenness ends up permeating the engineering culture. Malfunction is just normalized. There's no reliability baseline; if it's broken to the point the amount of work you can do is zero, just open a ticket with support, who will add yet another bit of duct tape or just reboot something somewhere and ask you if the problem went away somehow. I think possibly the coworkers who don't look away from the emperor's non-clothed-ness, and the higher standards that they drive, may be more valuable to have around than you imagine, if you can get past the bad emotions that their lucidity gives you.

jack_tripper 1y ago
>I don't think I was ready for how bad it is. Says it's unthinkably bad then proceeds to give only one example. There are several other issues you can list. >the terminal -- the terminal! -- freezes after staying open several days, and you need to kill it and restart it. I wonder when that issue ever happened since I'm always ssh'd into my homelab via the terminal for days and never had to restart it since it never froze. >The worst part, I think, is how the brokenness ends up permeating the engineering culture. Malfunction is just normalized. Microsoft didn't make the culture like that, the managers were always like that which made them choose Microsoft because they just choose the biggest corporate name brand supplier. It's your typical old-school MBA. I've worked at all-MS shops and at all-Linux shops, and despite the issues with MS tech, the all-MS shops were far less toxic and pleasant to work at as people treated it as a 9-5 job instead of their own personal start-up project that needs to strictly conform to their world view, therefore the linux-shops I worked at tended to attract more of the toxic problem employees like your grandparent whos work life revolved around tech evangelism than pragmatism, which I didn't like since I just wanted to get work done and go home, not participate in some crusade at work to judge and shame choices of OS/IDE/languages/frameworks/tools the company should be using. As long as I get paid, I'll use any widely available tool, I don't really care.
- Grimblewald 1y ago
  > as long as I keep getting paid, nothing else matters Mindset explains the other users complaint perfectly I guess. I suppose it comes to how one views and feels about work. Take pride in your work? Dont go MS shop. Don't care and are just there to get paid? MS shop. that attitude explains why I can no longer edit calendar evemts in the android app unless I turn the phone sideways, and a deluge of other issues with MS products that reek of sloppy low effort work.
  - jack_tripper 1y ago
    >Mindset explains the other users complaint perfectly I guess. Yes, how dare SW engineers work to just put food on the table for their families, and not fight your imaginary tech revolution against MS-shops? > Take pride in your work? Dont go MS shop. Sorry buddy, but I work the SW equivalent of "putting the fries in the bag", my work has no impact on the tech issues in your life, and I don't live in The Valley, or the US, or some major international tech hub where hip, non-MS jobs fall from trees in order to make an impact, and so MS shops make the brunt of the jobs market where I live. Should I go homeless and hungry just to virtue signal on HN on how righteous I am via your self-defined Russian nesting doll of obscure purity tests? >that attitude explains why [...] Hate to break it to you, but some people on HN like you guys in this thread, are so over privileged with your career opportunities, that their delusions take over rationality and common sense views of the reality outside their bubble, and think the rest of the world must conform to your viewpoints or else they're somehow the "evil ones" responsible for the issues you perceive. By all means feel free to have your own beliefs and values that differ from others, just don't try to virtue signal, judge others, or impose your view on others, as nobody likes such obnoxious arrogant people on their high horse thinking they're on the right side of history and everyone else is wrong. Live and let live, that's my life's mantra.
    - Grimblewald 1y ago
      I don't have the opportunities you're talking about. You misunderstand who I am or what my background is. I don't come from the USA and in fact you literally couldn't pay me to go work in or for the USA. Not in my entire life has that ever been possible. USA has always been a last resort option for me. Not that I have the option, but to even consider it, it would need to be the last option left. I'm not saying that you cannot work in an MS-shop. I am just saying that the attitudes I see reflected in the comments supporting MS-shops explain why MS-shop output looks the way it does. Ultimately, it comes down to company culture not individual developers. I wouldn't hold devs accountable for what is a systemic issue, in fact I am grateful there are those devs who don't care about taking pride in their work who can survive in an MS-shop without it draining their reason for being. If not for them, positions in places where taking pride in your work doesn't come at personal cost would be far more competitive. However, that doesn't mean it isn't worth calling out an emerging pattern of MS-shops being the kind of place incompatible with wanting to take pride in your work.
hnthrow231025 1y ago
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jack_tripper 1y ago

>I don't think I was ready for how bad it is. Says it's unthinkably bad then proceeds to give only one example. There are several other issues you can list. >the terminal -- the terminal! -- freezes after staying open several days, and you need to kill it and restart it. I wonder when that issue ever happened since I'm always ssh'd into my homelab via the terminal for days and never had to restart it since it never froze. >The worst part, I think, is how the brokenness ends up permeating the engineering culture. Malfunction is just normalized. Microsoft didn't make the culture like that, the managers were always like that which made them choose Microsoft because they just choose the biggest corporate name brand supplier. It's your typical old-school MBA. I've worked at all-MS shops and at all-Linux shops, and despite the issues with MS tech, the all-MS shops were far less toxic and pleasant to work at as people treated it as a 9-5 job instead of their own personal start-up project that needs to strictly conform to their world view, therefore the linux-shops I worked at tended to attract more of the toxic problem employees like your grandparent whos work life revolved around tech evangelism than pragmatism, which I didn't like since I just wanted to get work done and go home, not participate in some crusade at work to judge and shame choices of OS/IDE/languages/frameworks/tools the company should be using. As long as I get paid, I'll use any widely available tool, I don't really care.

Grimblewald 1y ago
> as long as I keep getting paid, nothing else matters Mindset explains the other users complaint perfectly I guess. I suppose it comes to how one views and feels about work. Take pride in your work? Dont go MS shop. Don't care and are just there to get paid? MS shop. that attitude explains why I can no longer edit calendar evemts in the android app unless I turn the phone sideways, and a deluge of other issues with MS products that reek of sloppy low effort work.
- jack_tripper 1y ago
  >Mindset explains the other users complaint perfectly I guess. Yes, how dare SW engineers work to just put food on the table for their families, and not fight your imaginary tech revolution against MS-shops? > Take pride in your work? Dont go MS shop. Sorry buddy, but I work the SW equivalent of "putting the fries in the bag", my work has no impact on the tech issues in your life, and I don't live in The Valley, or the US, or some major international tech hub where hip, non-MS jobs fall from trees in order to make an impact, and so MS shops make the brunt of the jobs market where I live. Should I go homeless and hungry just to virtue signal on HN on how righteous I am via your self-defined Russian nesting doll of obscure purity tests? >that attitude explains why [...] Hate to break it to you, but some people on HN like you guys in this thread, are so over privileged with your career opportunities, that their delusions take over rationality and common sense views of the reality outside their bubble, and think the rest of the world must conform to your viewpoints or else they're somehow the "evil ones" responsible for the issues you perceive. By all means feel free to have your own beliefs and values that differ from others, just don't try to virtue signal, judge others, or impose your view on others, as nobody likes such obnoxious arrogant people on their high horse thinking they're on the right side of history and everyone else is wrong. Live and let live, that's my life's mantra.
  - Grimblewald 1y ago
    I don't have the opportunities you're talking about. You misunderstand who I am or what my background is. I don't come from the USA and in fact you literally couldn't pay me to go work in or for the USA. Not in my entire life has that ever been possible. USA has always been a last resort option for me. Not that I have the option, but to even consider it, it would need to be the last option left. I'm not saying that you cannot work in an MS-shop. I am just saying that the attitudes I see reflected in the comments supporting MS-shops explain why MS-shop output looks the way it does. Ultimately, it comes down to company culture not individual developers. I wouldn't hold devs accountable for what is a systemic issue, in fact I am grateful there are those devs who don't care about taking pride in their work who can survive in an MS-shop without it draining their reason for being. If not for them, positions in places where taking pride in your work doesn't come at personal cost would be far more competitive. However, that doesn't mean it isn't worth calling out an emerging pattern of MS-shops being the kind of place incompatible with wanting to take pride in your work.

hnthrow231025 1y ago

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