6 ms·

The criticism was directed at the company's product, not the employees...

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
trimethylpurine 8mo ago
The response appears to be pointing out that with so many employees (engineers), it's unlikely that they all work on Windows.
- mcmcmc 8mo ago
  And yet they still work for a company that has shown it isn’t overly concerned about quality or reliability in its products.
  - 1f60c 8mo ago
    Thaaat's capitalism
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - trimethylpurine 8mo ago
    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.
    - mcmcmc 8mo ago
      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.
      - trimethylpurine 8mo ago
        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.
        bionsystem 8mo ago
        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.
        mcmcmc 8mo ago
        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.
        deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
        trimethylpurine 8mo ago
- replooda 8mo ago
  Maybe. But interpreting it thus requires too much charitableness for it not to have been uncharitable, whether intentionally or otherwise.
  - trimethylpurine 8mo ago
    You mean interpreting it honestly. Yeah. I caught that.
- sharts 8mo ago
  Don’t the best of the best typically work on OS fundamentals though?
  - trimethylpurine 8mo ago
    Which developer has the best of the best on operating systems?
  - vlovich123 8mo ago
    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.
  - bionsystem 8mo ago
    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.
  - wongarsu 8mo ago
    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
  - mavhc 8mo ago
    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
ray_v 8mo ago
I always wish that people would make this distinction more often ... the people=good, the product=bad ... people!=bad
- replooda 8mo ago
  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"?

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

The response appears to be pointing out that with so many employees (engineers), it's unlikely that they all work on Windows.

mcmcmc 8mo ago
And yet they still work for a company that has shown it isn’t overly concerned about quality or reliability in its products.
- 1f60c 8mo ago
  Thaaat's capitalism
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- trimethylpurine 8mo ago
  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.
  - mcmcmc 8mo ago
    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.
    - trimethylpurine 8mo ago
      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.
      - bionsystem 8mo ago
        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.
      - mcmcmc 8mo ago
        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.
        deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
        trimethylpurine 8mo ago
replooda 8mo ago
Maybe. But interpreting it thus requires too much charitableness for it not to have been uncharitable, whether intentionally or otherwise.
- trimethylpurine 8mo ago
  You mean interpreting it honestly. Yeah. I caught that.
sharts 8mo ago
Don’t the best of the best typically work on OS fundamentals though?
- trimethylpurine 8mo ago
  Which developer has the best of the best on operating systems?
- vlovich123 8mo ago
  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.
- bionsystem 8mo ago
  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.
- wongarsu 8mo ago
  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
- mavhc 8mo ago
  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

ray_v 8mo ago

I always wish that people would make this distinction more often ... the people=good, the product=bad ... people!=bad

replooda 8mo ago
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"?