6 ms·

"He has changed the way engineering teams are structured, largely eliminating testers to speed software releases,... " What could possibly go wrong? Ok.. the

by weavie 12y ago

"He has changed the way engineering teams are structured, largely eliminating testers to speed software releases,... " What could possibly go wrong? Ok.. the sentence continues : "and adding data scientists and designers to the engineering teams to ensure all features are informed by rigorous testing and good design principles. " I don't quite understand, how can data scientists help to catch bugs? Automated testing?

AngrySkillzz 12y ago
I think the first testing refers to catching bugs, and the second refers to A/B and usability testing.
sp332 12y ago
It's a confused sentence, but I think it means he removed "testing" as a separate group of people, and made "testing" something inherent to the design process.
- sbuk 12y ago
  Agree totally, poor writing. It seems that Microsoft, under Mr Nadella's stewardship, are moving towards a more iterative design approach, which seems to be working well.
- intended 12y ago
  I hope that is what it means, because the alternative would be bizarre. That said, I think Nadella will do a good job, and that many ideas that Ballmer had were starting to show their promise.
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  In other words, Microsoft is doing what Google and other companies do: have individual teams responsible for everything for their project(s): design, development, devops, testing. One team has responsibilities for a vertical slice of a system: build it, deploy it, be responsible for it.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
This is probably why so many of the Windows Updates this year broke critical things, especially for enterprise. I feel Nadella is taking a "cheaper, faster" approach which is fine and dandy in the otherwise non-critical mobile space (mobile users are used to being treated like crap and having buggy releases) but in enterprise there's simply a higher standard of quality. I'm not sure what this means for MS. At our shop we now have to overly-test all patches and then wait a minimum of 30 days to see what happens. This has saved our bacon several times under Nadella's MS when before we only had to do pretty casual testing of patches. This also means a lot of shops are no longer rushing to get security patches in because of his negligence and corner cutting. That means a less secure internet for all. I really wish someone would step in and show Nadella that MS shouldnt just be an Apple-lite and that catering to enterprise should be MS's main goal, especially considering that's where almost all its revenue comes from. I'm sure playing Steve Jobs-lite is fun for Nadella, but its about time he grew up and started running with the big dogs. Frankly, I'm sick of the focus on mobile and other popular technology taking away from the core competencies that made some of these companies great. The recent actions and changes on OSX are disheartening as well. Or how the steam behind the Chromebook is more or less dead as Android eats the world. Buying and updating an MS product shouldn't be a gamble. They're supposed to be the conservative and stable big brother to the industry. Ironically, its only now under new leadership that we have so much more incentive to move to FOSS products. Its the same amount of headaches, except with FOSS I have no licensing worries. Under Gates and Balmer, the commercial MS products were less headaches and delivered a fair amount of value. Now just installing an Exchange rollup is asking for a complete reimaging. We don't even bother with service packs anymore. Might as well roll out a new image with that cooked in. The fail rate on those is unacceptably high. edit: why the downvotes? this echoes the sentiment at places like stackexchange and /r/sysadmin. testing at MS has gone to hell and everyone knows it. burying my comment does nothing to stop that reality. Its well known Nadella personally redid the QA and testing parts of MS and those outcomes have only gotten worse.
- Jare 12y ago
  Those are good points worth reading. What you describe is very much the feared outcome of removing SDETs before SDEs are ready to deliver tested and solid products in the new model. I have personally not suffered any troubles, but your experience does not surprise me one bit.
josefresco 12y ago
I actually think this is addressing a known or implied strength of Google - data driven decisions that effect design.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
joshrivers 12y ago
Are there any detailed references out there to what Nadella has changed for QA?
joycey 12y ago
They are not eliminating testing. This was really bad wording. When I interviewed in Redmond with Microsoft, I was told that Microsoft used to hire SDE's (software development engineers) and SDET's (software development engineers in testing) as two distinct positions. Now, if you are hired as a "software engineer", you are responsible for writing software as well as writing tests. This was done to decrease friction between what used to be the "software development team" and the "QA testing team", and hopefully lead to faster software releases.
- Silhouette 12y ago
  But if you're working on software that actually matters, you're supposed to have some friction between the people building it and the people testing it. This is otherwise known by terms such as "independent testing" and "lack of bias". Moving fast and breaking stuff is OK if you're building a web service that doesn't really matter. If Facebook falls over, the productivity at a significant number of businesses probably goes up. On the other hand, if yesterday's OS security patch stops everyone's PC from booting this morning, or if a new version of your e-mail server has a glitch that means half your company can't log in to read their mail or even that important messages from customers are actually being lost, that probably comes with a cost measured in large numbers of dollars per minute at a medium-sized business, or if you prefer, in careers per hour within the IT group.
  - kaeawc 12y ago
    Software engineers should be able to test their own code. The faster they get feedback on their code and its impact to users, the better they understand the various cases and can strive for better quality. Having a separate QA team has a fairly long feedback cycle. Ideally you'd get both engineers writing tests for their code as well QA teams for products.
    - Silhouette 12y ago
      Software engineers should be able to test their own code. Indeed, but there is also a good reason that professional editors have new writing proofread or even technically reviewed by people other than the original author. Maybe there's some subtlety that I'm not picking up here about Microsoft's previous set-up and/or the model they've been moving to under Nadella's leadership. We seem to have some past and present Microsoft developers around these parts, so perhaps their comments will clarify this. But as reported, this looks to me like a retrograde step, an attempt to be more agile and fast-moving rather than something likely to improve the quality of the finished product.
robwilliams 12y ago
Microsoft employee here. Microsoft somewhat recently implemented "Unified Engineering" company-wide, combining developers and testers. I can assure you that testing is still done extensively.

by weavie 12y ago

AngrySkillzz 12y ago

I think the first testing refers to catching bugs, and the second refers to A/B and usability testing.

sp332 12y ago

It's a confused sentence, but I think it means he removed "testing" as a separate group of people, and made "testing" something inherent to the design process.

sbuk 12y ago
Agree totally, poor writing. It seems that Microsoft, under Mr Nadella's stewardship, are moving towards a more iterative design approach, which seems to be working well.
intended 12y ago
I hope that is what it means, because the alternative would be bizarre. That said, I think Nadella will do a good job, and that many ideas that Ballmer had were starting to show their promise.
mark_l_watson 12y ago
In other words, Microsoft is doing what Google and other companies do: have individual teams responsible for everything for their project(s): design, development, devops, testing. One team has responsibilities for a vertical slice of a system: build it, deploy it, be responsible for it.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

This is probably why so many of the Windows Updates this year broke critical things, especially for enterprise. I feel Nadella is taking a "cheaper, faster" approach which is fine and dandy in the otherwise non-critical mobile space (mobile users are used to being treated like crap and having buggy releases) but in enterprise there's simply a higher standard of quality. I'm not sure what this means for MS. At our shop we now have to overly-test all patches and then wait a minimum of 30 days to see what happens. This has saved our bacon several times under Nadella's MS when before we only had to do pretty casual testing of patches. This also means a lot of shops are no longer rushing to get security patches in because of his negligence and corner cutting. That means a less secure internet for all. I really wish someone would step in and show Nadella that MS shouldnt just be an Apple-lite and that catering to enterprise should be MS's main goal, especially considering that's where almost all its revenue comes from. I'm sure playing Steve Jobs-lite is fun for Nadella, but its about time he grew up and started running with the big dogs. Frankly, I'm sick of the focus on mobile and other popular technology taking away from the core competencies that made some of these companies great. The recent actions and changes on OSX are disheartening as well. Or how the steam behind the Chromebook is more or less dead as Android eats the world. Buying and updating an MS product shouldn't be a gamble. They're supposed to be the conservative and stable big brother to the industry. Ironically, its only now under new leadership that we have so much more incentive to move to FOSS products. Its the same amount of headaches, except with FOSS I have no licensing worries. Under Gates and Balmer, the commercial MS products were less headaches and delivered a fair amount of value. Now just installing an Exchange rollup is asking for a complete reimaging. We don't even bother with service packs anymore. Might as well roll out a new image with that cooked in. The fail rate on those is unacceptably high. edit: why the downvotes? this echoes the sentiment at places like stackexchange and /r/sysadmin. testing at MS has gone to hell and everyone knows it. burying my comment does nothing to stop that reality. Its well known Nadella personally redid the QA and testing parts of MS and those outcomes have only gotten worse.

Jare 12y ago
Those are good points worth reading. What you describe is very much the feared outcome of removing SDETs before SDEs are ready to deliver tested and solid products in the new model. I have personally not suffered any troubles, but your experience does not surprise me one bit.

josefresco 12y ago

I actually think this is addressing a known or implied strength of Google - data driven decisions that effect design.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

joshrivers 12y ago

Are there any detailed references out there to what Nadella has changed for QA?

joycey 12y ago

They are not eliminating testing. This was really bad wording. When I interviewed in Redmond with Microsoft, I was told that Microsoft used to hire SDE's (software development engineers) and SDET's (software development engineers in testing) as two distinct positions. Now, if you are hired as a "software engineer", you are responsible for writing software as well as writing tests. This was done to decrease friction between what used to be the "software development team" and the "QA testing team", and hopefully lead to faster software releases.

Silhouette 12y ago
But if you're working on software that actually matters, you're supposed to have some friction between the people building it and the people testing it. This is otherwise known by terms such as "independent testing" and "lack of bias". Moving fast and breaking stuff is OK if you're building a web service that doesn't really matter. If Facebook falls over, the productivity at a significant number of businesses probably goes up. On the other hand, if yesterday's OS security patch stops everyone's PC from booting this morning, or if a new version of your e-mail server has a glitch that means half your company can't log in to read their mail or even that important messages from customers are actually being lost, that probably comes with a cost measured in large numbers of dollars per minute at a medium-sized business, or if you prefer, in careers per hour within the IT group.
- kaeawc 12y ago
  Software engineers should be able to test their own code. The faster they get feedback on their code and its impact to users, the better they understand the various cases and can strive for better quality. Having a separate QA team has a fairly long feedback cycle. Ideally you'd get both engineers writing tests for their code as well QA teams for products.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    Software engineers should be able to test their own code. Indeed, but there is also a good reason that professional editors have new writing proofread or even technically reviewed by people other than the original author. Maybe there's some subtlety that I'm not picking up here about Microsoft's previous set-up and/or the model they've been moving to under Nadella's leadership. We seem to have some past and present Microsoft developers around these parts, so perhaps their comments will clarify this. But as reported, this looks to me like a retrograde step, an attempt to be more agile and fast-moving rather than something likely to improve the quality of the finished product.

robwilliams 12y ago

Microsoft employee here. Microsoft somewhat recently implemented "Unified Engineering" company-wide, combining developers and testers. I can assure you that testing is still done extensively.