No surprise: Microsoft seeks Windows Update boss with 'ability to reduce chaos, stress' Microsoft wants to hire a particularly thick-skinned person to help run its Windows Updates team. The Windows Servicing and Delivery team Senior Program Manager will be tasked with overseeing the release of features, fixes and security patches Microsoft delivers for Windows. That means the person who fills this role will be …
Not likely, you're right. They're looking for me. I have 0 management experience and promise to stay drunk 20% of the time (%80 of time spent will be "Out of the office."). However, I promise each update will come with free porn and games. DEVELOPERS!!! DEVELOPERS!!! DEVELOPERS!!!!
And that is two orders of magnatude movement in a better direction for their update managers (not to mention giving users something they would like for a change).
You're hired, you start Monday, and I will *personally* walk you into the HR building if you show up in Redmond. (One of those three statements is actually true.)
Yeah, its like advertising for a ship hull repair expert and then giving them the Titanic.
Its not the Window's Update Boss that will fix the problem, its removing the CEO and starting again to produce an OS that the majority of users want.
"Its not the Window's Update Boss that will fix the problem, its removing the CEO and starting again to produce an OS that the majority of users want."
you got THAT right...
what I find interesting is they require a 4 year degree.
MANY competent software engineers (and quite possibly the MOST competent engineers) either have no degree, or it's in something else (like music). A requirement for a degree would only satisfy a bunch of CLUELESS H.R. dweebs. Yes, I have no degree, except in the school of ACTUAL APPLIED SCIENCES AND EXPERIENCE [where it REALLY matters].
A 4 year degree THESE days (in the USA anyway, where education ranks pretty low) requires suffering through 4 years of excessive tuition and liberal indoctrination. no thanks. I'd get 'F's if I were honest, or else have to "suck up and say the right key words and tricky phrases" to get the 'A' (like MOST people probably do).
THAT as opposed to 30 years of competent success...
So the person Micro-shaft REALLY wants isn't who they're advertising for. But the person they're advertising for will most l ikely "go along to get along", and that's what *certain* *people* inside Micro-shaft probably want...
[so YEAH if they wanted to FIX IT, they'd hire *ME*]
Maybe MS should start by getting someone to do QC on the code base and make sure that any code that gets used is way beyond beta quality.
Then they need someone to design a desktop operating system without pandering to smart phones and tablets.
Oh, and everything needs to be standards complaint.
Microsoft, a tip for you: I'd be looking to hire a Senior Software Architect from Dropbox.
Dropbox knows how to break a file down, structurally lay out those files across its customers/devices/localitiies, with the most seemless interface known to man, so you always have the latest version to hand. Dropbox does one job very well.
Windows Update is a quirk infested monster, and that's been polite. For this job, you need detailed knowledge of the ins and outs of 250+ Windows Patches (as a minimum) and what subsystems each interacts with.
It's a Venn diagram hell hole, to say the least.
@AC
After a Win7 fresh install, deploy KB3102810 to fix the unable to update problem.
It still take about an hour to sulk, but it then kicks off on the mammoth set of update followed by a number of smaller fits of activity that eventually brings you up to date.
I heard that they recently shipped a bundle of all the updates (used to be called a service pack in the olden days) but I don't know what its disguised as now as I don't do many Windows installs any more.
I've found an easier and more reliable way that does it all in one go, you run the following command
sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
This does one set of updates with no need for a reboot to unblock the next set of updates etc. Check it out
The problem is that the approach used by those distros requires proper partitioning so that the patches only address the bugs in the specific package.
Microsoft wants everything to be dependent on everything else - thus a patch to any part causes problems for all the OTHER parts as well.
If it were properly partitioned it would be easy to replace/substitute a package - and not affect anything else.
But that would change Microsofts bottom line...
In their internal documents they said Linux can be divided to very small parts fit for the purpose while Windows can't. That was in 1990s and they did almost nothing about it. Linux distributions can be updated so easy because even the updater has its own small package in a very simple container without 500 hex numbers filename.
"Microsoft wants everything to be dependent on everything else - thus a patch to any part causes problems for all the OTHER parts as well."
you're probably right. that would DEFINITELY explain it, yes.
The next question is: why? why put all eggs in ONE basket like that? What kind of CONTROL does Micro-shaft INSIST on having over our computers? [this deserves the W.T.F. emblem]
apt-get is what debian, ubuntu, mint, and others use. it works pretty well for me on my various installed Linux distros. And it's NOT forced.
Ah ha. I see your mistake
What kind of CONTROL does Micro-shaft INSIST on having over our computers?
This is where you are wrong. you might have actually shelled out hard earned £££ for the hardware but the moment you put Windows on it, it is then owned by Microsoft, lock stock and spyware.
They can (and do) what they want to your kit and you have no recourse especially in the USA where the EULA prohibits you from taking legal action against MS.
Get used to it. It will only get worse.
Despite all of the books that Microsoft Press has published in regards to quality and management, nobody inside Microsoft is fit for this job! I've always wondered, why don't any of the people inside Microsoft read those books and actually do what they say?
I interviewed with the Windows Update team many years ago. The interviewers were so clueless and unorganized that I led the interview with questions and prompts to help them along. They offered me the job later that same day. I politely declined.
One can only hope things have gotten better since then but I highly doubt it...
To me at least, the job description implies that delivering and testing updates is considered a separate function from developing the software in the first place. Why is the Windows Update manager responsible for anything other than the correct functioning of the WU software that delivers patches? Why are the products not responsible for the quality of the patches and WU is treated merely as a handy delivery mechanism?
You didn't actually believe all that "Win X is the last release ever!!!!one" bollocks from the BS corporation's marketeers, did you?
By now Win X is practically abandonware. All the half-competent coders will already be up to their eyeballs fucking up what's to be shat out as Win 11 10.1 ("Puma"): The best Windows(tm) ever!
I always found it curious that MS sold Windows 10 as "the best Windows ever."
From their perspective, shouldn't every Windows release be the "best Windows ever?" If the new one isn't better than the previous generation, why release it at all?
It's like they're admitting this has not always been the case. Of course, Win 10 is by no means the best Windows ever from a consumer perspective. From Microsoft's point of view, it certainly is; no other version has given them so much control over their users, and they ARE the ones making the claim.
...but every new version *IS* "the best Windows(tm) ever" (honest!)... at least according to the boilerplate M$ marketing B$ that accompanies each release... even the most putrid of their little turds like ME, Vista, 8 and 10! *ALL* were *SOLD* as the "best" Windows(tm) ever... just as the next one will be... and the one after that (if Microsoft isn't SCO by then)...
Same old.
"our best ever" always rings oddly with me as it's a weirdo marketing statement of nothing much. As in, it's stating what should bloody well be obvious and always the case. Similar to other gems that I've seen recently for example, "architect designed" on a new block of flats... who else would design them?
However the one that's a gem to watch for is "now our best ever" which really is an admission that what was being peddled previously really wasn't very good at all.
Feeling sorry for MS engineers. Windows is on so many kinds of PC's. Don't know if it's the reason but recently it seems they lost the ability to keep the quality of updates for many despite having many beta testers. Plus they are now very slow in everything. Plus their UWP apps always has some strange annoying usability problems/decisions, strange feature lack and bugs that may make people woder that if MS engineers really use Windows as their daily driver or macOS/iOS as the head of their WP team did. No problem about Win32 platform though but it lacks modern features that UWP supports. UWP platform still didn't reach there. But MS is right that this kind of apps are the future.
"UWP platform still didn't reach there. But MS is right that this kind of apps are the future"
It won't run on a Microsoft OS though being that Microsoft's OS is not running on very many devices and is declining. Who puts a universal platform on an OS which is in decline. Anyway there will not be a universal platform unless it run be Google or Apple. Google and Apple alone can make a universal platform. Microsoft is irrelevant in the device OS business.
.... or maybe not
<facepalmEPIC>
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/cumulative-update-for-windows-10-version-1607/1124d064-fe83-43ab-8fec-f0cf4f15f4d4
I'm probably the biggest MS supporter - being that I've worked with their products since DOS days, its got me the Jag, enabled me to send the kids to private school etc, but this is getting daft now.....
While we all "appreciate" the new world of evergreen - where the heck IS the quality control - we detected this in the Insider program, on the Fast, Slow AND Release Preview rings and yet its still been rolled out to GA....
That an' the decision to merge feature updates with security updates in roll-up patches,,,
</facepalmEPIC>
Unfortunately for everyone that's responded to that post they've posted on 'Microsoft never answers'.
I'm sure an MVP will be along shortly however to completely not read the original post and provide some completely useless no shit sherlock style information.
' the job description asks candidates have the "ability to reduce chaos, increase simplification and reduce stress for the team." '
So once the team leader convinces everyone involved to not give a shit, their work is done.
Out sourcing to a non-english speaking sweatshop will do the trick.
"Or buying in a crate of spliffs. Cheaper too. ..and the quality of patches would probably improve no-end."
Move to Colorado, then it's legal as well.
Plant geneticists working on a strain aimed at lowering the stress and increasing the productivity of software testers...they already have one for senior management but (a) it doesn't work and (b) it comes from Colombia.
No need to move to Colorado. *Recreational* Cannibis is quite legal in Washington State and Redmond City Council just (unanamously) approved stores in city limits (making them rather late to the game and irrelevant as Microsofties live in 20-Something Cool and Fun Seattle and give negative fucks about Stepford, er, Redmond). I assure you, weed (availability) is a non-issue.
Kids these days don't smoke spliffs, they Vape. (I know this because one of the little blighters gave me hell for having the audacity to smoke an actual cigarette by the ashtray, in the smoking section, which on the West Coast of America means "roughly five miles out to sea, but we can stay within U.S. Territorial Waters". And I know damn well what was in the vape he was blithely puffing on while I got a lecture on the evils of tobacco. I was so taken back, it was *hysterical*. I was compelled to play along. Anyway, spliffs are out, vape is in, make a note of it, you gerriatric neophite. (And *that* was when I slapped him, in case you were wondering.)
Business guys don't smoke pot anyway (...yes, they are indeed still coked to the gills) and That my friends, is part of the problem. And I'm going to let you in on a little secret: You do not look for Microsoft Corporate types in Redmond. Redmond is a little one horse town that doesn't even have a 24-Hour shitty diner with great pancakes and bacon like every other sane tech city, anywhere, ever. You go to *Bellevue*. Bellevue lets you build things over six stories (so there is a concrete/glass/steel Microsoft penis erect somewhere near campus) and that is where you find the Brooks Brothers and Blow.
Or so I'm told.
I can't be arsed (this phrase you guys use is so wonderful, I love it) to scroll back to quote properly but I'm with the guy that said (roughly): "This should not be a job. This is a rather critical and rediculously basic part of writing software."
Actually, cannabis is not legal anywhere in the US... repealing state prohibitions doesn't remove the federal one, even if they are (for now) choosing not to enforce it under certain circumstances. They can always change their minds if they decide they want to "get" you.
Nothing is going to change if Microsoft keeps downsizing its patch/testing team, or outsource the jobs to IT sweatshops who work for pittance in third world countries.
Also, automatic updates are a BAD idea. Everyone should be opted out by default, with a first-run one-time run nag for the first user to opt-in.
SECURITY* patching SHOULD be ON by default but turnoffable**.
ALL other patching/updates/"enhancements"/etc. SHOULD be OFF by default but turnonable**.
THAT IS ALL
Simple enough for even a child to comprehend, Shirley? Though not, apparently, a single one of the tits at M$.
*EXCLUSIVELY REAL BONA FIDE SINCERELY DOCUMENTED ACTUAL PROPER >>>SECURITY<<< PATCHES WHICH ONLY PATCH VULNERABILITIES AND DO ABSOLUTELYFUCKINGNOTHING ELSE
**BY THE SYSTEM'S ADMINISTRATOR WHICH ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY CERTAINLY IS >>NOT<<< THE MICROSHAFT CORPORATION INCORPORATED OF REDMOND, WA, NSA
It absolutely did happen. The comment was under the "Our Windows windows will be resizable, soooon, vows Microsoft" article. The status of the comment is "Rejected 3 days".
The subject and full text was:
"The sad truth
Microsoft Windows has evolved into a state where it is a running joke."
Is there a Miicrosoft mole in the Reg team?
PS. That was under a piece by Andrew Orlowski. He may have a slight dislike of me after I wrote that I recognized he knew more about climate than IPCC but I had no idea he knew more about copyright than professional judges ;-)
"Wanted: Dead eyed sociopath, must have can do attitude and ability to walk over dead bodies."
Somebody with a LART would be of some *serious* value. The rub is that this person must LART *UP* the command chain...I know it, you know it, *everybody* freaking knows it (well, Wall St. isn't complaining and I'm giving them a pass as Good Software Development isn't really expected to be in their bailwick whereas counting money is). And this, in the history of corporations, simply does not happen:
Well Mr. Phillips, we really would like for you to do a complete audit, that is, and, ah, well...we completely realize that in your analysis of our business you may, again in the course of your, ah, investigation, find that, um, rather, you see...that in fact *management* may be The Problem. In that event, we, ah, give you complete authority to sack any of us that you find to be, ah, incompatible with the Company Mission, or, ah, incompetant.
Never happened, never will happen. But damn would it be fun. I can see folk lined up all the way to the horizon for that job.
What happened to the previous Manager of the Update Team - fired, retired, promoted, demoted or quit?
Surviving corporate resizing is a tough ask for a Tech Team Manager, especially when the techies who were tasked with testing the product got the ax. Dealing with outsourced contributors adds even more dysfunction, complexity and uncertainty. Disastrous quality control is a given when this happens. A Senior Program Manager usually comes from the techie ranks so I assume the previous manager either quit or retired.
Microsoft are hard to understand. For a couple of years, the team maintaining code for Windows patches are, more or less, the team that wrote the stuff originally. After a few years, they are replaced by another team.
I'm not going to go along with racist comments about this layer of Windows coders; I know what the problem is; the people who are supposed to fix Windows are so distant from the problems and end users that they do not have a chance.
• Investigate and understand customer scenarios and expectations in depth, using telemetry/data, anecdotal evidence, personal experience and market perceptions.
No! That's precisely where the problem is: using bad data to paper over the cracks instead of actually testing their shit properly in the first place.
Guess it confirms what I'd hoped would never happen too: now we'll be force-fed the telemetry updates I've been trying so hard to avoid, whether we want to contribute to M$'s giant sludgepile of ill-gotten crap data or not.
They're coming (again)...
As far as I can tell, existing Win7 patches including Telemetry patches will be re-released and rolled up 'gradually' into monthly roll-up Updates over the next year starting from October 2016. Monthly 'complete' Roll-up patches are expected to reach the size of Service packs (or there abouts), over time, i.e. 12 months.
Windows Update will use smaller differential delta patches still, to keep downloads smaller. The are two types of roll ups, Security+recommended, Security only. Not sure which side of the fence Telemetry patches will sit though.
People have raised some interesting scenarios, when trying to grasp the full details of how this will actually work, but it looks like patches people have actively tried to avoid, are getting a second or third helping, just to make sure you consumed them.
I personally think this is a secret NSA mandate on Microsoft (following on from the Irish case), I don't think its Microsoft led, as such.
More info regarding a full list of patches to avoid here:
https://gist.github.com/xvitaly/eafa75ed2cb79b3bd4e9
I personally think this is a secret NSA mandate on Microsoft (following on from the Irish case), I don't think its Microsoft led, as such.
I doubt it's NSA. I really think it's all MS for one reason... profit. If they can datamine (and I'm sure they can and will) that information is very valuable to advertisers. MS is quickly picking up from Google on how to grab information from users.
All O/S's seem to be have become a cancer requiring a constant cycle of patching. Worse, you no longer own your own machine, O/S and their apps becoming malware in themselves. How many more stabs do Microsoft need, and why the heck do they need to be advertising a position outside the team. Shows how desperate things must be. Will they ever give me my computer back?
I propose making this position largely redundant. They are trying to fix the thing which is causing problems, not eliminate the thing causing the problems.
Hear me out.
Make Windows a VM. The OS would be managed by a new ultra-barebones hypervisor. There would be a dedicated static file (.vhdx in current paralance) containing the OS, and another for settings, and another for apps, and another for data.
Windows updates would then simply be a case of downloading the new OS .vhdx (or byte/block patching for small updates) and "rebooting" into it and updating the settings "schema" - it should be pretty much instant.
Apps could also be run from their isolated VM, similar to running Edge in its own VM.
I would be happy for a modest one-off £5million consultancy fee from Microsoft for this revolutionary idea. Pretty cheap, I think.
"Make Windows a VM. The OS would be managed by a new ultra-barebones hypervisor."
better idea: make windows linux at the core, with the GUI front-end entirely in userland, and open source so end-users can peer-review it and do pull requests
oh, that's kinda what a Linux distro is like, isn't it?
Anyone tried updating a new W7 install the conventional way recently, it's like watching a slug traverse the pitch at Wembley
Yes, I did. It spent SIX hours looking for updates and then announced that it didn't need any. It was a Windows 7 with SP1 slipstreamed. However, two days later I went to shut it down and was informed it had 59 Updates installing. The last time I did a full Windows 7 update there was 252 Updates in the first round alone. Can't remember the exact number of the rest but it too FOUR sessions before Windows 7 admitted it was full. Then it was off the cleanmgr to clear out all the duplicated crap.
Time to get reacquainted with AutoPatcher me thinks.
It started sometime around 2-3 years ago. I've imaged and deployed literally thousands of PCs worldwide and we would have to wait 24 hours for the nearly quarter GB of updates to download and install and often in 2-3 stages which often meant 48 hours before all current updates were complete.
Why didn't we just update the image? Ask the boss, not me, although I'm almost sure it had to do with restarts required before the next updates could actually install. But after making what seemed a never ending image update and the time for weeding out the bad updates, we finally gave up.
We did try to manage it with SCCM, which is another bone of contention I have with MS. Great concept, slow as fucking hell.
I have fixed my W10 box to , hopefully, not update or give data to MS at all. That's after several very bad recent experiences not to mention their in your face privacy policy reviions.
I would guess they will look to FaceBook for an update magician who will be very good at pulling rabbits out of a hat while driving the shaft in deep in our backs.
Microsoft would have needed someone like that in the early 1990s. The problem was caused by a mirror image of that we currently have in the FreeDesktop world.
The problem is that Microsoft has lots of half-baked non-orthogonal features. Developers jump on every new feature just to find out it's not yet usable a couple of month later. This causes a mess of workarounds which tie the bugs down, making it harder to fix them... and then just before the feature would be usable... it gets discontinued by Microsoft.
Microsoft never managed to find a decent way to string together orthogonal features. They have tried with OOP, promising things like being able to add a feature into every program by just adding an additional program. Since they haven't managed to get OOP running across multiple programs (OLE was one attempt) that project kinda failed.
Now, even if Microsoft hat the right people, it would be to late. Microsoft is trapped in legacy. People don't buy Windows because of its cool new features but because it continues to run the software they bought somewhere in the 1990s. With .net they would have had the chance to change that. Unfortunatety since .net wasn't open and minimal from the start, it seems to have only attracted the "bottom of the barrel" programmers.
Rebuild innards from scratch. Become a Unix or Linux distribution. Build the Microsoft Windows look and feel desktop on top of Xorg on top of the Linux kernel. Add a legacy library "veneer" (DLL etc.) to allow 3rd parties to survive until they find it interesting enough to port to Linux/Unix APIs.
Apple did this (MacOSX on BSD Unix) and they have thrived. Redmond needs to reduce their costs or go the way of the Mini-computer market of the 1980s.
... and reliance on multiple-gigabyte updates pushed at people without asking, especially when they inexplicably fail first time and download all over again? My folks got billed for going over their monthly quota thanks to the bonkers-big Windows 10 anniversary update they reasonably described as "unsolicited".
I thought a large part of the Windows 10 "always updating" ethos was to avoid the need for such huge and mostly duplicative service packs, or do they have such little trust in the day-to-day updates not to be layering up a cumulative clusterf*ck?
There are some guys from third World in MS forums that provide some genius, crazy registry/shell hacks. I doubt they have seen a University building in real life.
The code which even MS builds on (Linux, BSD) could have been written by an 13 year old with ADHD and we would never know. Does it work? Was it goodly written? Does it conform to the quality of code standards in Linux? That is all Linus cares about. Just imagine the highly prestigious Debian stable, are all debs maintained by computer science guys?
MS does some cool things lately but their company culture didn't change. They never ask why such scandals didn't happen in Debian, a free OS. There is democracy and real free market there. A MIT professor's code could be fixed by an 15 year old and no offence taken.
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