Former and current Microsofties react to the latest round of layoffs Microsoft's latest round of layoffs has triggered an outpouring of emotion from inside and outside the company, with at least one former staffer asking: "How many billions must be burned in the AI furnace before this stops?" To be clear, Microsoft has not stated that the latest round of cuts is anything to do with its AI …
But the point surely is that MS is adopting the corporate arrogance and entitlement of IBM that led to IBM's irrelevance?
Windows and O365 are now bloatware to which MS keeps adding features that nobody asked for (rather than fixing the bugs and various illogical aspects of functionality), the company is pushing more and more to a SaaS model that customers aren't seeking, their games business is a haphazard pile of acquisitions they don't know what to do with, they're trying to shove AI into everything despite the mediocre capabilities of Copilot (and again, nobody asked for this). They're mangling old school Outlook again which nobody asked for. MS do have a dominant market position, but as the world continues its shift to mobile (which MS flunked repeatedly) they're just like IBM relying on its mainframes to power its business. Dynamics is a surprisingly competent and versatile platform, but I suspect like all acquired software it's likely been underinvested as MS throw money at junk like AI, Recall and other shite. I can't think of any MS product that is a killer application, or a best in class one, and the company are existing largely on their own corporate inertia, and the short termist reluctance of customers to adopt cheaper or better alternatives.
"I can't think of any MS product that is a killer application"
That MS isn't involved in the development of safety critical software is one small blessing.
A cardiac pacemaker running MS software under IOT Windows would undoubtedly meet the definition of a killer application but perhaps not in the sense originally intended.
This post has been deleted by its author
Excel is Microsoft's killer app.
Just try to convince the finance types that they should migrate all of their spreadsheets to LibreOffice.
Or that they should learn another spreadsheet program, another scripting language and so on.
And what kind of person have a lot of clout within organisations? Those whose primary application is Excel.
Hmm maybe the killer app(s) is a compatibility tool from Excel to LibreOffice? Would still take decades to wean them off. Has LibreOffice got anything decent yet regarding scripting. I had a look once but couldn't make head or tail of it but that could be impatience and poor docs. Did I hear they were going to use Python?
Not so sure about that. The small community I work in and with seems to be increasingly a Linux one. More to the point, of all the colleagues who have "gone Linux" over the last three years, not a single one has reverted to M$. OK, it is hardly a landslide, but the arrow is clearly pointing in one direction only.
"The small community I work in and with seems to be increasingly a Linux one."
For me it's down to the software I need/want to use. If it's available for Mac or Linux, I'll use it on one of those machines. If it is only available on Win, I have to suffer. The Win machine is completely off-network so if that's a requirement, I have to find an alternative. Most GUI's for Linux are nearly the same as Win/Mac so it's not a slog to switch between any of them. The beauty of Linux is the performance on older hardware. Every new release of Mac/Win is just a bigger resource hog unless one buys the latest shiny new box (and has an electrician around to install a dedicated socket for it).
I think that a lot more people are going to at least look at ditching Windows entirely. And Linux is certainly a solid gaming platform these days, and always getting more comfortable to use for non-technical people. But definitely, until the "Photoshop problem"[1] is solved, the biggest beneficiary of a large migration amongst average users is going to just pad Apple's pockets more. Given the price to performance on the M4 Minis/Airs, they're becoming a bit more competitive there. I think that large-scale switching to Linux will probably follow institutions migrating and sticking with it. If EU cities stick with a changeover, and companies start following suit, *then* home users are really going to start to follow.
[1] Or insert "must have" application here, where WINE isn't a viable option.
I tried Linux on my kids a few years back but got fed up being dragged into getting games running. Also, the graphics were not as good. Not sure if lacking sufficient investment from Nvidia etc but they simply were not as good. When the whole Steam catalogue can run without special effort maybe. However, what the little gits do now is try to install various mods people have created. Unfortunately, the creators assume a level of competence and patience my progeny don't seem to have! So it's "Daaaad, can you help please". The main requirement is to be patient and carefullly read the instructions & checking versions etc. My children have no patience.
really?
Might be time to try again
These days it's just a case of 'apt install steam' and set the option "Enable SteamPlay (aka Proton) for all titles" in the Steam settings, and everything just works. It's pretty rare that I find a game that doesn't, and Steam have been very good about refunds in these cases.
Use case is a thing, and I'll never expect EVERYONE to ditch Windows, especially not overnight, from inertia alone. A mass-migration to Linux is quite unlikely, at least until people start becoming more familiar with it, which means workplaces and schools start adopting in significant numbers, and major software gets ported, first. These days, it is a solid enough gaming platform that I'm considering dual-booting the Intel iMac with Linux just for gaming.[1]. But sadly, that's the thing. While I ditched M$ pretty much entirely 25 years ago, most of that time, my primary platform is Mac, and that's highly unlikely to change in the near future between software support and lingering quality of life issues.
[1] But not gaming much at the moment and very lazy.
Micros~1 just laid off 9,000 employees of their Xbox gaming studios, the people responsible for Starfield, Indiana Jones, and Doom. It is as if they are trying to destroy their gaming division.
PC gaming is the one area that they are still strong in for home users. Now through Steam Proton, all of those gaming rigs can run Linux with no issues. And other than gaming rigs, who buys a home PC with Windows anymore? Those that still use laptops are probably running Macbooks, if for no other reason than they are easy to use and sync nicely with their phone.
Also musicians. Or at least those of us that pretend to be musicians in our spare time. You just cannot record and instrument 'in the cloud' with anything like the latency you need (<=5ms from hitting the note to hearing the note) so local is the only option. Mobile isn't there by a long stretch and Mac, well, it's Apple.
Rosie
"... latest 365 version of Word at work it still cannot properly format tables within tables."
That is NOT an error it is exactly as MS intended it to work !!!
The previous versions did not work SO the latest version must be compatible ... therefore it does not work either !!!
Problem solved ... Customer did not 'understand' what compatible means !!!
P.S. MS still not rushing ... but thanks for the thought.
:)
I think the use of the phrase "nobody asked for" in saying what Microsoft are doing is to miss how business works. Tech businesses that *just* do what people ask for will fail because anyone can listen to people and produce something that fits their stated needs. The difficulty is fitting their actual needs or doing something brand new that people haven't thought of.
That's where AI is currently and it will change our entire world - especially for developers who need to understand and eventually embrace it or may as well quit.
"their games business is a haphazard pile of acquisitions they don't know what to do with, they're trying to shove AI into everything despite the mediocre capabilities of Copilot"
I'm old enough to have had an AOL account before the internet was a thing (and BBS memberships before that). When the internet started to be a thing, every software maker had to inject some sort of web functionality to their product whether it made any sense or not. Sure, it sounded grand, but the novelty wore off in less than a week just like gadgets in new cars. Here we go again.
I wouldn't write IBM off quite yet. They still have a good service capability and technologies because they still have some good people. But it is under threat by what looks like some bad management decisions. They seem to be stuck with some delusions of grandeur. For example the IBM Cloud and AI ventures were both too late not necessarily in terms of fundamental R&D but in large scale investment. Not surprising, you don't want to bet your existence when you already have a business. Maybe they could've found someone to buy as MS did. Still risky if it involves a high percentage of your profit. Sooner or later they will have to make some big bets or they'll dwindle. Better to go with a bang than a whimper?
"Chasing the latest fad"
The fear of missing out, just like last time.
Big companies have loads of inertia which is why they gobble up smaller companies that have taken a risk on developing something new. That new thing also hasn't been sandblasted by layer upon layer of middle manager approvals and changes.
I suppose with AI, the big companies believe that they'll miss the point where they should have eaten the small fish and wind up being eaten themselves. That's a nightmare of top management that they'll wake up one day to a broken rice bowl. How on Earth could they possibly get another job at $20mn/yr to support their current lifestyle?
It is bringing our civilisation down. The unchecked, short term greed that is. There are clever people who do not work short term and have slowly manipulated us by using our short term insight, needs and greed. You can see it at every election. Promises are made and not kept but do we revolt, do we stand up and say enough is enough, we need to rearrange the system. Well the system is soon to get rearranged but not in our best interests. Or at least the orchestrators do not intend it to be in our interests, but it is a chaotic system so they may be dissappointed.
Capitalism always takes the Cash over efficiency gains.
They can always fuck something offshore in addition - Primark is a good example here on outsourcing some IT/Finance/HR/Sourcing functions to Accenture (India).
Primark are doing well and shame on them for fucking off hundreds of jobs in USA, UK and Ireland.
So there’s a comment piece in The Guardian written by a recent grad that says graduate level finance jobs are being wiped out as companies go for AI to do them instead. So what happens when those same companies need experienced people that they haven’t home-grown?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/06/graduation-students-jobs-market-ai-accountancy-finance
People will be burning the robots in the streets and seeking the banning of A.I. - as per all good Sci-Fi from Star Trek, to Dune, from Terminator to Foundation.
I doubt if will get anywhere near robots v’s humans war before there is a revolt.
Realistically Agent Orange would just view anyone needing Universal Basic Income and Medicare/SNAP as a bigly looser. What are people going to do ??
There’s a moment before the layoff hits when everything feels fake.
Your calendar’s full, your tasks are real, but you already know:
you’re done.
The Slack channels go quiet.
The VP posts about “resilience.”
You did everything right.
Stayed late. Picked up extra tickets. Covered for bad management.
You missed birthdays. Skipped holidays. Worked sick.
You shipped the thing that saved the quarter.
You trained the new guy.
You carried the dead weight.
You swallowed shit.
All so the company could thrive.
And it did.
Revenue soared.
The stock climbed.
The CEO got a bonus larger than your lifetime earnings.
But none of that was for you.
You weren’t rewarded.
You weren’t protected.
You weren’t even seen.
Because in this system, loyalty is worthless.
Sacrifice is invisible.
And your “market rate” is just a polite way of saying:
We’ll pay you as little as we can get away with until we can pay someone else less.
You were never part of the company. You were a cost item.
And when it comes - the email, the lockout, the HR script - you realise:
You didn’t build a career.
You subsidised a yacht.
With your time. Your health. Your life.
You should’ve been a sparkie - at least the shocks are honest.
Good gods, mate, that was brilliant!'
Beyond true. Why I said "never again" after being caught in one of those "layoffs because execs were upgrading their corporate jets again" and went contract. I'm not sociopathic enough to become like "them", and grab far more than my due, but at least now I get what I'm owed without the Stockholm Syndrome, the KPIs, the annual reviews and finally the layoffs.
Every time someone says something to me like "I couldn't go contract, I need the job security of perm employment" I wonder what the hell they're smoking. What job security?!
"I dunno. Microsoft did pay OK. I made a small fortune there. Was a particularly pleasant work environment though…"
With a big company, much of that will depend on your immediate management. I've had excellent managers and complete shit at the same company which prompted me to leave the last "real" job I had in aerospace when they chased out the best engineering manager they ever had.
Amen. Let me add my own experience.
(Posting anon because I try to keep my Reg persona separate from my IRL one...)
I was laid off by Intel just over two years ago. This, after literally burning the midnight oil to save a major datacenter product launch ("help!! we're launching Product X in 4 weeks and we have absolutely nothing to show it off to the Press!!") - for 2 weeks, I was managing a team of devs in India, from the West Coast. This meant conference calls until 3-4AM, on which I'd have to explain to them some surprisingly fundamental concepts (e.g. "if you have 5 benchmark numbers, and you want to display them as bar graphs normalized to the lowest one, this is the algorithm to calculate the bar sizes..." - these are devs, remember, who might be expected to know stuff like that?) and then an hour of writing up the meeting minutes and action items etc., before collapsing into bed and waking two hours later for another full day.
My reward for that? Just before the launch, I was laid off, and placed in the "redeployment pool", which ostensibly gave me 3 months to scurry around trying to find an internal transfer.
But, as I was literally (and I say this with no vanity) the only person in the org with my skill-set, a week later I had another desperate product launch team come to me asking where they could get assets for a big upcoming launch. Visuals, mockups of software, actual custom-written software, demos...
A smart man would have said, "no-where! ...they've laid me off, there's no-one else that can do this, good luck, sucks to be you, take it up with my org manager."
But I have never, ever claimed to be smart - so I spent that 3 months that should have been spent looking for another role creating all the assets for them, knowing that if I didn't, the launch would fall flat and be embarrassingly bad. Loyalty, eh? Hard to tell it apart from rampant fucking stupidity in my case. Created everything they needed to A+++ standard, delivered it all on-time for their deadline... and that was the end of my 3 months.
So, I walked out of the building on my very last day, after almost 30 years with the company. No exit interview; no farewell from colleagues, not even a Teams IM from my temporary HR manager, who made it very clear that he couldn't care less about me and was only there as "my manager" because the organisational structure mandated that everyone had a manager. I think I spoke to him exactly once, and that was at my instigation.
As I walked out through the building lobby, I said to the duty desk-guard "it's my last day, do you want my laptop and badge?" and he scrambled to blow the dust off a ring-binder of the procedure, and went through it as though it had never been done before. I often wonder if, had I not told him, I'd still be in possession of my badge and laptop.
The final insult?
About a year later, my phone rang from an Intel number, and a tetchy voice at the other end said "Anon, I'm standing in your office, you have to get it cleared out by the end of the week because we're vacating the building at the end of the month."
Yep.
On at least one level, they hadn't even noticed that I'd gone. When I replied "actually, I haven't worked for Intel for over a year" there was a shocked and hopefully embarrassed (but I wouldn't count on it) silence at the other end.
So, yes, I am somewhat bitter, and I do weep for all my Intel friends who are either in the same boat, or who are tenuously clinging on to their jobs and fearing the fall of the axe.
Different AC here, but a similar experience in the north of the UK with a large US company.
Was given one month's notice because my services were no longer required .. yet repeatedly asked if I could run another course, or whatever .. it took six months before enough was enough and I left for pastures new.
You are an expense on an accounting sheet. If you can be fired to keep up the stock price up, so be it.
Nothing more.
They will bleed you dry, but happily throw you on the rubbish heap if it keeps the share holders happy.
YOU MEAN NOTHING TO THEM.
Do not burn yourself out making the rich richer.
Sadly you can't mean anything to them. The system does not allow. I've been on both sides. As a manager the only thing I could do was to reassure people they're not rubbish, it's not you. I saw people leave under threat of layoff or laid off taking valuable experience and skills with them. Not because they weren't producing profit but because a bean counter had been told to shed 5% so they mindlessly did so. Quality went down but it didn't matter because competitors were in the same place. Who won? Short & medium term, the board and the big shareholder institutions. Who wins long term? A very small number of shadowy people who are driven by power and control.
"You are an expense on an accounting sheet."
Remember that tired old line the execs used to spout at corporate all-hands meetings and such?
"Employees are our most valuable asset".
We figured it was always best to remember that all assets depreciate ... even the valuable ones. And eventually they're written off the books entirely ... sometimes *especially* the valuable ones.
This post has been deleted by its author
This post has been deleted by its author
The J is the first name of our Lord and Saviour, the F is the F-word, the C is the surname(?) of our Lord and Saviour.
Personally I like to add an H after the J - no idea what the H stands for though, just sounds even better as an ejaculation (in the Sherlock Holmes sense).
"The question was something like 'what does JFC mean?' Asked by someone who must lead a quite sheltered life."
There's only so many TLA's to go around so if they aren't expanded anywhere in a post/paper, who knows what's meant? I was browsing some headhunter emails the other day and they use TLA's all over the place. Lazy bastards. Most of the time I have no clue what they mean and likely have something to do with the latest Agile or ISO999 crap. When I see that, I expect a lot of the job will be sitting in meeting lobbing biz-speak at each other rather than getting on with designing products. The PD (product development) I do independently for my clients is so much better. They have an idea for a product and I work with them to make it tangible. Very fulfilling. Meetings are very focused and not frequent.
My IT history goes back a long way. There were a few companies I worked that, initially at least, valued their employees. MS did too… initially.
I witnessed in the companies I worked at management change over time to be more distant, more profit motived. And in proportion less caring for their employees.
All that was across the board. But even more so with IT employees. Considered an expensive necessity, it has always been an area that bean counters wanted to cut down.
in the history of things MS lasted a long time before it started becoming what it is today. The clown who took over from Bill Gates accelerated the process. I remember reading people saying “ I wish MS would pull its head out of its Bahlmer (sp?)”
My point is that this has been going on for a long time, for all companies, not just MS.
I’ve never worked for MS. I can still say it’s a shame to watch it continue to go downhill, letting talent go, chasing the next bright shiny thing. When, with proper leadership, it could be leading the way in regard to true innovation.
" There were a few companies I worked that, initially at least, valued their employees. MS did too… initially."
Turn-over is very expensive. Most new hires are nearly worthless for the first few weeks (if they are good) and then merely unprofitable for a while until they've become one with the company culture to some extent. People that have been at the same company for a long time have figured out how to get things done, what parts of the process can and can't be circumvented. Boss's pet peeves, etc. I think many companies have lost sight of this.
Yep back when I was a kid and I'd hear about layoffs it was because a company was struggling - they had no choice it was a matter of survival.
Somewhere along the way it became normalized for companies to lay people off even during good times. At first it was only when your company was the victim of a hostile takeover, and the new owner wanted to asset strip the organization to pay for the debt incurred for the takeover or lean them down to extract maximum profit knowing that the company would ultimately have no future - but if those doing the takeover profited that was all that matters, the employees affected be damned!
Now companies do it to themselves, even massive ones at no risk of being taken over.
"Somewhere along the way it became normalized for companies to lay people off even during good times."
I had a friend that worked at a company making sports equipment that was quite seasonal. They'd hire people in the late winter and disemploy them in the fall rather than have a smaller year-round staff with inventory buildup in the winter that would get depleted through the warmer months. They got away with it as they were one of the largest employers in the area when they had people in production and took advantage of the welfare/assistance agencies largess in the off-season. There's more than one way to get government subsidies.
One of the reasons for "layoffs, whether they need it or not" behavior is managers not getting rid of the bad employees.
Companies tend to accumulate them over time: slackers, dead-wood, malcontents, incompetent bunglers, chaos cowboys, you name it. Managers are often reluctant to get rid of the bad ones, because 1) it's hard to do, 2) it shrinks their org, and therefore their own perceived importance, and 3) they might not get a replacement req (so see #2).
Instead, the culling is outsourced, if you will, to The Company. "It's nothing personal, just the needs of The Business, you know". Sometimes along with a meager severance so they go away a bit more quietly, or so it's hoped.
Problem is, layoffs are rarely effective at actually getting rid of the bad employees either, since layoffs are typically just a numbers game played by execs and HR. More likely the senior ("old") and experienced ("expensive") types will be let-go, compounding the problems.
Plenty of other reasons (excuses) for layoffs, of course; executive bonuses, short-term juicing the stock price, various "Corporate Actions" (mergers and whatnot) etc. This is just another one.
In theory you're correct. There are always bad or poor performing employees in an organization of any size, but identifying them isn't always easy. Back when it was a manufacturing economy it was rather easy - if you couldn't keep up with the line or you weren't properly doing your task you were rightly canned. When it transitioned to a service/information economy it became a lot more difficult.
It isn't so easy to identify a "bad" customer support rep, or programmer, or middle manager. Not saying that can't be done, but it isn't easy - especially if you want to protect yourself against claims of unfair dismissal (claiming you were fired for personal issues, age discrimination, racism, whistleblowing, whatever) So companies try to make it "fair" by gathering metrics they can point to as the reason for termination. Average call time, lines of code, that sort of thing - all of which have obvious flaws and cause employees to game the system by hanging up on complicated support calls or coding in a way that maximizes lines of code such as writing thousands of functions that have only a few lines each.
If it was easy to identify bad employees to fire them, and good employees to hire them, then all companies would benefit from laying off their 5% worst employees and replacing them with new employees every year.
> "According to Bloomberg, the company's King division, which makes Candy Crush, is cutting 10 percent of its staff."
Didn't know that the company that made "Candy Crush" (King Games) was owned by MS, but apparently they were bought out by Activision/Blizzard who MS bought just over a year ago.
How much money can they be spending on actually *developing* browser and casual games (*) that- I assume- are glorified Skinner boxes and/or knockoffs of existing formats like Candy Crush with pay-to-play/win mechanics designed to nickel and dime their players?
I mean, even their ""games" page confirms my assumption about the sort of generic, icon-shaped fodder they're turning out?
I can't imagine this sort of thing would- or should cost- even an order of magnitude less than those horrendously big-budget flagship games on (e.g.) the PS5 and XBox Series X/S? (Those are far closer to the sort of money sink whose figures might start to compare to that of AI).
Or maybe they've figured out that they *don't* need to spend that much and that's why their laying all those employees off?
I mean, Activision themselves apparently paid almost $6 billion when they bought it over a decade ago, and I assume the entity/division is still nominally worth something in that ballpark. Yeah, that's big money. But I can't imagine that laying off the small development team designing whatever fluff they need to justify their latest advert-displaying/nickel-and-diming mechanism being on someone's phone is going to save them much. I'd assume that marketing/placement costs for this sort of thing would have been high in the past, but that's not a development cost, and anyway, now that MS own "Candy Crush" they can use their monopoly to shove it in everyone's face for free.
(*) This isn't snobbery or anything against the concept of casual gaming in itself. Personally, I'm not a gamer at all and bought a Nintendo DS Lite almost twenty years ago *because* that "casual" mobile gaming approach was more novel and appealing to me back then (i.e. before the iPhone was even out). But even that was later saturated by generic, low-effort crap and the whole field has gained a bad reputation for entirely genuine reasons since then.
I keep wondering how long Microsoft is going to keep the XBox franchise alive. The XBox has only limited market share worldwide (on the order of 20%) and is barely profitable. I'm guessing Microsoft is evaluating whether the takeover of Blizzard improves XBox's fortunes. If it doesn't I wouldn't be surprised the company will call it a day and sells it or just culls it. Gaming was always an outlier within the Microsoft organization and still is.
Microsoft is betting big on A.I. and if the uptake doesn't appear they'll have to make deep cuts to remain similarly profitable. In the meantime there's the prospect of Linux Mint eating its desktop market share.
Gaming is The Thing(TM) that keeps people on Windows. It's the thing that continues driving Windows persistence, and it is core to Microsoft's ongoing success. Remove gaming, and Windows will collapse almost over-night.
Xbox is part of the Microsoft Gaming experience. Create a console, and derive its development from DirectX, keeping an architecture very similar to what Windows runs on. Compete with the "other" consoles just-enough to keep Windows gaming relevant, recent, and AAA, with exclusives or nearly-so that otherwise would've gone to other platforms.
Gaming hasn't come to Mac (???). It isn't going well for Linux except for Steam, which runs on top of Wine - eternally chasing Windows. Microsoft may not be _focusing_ on games, openly, and probably doesn't acknowledge it very much from within - but you can bet they're (lower than middle-management, and back-of-mind for slightly-higher than middle management) aware of the impact of Gaming. If something happens that sparks game compatibility off of Windows or dual releasing of platforms, I feel you'll see Macroshaft move radically quickly.
Games maintains the monopoly as much as Office, Outlook, and Active Directory - even if they're not trying. Maybe it just (still) gives developers a stable platform to target, with a large audience, without worry about drivers, system packages, foreign architecture (ARM and accompanying lack of familiarity/experience) that users will have, with compatibility lasting ten years at a run.
I think between mobile, Mac M, and Switch/Switch 2, developers already have more than enough ARM experience.
SteamOS, Proton, Lutris, Bazzite, and so on mean gaming is not Windows' preserve any more. The only thing keeping people playing games on Windows now is some games using kernel-level DRM. On the other hand Xbox only has 20% of the market and Microsoft aren't giving anyone a reason to buy Xbox hardware. In the gaming world, Xbox and Windows seem like two punch drunk boxers hugging each other in an attempt to keep themselves up before they both fall over.
> SteamOS, Proton, Lutris, Bazzite, and so on mean gaming is not Windows' preserve any more.
It might surprise you to know that Valve maintains Proton, a light-fork of WINE, which they use in SteamOS; Lutris is a more open-source version of Steam, using Proton; Bazzite appears to be a distro that sets up and configures Lutris, Steam client, and Proton for you.
Those are all the same thing, with WINE their core, which of course is a Windows compatibility layer -- Windows is on top and leading every move. Sure, some games work, sometimes, somewhat. TBH my experience with Proton etc hasn't been great.
I can't see how you're seriously arguing that a compatibility layer, a piece of software which automatically installs software from another platform, and a distro are the same thing.
I have a Steam Deck. I have only had to set the Proton version manually on one game, everything else which doesn't have DRM in it just works. Please take your FUD elsewhere.
I'm not talking about gaming on Windows, I'm talking about the XBox CONSOLE. The latter isn't tied to the former, although there are some cross cuts.
Gaming on Windows will continue if XBox is removed from the equation. If its market share drops any further it will become a source of mockery within and outside the company.
XBox is now just Game Pass on PC for all they care about the hardware.
Windows games run better on Steam Deck than Windows now, and Steam Deck is running an emulation layer, as a measure of how bloated Windows is now.
As for the game studios they bought, they can just fire everyone and write them off, like they did with Nokia.
The money spent is lining peoples pockets ... JUST not the people you think !!!
The people selling all the kit to build the Mega-Datacenters are the ones who are getting rich ...
After AI there will be another great IDEA which will buy a few dozen more Mega-yachts over the next decade or two.
P.S. I almost forgot ... the other people getting rich are the lawyers for when the lawsuits hit.
:)
"How many billions must be burned in the AI furnace before this stops?"
I think the answer to that is until there is nothing left to burn.
A.I. is the Moby Dick of I.T. and Nedalla is Ahab. Although the Start Trek "Khan" version of Ahab is perhaps slightly more appropriate:
"I'll chase him (A.I.) round the Moons of Nibia and round the Antares Maelstrom and round Perdition's flames before I give him up!"
It is that or Nero and the burning of Rome.
And then there are the incessant notifications about xbox shite which - despite being turned off, keep coming back.
Should have learned my lesson in my first IT job when I was told "You're just overhead. You don't make any money for the company". Then I moved to a big corporation with job security (in IT again) and worked my butt off night and day, weekends and holidays to be told "restructuring the company will be good for us all". Then they gave my job to two foreign guys. One spoke no English and the other did not have a computer yet. No thank you at all from my manager (he was gone already), no card, no cake, no nothing. Except the handshakes of my two remaining coworkers who were also gone in a few months. No, I'm not bitter. Been 12 years now and taking early retirement probably saved my sanity. And health.
> to be told "restructuring the company will be good for us all".
Well, you weren't planned to be part of the "us" by then, you see.
Of course, "restructuring the company" rarely works out the way they want or expect either, but at least there aren't as many paychecks going out, so the executive bonuses will be preserved.
> taking early retirement probably saved my sanity. And health.
Likewise, and well done.
As the quote was too long I've stuck it in the post instead.
"organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace,"
Bullshit speak for "Satnav said we need to give more money to the investors, so this is how we're doing it. Fuck the quality of Windows 11 and its updates. We're moving to AI and a SaaS Windows. The investors just want more money."
This is explains why Windows 11 is a mess and essentially so is Microsoft. Since Satnav took over, its a shadow of its former self. Sadly, I know Bill would of also pushed for the cloud and SaaS like he pushed IE.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
