Satya Nadella decides Microsoft needs an engineering quality czar Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has decided Microsoft needs an engineering quality czar, and shifted Charlie Bell, the company’s executive veep for security, into the new role. Nadella announced the new job and Bell’s appointment in an internal memo he shared on the Microsoft blog. “Charlie built our Security, Compliance, …
some nameless beancounter counting beans wot got rid of their QA staff. It was the same time they all *FELT* (not thinking at all) that using the customer base to do their QA was a "good idea", just like TIFKAM, 2D FLATTY FLATSO, the 8.0 "start menu" tiles, the ads, the strongarming, the mandatory updates, yotta yotta, CUSTOMERS BE DAMNED!@!!
Yeah how'd THAT work out, Micros~1???
[oh wait they have a NEAR MONOPOLY - I forgot, been using FBSD and Linux for too long]
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Back in the day Gates would emit missives about bugs and whatnot, and claimed that he hated shipping buggy software*. Presumably a quick email or ticket from the CEO triggered action/fixes/excuses/whatever. They could bring him back in that role? Might distract him from his ... other ... activities. Maybe.
*I note it didn't work, MS software quality has always been utter shit.
"MS software quality has always been utter shit"
I beg to differ. The BASIC interpreter in ROM on my TRS-80 (model 1) was rock solid (well, except for the wrong timing value in the cassette loading routine, which made sensitivity to volume level changes a PitA).
I'm just glad there's no reporting option for "too fscking easy", since I'd probably be in trouble then.
Of course, I also wanted to allude to the classic ""Windows is a 32-bit shell for a 16-bit extension to an 8-bit operating system designed for a 4-bit microprocessor by a 2-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition." (source unknown)
No, it will be business as usual. Hire a scapegoat, claim the goat will solve the problems, sign a big check for the goat, then loudly fire the goat for failing "but now that the goat is gone, we can fix the problems the goat caused."
This is good for a couple of years until Satcrash is ready to retire, then he becomes the Golden Scapegoat.
By consumers you mean ordinary home users? I don't see much evidence of them moving away from Windows. Nor do I see much evidence of businesses moving away.
Which basically just leaves those home users with the ability and interest to run one of the many flavours of Linux. There simply aren't enough of those to cause any meaningful shift.
I’ve been seriously considering moving my elderly dad of Windows 11. I’m pretty sure I have to set the same settings every time he asks me to take a look. He doesn’t change them. Windows Update are you looking guilty? I’ve actually thought about joining him to my 365 domain so I can GPO his machine, but I’d need a W11 Pro license.
Honestly I feel like I have been seeing a shift in the consumer market. I had to get a user set up with a virtual desktop solution the other day on a personal device, and all she had was a chromebook, an iPhone and a smart tv lol. I feel like the year of the linux desktop is upon us, but only on a technicality.
This is something I think we'll see more of as time goes on. U.S. Education institutions rely predominantly on chromebooks these days, and as we've seen those students grow into adults, there's been a marked shift towards what they're familiar with. My mom only has a chromebook, my sister only has a chromebook, and I think that we'll see enterprise migrate not necessarily to ChromeOS in the near future, but to a similar model of opaque walls and cloud software as the only option. I think you could make a case now, but in five years, "Windows" will not mean what it means today. Operating systems used by word-processing, spreadsheet-tabulating office workers are going to be web browsers with a Fischer-Price RDP client, and the proportion of users utilizing a "real" operating system are going to be scientists stuck using FreeDOS because it's the only thing that will interface with their ten-billion dollar piece of research equipment.
In a business sense, the user is rarely the customer. And it seems the customer has been forgotten again.
I'd wager "the big money" comes not from OEM, but fat, fat Software Assurance and MS 365 subs. (not looking at IAAS here).
The customer wants reliability, security and manageability as a priority. Security, is of course, multi-layered and can range from hacking resistant to telemetry free and 100 other definitions. Reliability, it is available for use when and where the customer wants it. Ties nicely in with manageability.
I think home users would benefit from that as well.
No it was pure Satya fault to harvest the money. It was told "Win 7 upgrade only until 2016" then 2017 then 2018 etc... It took until late 2023. Windows 10 was out, and it worked very well fro 1607 on. Nobody would have had a problem if he had pulled the upgrade plug end of 2017 as they said they wood. And nobody would have had a problem actually buying the follow up version, Windows 10 worked (works) very well and still better than Windows 11 in some aspects. He just killed a revenue stream, for no reason. The quality of Windows 11 might be better if he would not have let this opportunity go for way too long.
It all boils down to bad decision making. Like killing Windows Phone when they managed to get into aviation. Pilots on big machines used Windows ARM tablets, and once you make it into aviation you stay there until you deliberately fuck it up, which Satya Nadella did. The phones were technically en-par with apple and android, and the store picked up well and filled, including the games. Several European countries already had 10% Windows Phones. And then he made the bad decision to throw it away.
From my point of view: He must go, it is a top-down rot.
> The customer wants reliability, security and manageability as a priority
Don't forget stability and not having things changed month to month "just because". I do wonder if the time spent relearning from all the changes to the Micro$lop software could have been put to better use of learning a new OS just once.
Delivery, no. You need to travel to it - delivery charges the other way could be quite high:
If you are an investor looking at business performance then you wouldn't describe it as a shitshow - profits and turnover up steadily over five years, still incredibly strong presence in enterprise server, desktop "productivity" and email, commanding presence in desktop OS, some exposure to AI (which investors strangely like) but not up to its eyeballs like Oracle, some presence in ERP, gaming etc.
I don't like MS or its products very much, if your or my pension were invested in their stock I doubt we'd cursing the fact.
I'd bet any "engineering quality assurance officer" who isn't a C-suite bootlicker and also want to do their job right, would retroactively ban any "ai" generated bits of software/code, and also ban "AI" in the company while only permitted hyperfocused and fine-tuned LLM's for very specific tasks after a rigorous risk-assesment has been made.
Which means they're definitely a bootlicker, because otherwise, they'd identify SatNad as a liability for the company.
No, they no longer have them. Just needed today to work with Windows 11 Settings network and disk management. Whoever desinged that s**t have no clue about UI design and programming. Coding a specific control to show disk partitions? Too hard. Having "network connections" UI objects to interact with? Too hard! Just make some web-alike scroll lists and a few buttons - moreover in separate pages...
I wonder if we entered the Middle Ages of IT - when most previous knowledge was lost.
ncpa.cpl ist your friend. Your other friends are: sysdm.cpl, appwiz.cpl, timedate.cpl, inetcpl.cpl, powercfg.cpl, mmsys.cpl (and a few less important + some runtime dll calls). Just enter at "run" dialogue, or in a shell.
Especially mmsys.cpl deserves an extra note, cause THERE you can set which audio devices to deactivate, and which should be the standard (if plugged in). It works so much better to have your two or three actually used sound devices controlled there and automatically choose those which YOU say are important (usually headset should be highest priority, but only when plugged in or connected).
Similar for printer: To get the BEST print control panel, i.e. the not-grouped-printers panel, I really hated the group-printers-if-on-same-port panel in Windows 7, create a folder named:
Classic Printer Control Panel.{2227a280-3aea-1069-a2de-08002b30309d}
(you can delete it from CMD if needed, tab completion works)
Similar example you find on the net (though NOT WITHOUT ISSUES! But most of it works...):
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
Sure - but MS is working hatd to hide them, and I like to test "new " features to see how they work - anyway how long the old control panel applications and MMC consoles will still be available before being wholly replaced by the new, ugly "settings" implementation? And the list might be long - i.e. the "ner" Outollok.
It's pretty clear that both requirements and implementations are far lower end today - and if this is a preview of the near future, it doesn't look good.
I is it just management requiring uglu UIs, or managers are also adapting to far less skilled (and cheaper...) developers, hoping to replace them with AIs soon?
It is more like a "back to root", where if you want to do anything, you need to use the command-line and scripts (so, PowerShell)...
Not that I'd complain much, I started using computers 47 years ago, so I am feeling younger by the day.
Now, I just have to get rid of the graphical interface, and I'll be happy at work.
(at home I have already Linux, Windowz, macOS, Android, iPhone/iPad OS, and I forget a few others)
The first part of my tenure working there was during Win95 Second Edition development on the storage team, I filled a 1 GB volume most of the way and then ran the in-build Drive Space disk compression utility. After that there was 100% unrepairable volume corruption. That same Drive Space version shipped in Win95. I can fix their Windows quality problems, at least reduce the silly regressions. No boot situations were at one time recall-class. Now nobody that cares remains on the payroll so the man is feeling the heat.
"I have to wonder if Hayete Gallot was deliberately "sent" to Google"
There's literally no reason to wonder: She did. That's the MS way of doing things. Has always been.
In the old times MS called that 'collaboration', where MS stole the secrets from 'partners' and then used those to make their own product and the 'partner' lost their secrets and/or money.
Often resulting a bankrupt. Not a single case either and it started from day 1, 'collaboration' with IBM.
Literally the reason MS has/had 30% lawyers, 30% management, 30% sales men and 10% developers. AFAIK that has not changed.
Combining these items make sense. Microsoft would be crazy to improve quality and security in its core enterprise products given it can increasingly monetise it's problems through its +$20B security business. “Would you like to upgrade your licences to the most expensive tier, which does of course come with more advanced logging, more identity protection, and even a little bit of automated response. Not everything necessary you say to secure our base products against modern threats? Let me give you the phone number of our most favoured service partner who will be pleased to help you navigate the complex and frequent patching cycles required for Microsoft software." If its broken and its never fixed its probably because they figured out how to monetise it. Bringing back Hayete after she spent the last six months listening to the plans Google has to build-out its competing security business with Wiz make total sense to everyone except those idiots with ethics
Quality is an institution-wide thing. It isn't "inserted" at some point in the process, rather it exists as a part of the culture.
Unless (almost) everybody is on-board with this concept, everything else is hopeless band aids that will cost the shareholders.
After several decades of a corporate culture not giving a shit, it would be faster and easier to fire everybody and start over from scratch.
And I still wouldn't run or recommend Microsoft code if even one of the previous upper management existed. This includes sat nad.
"or come up with uses for AI that excite more than the 3.3 percent of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 users who are willing to pay for Copilot?"
so all those billions pissed down the drain on AI Co-Pilot SLOP and only 3.3% are willing to pay for it?
and how many of those are internal users at M$ vibe coding all this crap and bugs
90+% of the small number of people I know use co-pilot only for 1 thing, teams transcription summarisation and that's it (oh, it can produce some funny images of trump spitting his dummy out and losing his shite :) )
Why doesn't he dismiss that Indian heading the Windows division? Why are they adding another executive who's responsible for cleaning up the mess the people at the Windows division make?
Microsoft needs to hold the people at the Windows division responsible accountable for the mess they're making.
