The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
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The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
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Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
#2This sounds like the combinatoric explosion of point 1 in the Mythical Man Month.
It's the one thing I try to make sure all the PMs I work with understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_myt...
Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
#3Anybody who currently works on the Windows team know if things are still like this? I know I've read about improvements to the version control system for Windows teams and some other blogs about improvements in management practices but I'm wondering if even after 11 years if this has been fixed.
Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
#4I have always thought about the shutdown crapfest as not being able to shutdown for like ... 25 reasons? I believe there is a KB entry somewhere listing a bunch of them.
Almost impossible to troubleshoot ( network connections! )
Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
#5Anybody who currently works on the Windows team know if things are still like this? I know I've read about improvements to the version control system for Windows teams and some other blogs about improvements in management practices but I'm wondering if even after 11 years if this has been fixed.
they have definitely changed the source control infrastructure and are now on git.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/05/24/the-large...
Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
#6Anybody who currently works on the Windows team know if things are still like this? I know I've read about improvements to the version control system for Windows teams and some other blogs about improvements in management practices but I'm wondering if even after 11 years if this has been fixed.
I work on the Windows team. Things are very different now. Source control especially:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/05/24/the-large...
It still takes a lot of political effort to change primary UI features though. And I think that's a good thing.
Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
#7I can relate to this. It was a common theme across Microsoft. In one instance, the team I was part of was responsible for the initial integration of Bing and Facebook. We had about 24 dedicated people on the team (a few partner/principal group managers too!). Our team was considered agile because we released most features every 4 months (this was around 2009 I think)!!!
Anyway, we had a hackathon at Facebook with Zuckerberg and the FB team. There were all these big (redundant) talks by every manager up that chain about how this is the most important integration, etc.
Guess what came out 4 months later??? A like button on the Bing home page! The kicker was that the code for the widget was picked from the facebook developers portal.
Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
#8[deleted]
Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
#9I have always thought about the shutdown crapfest as not being able to shutdown for like ... 25 reasons? I believe there is a KB entry somewhere listing a bunch of them. Almost impossible to troubleshoot ( network connections! )
I once had a Windows 7 machine refuse to shut down because it was "Playing Logoff Sound"!
Re: The Windows Shutdown crapfest (2006)
#10I started at MS during Vista and I've been involved (sometimes tangentially) with Windows ever since. This is all my opinion, but It's been very interesting seeing the decision making process change over time.
If I had to summarize the change, I'd say that it's evolved from an expertise-based system to a data based system. The reason why eight people were present at every planning meeting is because their expert opinion was the primary tool used in decision making. In addition to poor decisions, this had two very negative outcomes:
1) reputation was fiercely fought for. Individuals feared that if they were ever incorrect, the damage to their reputation would limit their ability to impact future decisions and eventually lead to career death. Whether this actually happened or not is irrelevant; the fear itself caused overt caution and consensus seeking.
2) In the absence of data, an eloquent negotiator is often able to obtain their desired outcome, no matter how sub-optimal that outcome might be.
Nowadays, I see data used a lot more, hence the telemetry. A while ago, in response to criticism of Windows telemetry habits, I wrote:
"Telemetry is, by now, a fundamental part of the engineering process. Products that don't incorporate it are going to be clobbered by products that do. Microsoft didn't start this paradigm, but I think they had to incorporate it in order to stay competitive."
I understand that telemetry is still a delicate issue, but the expertise based decision making of yester-year truly sucked for many, and I don't see a viable alternative.