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Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

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Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#131

Post by soulofmischief »

jlarocco wrote: post #83
johnday wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Intellisense with AI now available on VS Code” is Microsoft’s nice way of saying “We harvest the shit out of your data”. What? The IntelliCode description says that "Contextual recommendations are based on practices developed in thousands of high quality, open-source projects on GitHub each with high star ratings.". I'm not clear on how you think Microsoft will harvest data from doing this - much less how it is re…

> "Contextual recommendations are based on practices developed in thousands of high quality, open-source projects on GitHub each with high star ratings." Wait, what? Is there a way to opt out of that in GitHub? I don't want their AI to scan my code. Realistically, since most of my GH code is Common Lisp with few stars, I doubt it's looking anyway, but I'd like to make sure. I'm sure it's covered in their TOS, but as…

Is it publicly hosted on Github with a permissive license?

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#132

Post by mhermher »

loudmax wrote: post #32

Microsoft's core revenue is still due to market lock-in of their proprietary technologies: MS Office and Windows itself. There are other office suites out there, but nothing can gain much market share without complete compatibility for MS Office file formats: docx, pptx, etc. Microsoft produced a version of Office for Macs and that allowed Apple to grow greater than niche, but their market share was always tiny compa…

What is core revenue? Because you are excluding cloud, gaming, hardware which altogether very likely make up >50% of their revenue.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#133

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

calvinbhai wrote: post #93

Having read Nadella's book Hit Refresh as soon as it went on sale, Microsoft performance since then doesn't look surprising at all. Having listed what's wrong (with their product focus, company culture etc), and where they plan to head, its' almost like the book informs the reader where puck is going to be (from Satya's POV). It's funny that 15 years back I was so anti MS and pro Google and now I think it's the other…

> It's funny that 15 years back I was so anti MS and pro Google and now I think it's the other way!

You should be pro-neither. Microsoft used to be against FOSS because they thought it would make them more money; Microsoft is currently friendlier to FOSS because they think it will make them more money. Does that make them bad people? No because all businesses are that way, even the vaunted "don't be evil" Google.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#134

Post by falcor84 »

baybal2 wrote: post #52
johnday wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Intellisense with AI now available on VS Code” is Microsoft’s nice way of saying “We harvest the shit out of your data”. What? The IntelliCode description says that "Contextual recommendations are based on practices developed in thousands of high quality, open-source projects on GitHub each with high star ratings.". I'm not clear on how you think Microsoft will harvest data from doing this - much less how it is re…

Fuzzy logic, hamming scoring, and markov chains suddenly became "AI" now... They don't need your telemetry for that

I'm pretty sure these approaches were considered AI from the very start. If anything, algorithms stop being referred to as intelligent over time, as our expectations of what is possible grow.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#135

Post by mtgx »

Personally, I'm more impressed by the company's President, Brad Smith, who seems to want real change in terms of digital rights. He's the man behind every single "pro user rights" Microsoft announcement you've seen in the past few years.

Meanwhile, Nadella is the man behind every single user-hostile and user-tracking feature you've seen introduced in Windows 10 (pretty much).

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#136

Post by orbifold »

calvinbhai wrote: post #93

Having read Nadella's book Hit Refresh as soon as it went on sale, Microsoft performance since then doesn't look surprising at all. Having listed what's wrong (with their product focus, company culture etc), and where they plan to head, its' almost like the book informs the reader where puck is going to be (from Satya's POV). It's funny that 15 years back I was so anti MS and pro Google and now I think it's the other…

I feel the same way. Although in my case it is also due to age. I‘ve lost patience with the linux ecosystem a long time ago, it’s all fun and games when you are in control, but being forced to use a Linux cluster or custom Debian installation without admin privileges is so much worse than working on an administered windows or macOS could possibly be. At least there you have sane defaults.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#137

Post by cjarrett »

hello_moto wrote: post #113
cjarrett wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

biggest negative I would say is getting rid of the SDET role and moving them into Telemetry. It moved the onus of testing on Devs who've never done it before as part of their job and thusly very lacking. The bungled W10 recent releases can be directly tied back to this model. As PMs and Devs don't account for testing like they used to before shipping to customers. This may be fine and dandy short-term, but if you're…

> biggest negative I would say is getting rid of the SDET role and moving them into Telemetry. I don't quite understand this move. Would you mind to elaborate? Are you saying that previously SDET role exist at MSFT and today, it does not exist anymore? And that Developers have to rely on Telemetry (logging, metrics, notifications, error reporting, etc etc) ? Perhaps I don't understand "Telemetry" in this statement.

They erased the Software Developer in Test role, and moved to a 'Quality' role.

The 'Quality' role implements Telemetry for the working product which turns into metrics that PMs/Dev Managers look at to determine shipping.

I used to be an SDET, and re-interviewed in order to be a Dev after the big switch. I could have rolled right into 'Quality', but I didn't find that as interesting. As a result, the automated Testing that used to be done by the SDET team is moved to be the responsibility of the Dev teams. Most dev teams knew little to nothing about the automated tests that were being run every day against their code (Upgrade tests, BVTs, integration tests).

SDETs also created tools and internal frameworks which were created to reduce cost; for example, I implemented a Code-Coverage based test-pass to reduce the 24 hour automated test suite that was running every day on Windows Phone main branch.

The previous SDET role's responsbility has moved 100% to Dev Teams, none of which had to ever think about that facet of development before. As a result, you get me implementing automated test suites for 5 different teams in 3 years (WSL, Ink, Text, Touch input, kernel sec) because I know the frameworks more than 25 year veterans of Windows internal development. Some of these teams had 10-15 years of built in collatoral that is now attempting to be revived because management realizes that they've dropped the ball quite a bit.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#138

Post by lostmsu »

cutenewt wrote: post #121
maxxxxx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way was MS sinking under Ballmer? Maybe they were not exciting but they were super profitable every year. I think it's more about better PR. Not everything is golden at MS now either. I am working on creating a platform for our medical software on Windows 10 and it really makes me want to switch to Linux or iOS. Windows is a big mess of old and new code and attempts of sandboxing like iOS but only half-hearte…

Remember this comic: https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/50a25c45eab8ea8c41000... Ballmer brewed the culture to be like that. It's not like that at MSFT anymore.

Ha-ha-ha, tell it to the folks driving UWP vs WPF debacle.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#139

Post by cjarrett »

addicted wrote: post #108
cjarrett wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the initiatives Satya has gotten credit for were started under Ballmer. Some of the worst moves I've seen regarding current MSFT internal culture were direct results of Satya Source: Me, at MSFT before Ballmer left and still there now. That doesn't mean Satya's not had a good effect overall. Part of the investor postives were due to PR differences that Satya made (which are very good), and his ability to talk…

Ballmer started a lot. Ballmer also subjected all of those new initiatives to the Windows/Office dominance, which is why they all failed. Nadella's most impactful, and fundamental, contribution was demolishing Windows's hold over every other department.

Agreed wholeheartedly.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#140

Post by spectramax »

bovermyer wrote: post #127
maxxxxx wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It's funny that 15 years back I was so anti MS and pro Google and now I think it's the other way!” Stay skeptical of all of them. No need to be fan of one of the big techs. In the end they are all greedy organizations that want to dominate. None of them should be trusted.

I'm both wary of and hopeful about Microsoft and Google. "Trust but verify" and all that.

I’ve always found this phrase an oxymoron.
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