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Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

isolveproblems.substack.com

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Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#291

Post by szszrk »

doubled112 wrote: post #158
macNchz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve created a bunch of fresh Azure accounts over the past few years and each time I’ve found myself sitting there dumbfounded anew at how garbage the experience is. There has been weird broken jank at just about every step of the process at one point or another. Like, I’m a serious person trying to set something up for a production workload, and multiple times along the way to just having a working account that I ca…

I've joked that on some services, when you're clicking buttons, you're actually opening tickets that a human needs to action. That scenario is an example. You complete an action on a web page and nothing works. You make no further changes and hours later it works perfectly. Your human wasn't fast enough that day.

> when you're clicking buttons, you're actually opening tickets that a human needs to action

I had one public cloud vendor sales literally admit this was the case with their platform. But they were now selling "the new one" which is supposed to be better.

It was, a lot. But only compared to the old one.

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#293

Post by bradleyjg »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #247
branko_d wrote: post #205

I think this is especially problematic (from Part 4 at https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporize... ): "The team had reached a point where it was too risky to make any code refactoring or engineering improvements. I submitted several bug fixes and refactoring, notably using smart pointers, but they were rejected for fear of breaking something." Once you reach this stage, the only escape is to first…

if the service is so shitty, why are people paying so much fucking money for it? is microsoft committing an accounting fraud?

CFOs love it because Microsoft does bundle pricing with office. Plus they love to give large credits to bootstrap lock-in.

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#294

Post by zipy124 »

dh2022 wrote: post #152
nrds wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked at both Microsoft and Google in the past 6 years and the notion that msft "Principal" is equivalent to goog L5 is crazy.

Meaning Msft Principal is below L5? I got the same feedback from one of my friends who works at Google. She said quality of former MSFT engineers now working at Google was noticeably lower.

I mean if you go by pay in the UK a Microsoft principle is equivalent to an L4 at Google if levels.fyi is too be believed....

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#296

Post by wredcoll »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #77
abtinf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> risks to national security …really? Really. Apparently the Secretary of War agrees with him.

To be fair, it's not like Hegseth is a super high-signal source. Hegseth says lots of stuff, some of which are even true!

This was such a genuinely weird moment for me when reading the article.

"yadda yadda and then also the secretary of defence agreed it was bad"

I'm just reading along and going, "yeah that sounds really bad if a secretary level position is being cited... wait a second, isn't that actually the guy who is literally famous for being stupid??"

I never expected to be living through a real life version of "the emperor's new clothes", like, how is anyone quoting this guy about anything?

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#298

Post by tux3 »

axelriet wrote: post #251
dbdr wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I submitted several bug fixes and refactoring, notably using smart pointers, but they were rejected for fear of breaking something. And that, my friends, is why you want a memory safe language with as many static guarantees as possible checked automatically by the compiler.

I was waiting for that comment :) Remember that everybody, eventually, calls into code written in C.

If you're sufficiently stubborn, it's certainly possible to call directly into code written in Verilog, held together with inscrutable Perl incantations.

High-level languages like C certainly have their place, but the space seems competitive these days. Who knows where the future will lead.

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#299

Post by hunterpayne »

ludwigvan wrote: post #21

I had the misfortune of having to use Azure back in 2018 and was appalled at the lack of quality, slowness. I was in GitHub forums, helping other customers suffering from lack of basic functionality, incredible prices with abysmal performance. This article explains a lot honestly. Google’s Cloud feels like the best engineered one, though lack of proper human support is worrying there compared to AWS.

Unless you work in Alphabet's marketing department, then no GCP isn't the best one. The most reliable cloud has always been AWS by a wide margin. The exec in charge of GCP has had to apologize in public on multiple occasions for GCP's reliability problems. Sounds like they have fixed them by now (years later) but that doesn't make up the disaster that was BigQuery.

Also, GCP is more focused on smaller customers so perhaps that's the part that works for you. AWS can be a bit daunting. But AWS actually versions their APIs and publishes roadmaps and timelines for when APIs get added and retired and what you should use instead. GCP will just cancel things on short notice with no replacement.

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#300

Post by auggierose »

delusional wrote: post #263
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the root of the issue. For something like Azure, people are nor fungible. You need to retain them for decades, and carefully grow the team, training new members over a long period until they can take on serious responsibilities. But employees are rewarded for showing quick wins and changing jobs rapidly, and employers are rewarded for getting rid of high earners (i.e. senior, long-term employees).

> For something like Azure, people are nor fungible What I've learned from a decade in the industry is that talent is never fungible in low-demand areas. It's surprisingly hard to find people that "get it" and produce something worthwhile together.

What is a low-demand area?
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