> Cutler’s intent was to produce a system with the same level of quality, unshakable reliability, and attention to detail he was famous for in his work on VMS and NT.
I'm not sure whether this is serious or irony.
Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer
321–330 of 697 posts
Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer
#322[dead]
Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but this misses the underlying point: this is the same software. It suffers from the same defects. If your management stack keeps crashing and leaking VMs you are seeing a reduction in the operational capacity of the fleet. If you are still there just tour Azure Watson and tell me if you’d want the military to rely on that system in wartime? Don’t forget things like IVAS and God knows what else that are used duri…
You also make it sound like getting a JIT approved is getting keys to the kingdom. It's not -- every team has it's own JIT policies for their resources. Should there be far less manual touches? Ideally. But JIT is better than persistent access at least, and JIT policies should be scoped according to principle of least privilege. If that is not happening, it's a failure at the level of that specific org.
200 requests a day, lol
Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer
#324I 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?
Because the alternatives are also in similar state.
AWS or GCP are all pretty crap. You use any of them, any you'll hit just enough rough edges. The whole industry is just grinding out slop, quality is not important anywhere.
I work with AWS on a daily basis, and I'm not really impressed. (Also nor did GCP impress me on the short encounter I had with it)
Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer
#325I 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…
Once you reach this stage, honestly the only escape is real escape. Put your papers in and start looking for a job elsewhere, because when they go down, they will go down hard and drag you with them. It's not like you didn't try.
Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer
#326What are we reading here? These are extraordinary statements. Also with apparent credibility. They sound reasonable. Is this a whistleblower or an ex employee with a grudge? The appearance is the first. Is it? They’ve put their name to some clear and worrying statements. > On January 7, 2025… I sent a more concise executive summary to the CEO. … When those communications produced no acknowledgment, I took the customa…
I recall seeing some pretty damning reports from a security pentester that was able to escape from a container on Azure and found the management controller for the service was years old with known critical unpatched vulnerabilities. Always been a bit sceptical of them since then
A decent portion of Azure Web Apps internals hasn't moved past .net core 2.3
Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer
#327What are we reading here? These are extraordinary statements. Also with apparent credibility. They sound reasonable. Is this a whistleblower or an ex employee with a grudge? The appearance is the first. Is it? They’ve put their name to some clear and worrying statements. > On January 7, 2025… I sent a more concise executive summary to the CEO. … When those communications produced no acknowledgment, I took the customa…
What I meant is that it’s customary to write to the Board through the Secretary as opposed to write directly or through some other channel.
Thanks for the direct reply! I wasn’t aware it was ever customary to write to a board.
But I do see you have very clear concerns.
One thing I don’t fully follow is: how did it get from such a nicely designed system, built by Dave Cutler, to this — simply moving fast and building tech debt?
Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer
#328> was maintaining in-memory caches containing unencrypted tenant data, all mixed in the same memory areas, in violation of all hostile multi-tenancy security guidelines
Splitting caches to different isolated memory areas will not make shareholders happy, will not lead to promotion and will not even move the project forward.
Simply put, designing secure software is detrimental in that environment.
Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer
#329The post is so dramatized and clearly written by someone with a grudge such that it really detracts from any point that is trying to be made, if there is any. From another former Az eng now elsewhere still working on big systems, the post gets way way more boring when you realize that things like "Principle Group Manager" is just an M2 and Principal in general is L6 (maybe even L5) Google equivalent. Similarly Sev2 i…
Yes it's easy to critique any large system or organisation, to then go over everyone's head and cry to the CEO and Board is snake like behaviour especially offering you self as the answer to fix it. OP will be marked as a troublemaker and bad team member.
Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am sort of confused how NDA and such agreements employees sign would allow for an employee to post such an article without being sued by Microsoft?
Most likely, the author was let go in mass layoff, and they forgot about NDA.
NDAs are usually signed when you join the company, not leave it.
Signing a non-disparagement agreement is often a condition for receiving severance, although I'm not sure what MSFT's policy on this is.