Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#41

Post by pixl97 » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #10

weavie wrote: post #4

"He has changed the way engineering teams are structured, largely eliminating testers to speed software releases,... " What could possibly go wrong? Ok.. the sentence continues : "and adding data scientists and designers to the engineering teams to ensure all features are informed by rigorous testing and good design principles. " I don't quite understand, how can data scientists help to catch bugs? Automated testing?

This is probably why so many of the Windows Updates this year broke critical things, especially for enterprise. I feel Nadella is taking a "cheaper, faster" approach which is fine and dandy in the otherwise non-critical mobile space (mobile users are used to being treated like crap and having buggy releases) but in enterprise there's simply a higher standard of quality. I'm not sure what this means for MS. At our sho…

>Buying and updating an MS product shouldn't be a gamble. They're supposed to be the conservative and stable big brother to the industry

You can tell who's young around here. In the distant past you could have put IBM or Novel in that same blank 20 years ago. It wasn't till around the release of server 2003 that anybody thought that.

Next, every product is a gamble these days. If you're connected to the net, you're at risk. Before exploits may have taken weeks or months to fully circulate, now 0-days are very common and other vendors release the exploit information they have on your products in 90 days or less.

>Now just installing an Exchange rollup is asking for a complete reimaging

Again, I'm not sure when Exchange didn't explode in the past either.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#42

Post by Silhouette » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 7:45 PM UTC

joycey wrote: post #39

weavie wrote: post #4

"He has changed the way engineering teams are structured, largely eliminating testers to speed software releases,... " What could possibly go wrong? Ok.. the sentence continues : "and adding data scientists and designers to the engineering teams to ensure all features are informed by rigorous testing and good design principles. " I don't quite understand, how can data scientists help to catch bugs? Automated testing?

They are not eliminating testing. This was really bad wording. When I interviewed in Redmond with Microsoft, I was told that Microsoft used to hire SDE's (software development engineers) and SDET's (software development engineers in testing) as two distinct positions. Now, if you are hired as a "software engineer", you are responsible for writing software as well as writing tests. This was done to decrease friction b…

But if you're working on software that actually matters, you're supposed to have some friction between the people building it and the people testing it. This is otherwise known by terms such as "independent testing" and "lack of bias".

Moving fast and breaking stuff is OK if you're building a web service that doesn't really matter. If Facebook falls over, the productivity at a significant number of businesses probably goes up.

On the other hand, if yesterday's OS security patch stops everyone's PC from booting this morning, or if a new version of your e-mail server has a glitch that means half your company can't log in to read their mail or even that important messages from customers are actually being lost, that probably comes with a cost measured in large numbers of dollars per minute at a medium-sized business, or if you prefer, in careers per hour within the IT group.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#43

Post by JimmaDaRustla » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 7:50 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #29

perseusprime wrote: post #14

I feel there is good and bad. I am glad he moved to a more data driven and agile culture. He is also empowering engineers in his organization. The bad is that they all suffer from the windows mindset and spend a great deal of time building for windows. With all the patents they own they literally own android and yet they are not willing to allow android apps on windows phone or surface pro 3. It feels like a slow mar…

Perhaps Microsoft is planning on dumping the Windows phone in favor of Android and iOS? The Office365 apps run well on my Android Note 4 phone and my iPad mini (and my MacBook Air). I like Microsoft's new strategy, but I wonder about the financial aspects of it. Microsoft gets $100/year from my family, that is it, and everyone gets 1 terrabyte of OneDrive storage and all of the apps. Is this sustainable for a busines…

The Windows license is absolutely free on devices with an MSRP of $200 or less, which means they make nothing on it except maybe any apps you purchase.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#44

Post by DonCarlitos » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

Nadella has surpassed expectations to date, he has a plan, and is implementing it in a rigorous and competent manner. I expect the next year will be a good one for the "ruffians from Redmond." And I just can't stress enough how important it was for Balmer to yield when he did. Steeped in the past and his old ways, he wasn't the new leadership the firm required. Nadella is just that.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#45

Post by joshuapants » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 8:07 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #18

perseusprime wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it monumental? Java runs on windows already and they are third parties like Bluestacks who have demonstrated running android apps on Windows.

Java runs on Windows, but not Windows Phone, which would be the main target of Android app functionality.

Windows Phone isn't a distinct product anymore with the launch of Windows 10, is it?

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#46

Post by kaeawc » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 8:07 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #42

joycey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not eliminating testing. This was really bad wording. When I interviewed in Redmond with Microsoft, I was told that Microsoft used to hire SDE's (software development engineers) and SDET's (software development engineers in testing) as two distinct positions. Now, if you are hired as a "software engineer", you are responsible for writing software as well as writing tests. This was done to decrease friction b…

But if you're working on software that actually matters, you're supposed to have some friction between the people building it and the people testing it. This is otherwise known by terms such as "independent testing" and "lack of bias". Moving fast and breaking stuff is OK if you're building a web service that doesn't really matter. If Facebook falls over, the productivity at a significant number of businesses probabl…

Software engineers should be able to test their own code. The faster they get feedback on their code and its impact to users, the better they understand the various cases and can strive for better quality. Having a separate QA team has a fairly long feedback cycle.

Ideally you'd get both engineers writing tests for their code as well QA teams for products.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#47

Post by weavie » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 8:15 PM UTC

joycey wrote: post #39

weavie wrote: post #4

"He has changed the way engineering teams are structured, largely eliminating testers to speed software releases,... " What could possibly go wrong? Ok.. the sentence continues : "and adding data scientists and designers to the engineering teams to ensure all features are informed by rigorous testing and good design principles. " I don't quite understand, how can data scientists help to catch bugs? Automated testing?

They are not eliminating testing. This was really bad wording. When I interviewed in Redmond with Microsoft, I was told that Microsoft used to hire SDE's (software development engineers) and SDET's (software development engineers in testing) as two distinct positions. Now, if you are hired as a "software engineer", you are responsible for writing software as well as writing tests. This was done to decrease friction b…

A developer can test their own code, but they will only test it through the paths that they are aware of and thus coded for. An independent tester needs to be there to explore different avenues and try things that a developer wouldn't have thought of. Developers do think very differently to users.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#48

Post by ZenoArrow » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 8:30 PM UTC

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #2

The obvious thing left out is that Nadella's second year involves the release of Windows 10.

Exactly. The second year is going to be a sales high just because of Windows 10, they'd have to try pretty hard to mess that up.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#49

Post by bztzt » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 8:32 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #42

joycey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not eliminating testing. This was really bad wording. When I interviewed in Redmond with Microsoft, I was told that Microsoft used to hire SDE's (software development engineers) and SDET's (software development engineers in testing) as two distinct positions. Now, if you are hired as a "software engineer", you are responsible for writing software as well as writing tests. This was done to decrease friction b…

But if you're working on software that actually matters, you're supposed to have some friction between the people building it and the people testing it. This is otherwise known by terms such as "independent testing" and "lack of bias". Moving fast and breaking stuff is OK if you're building a web service that doesn't really matter. If Facebook falls over, the productivity at a significant number of businesses probabl…

there is a separate, smaller "quality" team with a separate reporting hierarchy that is supposed to address this - that's where the reference to data scientists, etc. in the article comes from.

basically the idea is to split the SDET role into two - SE testing (closer to the code than SDETs used to be) and "quality" (further from the code than SDETs used to be). SDET testing, though not directly driven by the code structure, tended to be at a pretty low level driven by a detailed functional spec.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#50

Post by drzaiusapelord » Wed, Feb 04, 2015, 8:34 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #41

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably why so many of the Windows Updates this year broke critical things, especially for enterprise. I feel Nadella is taking a "cheaper, faster" approach which is fine and dandy in the otherwise non-critical mobile space (mobile users are used to being treated like crap and having buggy releases) but in enterprise there's simply a higher standard of quality. I'm not sure what this means for MS. At our sho…

>Buying and updating an MS product shouldn't be a gamble. They're supposed to be the conservative and stable big brother to the industry You can tell who's young around here. In the distant past you could have put IBM or Novel in that same blank 20 years ago. It wasn't till around the release of server 2003 that anybody thought that. Next, every product is a gamble these days. If you're connected to the net, you're a…

My personal experience is that MS has been solid since Windows 2000. I have limited experience with the NT4 products but I remember those being just fine as well (i maintained two NT4 servers for my employer and used to host images for fark photoshop contests on one- shh).

Exchange has been SUPER solid. Its only 2010/2013 that we're seeing so many issues with what should be a trivial update process.

I think there's a real drop in quality lately. Heck, in the XP days we never bothered to test security updates. They all came in same day via WSUS. Nowadays? No way.