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Microsoft became incompetent in IT

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Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#121

Post by donatj »

Hear me out, it's industry wide. There is simply no real support anymore.

My aunt died unexpectedly a number of years ago. Within weeks some man from Nigeria took over her facebook profile. Changed her profile picture from a middle aged white woman to that of a Nigerian man, added a bunch of Nigerian friends. Otherwise the account is seemingly largely untouched. We, the family, have all contacted Facebook support multiple times. We have attempted to memorialize the account submitting proof of death. Nothing. It's beyond infuriating to see a cherished loved ones page vandalized like this regularly every time Facebook has its flashbacks.

Alternatively, a number of years ago I started a Twitter account for a side project that never got very far. Forgot about it.

Years later I make a little update to the side project and think "I could update the Twitter surely no one cares about" and discover to my annoyance that the account got hacked, posted crypto spam for a couple months and got shut down.

I try to contact support, explain the situation. Got into a loop of absolutely infuriating responses of "Your account has been banned. This ticket had been closed. You cannot reply to this message. There is no recourse to this action." No chance for literally any discussion.

I keep attaching longer and longer explanations until I eventually get a "Hmm, let me look into that" from someone that at least smelled minutely human. After a couple messages back and forth suddenly I get the "Your account had been banned. This ticket has been closed..." I throw my arms up and give up. One of the most infuriating experiences of my life. I'd spent over a week fighting to get a largely unused account back. It frankly instilled quite a bit of fear for if I ever lost access to my primary account.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#122

Post by samrus »

random3 wrote: post #52
chrismorgan wrote: post #20

This kind of issue is absurdly common. I’ve seen basically the same thing with Microsoft, Amazon and Google—personally and with others. With Google, it’s well-documented that sometimes, even if you don’t have 2FA turned on and you know your password, they simply won’t let you log in without some sort of additional verification… which may not be possible. This hit me once while overseas, I think I managed to get in by…

Exactly! The OP’s surprisal is surprising, given that 95% of all support interactions across the board are exactly like this. In fact, the internal support - i.e. the support for employees is just as bad and nonsensical. It goes pretty much like this. If your problem needs “reasoning” that entails more than matching a direct solution, you’re getting the default answer that’s the closest match to the solution. The onl…

Thats last part is either naive or just shilling.

The problems isnt the cogs, its the business owners setting up the incentives. Providing reasoned support is expensive from a time and effort perspective, so they dont invest in it. Service reps are specifically trained and incentivized to just fuzzy match the SOPs

And AI cant reason either, so it wont be able to provide any real reasoned support either. And the pwners dont care because they already provide shit service, people like you will just hype the AI up and then make excuses for it when its just as shit

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#123

Post by pas »

II2II wrote: post #94
eviks wrote: post #40

> But this, once an IT tech leader, became utterly incompetent in IT. And for me, it’s a pity. The rose tint is strong in these glasses. When was their support great? Or is the author simply confused about what tech they were a lead in?

I can't speak for Microsoft since I've never dealt with them directly, but descriptions of the level of support offered to consumers in the eighties and early nineties would be beyond belief to those who didn't live through it. You would dial a toll-free number, talk to a real person who would diagnose the problem and fix it. If it was a known fixed bug, they would mail you a software update. If the bug didn't have a…

Software was less complicated. Not that many layers, not that many supported platforms/configurations, etc.

Networking was simpler, if any.

And in general, pushing updates was not near zero-cost like today. So there was a bit of QA.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#124

Post by donatj »

PeterStuer wrote: post #72

I remember a time long ago when Microsoft support was great. I had a problem with Windows 3.11 crashing on my computer. Called the free telephone support, and the person went through a rigorous unscripted troubleshooting session with me to finally find the problem. Turned out some dram timing was slightly of in the bios setting which was only tripped by Windows and not by other software. That was in the 80's.

Yes! I had an issue with my original Xbox where it wouldn't power on properly, blinking light. After some back and forth with a very Texan man, we determined that I just needed to reseat the video cable. It was fantastic support! I miss those days.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#125

Post by donatj »

CCs wrote: post #6

LinkedIn (also MS) has the same problem. Also: minimum age to sign up is 16. But you need to be 18 to verify your account. And if you’re locked out, you need to verify your account and log in to open a ticket saying that you can’t log in…

I have a terrible fear that someday eBay is going to do the math on my 30 year old eBay account, figure out I was 9 when I opened it and lock me out.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#126

Post by PeterStuer »

velocity3230 wrote: post #96
PeterStuer wrote: post #72

I remember a time long ago when Microsoft support was great. I had a problem with Windows 3.11 crashing on my computer. Called the free telephone support, and the person went through a rigorous unscripted troubleshooting session with me to finally find the problem. Turned out some dram timing was slightly of in the bios setting which was only tripped by Windows and not by other software. That was in the 80's.

Windows 3.11 was released in 1993. Don't mess with the timeline, Marty!

You are right. Must have been early 90's. Might have been Windows 3 or 3.1 as well. I remember you had to install a 3rd party tcp/ip stack, as Windows did not come with one.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#127

Post by random3 »

samrus wrote: post #122
random3 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! The OP’s surprisal is surprising, given that 95% of all support interactions across the board are exactly like this. In fact, the internal support - i.e. the support for employees is just as bad and nonsensical. It goes pretty much like this. If your problem needs “reasoning” that entails more than matching a direct solution, you’re getting the default answer that’s the closest match to the solution. The onl…

Thats last part is either naive or just shilling. The problems isnt the cogs, its the business owners setting up the incentives. Providing reasoned support is expensive from a time and effort perspective, so they dont invest in it. Service reps are specifically trained and incentivized to just fuzzy match the SOPs And AI cant reason either, so it wont be able to provide any real reasoned support either. And the pwner…

Shilling what? AI in general? What’s the incentive? Hype is harder to argue. LLMs are defective attempts at AI, but that’s also a huge blind spot— effectively confounding AI and AI progress with a specific instance like LLMs.

Business incentive— if you can make an argument on why would a corporation provide shit support to its own employees you win. Also make an argument on why support is actually good at Amazon and others like them. So I don’t buy your argument on incentives either. Although there are other implications related to incentives and AI in general, but those are off topic.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#128

Post by ethbr1 »

samrus wrote: post #122
random3 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! The OP’s surprisal is surprising, given that 95% of all support interactions across the board are exactly like this. In fact, the internal support - i.e. the support for employees is just as bad and nonsensical. It goes pretty much like this. If your problem needs “reasoning” that entails more than matching a direct solution, you’re getting the default answer that’s the closest match to the solution. The onl…

Thats last part is either naive or just shilling. The problems isnt the cogs, its the business owners setting up the incentives. Providing reasoned support is expensive from a time and effort perspective, so they dont invest in it. Service reps are specifically trained and incentivized to just fuzzy match the SOPs And AI cant reason either, so it wont be able to provide any real reasoned support either. And the pwner…

The part that seems to be missing these days, that was historically present in support orgs, is escalation.

You’re always going to do the bulk of support through L1, and L1 support is going to be limited in terms of training and access.

But! The intended flow is that L1 recognizes when an issue exceeds their ability and escalates it up to L2+. And that’s where your talented (and empowered!) support engineers work.

That escalation just doesn’t seem to happen any more.

My hypothesis is that it’s a consequence of L1 being outsourced, where now they’re heavily incentivized to avoid escalating and impacting their probably-contractual KPIs.

Yet another cost for adding too many parties to something that could be better if it were simpler.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#129

Post by dragonwriter »

ethbr1 wrote: post #128
samrus wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats last part is either naive or just shilling. The problems isnt the cogs, its the business owners setting up the incentives. Providing reasoned support is expensive from a time and effort perspective, so they dont invest in it. Service reps are specifically trained and incentivized to just fuzzy match the SOPs And AI cant reason either, so it wont be able to provide any real reasoned support either. And the pwner…

The part that seems to be missing these days, that was historically present in support orgs, is escalation . You’re always going to do the bulk of support through L1, and L1 support is going to be limited in terms of training and access. But ! The intended flow is that L1 recognizes when an issue exceeds their ability and escalates it up to L2+. And that’s where your talented (and empowered!) support engineers work.…

> Yet another cost for adding too many parties to something that could be better if it were simpler.

But its not a cost from the perspective of the companies doj the outsourcing: the incentives are the way they are because the result is intended. Its not a cost of adding an extra party, it is part of the reason the party is added.

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