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Microsoft became incompetent in IT

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Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#141

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

ethbr1 wrote: post #131
dragonwriter wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think you’re overestimating intentionality in bad outcomes. It’s entirely possible for a whole organization to want a good outcome, but construct an org chart where bad outcomes are guaranteed by the misaligned and incomplete incentives for sub-divisions. E.g. the IT support org that is only measured on total spend and time to ticket closure

> It’s entirely possible for a whole organization to ... construct an org chart

You changed actors mid-sentence. The workers in the organization may want good outcomes but they are near-invariably separate from the people making decisions for the organization.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#142

Post by ethbr1 »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #141
ethbr1 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re overestimating intentionality in bad outcomes. It’s entirely possible for a whole organization to want a good outcome, but construct an org chart where bad outcomes are guaranteed by the misaligned and incomplete incentives for sub-divisions. E.g. the IT support org that is only measured on total spend and time to ticket closure

> It’s entirely possible for a whole organization to ... construct an org chart You changed actors mid-sentence. The workers in the organization may want good outcomes but they are near-invariably separate from the people making decisions for the organization.

No, I said it exactly as I meant it.

The organization (including the bulk of employees and executive leadership) may want a good outcome, but sub-divisions’ (aka the org chart) may have have their self-interests set to inevitably produce a bad outcome.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#143

Post by stolkin »

Facebook was even worse. My wife’s account was hacked and we noticed and right away clicked the link to do a reset. Then page then said something like: we have sent the reset link to hacker@hack.ru Which was the email associated with the account for an hour. That is stupid beyond belief. They should have sent that link to the email that had been on the act for the past several years.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#144

Post by MrPowerGamerBR »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #114
kazinator wrote: post #71

`Tis ironic he was locked out trying to interact with LibreOffice. I had a good interaction with the LibreOffice project. I reported something about LibreOffice Writer. Not even a bug, but just a user experience thing in some paragraph cohesion control UI. My report was taken seriously, discussed and fixed, in a way that was fairly aligned with my suggestions, and it all happened on not a very long time scale, about…

I once reported an obvious bug on open source project (windows preview was misaligned on Linux mint desktop) and told it’s working as intended, case closed. Open source support vary a lot, you can’t compare it to a business that is actually receiving money for service and take things seriously.

While true, at least with open source you can actually go into the code and try to fix the code if you really want to.

With a closed source business you are at the mercy of them to decide if they really want to fix your issue, even if you are a paid customer.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#145

Post by bithead »

As a network engineer I once had a project involving an infrastructure for a deployment of thousands (so I was told) of SQLServers. My part was pretty straightforward and ready well ahead of schedule, but the DB team got stuck because the SQLServer build process kept getting hung. The only response ever heard from microsoft was "It's a network problem"

So I dug into packet captures and found that the switches were using all-zeros gratuitous arps to populate the forwarding table more quickly, which is a fairly common practice. The SQL servers saw this as in indication of a duplicate IP address (the garps were for 0.0.0.0).

Technically this did trigger the duplicate IP address detection RFC, but was never a problem for other server builds or any other server operational capacities. Cisco was the other vendor involved and came out with an update to allow for a timing delay for the all-zeros GARP. However given the timeline runway and the need to do a bug scrub for just one access area in a large data center with other much more lucrative capacity builds the only fiscally responsible thing was to look to the vendor at the heart of the problem.

However it was not possible to get any response from microsoft on it in spite of having the most expensive support contract they offered. The monthly late fees for the project were in the 8 figure range, so microsoft was dumped since they were not answering the phone. It was not for a lack of trying either. Our so-called "high touch" liaisons were equally frustrated.

It was weird since we were not a small customer - we were one of their largest. If a fortune 10 can't get microsoft to answer the phone, what hope does anyone else have?

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#147

Post by _DeadFred_ »

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?

In the 90s/2000s their Microsoft SQL Server support was amazing. They would go through traces with you and explain everything going on, what different techniques could be applied, performance considerations, etc from the highest level down to disk access. Their SQL support literally changed my skills to a point it changed my career. They could have recorded those calls and sold access they were so good and explained things so well.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#148

Post by phba »

crocowhile wrote: post #73

It gets much worse than this if you think about what they decided to do with Minecraft. They obliged millions of kids - literally, kids - to have a microsoft account to play a game that has nothing to do with any other microsoft products. They apply sub-standard and child-unfriendly security measures and when armies of kids get hacked (mostly phished) every day the only thing they do is to close down their account an…

The business incentive is funneling new users into their walled garden. If they could, they would assign a MS account to every newborn. There are still loopholes to protect your children from Minecraft's new "features" (at least for Linux users, ask privately), but it's only a matter of time until they are closed to appease the gods of enshittification.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#149

Post by kazinator »

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…

The common thread is that all these tech giants concentrate on scaling their ability to deliver the product and generate revenue, making service for exceptional situations a lower priority, with solutions that do not scale.

While you are consuming product and paying, you are basically identical to everyone else doing that (except for your varying personal info). That can be scaled in straightforward ways.

If you have some problem that requires attention to your account, that doesn't scale well. Even if it could, it's not worth it to them; it's off the happy, revenue-generating path.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#150

Post by tremon »

y42 wrote: post #133

The problem is not that they are incompetent in IT, the problem is, IMHO, that they not scale their support with their product. Because they can't. Yes, the process described is nuts. But it's not an IT process, it's a business process. And there it is about cost saving, trying to automate things and keep them secure at the same time. The reason is: They have to take care of hundreds of millions of customers. Eemploy…

It's just not feasible to cover millions of individual problems if you grow to a certain size.

Then logic dictates it should not be feasible for companies to grow to that size and beyond.

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