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

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

#21

Post by yuhong »

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…

I guess for example that the http://support.microsoft.com/kb/3004394 Win7 fiasco comes from the update being only tested on machines with test roots installed, right? And Win8.0/Server2012 seems to be treated as second class with more than one bug affecting only that one, which reminds me of the odd support lifecycle where the server edition was treated as an older release but the client edition get treated as a older service pack.

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

#22

Post by pnathan »

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…

Your comment harmonizes with the word on the 'street' from in-person conversations from MS employees & people who know them. Testing as a role evidently has been disintegrated and QA turned into SDEs in general. I believe the goal is to force quality onto the developers responsibility instead of making it QA's responsibility.

We'll see how that plays out; it sounds like the first iteration has been brutal.

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

#23

Post by existencebox »

pnathan wrote: post #22
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…

Your comment harmonizes with the word on the 'street' from in-person conversations from MS employees & people who know them. Testing as a role evidently has been disintegrated and QA turned into SDEs in general. I believe the goal is to force quality onto the developers responsibility instead of making it QA's responsibility. We'll see how that plays out; it sounds like the first iteration has been brutal.

Disclaimer: MS employee/don't speak for the company etc; Yes, SDET has been (at least in my division and those I talk with) dissolved and integrated into SDE.

I raise an eye at the parent-parent post not because of the impact this will have (certainly some of the concerns stated here echo strongly with me) but that it's been a relatively recent change and I'd be skeptical that you can attribute any recent failures to this specifically, things just don't move that fast.

As to seeing how it pans out, it's certainly up in the air. As a former SDET there's a big wall to climb of making testability performance security etc. part of the first line of thinking alongside design and implementation.

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

#24

Post by shmerl »

untog wrote: post #16
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…

It's not really a case of "allowing" Android apps. It would take a monumental engineering effort.

It wouldn't have been so monumental if instead of locking everything into Direct3D they'd used OpenGL instead. Here their own lock-in mentality will eventually bite them hard. If MS will outgrow their dinosaur lock-in approach, they can start supporting GL-Next on all of their platforms when it will come out.

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

#25

Post by pachydermic »

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…

I think the problem for a business like MS is that, like you said, most of their revenue comes from enterprise. They already dominate that market. It's not enough to tread water - they have to grow! How can they really grow in a market which is definitely not chomping at the bit for change and are slow to adopt new products (even windows 7)? Where else can they grow? Apple is making so much goddamn money right now it's crazy - MS has to be thinking of ways to get a piece of that if they want to grow.

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

#26

Post by joshrivers »

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?

Are there any detailed references out there to what Nadella has changed for QA?

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

#27

Post by mark_l_watson »

sp332 wrote: post #5
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?

It's a confused sentence, but I think it means he removed "testing" as a separate group of people, and made "testing" something inherent to the design process.

In other words, Microsoft is doing what Google and other companies do: have individual teams responsible for everything for their project(s): design, development, devops, testing. One team has responsibilities for a vertical slice of a system: build it, deploy it, be responsible for it.

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

#28

Post by cwyers »

shmerl wrote: post #24
untog wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a case of "allowing" Android apps. It would take a monumental engineering effort.

It wouldn't have been so monumental if instead of locking everything into Direct3D they'd used OpenGL instead. Here their own lock-in mentality will eventually bite them hard. If MS will outgrow their dinosaur lock-in approach, they can start supporting GL-Next on all of their platforms when it will come out.

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Windows runs OpenGL just fine (look at anything iD Software puts out). It doesn't run Google's custom Java VM, it doesn't offer AOSP APIs and it doesn't offer Google Play Services. THOSE are the obstacles to running Android apps on Windows, not your obsession with OpenGL vs DirectX.

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

#29

Post by mark_l_watson »

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 business? I don't know.

I bought a tiny Windows 8.1 laptop a few weeks ago mostly out of curiousity (HP Stream 11, direct from Microsoft so no crap-ware installed, price: $199). Except for it being slow running IntelliJ for Clojure/Java dev, it is such a cool little laptop. Windows is free on it because it is a low cost device. Considering that this laptop uses OneBox configured for few files being on the local drive, and most used dynamically from Microsoft's servers, how much money could they make selling me this device with the cost of running OneDrive? Not much.

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

#30

Post by shmerl »

cwyers wrote: post #28
shmerl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't have been so monumental if instead of locking everything into Direct3D they'd used OpenGL instead. Here their own lock-in mentality will eventually bite them hard. If MS will outgrow their dinosaur lock-in approach, they can start supporting GL-Next on all of their platforms when it will come out.

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Windows runs OpenGL just fine (look at anything iD Software puts out). It doesn't run Google's custom Java VM, it doesn't offer AOSP APIs and it doesn't offer Google Play Services. THOSE are the obstacles to running Android apps on Windows, not your obsession with OpenGL vs DirectX.

Is there OpenGL on their mobile platforms? It can run just fine in theory there, but it's not available. Applications are not limited to Java, and often rely on the graphics system a lot and there can be as well native code.
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