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Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

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Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#581

Post by axelriet »

rhyperior wrote: post #544
bawolff wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you are writing as if you expected it to go well.

I’d say they’re writing as if they expect everyone to share their ideals, and they’re responding to violations of those ideals in a naive and disempowered way. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong in those ideals, but the way they tried to fix things… they interacted with Cutler, why didn’t they try to influence him to fix things? Or any other senior technical leaders?

I never said I didn’t. It was a multi-year escalation and I shared my concerns widely along with concrete options.

The thing is in corporate environments people avoid admitting anything is wrong because that would make them look bad and also disavows the bosses who promoted them, so the true best interest of the company takes a back seat.

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#582

Post by Forgeties79 »

riffraff wrote: post #219
Forgeties79 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only good thing Microsoft azure ever did for me was provide a very easy way to exploit their free trial program in the early 2010s to crypto mine for free. It couldn’t do much, but it was straight up free real estate for CPU mining. $200 or 2 weeks per credit/debit card.

Ah, I did the same, but wasn't the experience/UI back then pretty nice too? I haven't used azure since then, but I remember the web interface was way more polished than aws and things worked ok (spinning up a VM was fast etc). So I'm confused by how everyone seems to hate it now.

I did it all in the command line so can’t say

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#583

Post by axelriet »

chris_money202 wrote: post #364
axelriet wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, but “Microsoft runs on trust” they say. They also say the CEO’s inbox is always open, actually the CEO himself says it in the yearly mandatory training video on business conduct. So it should be safe, in theory, to openly speak out in the best interest of the customers, no? Rhetorical question :)

I feel like emailing the CEO in this case is just a no-op, the inbox is gatekeeped by his staff and very unlikely he saw your email. That said, “inbox always open” means you should come with a problem AND a very well detailed solution. But question becomes if you had a detailed solution that was good, why wasn’t it ran up the org chart with buy in and why did it have to skip to the top.

The answer is “intricate politics and misplaced personal interests.”

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#585

Post by axelriet »

whoamii wrote: post #539
markus_zhang wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was from the kernel team, though. I always put their experience x2.

Unless you’re still senior after 10+ years. Add to that switching companies and coming back same level…

Life works in mysterious ways. Whoever you are, bring it on and prove any of my points wrong.

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#586

Post by cjbgkagh »

kev009 wrote: post #556
cjbgkagh wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former MSFTy it does sound weird to me too. I didn’t see what Axels level was but a lot of people work for Microsoft and not many of them can expect to email the CEO and get a response. It seems a bit like a crash out, not the first I’ve seen levied at Azure, won’t be the last. They probably think it’s a mental health episode, if you’re an important CEO crazy people will email you all the time and the staff prob…

I like how caring about fiduciary responsibility is a mental health episode or personality disorder to enough people in the comments. Simply being employed gives you a vested interest in keeping an operation above board and healthy. If you have a stock plan, you have equal rights to comment on issues as some low IQ private equity chief that does an end run to manipulate a company for their own benefit. The cattle psy…

It is emblematic of a crash out, I’ve seen a lot of them, and I’ve thought about doing it myself. I understand the impulse first hand. I did quit over my misgivings but I did not write a blog post about it, that would have been a career ended for me. I am expected to keep secrets as part of my job.

I work for myself now, for less money, but I do get to build things to the quality level that I want.

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#587

Post by 12_throw_away »

CalRobert wrote: post #200

What makes anyone start a new project and think “I know, I’ll use Azure!”? I really don’t get it. Do they have a great sales org? Is it because a phb thinks “well they made Office so it must be good”? I interviewed with a Dutch energy company migrating infra from AWS -to- Azure and I have no idea what would make them do that (aside from inertia, but then why use Azure in the first place?) And for some reason Azure us…

> What makes anyone start a new project and think “I know, I’ll use Azure!”?

Because your org is likely already paying for O365 and "Entra ID" or whatever they call it nowadays, and so it seems like this will all integrate nicely and give you a unified system with consistent identity management across all domains. It won't - omg, believe me it will NOT - but you don't find that out until it's too late.

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#588

Post by axelriet »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #560
dgellow wrote: post #460

All those discussions about career suicide. Are you all that afraid to do what you think is right because you could get fired? What Axel does by coming public with his named attached is remarkable. He gains a lot of respect in my book. Even if it is one sided and details are missing

The career suicide wasn't escalating (although probably that was job suicide). The career suicide is venting and airing all of your former employee's dirty laundry. Unless your former employer is doing something deeply unethical, writing hit pieces against them after you leave is going to make you less attractive to future employers. Before this article, employers would see "experienced and available cloud engineer."…

You have all the right words but some are in the wrong order.

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#589

Post by axelriet »

Terretta wrote: post #386
AmVess wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP was not successful because they didn't want to fix the problems he discussed. I have been in the same exact situation, and no level of communication skills would have been successful in changing their minds.

Or they did, but they needed/wanted to do something else more. That's usually based on either (a) more perspective, or (b) lack of foundational depth.

Maybe they didn’t have sufficient visibility at the ground level to make proper decisions.

Re: Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer

#590

Post by kev009 »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #586
kev009 wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how caring about fiduciary responsibility is a mental health episode or personality disorder to enough people in the comments. Simply being employed gives you a vested interest in keeping an operation above board and healthy. If you have a stock plan, you have equal rights to comment on issues as some low IQ private equity chief that does an end run to manipulate a company for their own benefit. The cattle psy…

It is emblematic of a crash out, I’ve seen a lot of them, and I’ve thought about doing it myself. I understand the impulse first hand. I did quit over my misgivings but I did not write a blog post about it, that would have been a career ended for me. I am expected to keep secrets as part of my job. I work for myself now, for less money, but I do get to build things to the quality level that I want.

Sure, it is a "crash out" in the sense that you have an infinitesimal chance of changing things unless the founder is still involved because the situation didn't happen in a vacuum. And yep, you are narrowing your path significantly... sycophants have no tolerance for hardliners. But the mental heath episode is the opposite, to keep reporting for duty once you know something is deleterious. A lot of white collar people are on psychotropic drugs or otherwise self-medicate with alcohol and addictions and it's not difficult to diagnose why. Congrats on going your own way.
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