Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

isolveproblems.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 697 posts

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

#641

Post by chii »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #630
chii wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately, what you will find is that unless you get lucky, the next ship is more of the same. The system/management style is ingrained in corporate culture of large-ish companies (i would say if it has more than 2 layers of management from you to someone owning the equity of the business and calling the shots, it's "large"). It stems from the fact that when an executive is bestowed the responsibility of managing…

> I would say if it has more than 2 layers of management from you to someone owning the equity of the business and calling the shots, it's "large" By that metric, my 50 employee company is "large".

well, does this company have more than 2 layers of management? Why do you need that much for only 50 people, instead of enpowering those people to make choices (after training and providing guidance on what makes for a good choice in various circumstances)?

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

#644

Post by aswegs8 »

egorfine wrote: post #336
convexly wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large orgs make decisions that prioritize short-term metrics over long-term quality all the time and nobody tracks whether those tradeoffs actually paid off. The decision to ship fast and fix later sounds reasonable in a meeting setting until articles like this surface and the reality comes through clearly.

> sounds reasonable in a meeting setting until articles like this surface No. It sounds reasonable past that. Because shipping features will make shareholders happy while an article like this will change nothing.

Microsoft Azure holds 20% of global cloud infrastructure market, 2nd largest behind AWS. Seems to be working.

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

#645

Post by jiggawatts »

eviks wrote: post #638
jiggawatts wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've experienced a nearly identical scenario where a large fleet of identical servers (Citrix session hosts) were crashing at a "rate" high enough that I had to "scale up" my crash dump collection scripts with automated analysis, distribution into about a hundred buckets, and then per-bucket statistical analysis of the variables. I had to compress, archive, and then simply throw away crash dumps because I had too man…

Yeah, long periods of total disfunction get ingrained Though just to ref my original point > burned before, and they're never touching the stove again Except they are sitting on the stove with their asses burning, which cuts all the needed cooling off their heads!

The better analogy is that they ran out of the kitchen in a panic, and left the pots on the burners. Some time later there is smoke curling up from under the kitchen door, but they’re used to the burning smell by now so it’s “not that big a deal”.

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

#646

Post by aswegs8 »

axelriet wrote: post #581
rhyperior wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I get that, I have been in a similar situation. At some point you just want to pull the trigger instead of going along with values that aren't yours. Sure, there is always the way of just silently disagree and move on, but who cares. We live one life not to maximize our careers, but to be who we are. Was an interesting read and wish all the best to you in the future.

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

#647

Post by pts_ »

phillipcarter wrote: post #546
gtowey wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I've worked on honing my communication skills for 20 years in this industry. Every time I have failed to get the desired result, I have gone back to the drawing board to understand how I can change how I'm communicating to better convey meaning, urgency, and all that. After all that I've finally had an epiphany. They simply don't care. They don't care about quality, about efficiency, about security. They…

Yeah, uhh: > I've worked on honing my communication skills for 20 years in this industry. That's because the skills weren't good enough.

If I am using a service, I do not care about your communicating...I want reliability...

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

#648

Post by dartharva »

breppp wrote: post #391
petterroea wrote: post #238

A business man at a prior employer sympathetic with my younger, naive "Microsoft sucks" attitude told me something I remember to this day: Microsoft is not a software company, they have never been experts at software. They are experts at contracts. They lead because their business machine exceeds at understanding how to tick the boxes necessary to win contract bids. The people who make purchasing decisions at compani…

That's true for Azure, where contracts are signed due to free credits given over Office and Windows usage. However, there is a reason why everyone uses Office and Windows. Office is the only suite that has the complete feature set (Ask any accountant to move to Google Sheets). Windows is the only system that can effectively run on any hardware (PnP) and have been that way for decades. This is due to superior software…

I use to think that too.

But if you really look at it the "comfort zone" problem isn't too big of an issue in itself that a few training workshops and brief acclimatization periods for other tool suites can't solve. Making accountants move to Google Sheets is actually doable given enough incentive; there really isn't a lack of features in Sheets against Excel so much as there is a difference of implementation. In fact, for many purposes Sheets and GSuite could even be the "superior software" if only one bothers to make good use of it.

The problem is more that companies hesitate to take the dive because they can't be sure any of the alternatives will stay stable in the long run. Google is infamous for abruptly shutting down applications and none of the other competitors have built enough of a repute yet to ensure longterm reliability.

Microsoft has been (and continues) riding on its first-mover advantage as an unmovable establishment for decades. It has worked out till now, but who knows till when.

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

#649

Post by axelriet »

tuan wrote: post #102
gamblor956 wrote: post #87

TLDR: It turns out that Nadella despite being an engineer is actually quite bad at managing engineering. Who would have thought?

I thought he was a PM.

There is a video floating where he demoed Excel, and his title was Technical Marketing Manager. Maybe he pivoted to PM later?

https://youtu.be/ddHDclRfzxM

Base education, he’s an EE.

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

#650

Post by dartharva »

lmm wrote: post #261
dbdr wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that also means that if you as a user/customer can make choices based on technical merits, you'll have a significant advantage.

An advantage how? Maybe you'll have one or two more 9s of uptime than your competitors; does that actually move the needle on your business?

You massively underestimate the difference in employee productivity not having to fight user-hostile software every step of the way can make. Not to mention cascading cost savings and infra flexibility distancing yourself from Microsoft products can grant.
Post reply on HN