91–100 of 110 posts
I think they're removing old rust that would crate friction in moving towards AI assisted development. Old rust which is used to higher quality of code...
Yes, that good old high quality code Microsoft is famous for.
NT Kernel, Direct3D, .NET Runtime. Also a lot of stuff that came out of Microsoft Research like Z3.
Which also happen to be the sort of projects older devs would normally be working on.
So the goal is to get rid of the people who have all the internal knowledge?
Speaking as a greybeard, it's not really that valuable. Younger people are just as smart, if not smarter, and they can figure it out if I get hit by a bus. There's literally nothing I know that someone younger couldn't learn or figure out.
But with AI, simple codebase understanding or even just paving over everything, including the fence, is potentially easy, and getting easier each month.
Certainly, a certain amount of senior experience is needed. The AI lacks taste and discretion. But the greybeard sensibilities the come with increasing seniority will probably hold back the new pace of things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume this voluntary retirement offer will be something like 2 weeks of pay per year of service, plus maybe 16 weeks. And you get to keep your unvested stock. If that's not too far off, you'd expect a principal engineer's gross expected value to be something like 800k from such a move. It seems like the net opportunity cost of accepting the VR would play out like: 1) you lose 1 or 2 million net, in the scenario wh…
I'm in Seattle and used to work at MSFT, along with many others at where I work currently. The details still haven't been given out to anyone, but I had drinks with someone who is thinking of taking the offer based on what they know. While no one has been told explicitly that they are on the list yet, this particular individual has been there more than long enough and is of the age where this actually makes sense to…
Non-competes are still legal until Jun 30, 2027 for employees earning more than $127k.
I think they're removing old rust that would crate friction in moving towards AI assisted development. Old rust which is used to higher quality of code...
Though based on the headlines that I've seen regarding Azure development I'm not confident that they would end up in a better place if this ends up happening.
But maybe who knows, they might open source the NT kernel as there will be nobody left to maintain it within Microsoft.
So the goal is to get rid of the people who have all the internal knowledge?
Speaking as a greybeard, it's not really that valuable. Younger people are just as smart, if not smarter, and they can figure it out if I get hit by a bus. There's literally nothing I know that someone younger couldn't learn or figure out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not a native English speaker so I actually geniunely wonder: 1. Could you please tell more? 2. Could this be said for other -ism s as well? (Sexism, Racism, Ableism, Classism, Nationalism, Nepotism)
In the US ageism is illegal if you are discriminating against someone for being too old. It is not illegal in the US to discriminate against someone based on how young they are
And is this only about the employment, or generally?
I feel like paying your most experienced employees to quit is exactly the opposite of what Microsoft needs right now. Paying to get rid of your institutional knowledge and experience is an insane move, especially as everything is on fire.
There’s a reason why despite investing so much in building AI tools, MSFT has a bad rep and no one uses their tools. People use CC, Codex, Cursor when MSFT already has supposedly competitive tools.
Note: I work at MSFT.
So the goal is to get rid of the people who have all the internal knowledge?
Speaking as a greybeard, it's not really that valuable. Younger people are just as smart, if not smarter, and they can figure it out if I get hit by a bus. There's literally nothing I know that someone younger couldn't learn or figure out.