Comment by neuroelectron
2 months ago
They need to actually hire good devs again but then again they are a major part of why software as a career is dying in America.
2 months ago
They need to actually hire good devs again but then again they are a major part of why software as a career is dying in America.
This might not be an engineering problem. It just doesn’t feel like anyone at MS actually cares what their users care for. Doesn’t seem like they use the OS themselves.
> Doesn’t seem like they use the OS themselves.
Watch any of the MS BUILD or Ignite conference sessions, and take note of how many MS employees are using MacBooks - there's still Windows & Surface there, but I swear it's becoming less and less every year as Microsoft keeps acquihiring, and moved all in on the MS <3 Open Source campaign.
There used to be a huge culture of dogfooding in MS and I don't see it anymore (granted, I'm not an insider - just speaking from public perception). Also see any new open source stuff they put out - very little of it is using their own stack. Good for the community at large, but it speaks volumes to Microsoft's priorities.
Even on the business side - InTune (their MDM) will happily manage macOS, Ubuntu, Android, iOS almost as well as Windows (there' still deficiencies compared to competitors like JamF). Office is on Mac, EntraID doesn't care what OS you use, Defender EDR doesn't care what OS you use, etc.
It's clear that Windows is no longer a priority. Microsoft doesn't care what OS you use as long as you are using Azure, Office, and M365's suite of services. Definitely a better strategy for them to reach more customers, but it does spell the death of Windows long term.
Actually renting office suites is kind of stupid and I don't think it's going to work out for them. If they don't revert to something that isn't abusive to their customers. There's plenty of old businesses that are still running windows 95.
Initially when Satya took over many were oblieged to use Macs and Linux, exactly because they had to ensure their services also worked great on them, and that there as a culture shift beyond Windows one and only.
The problem is that this kind of backfired, and nowadays they also seem unable to hire new devs, outside game developers, that actually know what developing native Windows applications, and OS services actually means in practice.
Even though Microsoft nowadays is more open, I miss the "Developers, Developers, Developers" mindset on the Windows development team.