Comment by ferguess_k
1 day ago
They don't have David Cutler to mow the lawns. I have worked in larger shops (smaller than MSFT but still large enough, almost 10K employees), and people in general are very forgiving about making mistakes. You would think it was a good thing, but what it shows was that no one cared and none took responsibility.
If youn put me in the starting lineup for an MLB team, I'd strike out every single at bat for the entire season, and it's wouldn't be a "mistake" on my part; I'm just fundamentally incapable of doing the job.
A mistake is something that happens when someone capable of doing the job well happens to not do it well in a specific instance (without ill intent, of course). If it happens often enough, the question should be whether it's a mistake or if they're not able (or not willing) to do the job as expected. I don't know that this is what's happening here, but the issues seem to be large and frequent enough to at least warrant a discussion.
I think system programmers are supposed to come under a more strict standard, simply because they are system programmers. There are programmers, and there are system programmers.
I'm not saying that people should be sacked for just one mistake, unless it is a pretty large one (criminal e.g.). But I'd say system programmers should be allowed to make the same mistake three times maximum. I think that's pretty generous. If the culture does not allow enough time for reflection and education, then that's a different story.
The other programmers do not need to hold the same standards simply because their code (presumably) impact less.
System programmer can crash your system
Web dev can leak shitton of valuable data
If you knew what kind of software runs on Java, C# and even VBA you would shit bricks.
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There are fewer and fewer 'David Cutler' types and more and more 'Pavan Davuluri' types at Microsoft. Wonder if the blame is really down to AI or indeed a lack of attention to detail from a new kind of workforce.
'David Cutler' types are definitely not popular, in his prime time or in nowadays. My only regret is that I have never worked under such a person.
People assumed they could "modernize" software engineering, but, at the end of the day, it's still mostly engineering and very slightly about software. People optimized for the wrong thing.
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On his garage interview, he mentioned nowadays having fun with XBox Cloud hardware running Azure Linux.
https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?t=10730
Yeah I think he moved away from Windows some 25 years ago, after Windows 2000. He gave me the vibe of trying to build something really solid and then move onto the next important target, never lingering in one place for too long.