Hm, read the whole article. After the initial “this person blogged about x”, the rest is speculation and quotes with no context. Copy-paste journalism, no substance.
Even_Package_8573 on
Cutting senior engineers and expecting better reliability is… an interesting strategy.
BetSquare7190 on
Surely more AI will fix it.
Cautious_Boat_999 on
My heart bleeds for Microslop
crustyeng on
It’s just really, really not as good as AWS.
BungABunBun on
I read his essay and he thinks really highly of himself. I promise you a 3Trillion company isn’t impacted by the lack of software quality and testing discipline. In the year he was there he claims to have rewritten multiple daemons meeting the quality standard he thinks is good, he sent an email to Azure CEO, then sent an email to Satya, and finally sent an email to the Board of Directors after the previous 2 emails did not get a response.
It is important you do not think of yourself as a savior for a multi-trillion dollar company. You’re not even a cog in the machine.
HawkeyeGild on
Ex employee blames Microsoft’s issues due to him leaving.
lazyoldsailor on
Exodus or excision?
RichInYYC on
So, When they fired them they are “layoffs” and when they need them back, then it was because of an “exodus”
itsprobablytrue on
I assure you Microsoft had problems for over 30 years
profanesublimity on
How’s that Ai vibe coding going?
Accidental-Genius on
MBA’s are bad for business.
FeistyTie5281 on
Profit over quality ….
It’s the ‘Murican way.
And one of the reasons the entire world is moving away from anything having to do with the USA.
A convicted rapist criminal pedophile leading the country is another.
MrMichaelJames on
Azure has had problems since day one but yeah cut senior people things get out of control.
UrMomsNewGF on
Azure problems stem from attempting to build a cloud environment out of Microsoft products.
Mediocre-Pizza-Guy on
If it’s anything like my big tech employer….
They did a bunch of layoffs, made promotions impossible, pushed RTO policies, threatened stack ranking, mandated AI tools, shipped off tons of work to India and have limited raises to less than inflation…
Some of the best coworkers I had, genuinely, were already rich. They were making big tech, West coast salaries for years, and had some good luck with RSUs…. When all this happened they just kinda shrugged and said ‘Eh, why bother’. Then a few of the most talented ones, they jumped ship, but the market is really rough – only really talented people can make the jump without a huge paycut.
I’m an okay developer. I was pretty good in the Midwest. I get stuff done, in reliable, but like, I’m just okay. I won’t leave because interviews are hard, and I don’t want to change health insurance and I’ve got children and all that jazz. So you get crappy devs like me who don’t leave, but also, have no incentive to work hard.
When I’m motivated, I’m okay. Now? I’m awful.
But the AI tool will generate some slop that makes a decent approximation of useful work and the team in India that took my old project is doing so badly, even I look good by comparison… And nobody wants to pick up ownership of anything, we are all just coasting until we either get laid off, or we feel working hard will be rewarded….but at this point, I have no good faith left. I’m not going to work hard because they promise that next year my performance will be rewarded.
Also, I’m responsible for a bunch of stuff I shouldn’t be. I am literally ‘on call’ right now…we have had big name companies, literally paying multi-million dollar contracts for our product, and I’m the guy who gets paged at 2am to fix their problem… And I don’t know a thing about it and the team that did got laid off.
It’s absurd.
Ask our customers about how happy they are…we are delivering fewer features, with more bugs and our customer service is much much worse. We also have had more public outages.
But CEO swears AI is writing N% of our code and we are M% more efficient.
CHISOXTMR on
Have they tried copilot?
turkshead on
Man, the problem here is two-fold: first, high level engineers and managers leaving Microsoft, thus draining Microsoft of expertise; and second, high level engineers and managers from Microsoft getting jobs at other companies, thus infecting other companies with Microsoft’s work culture.
Prime_1 on
Vibes are your only way out of this, Microsoft. Bon Appétit!
Alert_Particular6733 on
MBA = More Bad Advice
AlphaMaleXYZ on
Talent exodus is the symptom, not the cause. It’s what cause talent to abandon the ship.
viking_linuxbrother on
When layoffs are coming, the talented jump ship quick. Microsoft did several strings of layoffs, I guarantee every company that has done them multiple times recently has bled talent.
lattice_defect on
Garbage mgmt
Tytown521 on
You mean the leopard ate its face?
SolarNachoes on
Exodus or layoffs? Kinda different effects.
jpsreddit85 on
Exodus….. Never heard layoffs called that before.
Traditional-Hall-591 on
Nah they have CoPilot. Slopya Nutella assures us that CoPilot is totally tops for vibe coding and offshoring.
Candid_Cat_5921 on
Microsoft has had some of the lowest salaries among the big players for the last 10-15 years, but the perk was they have one of the best work/life balances. A lot of people that leave Microsoft come back to Microsoft eventually.
But now you have Microsoft cracking down on engineer perks and they are starting to overwork them like Amazon while badmouthing them at the same time (their CEO recently said software engineers would need to “reskill” because their jobs are going away). So now you have relatively crappy salaries, and low morale. So now getting paid less is a lot less appealing given the other perks of MSFT are going away.
The fucked up thing is they could change it today. If they held back a bit on datacenter spending or dipped into their hefty cash reserves, they could give current employees a big cash bonus and immediately lift morale.
hornetjockey on
Just have copilot fix it.
Psigun on
More MBAs, more ai, less software engineers. Profit?
nullset_2 on
In other news, water is wet.
Secure_Guest_6171 on
AI will fix it
urbrainonnuggs on
Azure has always sucked since before AI. Not sure what solution you can give in a blog post when the problems are systemic.
Source: Myself at my company when Azure deleted our PROD kubernetes cluster and ghosted us for whole 2 days and all we got was an “oopsy here’s some credits” as we lost 2 million in revenue.
I moved to AWS so fucking fast
cazzipropri on
In the meantime, all Microsoft employees not working in MSAI are reporting horrific working conditions, increased pressure, increased workload, increased targets and increased threats of redundancy if those targets are not met. Basically everybody not in MSAI is a second class citizen.
SoloAquiParaHablar on
Azure was trash long before the exodus. The biggest problem with Microsofts design philosophy as a whole is it tries to be everything to everyone. And it’s evident in every Azure product you touch. Something as as simple as a server less function becomes as complex as configuring a virtual machine, why?
tacs97 on
They should just use copilot for their engineering. Isn’t that the reason AI was created? So that these corporations can run without paying for human labor?
Daz_Didge on
Just system prompt: act as a Ex-Microsoft Azure expert.
Simple_Assistance_77 on
No its fine, AI can fix everything.
apple_tech_admin on
As an enterprise architect, working with Microsoft has been insultingly awful. Customers will pay top dollar for “premium support” and receive slop. I obtained my current job after Microsoft’s fast track team bungled an Entra and Intune project and I basically had to do the whole thing over.
I remember when the tech titans in Silicon Valley actually meant something and they treated their engineers and architects well (and I’m far from old), and we prided ourselves on our work. You couldn’t pay me to go back now.
[deleted] on
[removed]
prof_dr_mr_obvious on
I think they didn’t use enough slop-pilot. Just one more agent will surely fix all of this.
Low_Pomegranate2648 on
“this one ex engineer thinks that maybe these problems are from this thing”
K cool, great newsworthy reporting
Debatablewisdom on
Like when I left my last job and they slowly started sinking. I tried to warn them.
DustNearby2848 on
I worked on Azure and was done far before all the layoffs. From a technical standpoint it was the worst code base I’ve ever seen and changing 3 lines of code led to 6+ months of bureaucracy. Never again.
Odrac_ on
Knowledge dilution is just a fancy way of saying nobody knows why anything works anymore and the one guy who did left in 2021
RebelStrategist on
No one care MS. You did this to yourself. Greed is a bitch.
48 Comments
[deleted]
Hm, read the whole article. After the initial “this person blogged about x”, the rest is speculation and quotes with no context. Copy-paste journalism, no substance.
Cutting senior engineers and expecting better reliability is… an interesting strategy.
Surely more AI will fix it.
My heart bleeds for Microslop
It’s just really, really not as good as AWS.
I read his essay and he thinks really highly of himself. I promise you a 3Trillion company isn’t impacted by the lack of software quality and testing discipline. In the year he was there he claims to have rewritten multiple daemons meeting the quality standard he thinks is good, he sent an email to Azure CEO, then sent an email to Satya, and finally sent an email to the Board of Directors after the previous 2 emails did not get a response.
It is important you do not think of yourself as a savior for a multi-trillion dollar company. You’re not even a cog in the machine.
Ex employee blames Microsoft’s issues due to him leaving.
Exodus or excision?
So, When they fired them they are “layoffs” and when they need them back, then it was because of an “exodus”
I assure you Microsoft had problems for over 30 years
How’s that Ai vibe coding going?
MBA’s are bad for business.
Profit over quality ….
It’s the ‘Murican way.
And one of the reasons the entire world is moving away from anything having to do with the USA.
A convicted rapist criminal pedophile leading the country is another.
Azure has had problems since day one but yeah cut senior people things get out of control.
Azure problems stem from attempting to build a cloud environment out of Microsoft products.
If it’s anything like my big tech employer….
They did a bunch of layoffs, made promotions impossible, pushed RTO policies, threatened stack ranking, mandated AI tools, shipped off tons of work to India and have limited raises to less than inflation…
Some of the best coworkers I had, genuinely, were already rich. They were making big tech, West coast salaries for years, and had some good luck with RSUs…. When all this happened they just kinda shrugged and said ‘Eh, why bother’. Then a few of the most talented ones, they jumped ship, but the market is really rough – only really talented people can make the jump without a huge paycut.
I’m an okay developer. I was pretty good in the Midwest. I get stuff done, in reliable, but like, I’m just okay. I won’t leave because interviews are hard, and I don’t want to change health insurance and I’ve got children and all that jazz. So you get crappy devs like me who don’t leave, but also, have no incentive to work hard.
When I’m motivated, I’m okay. Now? I’m awful.
But the AI tool will generate some slop that makes a decent approximation of useful work and the team in India that took my old project is doing so badly, even I look good by comparison… And nobody wants to pick up ownership of anything, we are all just coasting until we either get laid off, or we feel working hard will be rewarded….but at this point, I have no good faith left. I’m not going to work hard because they promise that next year my performance will be rewarded.
Also, I’m responsible for a bunch of stuff I shouldn’t be. I am literally ‘on call’ right now…we have had big name companies, literally paying multi-million dollar contracts for our product, and I’m the guy who gets paged at 2am to fix their problem… And I don’t know a thing about it and the team that did got laid off.
It’s absurd.
Ask our customers about how happy they are…we are delivering fewer features, with more bugs and our customer service is much much worse. We also have had more public outages.
But CEO swears AI is writing N% of our code and we are M% more efficient.
Have they tried copilot?
Man, the problem here is two-fold: first, high level engineers and managers leaving Microsoft, thus draining Microsoft of expertise; and second, high level engineers and managers from Microsoft getting jobs at other companies, thus infecting other companies with Microsoft’s work culture.
Vibes are your only way out of this, Microsoft. Bon Appétit!
MBA = More Bad Advice
Talent exodus is the symptom, not the cause. It’s what cause talent to abandon the ship.
When layoffs are coming, the talented jump ship quick. Microsoft did several strings of layoffs, I guarantee every company that has done them multiple times recently has bled talent.
Garbage mgmt
You mean the leopard ate its face?
Exodus or layoffs? Kinda different effects.
Exodus….. Never heard layoffs called that before.
Nah they have CoPilot. Slopya Nutella assures us that CoPilot is totally tops for vibe coding and offshoring.
Microsoft has had some of the lowest salaries among the big players for the last 10-15 years, but the perk was they have one of the best work/life balances. A lot of people that leave Microsoft come back to Microsoft eventually.
But now you have Microsoft cracking down on engineer perks and they are starting to overwork them like Amazon while badmouthing them at the same time (their CEO recently said software engineers would need to “reskill” because their jobs are going away). So now you have relatively crappy salaries, and low morale. So now getting paid less is a lot less appealing given the other perks of MSFT are going away.
The fucked up thing is they could change it today. If they held back a bit on datacenter spending or dipped into their hefty cash reserves, they could give current employees a big cash bonus and immediately lift morale.
Just have copilot fix it.
More MBAs, more ai, less software engineers. Profit?
In other news, water is wet.
AI will fix it
Azure has always sucked since before AI. Not sure what solution you can give in a blog post when the problems are systemic.
Source: Myself at my company when Azure deleted our PROD kubernetes cluster and ghosted us for whole 2 days and all we got was an “oopsy here’s some credits” as we lost 2 million in revenue.
I moved to AWS so fucking fast
In the meantime, all Microsoft employees not working in MSAI are reporting horrific working conditions, increased pressure, increased workload, increased targets and increased threats of redundancy if those targets are not met. Basically everybody not in MSAI is a second class citizen.
Azure was trash long before the exodus. The biggest problem with Microsofts design philosophy as a whole is it tries to be everything to everyone. And it’s evident in every Azure product you touch. Something as as simple as a server less function becomes as complex as configuring a virtual machine, why?
They should just use copilot for their engineering. Isn’t that the reason AI was created? So that these corporations can run without paying for human labor?
Just system prompt: act as a Ex-Microsoft Azure expert.
No its fine, AI can fix everything.
As an enterprise architect, working with Microsoft has been insultingly awful. Customers will pay top dollar for “premium support” and receive slop. I obtained my current job after Microsoft’s fast track team bungled an Entra and Intune project and I basically had to do the whole thing over.
I remember when the tech titans in Silicon Valley actually meant something and they treated their engineers and architects well (and I’m far from old), and we prided ourselves on our work. You couldn’t pay me to go back now.
[removed]
I think they didn’t use enough slop-pilot. Just one more agent will surely fix all of this.
“this one ex engineer thinks that maybe these problems are from this thing”
K cool, great newsworthy reporting
Like when I left my last job and they slowly started sinking. I tried to warn them.
I worked on Azure and was done far before all the layoffs. From a technical standpoint it was the worst code base I’ve ever seen and changing 3 lines of code led to 6+ months of bureaucracy. Never again.
Knowledge dilution is just a fancy way of saying nobody knows why anything works anymore and the one guy who did left in 2021
No one care MS. You did this to yourself. Greed is a bitch.
[deleted]