Ask HN: Any Microsoft employees/devs here? What's happening to Microsoft?

2 days agoby thehamkercat

Why are they behaving like this since last year (trying very hard to burn themselves to the ground)

Latest example:

Microsoft Office renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app” (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46496465)

Not only the rename is absurd, but the page (office.com) looks heavily vibe-coded

My elderly dad is suffering from cognitive decline but likes to play computer games.

I realize he can't even open Steam without getting bombarded by ads from MSN in the start menu.

I'm angry at Microsoft for this. Instead of being good stewards of "computing", they provide an environment that's poorly designed and exploitative.

Shame on the people at Microsoft responsible.

13 hours agoby abstractanimal

Broken incentives, clueless trend-following leaders.

For the last year or so all orders from leadership have been "build more AI, show AI usage" even above things like stability and reliability.

There was no recognition from leadership over what use cases worked or not, and they appeared to believe their own hype.

To complement this, there is near to no long-term accountability for upper leadership for failure, so even as features underperform and strategy turns out to be a flop, they will continue to make millions a year, having layoffs every 6 months, and then acting surprised pikachu when morale is down and top engineers are looking to the door, since salary is barely competitive even if you are a top performer getting special stock awards.

2 days agoby throwawayms4

Just FYI, "Microsoft Office" wasn't renamed, it was "Microsoft 365" that was renamed. You can still download the Office suite and it's still called Office.

What Microsoft did do was make is super-confusing to people about what they changed and what is called what.

See: https://www.theverge.com/tech/856149/microsoft-365-office-re...

15 hours agoby nticompass

After reading Nadella's Hit Refresh on how he revived Microsoft, what's happening now is a 180 degree turn from that. I have no idea what's going on.

1 day agoby ed_mercer

Its 2014 levels of total distrust inside the company. Morale has been on the floor since end of 24, due to closing offices, laying off people. Contractors are being left in limbo more and more often.

Half of the people are just talking about layoffs and other are keeping thier mouth shut. There is sense that execs are making one bad decision after another. Xbox division knows this very well, the trust in that division is near zero, but now it has spread to even the orgs which were doing decently well.

Product quality is also completely dogshit/dogslop, we have done nothing in last 2 years except making our products worse. We do hear reports of boomer companies moving to Apple every now and then, and these rumours are increasing. Windows 11 is a disaster, Copilot is an convenience no one asked for. Users are contacting support every day asking how to disable all these features but execs keep ignoring users. The consensus among top guys is that customer is wrong and we need to teach them.

Trusting stock market more than the customers is now the industry standard.

1 day agoby falloutx

I'm more interested in knowing the status of the kernel team. Is there any chance that there is an outflow of talents so they are OK to hire people who are not exactly qualified 100% for professional kernel development? So that I might get a chance to snug in...:P

2 days agoby ferguess_k

Since more than a year no images available. Now the page gone completely: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt...

2 days agoby kvemkon

Well, this year might not be the Linux's desktop but it definitely will be Windows' non desktop.

1 day agoby tsoukase

It's a disarmingly simple sillygism actually:

1. Saying "AI" makes stock price go up

2. Make all things AI

3. Stock price will go even more up

As for everything else, subordinated to the aforementioned.

1 day agoby throwmsreply

>Why are they behaving like this since last year (trying very hard to burn themselves to the ground)

Since last year? Burning themselves into the ground has been their M.O. for the last decade and a half, at least.

I'd argue enshitification started in earnest with Windows 8.

AI just enables them to speed up the process dramatically.

2 days agoby rl3

No vision.

Windows is utter ass.

They don't even use their own browser, languages, or OS half the time because they're so bad.

I don't use it but stuff like VS Code is a point of light but they run it like an internal project, and will drive it into the ground, just like GitHub.

16 hours agoby anacrolix

Nobody wants to use Copilot voluntarily, therefore it's going to be pushed down deep into Microsoft customers' throats.

2 days agoby HackerThemAll

There are rumors of more big layoffs in Jan.

1 day agoby tibbydudeza

What sane person even cares about that monster and their shitty products today anyway? Unless hands are tied by work or contract.

The sooner they drown the better for everyone and the industry.

1 day agoby aristofun

Not me

1 day agoby MopAmine

I interviewed at Azure the same time I interviewed at GCP and the former was an absolute shit show. It was comically bad.

2 days agoby VirusNewbie