I found this online, from a former Microsoft Employee. I think it explains a lot of things, except for why, under these circumstances, Microsoft’s stock value keeps going up (at a rate faster than inflation, that is).
Truly, this isn’t — and never was — me. It’s some one else.
“MS has some very talented programmers. They’re not very common, but they exist. The problem is that the entire company is completely and totally focused on developing an absurd number of new features and products, giving them completely unrealistic deadlines, and then shipping software on those deadlines no matter how half-assed or buggy it is.
“The idea is that everything is serviceable over the internet now, so they can just “fix it later”, except they never do. This perpetuates a duct-tape culture that refuses to actually fix problems and instead rewards teams that find ways to work around them. The talented programmers are stuck working on code that, at best, has to deal with multiple badly designed frameworks from other teams, or at worst work on code that is simply scrapped. New features are prioritized over all but the most system-critical bugs, and teams are never given any time to actually focus on improving their code. The only improvements that can happen must be snuck in while implementing new features.
“As far as M$ is concerned, all code is [insert favorite expletive here], and the only thing that matters is if it works well enough to be shown at a demo and shipped. Needless to say, I don’t work there anymore.”
Okay, me again, theAuthor (though not of the above, really…). I think that about sums it up… don’t you? Certainly fits the downward-spiraling quality of Windows and Microsoft Office these last couple decades.
Me, I think Microsoft needs to abandon all new feature development for 12 – 18 months and get every single programmer there working on bugs(1). They also need simultaneously to ramp up QA / Testing and send some of their more promising lower level programmers to advanced training in the art during this period. Only then, when all the A’s (high-priority bugs) and all or nearly all the B’s(mid-level bugs)(2) have been eliminated, only then open up to new features again. Then keep the new practices in place — forever!
With billions of clients and 10’s of billions of computers requiring Windows to operate, with so much of the World’s economy and livelihood dependent on this piece of software, it’s too important to do anything else with, at this point. Any priority bugs in that system puts the entire Human Race at risk, that’s not an exaggeration.
If you’re wondering what the alternative is or thinking something like “yeah? So what, it’s not like we have a choice,” well actually you do have a choice. Many alternatives to Windows exist.
By the way, if you’re a business, or managing one, and are looking for a market niche to take over, I think the ones Microsoft occupies are, or will be, up for grabs. When a company no longer puts quality first, when they are reduced to nothing but a Smoke and Mirrors / Dog and Pony show aimed at the investors, then they are actively abandoning their customers and their market share to anyone wise enough to notice the opportunity.
Further, what ever industry or service your business (whether sole proprietorship or all the way up to Godzilla Huge) is in, take this lesson to heart. NEVER put quarterly returns ahead of quality and true service to your customers / clients. The only way to keep a business happy and prosperous for the Long Term (you know, more than just next quarter) is to serve the customers, not the investors. Serving the customers *is* serving the investors.
Serving your investors ahead of your customers is dishonoring your investors and spitting (or worse) on your customers. Truly.
Just a thought…
(1) Something I think that would make life better and better and better for a Very Great Number of People is to revamp the entire .NET framework (one of those “badly written frameworks” the above ex-employee cites), especially for performance. It’s performance right now is just mind-bogglingly bad. Poor performance is itself a Bug. When it takes a 4 GHz computer to make Microsoft Office perform in half-way efficiently, and the typical consumer or small office computer runs at 2 – 2.4 GHz… that’s a Bug. A serious one. Intolerable. To me, there are very few products Microsoft has that are “ready to ship,” most of those are in their games division.
(2) “A, B & C” is one of the methods for categorizing Bugs. A’s are priority, the product does not work in some specific area and there’s no work around. B’s are important but there’s a work-around available. C’s are “would be nice if” sorts of things. Last I knew for sure (and, admittedly, it was a while ago) Microsoft ships with hundreds to thousands of A level bugs, and 10’s of thousands of B level bugs. The bug lists for any flavor of LInux — a FREE operating system — has never been anything like that enormous. One expects better of an industry leader with a Mission Critical (to the entire Human Race) product like Windows.