Interesting reading about Micro$oft

[Bob Mariotti]

I know that there have been questions about how/why Micro$oft misses
deadlines and/or makes technical mistakes and I read about it all the time.

On one of my technical forums some junior developer asked the question
of why Microsoft is so bad and several of the "seasoned" developers rang
in with their opinion.  I've quoted the most common below so those of
you who are interested can at least get a handle on why.   Enjoy.  Bob

> Why is Microsoft so bad at everything it tries to do?
>
> I lived in Redmond for a decade & had tons of friends and colleagues
> who worked there. Here are the key points I’ll offer on this:
>
> Trying To Support Everyone: Unlike Apple, which only supports its own
> hardware, Microsoft supports an entire industry of hardware from
> manufacturers like Intel, AMD, Dell, HP, IBM, and literally hundreds
> of others. This means that Microsoft is constantly playing catch-up on
> compatibility with tons of standards, including many proprietary
> manufacturer standards.
>
> In addition, this means that when Microsoft rolls out new features, if
> those require hardware support, then Microsoft has to basically get
> the entire industry onboard with the new feature, which essentially
> becomes a giant task of herding cats. In the event that any hardware
> (or 3rd party driver) isn’t compatible with Windows, regardless of
> which organization screwed it up, Microsoft usually gets blamed.
>
> Super Long-Term Legacy Support: I’ve read that Windows 10 is capable
> running executables dating back to Windows 3.1, which is close to 25
> years of software support for some applications. In terms of
> computing, that’s more than an “era” - you’re talking about a literal
> epoch.
>
> This long-term support comes at a cost, though: it makes it difficult
> to deploy & maintain a tight, fast, streamlined operating system when
> you have to support all that legacy code, and once again, if something
> screws up (even if it’s your old copy of Wolf 3D from 1992), then
> Microsoft gets blamed.
>
> Petty Fiefdoms: The first 2 reasons above give Microsoft a pass - the
> rest of them don’t, starting with the fact that power within Microsoft
> tends to be held in petty fiefdoms.  I’ve heard that this has gotten
> better recently, but for a long time, entire teams, groups and even
> business divisions held more allegiance to “rock star managers” than
> they did to the corporation itself.
>
> I’ve worked in other companies that had this issue, and the problem it
> creates is that it dramatically undermines the company’s focus, slows
> & complicates the development & deployment of new technologies, and
> basically makes the company more focused on internal competition than
> it is on competing in the marketplace and meeting the customers’ needs.
>
> Design By Committee: A corollary to my point about fiedoms above is
> that new features, technologies, and produce enhancements can’t just
> be rolled out - they’re subjected to intense scrutiny by a thousand
> different stakeholders, with a thousand different points of view, and
> of course, intense internal competition for feature support,
> recognition, etc.
>
> This dramatically slows down the development & deployment of new
> technologies despite Microsoft’s rapid push to get them into
> production, leads to massive bloat, and often means that stakeholders
> who really shouldn’t be involved in a new technology at all end up
> holding it back because of too many cooks in the kitchen
>
> Insular Culture: Microsoft started out as a scrappy startup rebelling
> against a stodgy, outdated computer industry - which led them to a
> rather insular culture with a particular disdain for Apple & Unix
> systems, and a general dislike of anything “not invented here”.
>
> Unfortunately, this has led to Microsoft re-inventing the wheel
> countless times, as well as pushing out competing standards that
> actually undermine the rest of the industry. Microsoft has gotten
> better about supporting industry standards lately, but for a long time
> they attempted to use their PC market dominance to force their
> proprietary interpretation of standards on everybody else, as well as
> ignoring standards that everybody else tends to support.
>
> Loss Of Industry Status: Back in the day, Microsoft had its pick of
> the smartest, most talented people in computing who would move to
> Seattle to add America’s hottest tech company to their resume. That
> changed after the dot-com crash, though.
>
> In the Seattle area, Microsoft is still big, but now the best &
> brightest minds in the industry are going to companies like Apple &
> Google - while Microsoft has in many ways transformed into one of the
> boring, stodgy old computer companies that they fought so hard against
> when they first started.
>
> You could argue with me on this last point, but for most of my
> colleagues at Microsoft these days it’s a relatively boring 9x5 job
> that they’re doing because it has reasonable pay and a benefits
> package. In other words, it’s a mature company now, and it’s really
> hard for mature companies to change the industry with brilliant new ideas.
>
>