{"id":50294,"date":"2020-07-07T06:00:54","date_gmt":"2020-07-07T10:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=50294"},"modified":"2020-07-07T03:08:03","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T07:08:03","slug":"babysitting-at-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=50294","title":{"rendered":"Babysitting at Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I’ve said before<\/a>, I think Microsoft has outgrown their original reputation as a machine of rapacious corporate dominance. I don’t know if it’s because Bill Gates retired or because it’s grown to be top-heavy and bureaucratic. The days of cutthroat, calculating MS are over, replaced by a fickle leadership and an inability to design quality software.<\/p>\n

Yes, their operating system still dominates. Their programming tools are still incredibly popular. But what about the stuff they’ve made in the last 15 years? Have they built anything that was able to stand on its own? I can’t think of anything. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

INT – Day – Microsoft headquarters.<\/p>\n

Jonny Microsoft is sitting in a playpen in his corner office. An exhausted engineer, Barry, is cleaning up Jonny’s most recent mess. The subtitle in the corner indicates the year is 2006. <\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

NO! I don’t wanna work on a stupid web browser. <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

(Sighs.) Jonny, you already had us install this web browser on everyone’s computer. Don’t you remember the bad press and antitrust case<\/a>? We took a-<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

BO-RING!<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

We took a pounding to take this beachhead, let’s at least keep it up-<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

(Louder) BO-RING!<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

(Growing frustrated.) -keep it updated so all that wasn’t for nothing.<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

Web browsers are boring! I want Steam. <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

You want to create a competitor to Steam? That’s a lot of responsibility. Are you sure you want to do that?<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

(Delighted.) YES! I want Steam!<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

If I set up a gaming platform will you promise to update the web browser? It’s in really bad shape and it’s making a mess of web standards.<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

(Ignoring Barry, jumping up and down in his pen.) STEAM! STEAM! STEAM! We’re going to make the best Steam ever! The! Best! It will be bigger than the biggest Steam ever!<\/p>\n

Cut TO:<\/p>\n

INT – Day – Jonny’s Office – 2013<\/p>\n

It’s 7 years later, but Jonny is still somehow a toddler. Today he’s sitting in a highchair. He’s got the wreckage of a birthday cake in front of him and is shoving fistfuls of frosting into his mouth. Barry is nearby,sweeping up bits of cake that have been flung around the room. He doesn’t look older either, but he does look tired and haggard.<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

Birthday!<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

(Rolls his eyes.) Sir? It’s not actually your birthday, but you promised that if I got you cake you’d let us work on Games for Windows Live. Are you ready to do that now?<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

That’s stupid and boring. It’s broken and nobody likes it.<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

(Longsuffering.) Yes it is. That’s why we need to work on it. We just need some budget and we can have our engineers-<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

You’re a bad engineer and you made a bad Steam!<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

Sir, I told you back in 2007 that it wasn’t ready for release. I said it takes years of work to make a good platform. You told me to release it anyway. <\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

Nobody likes it! Nobody likes you!<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

Yes, everyone hates Games for Windows Live. That’s why I need you to approve the budget so we can fix-<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

Just throw it away!<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

(Turns white with horror.) Sir? Teams have integrated Games for Windows into their products. Do you understand? They depend on us now. We can’t just abandon them!<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

THROW. IT. (Grabs a handful of cake and throws it at the window.) AWAY!<\/p>\n

(Barry looks bitterly at his boss. Then without saying a word he gathers up Batman Arkham Asylum, Fallout 3, and FUEL, and drops them in the bin with dozens of other games.)<\/em><\/p>\n

CUT TO:<\/p>\n

INT – Day – Jonny’s Office – 2019<\/p>\n

Jonny is sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by smashed toys. Right now he has a broken Zune in one hand and a Kinect controller in the other. He’s smashing them together and making explosion sounds. There’s a massive television on the wall, which he’s using to watch Ninja<\/a> play Fortnite on Twitch. <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

Pardon me sir, I wanted to talk to you about the new version of Internet Explorer…<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

(Looks away from TV.) Is it the best now?<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

(Nervously.) Sir, I talked about this with you last year. It can’t be the best right away. People remember how bad the old one was. Remember when you had us abandon the old one?<\/p>\n

(On the television, the Twitch chat goes wild with emotes as Ninja gets a pair of headshots in a row. Jonny turns back to the TV.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

(Firmly.) You had us abandon the old one, and now people don’t like our web browser anymore. <\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

(Angry that he missed the action, he glares at Barry.) You said this one was good! You said the programming people did a good job!<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

Yes, they did. Well, they did a good job at copying good ideas from Chrome. The point is, people remember how bad it was after you abandoned it. They still think Internet Explorer is terrible.<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

(Shrugs.) Just call it something else<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

They’ll still know that WE made it. They won’t want it.<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

So just make them download it anyway.<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

You can’t be serious.<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

If you make everyone download it<\/a>, then it will be the most popular and I’ll have the best web browser! (Begins gnawing on the broken Zune.)<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

It doesn’t work that way. Do you remember when I talked to you about brand? See, we have a bad brand because you don’t take care of your things.<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

(Points at the TV.) I want Twitch.<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

(He stares in stunned silence for several seconds.) You can’t buy Twitch. It’s too big, even for us. I’m sorry.<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

Just make another one then.<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

I’m sorry?<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

Just make another Twitch and have Ninja on it and have him play Fortnite all the time and get all the shots and then everyone will watch it and people will love it and I’ll have the best Twitch. I’ll be the best!<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

Sir, before we build a streaming platform we should fix our Game Pass service. It’s got a lot of problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

I WANT A TWITCH RIGHT NOOOW<\/strong>! I HATE YOU. YOU’RE A BAD ENGINEER AND ALSO FIRED.<\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

You can fire me if you want, but the next engineer will tell you the same thing.<\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

(Banging the Zune against the Kinect.) I WANT TWITCH! I WANT TWITCH! I WANT TWITCH! I WANT TWITCH! <\/p>\n

Barry:<\/h4>\n

(Wincing.) Okay, okay. If we make a team to build a Twitch competitor, will you give the Skype team some resources? We spent a fortune buying this platform for you and right now it’s disaster. Imagine if there’s a sudden surge in video conferencing and working from home? We should really- <\/p>\n

Jonny:<\/h4>\n

YAY! I’m going to have the best Twitch! I’ll have the most viewers and EVERYBODY will watch it and everyone will love me!<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, I fiddled with the timeline a bit so I could have some of these products in the same conversation. You get the idea. <\/p>\n

Has Every Advantage. Fails Anyway.<\/h3>\n

Imagine a gamer trying to cheat at Counter Strike. He’s running an aim bot so he can’t miss. He’s got a top-end gaming PC with a 144Hz display. He’s sitting on a lag-free connection to the game server. And he’s still getting steamrolled by opponents<\/strong>. He keeps rage-quitting, changing his username, and re-joining the game. That’s what Microsoft’s endless parade of failure looks like to me. <\/p>\n

Microsoft has a huge pool of talented developers. They have access to massive wealth. Their operating system dominates the desktop space and they can use that to leverage any new product they like. And yet despite all of these apparent advantages, their software is so often broken, buggy, counter-intuitive, or frustrating. They crash-spend to build a half-assed product, ram it down our throats, clutter it up with cruft and bullshit nobody asked for, and then abandon it so they can chase some other fad. <\/p>\n

Skype<\/a> is horrible. The Windows 10 Store is a mess of jank<\/a>. Their Game Pass service is shamefully cumbersome<\/a>. Microsoft Office is a sluggish, bloated messI haven’t touched it in half a decade. Maybe they’ve revitalized it since then, but I wouldn’t bet on it.<\/span>. Bing is seen as a joke search engine for non-technical people who don’t know how to switch to Google. Mixer is dead. Microsoft One Drive somehow manages to be worse than Dropbox, which is almost a heroic accomplishment of anti-usability. Their web browser projects have failed at least twice and their latest effort is basically just Chrome for your grandma. Cortana is a goddamn nuisance. Games for Windows LIVE was so bad it literally ruined many good games and also GTA IV<\/a>. <\/p>\n

They provide free apps with their operating system like a media player, text editor, video editor, all of which are vastly inferior to the free \/ OSS alternatives. Their software is so terrible, they can’t even compete when their price point is zero!<\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah. Visual Studio is pretty good. I’m a fan. But since they use that one good piece of software to make so much additional horrible software, I’m not sure Visual Studio counts as a net positive in the world.<\/p>\n

Fun fact: There’s a forced update being rolled out for WindowsEven for Windows 7, which is supposedly no longer supported!<\/span> that only exists to put Microsoft Edge onto your machine and pressure you into switching<\/a>. It just happened to hit my laptop while I was trying to set up my home network after our recent move<\/a>. I’m right in the middle of this complicated project and all of a sudden I realize I no longer have access to the laptop because Microsoft is busy trojan-horsing their next big failure onto my machine. <\/p>\n

Laying aside the unfortunate timing and outrageous presumption of this forced update, this is such a massive waste of everyone’s time. Even if it was good and even if there was a market for a new browserThe various sides are all deeply entrenched these days. When was the last time ANYONE wanted to go through the hassle of switching browsers?<\/span>, I’m sure the company will get bored with it again in five years and orphan the whole project. <\/p>\n

What happened to this company? What kind of horrendous Lord of the Flies<\/em> management style do they have going behind the scenes that turns so much talent into so much waste? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I’ve said before, I think Microsoft has outgrown their original reputation as a machine of rapacious corporate dominance. I don’t know if it’s because Bill Gates retired or because it’s grown to be top-heavy and bureaucratic. The days of cutthroat, calculating MS are over, replaced by a fickle leadership and an inability to design […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50294"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50326,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50294\/revisions\/50326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}