I wonder how azure employees feel about this.
I don't trust or rely on any infrastructure that largely uses microsoft products...I'm sure there's some minor stuff hidden away here and there within systems. MSFT has a software philosophy, which is reciprocated in their culture, that can only be described as byzantine and unpredictable. They are basically 00's Oracle at this point.
Satya Nadella has been on a long-term campaign to transform the culture in some pretty inspiring ways, to be honest. It's led to the departure of long-time fixtures in leadership--the most shocking of which was the head of the Windows team (remember the agonizingly pushy nature of the Windows 10 rollout?). Today, there is no "Windows" team anymore, as they've been absorbed under the "Experiences and Devices" group. And increasingly, open source and embracing of other technologies has become a shocking priority (the decision to move to Chromium-based browser was especially shocking, but on further thought, consistent with Satya's philosophy).
So, yeah! I'm pretty optimistic of Microsoft's future. It's going to take some time to shed a lot of the old image it earned under Bill Gates in the 90's and Steve Ballmer more recently. But in my opinion, I think the company has by now earned what will likely take a few more years to become more apparent to the rest of the world. Basically, the CEO didn't just transform the company from a Windows-based business to a Cloud service provider; he absolutely moved to change the culture as the foundation for that move.
They may yet right the ship as time goes on and their growing revenue points in the direction that they will, but anyone who's used all three major cloud-providers knows they're still at the bottom of the totem pole.
Azure, sure, but Windows and Office are at this point very mature products. They're not going to win awards, but they get the job done.
If it's less capable, it's less likely to get embroiled in stupid imperialistic adventures.
Edit: I don't understand why so many people are, at the same time, so enthused by the idea of starving government (Because they think most of its services are a waste of money), while at the same time, insisting on spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined.
Same here, that’s why I’m glad this contract went to MS instead of AWS, as I see the latter as being technologically better than MS’s cloud solution.
While the US military expenditures are ridiculously high, they're only ~34% of worldwide expenditures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Not saying decision is good or bad but in terms of setting clarity this was really critical.
I imagine there will be a lot of unrest inside the company about this, and I think things are about to get tricky for Nadella. Up until now he's been largely able to be above a lot of the labor disputes that have been roiling the other FAANGs recently, but that's mostly out of luck: Microsoft's business doesn't involve arbitrating culture war disputes on social media or search reuslts, nor employing underpaid warehouse workers. But now there's going to be no way to wiggle out of the fact that this money is coming from Trump's DoD, and $10 billion isn't a paltry sum that they can just wave off to claim the moral high ground.
Satya's next "fireside chat" is going to be tremendously awkward, I think.