crandycodes

As is Microsoft: http://reimagine.microsoft.ca/en-ca/

I'm glad someone else said it. I work on Azure, so I thought maybe I was just in a bubble, but the various "Death to PaaS" articles not mentioning Azure or AWS seemed odd. Azure App Service is just one of the PaaS services we have, and we're quite healthy. :)

This is pretty much the answer. GitHub identity <> Corporate identity. Jeff's portal helps join those two, so that permissions & legal can be handled automatically. If you ever contributed to a Microsoft Org owned repo, you'll get a bot asking you to sign the CLA and tagging your PRs DNM until you do. When I leave Microsoft, if I make any PRs later on (I'll probably end up using a few of these projects later on), they'll have removed me from Org and listed me as a non-MSFT, so I'd have to sign the CLA.

This portal is really nice compared to the previous system, which was send an email to someone and wait for them to get to it. :)

If Lambda open sourced the engine, but didn't make it super easy (as in a 1-button deploy, nothing intentional) to stand up your own stand alone Lambda service, would that be better?

On my projects that have been open sourced, we mostly open sourced to make debugging easier and make extension authoring easier. I've gotten comments from people that that makes them feel easier about vendor lock in, but honestly, I haven't seen many people try and stand up their own service. Would you say that matches your own expectations?

Win8 didn't really deliver on the Universal OS concept. There is a difference between "'Windows' everywhere" and "Windows everywhere"; though it will be interesting to see if that's enough to convince customers to use the extended platform.

Oh yeah. None of this is simple black and white. My main assertion is that systems are generally trying to maintain homeostasis. In order to change the system, it's sometimes necessary is disrupt/ignore the system; especially when other means of influencing the system are denied or ineffective.

Sometimes it's exactly the best way to fix it. Have something so good and popular the law has to change.

Prohibition didn't end because people missed the taste of alcohol; it was because people kept on drinking (and the illicit nature brought with it the trappings of criminality - corruption, violence, and murder).

Gay marriage bans were hard to "ignore" because it requires cooperation with the government, but anti-sodomy laws were generally ignored until it became comical they were still on the books.

And in general, these kinds of things are the way change happens. The first people at my work switched to git on their own discretion and against the "rules", but it caught on and was productive/popular enough that it's now common practice and no managers ruffle their feathers at the thought.

The phrase is something like - "It's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission". That's because it's easy to say no when asked for permission ("The rules are there for a reason! Tradition!"); if someone has to think about why what you did was wrong, they may come to the conclusion that you were right.

Program Managers are not Project Managers nor Product Managers. We perform the roles of one or both depending on the Org (which is kind of annoying that that isn't more predictable). Our primary role is customer advocate. You can see Steven Sinofsky's blog post from 2005 [1] about it. Ignoring what Sinofsky has or hasn't done, it's a very good post and fits what I try to do with my very open ended position. There is an article "Zen of PM" [2] that is a more recent description that I like a lot as well. You'll notice they disagree with each other a bit. :) It's never boring as a PM at Microsoft. If you're ever in a lull on a project, you can always pontificate about your reason for existing in the company.

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techtalk/archive/2005/12/16/504872.a... [2] http://microsoftjobsblog.com/zen-of-pm/

I'm still naive enough to believe there is more than money out of a job. I really do like making new products and having people like them. There is always another opportunity out there. Microsoft has rewarded me pretty dang well so far, but if I ever get stuck with a bad boss or some stagnation career-wise, I'll find a place where I can do what I love and be rewarded for it. Rewards do tend to go towards good PMs and such, but it's easy to find yourself in a bad spot. Can't let the game play you.

I'm a PM at Microsoft and this post hits close to home. I think there are a good number of PMs that you're talking about. It's easy for the PM role to evolve into pure politics because our job is to represent the customer. Just like our government's politicians sometimes claim to represent the people and end up making selfish decisions, PMs aren't immune from that weakness. The role attracts people who are good at politics, so you tend to see a high concentration there.

Why do I still do the role? Well, it kind of fits what I wanted to do for a living. I always enjoyed doing lots of diversity in my job and trying all kinds of new technologies out. I get to be a customer for a living. I try out our product and think about where I want it to go. I can be annoying (a real customer would probably be a bit annoying sometimes too, they challenge your product and your hard worked design). I get to care for a living. As an engineer, I could see myself needing to let things go because it's gotta get out the door. As a PM, I know a customer is going to hit that issue and I need to get it in front of people so we can fix it. I'm building applications using our technology and competitors and technology not obviously related just to see if could be relevant.

The problems with PMs vs Engineers is that it is super hard to tell a good PM from a bad PM who is good at politics; but I'm still super happy the role exists. I'd likely have to become an evangelist to do the things I do everyday still, but I'd have less influence with the engineers and it'd often be reactive if I wasn't on the product team. To any people considering a job as a PM, do me and your other future customers a favor and ask if you can care more about your customer than having your job or being promoted? I've held fast to the notion that customers are why I'm here and my career hasn't been too bad so far, management still recognizes good work with customers. But if it all goes to hell, I can always find some other job and be happy with myself.

What if the "robotic" questions themselves have a bias? They almost certainly do. (They've already turned off people who don't like robotic questions. :P) Demographic diversity is just as important as creative/intellectual diversity - I think diversity of hires requires diversity of questions. It requires some bad interviews, but it creates some great interviews. I've had interviews and been interviewed in both settings; no regrets. White male, though, so hard to say.

I replied with something similar elsewhere. The content producers have to pay for hosting (generally). Their business model may not work, but adblocking is basically circumventing their revenue model. The only "fair" means would be to not go to that site if it serves ads, but then the internet would be much smaller. It's just as moral as pirating movies in countries that don't offer them or offer them in friendly formats. I see why you'd steal, I don't think you're a bad person, but it's still not a moral means of acquiring the content.

I would argue the content producers do receive a larger burden due to the costs of hosting that content. A more fair argument would be that users should just boycott the site, not consume it in an altered means. That kind of gets into the weeds, though, eh?

While, I think there is room to fund content producers in alternate means, I don't think advertising needs to be written out of the playbook. It's just a matter of properly recognizing the cost of violating privacy and the alternatives. I think society as a whole has a bit to learn about the price of privacy.

I'm so torn on Adblockers. While I agree that advertisers generally don't act in good faith, the penalty falls unfairly on content producers. Two wrongs don't make a right, but maybe the middle ground is to be a responsible website owner who uses best privacy practices around advertising while consumers un-adblock their site. Seems like it's really just an arms race not benefiting content producers, as it is now.