I don’t understand the repulsive feelings towards helping the govt. Would we rather have the people in control of the military and our troops use out-of-date tech?
> Would we rather have the people in control of the military and our troops use out-of-date tech
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.
I thought they have reinvented themselves with the new embrace for linux and the cloud? I've always thought Windows OS is garbage but Microsoft seemed fine without it nowadays. Can anyone with Microsoft knowledge share a little bit about the culture and how it's changed?
MS employee here. No joke, the Microsoft of today is like a 180 from the Microsoft of even 3, or 5 years ago.
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.
As a Microsoft employee, do you have any thoughts on whether this will cause Microsoft to start a hiring spree of people with active US Government security clearances?
Microsoft has definitely turned the corner in terms of culture with some projects like Typescript, WSL, .NET Core, etc., but Azure is very much still the "old Microsoft." It was started before this turn and has many of the same old stinks that anyone who's worked in Enterprise Microsoft-land can smell.
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.
I would rather the military be less capable, because its current capability is being used for offensive, not defensive purposes.
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.
> 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.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
He advanced a long-term goal that I agree with (disengagement from Syria) in a manner I found stupid and immoral (abandoning the Kurds with no security guarantees and leaving potentially tens of thousands of IS prisoners free to escape).
I fear Google and Facebook far more than the US Army. I fail to see how rehosting ancient military logistics and business systems translates to a Lojack up our collective derrieres.
This is an important question and also an example of how Satya Nadella played his job really well. By clearly stating that Microsoft will not deny democratic governments access to the latest technology, he deftly put stop to any potential discussions about tech mis-use (e.g. like the employee outburst at Google).
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.
Maybe.. Microsoft is providing the infrastructure here and the DevOps I guess.. the rest of it is, the applications will be written by contractors etc... Maybe some of the AI technologies developed by MSFT will be used but maybe other providers will port to the Azure platform. At the moment US ships run Windows. Lots of dual use infrastructure so I can't see a major dilemma. Certain AI technologies and applications of them.. maybe.
He's not anti war as much as he's anti policy that pushes up against Russian spheres of influence. You see no issue with, and in fact a lot of funding and support increase to, Saudi Arabia. Where as Obama had put a pause on things during the initial outbreak. Didn't condemn things outright in public, but the Obama administration was definitely taking a step back during the Yemen war.
The trump administration also has changed the rules of engagement for military strikes on ISIS and other terrorists to allow for the potential of more collateral damage or civilian deaths. The Obama administration set that threshold pretty high to prevent blowback for our actions and feeding terrorist propaganda.
I'm a 2x Obama voter, but Obama totally greenlit and supported Saudi Arabia in Yemen from the beginning. Things were getting hot there in like 2010, this spanned almost his entire tenure. That's another area where as soon as things change hands, everyone has a different opinion depending on if it's the red guys or the blue guys.
As far as hooking Russia/Turkey up, Syria would be a better example IMO. We ceded Syria, the Saudis are still 100% ours. In either case, part of being non-interventionist means ceding things to regional powers.
>He's not anti war as much as he's anti policy that pushes up against Russian spheres of influence.
At the moment Russia is extending its sphere of influence by opportunistically exploiting American mistakes in the middle East. Those mistakes were started by Trump predecessors including Bush, Clinton & Clinton, Obama, etc.
One of his main campaign promises was that he would withdraw from all the ill-conceived multi-trillion dollar wars in the Middle East. And unlike Obama he's actually keeping his promises. Give credit where credit is due. Even if it is due to Trump.
Last I checked we're no longer droning people directly in Yemen Obama-style (although Saudis are, and we're helping them), we've defeated ISIS and are in the process of withdrawing from Syria, there's troop withdrawal (although still incomplete due to Taliban stirring shit in September) from Afghanistan. Importantly, we haven't started any new wars on Trump's watch. Obama started several. So did Bush. Clinton before him started one. So did Bush senior before Clinton.
That's as good a peace record as you'll find in a US president in the last 100 years.
