Baldur Bjarnason

This six part series (link goes to the first part), written by a former core Azure engineer, is mind-boggling. Microsoft sounds like a dysfunctional company whose software is dangerously unreliable

(I mean, more so than it has been historically)

https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporized-a-trillion

How Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars

Inside the complacency and decisions that eroded trust in Azure—from a former Azure Core engineer.

Axel’s Substack
Apr 3 at 12:08pmWeb
Show threadCarePackage171d ago
@baldur wow, that sounds terrible
Show threadBashStKid1d ago
@baldur I was struck with the similarity to Boeing (amongst others).
Reality won’t withstand ever-accumulating technical debt without increasingly severe failures.
It’s impossible to scale ‘fixing the problems in post’, the firefighting engineers end up in customer production systems, playing Maxwell’s Demon against a million faults.
Show threadzygmyd1d ago

@baldur

I'm by no means as skilled in any of this as the people in this thread, but also I have never once seen a company succeed by solving individual problems through heroic operators working beyond the limits of their own capacity.

Show threadDawn Ahukanna1d ago
@baldur
“first hour in new role left me with a mix of strange feelings, stupefaction, and incredulity.
…
I’ve seen a lot in decades of industry (& Microsoft) experience but I had never seen an organization so far from reality. My day-1 problem was therefore not to ramp up on new technology but rather to convince an entire org, up to my skip-skip-level, that they were on a death march.”
- “Messenger” about to be killed as “message” is not received & shouldn’t have been sent in the 1st place! 🤦🏾‍♀️
Show thread🇪🇺 Paul Schoonhoven 🍋🍉1d ago

@baldur @steltenpower I quit using Windows in dual boot at the end of Win7 and didn't take any notice of MS for many years.

I only read the first part, but I see things only got worse over the years. 😇

Show threadTristram Brelstaff1d ago
@baldur Wow!. So good software engineering is necessary after all. Who'd have thought it?
Show threadWalrus 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿1d ago

@baldur

This is an extremely interesting read, and reminds me very much of what I read way back, in "Big Blues", about how IBM nearly destroyed itself with similar top level incompetence.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft really is "too big to fail", or whether that's a silly concept.

Show threadJ$8h ago
@Walrus @baldur “Nearly?”
Show threadGP1d ago
@baldur my jaw got lower and lower with each part
Show threadBaldur Bjarnason1d ago
@gpshewan Same.
Show threadAnthony1d ago
Microsoft rushed Azure out of the gates under intense competitive pressure. Corners were cut. Fundamental principles of reliability and operational simplicity were quietly abandoned.
Meaning all this came straight from the top. "Intense competitive pressure" is self-induced.

Fortunately this kind of thing, rushing software out the door under self-induced competitive pressure, doesn't happen anymore. Organizations have learned their lessons about the perils of operating this way. (/s)

Layered on this chaos was an Azure-wide mandate: all new software must be written in Rust.
LOL

On a more serious note: LMAO

On top of all that, the org had a hard commitment to deliver the already long-delayed OpenAI bare-metal SKUs that had been promised for years. This work started around May 2024 with a target of Spring 2025 and was led by a Principal engineer who had evidently never tackled a task of that scale.

Fast-forward to March 10, 2025: OpenAI signed an $11.9 billion compute deal with CoreWeave for model training and services.
This detail really struck me. Microsoft's deep internal dysfunction drove OpenAI right into the outstretched arms of Datacenter Enron.

An unbelievable series thanks for sharing. I feel like @[email protected] could make quite a bit of hay out of this one.

Show threadeestileib (she/hers)1d ago

@abucci @baldur @davidgerard

Satya is a goddamn business genius y'all.

Show threadspinnyspinlock1d ago

@abucci @baldur @davidgerard azure has the buggiest cloud UI (yeah yeah I know clickops) I ever used. I thought it would improve but it hasn't, maybe even worsened

and cloud web consoles aren't known to be high quality to start with

Show threadspinnyspinlock1d ago

@abucci @baldur @davidgerard there was also a (hilarious) rant about a Microsoft employee about how powershell came to be, I think it had some complaints about NTFS too.

A long shot but does anyone know what I'm talking about? It was quite a long time ago

Show threadThe Long Tail6h ago
@spinnyspinlock @abucci @baldur @[email protected] I don't, but I'd love to see it if you do find it.
Show threadspinnyspinlock5h ago
@sleepyfox @abucci @baldur found it https://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-we-are-slower-than-other-oper/
"I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other Operating Systems. Here Is Why."

I was explaining on Hacker News why Windows fell behind Linux in terms of operating system kernel performance and innovation. And out of nowhere an anonymous...

Show threadDavid Gerard1d ago
@spinnyspinlock @abucci @baldur azure: when you're running windows, you hate yourself, or both
Show threadDogiedog641d ago

@davidgerard @prietschka @[email protected] @baldur

@prietschka Does any of this surprise you at all? Sounds like peak Microslop behavior to me.

Show threadThe Orange Theme1d ago
@baldur @davidgerard One of my favorite part of the fediverse is how it keeps my "To Read" inbox full of thoughtful and vindicating writing like this.
Show threadthe elder sea1d ago
@baldur I'm crying over what transit we could have had with a trillion dollars. Or healthcare. Or honestly, just $3,000 per American.
Show threadJohn Ulrik9h ago
@baldur … more so than it has been historically KNOWN? 🤭