[mumblemumble]

Reducing this down to a Microsoft thing is a bit hasty. Apple has done it. IBM has done it. And, when I was working for a less well-known company, I once burned a whole lot of social capital trying to prevent it from happening.

At least in that instance, there was never anything overtly malicious happening. It was just your garden variety "banality of evil" situation. The existing corporate decision-making structures - that is, the bureaucracy - had no real mechanism to make sure that things like this are handled in an ethical manner. It's really hard to accomplish something that the bureaucracy isn't designed to handle, because that means that it's not really anybody's job to keep that particular ball rolling. So all it takes is one person not really giving a damn (perhaps only because they don't understand why they should) to scupper the whole thing.

If that experience is similar to how these things happen at Microsoft and Apple and IBM, then the problem isn't Microsoft, the problem is American workplace culture, and we have a responsibility to change how we work. Not in reaction to specific instances like this that have already happened, but in anticipation of, and in order to prevent, things like this from happening in the future.

[wpietri]

Are many companies terrible? Sure. Is that an accident? No.

However, Microsoft specifically has a history of being aggressively terrible in exactly this way, which is what I was referring to. For example, the time they talked with a company about an acquisition only to ghost them and totally steal their work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_law...

[GordonS]

They also have a more recent history of not behaving this way, and of winning back a lot of trust. This plainly isn't helping them now, but I do agree with the GP - this isn't a "Microsoft thing"

[wpietri]

Sure. But let's consider why we saw a change for a while. In their heart of hearts did they reform? Did they really see the error of their ways and vow never to misuse their market power again? Many people seem to think so.

I think the simpler explanation is that US v Microsoft and other anti-trust action combined with their declining fortunes scared them for a while, causing them to perform goodness. But now that the heat's off and they're on the upswing, they're returning to old patterns.

We'll see which explanation fits better over time. But it was all of two days ago that the Slack CEO, not given to hyperbole, said that Microsoft is "unhealthily preoccupied with killing us": https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270421/slack-ceo-stewar...

So I don't think my view is unreasonable.

[GordonS]

I think the reason for the change was 2 things.

Firstly, with the shift to the cloud, cross-platform was inevitably going to become more important - Linux is much loved in the server space.

Secondly, they realised the importance of developers in the shift to the cloud - their cloud, Azure, and also their DevOps tooling, Azure DevOps (and later Github).

Do I think their positive moves were altruistic? No, of course not - they are a corporation, a public one at that, and ultimately must generate money for their stakeholders.

But that doesn't mean their positive moves can't benefit me, or the development community, at the same time.

Honestly, the embrace & extinguish thing became a tired meme long ago; Microsoft are not somehow special in occasionally fucking someone over - every large corporation does this. It doesn't excuse it, of course, but the point is it's not a "Microsoft thing", and it doesn't invalidate all the goodwill they have generated in the past decade or so.

[wpietri]

If the "goodwill" is the result of calculated manipulation, which is what even you seem to believe, then I would hope that invalidates it thoroughly.

As to the reason for the change I think we're saying the same thing. If they could have snuffed out Linux, they would have. Their ongoing antitrust problems helped prevent that, allowing the Linux ecosystem to flourish. They have since been unable to abuse the power that they no longer have.

Again, time will tell if you're right thinking that Microsoft is merely just as awful as other large companies. But reasonable people can assume that it will be just as bad as before if they regain their power.

[orthoxerox]

It's not even American. I can easily imagine it happening in any large company.

This "Andrew" is isolated from everything by multiple levels of bureaucracy and regulations. Even if he wanted to make right, he would've just burned his accumulated clout it vain. Hire as a contractor? No matching position. Write a check? No such budget line item. Give a shout-out? Leave marketing to the marketing dept.

[cptskippy]

Exactly. He couldn't even give a line item credit because Legal would step in with a barrage of concerns compelling management to remove it.

[Brian_K_White]

None of these explainations for how this reprehensible behavior came to pass, suggest to me that it's unfair or unreasonable to call it, and the entities who do it, reprehensible.

[wpietri]

Exactly. It's not like people in those companies get nothing done. E.g., Microsoft got the product out the door. So any apparent incompetence at treating humans humanely is a choice.

[aporetics]

That’s not really what “banality of evil” means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

[bartread]

Indeed. Perhaps Hanlon's Razor is a better parallel for this particular situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

I've also heard it expressed as "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence".

Although in this case I'm not sure organisational incompetence is necessarily a good enough explanation given there are ex-Microsofters in the discussion suggesting that people would actively have been weighing up whether or not to screw over Keivan. (Obviously I have no idea how likely that is to be true either.)

[wpietri]

When "organizational incompetence" consistently yields the same result, it's not an accident. As the systems thinkers say, the Purpose Of the System Is What It Does (POSIWID). It's the same way wily teens are incredibly bad at things they never wanted to do in the first place.