[eric_b]

This kind of tone really doesn't engender sympathy:

> We get it, Microsoft sucks, we should all be fired, rah rah rah.

> I just don't know what else he's asking for here. Credit? Us to die screaming? The blog post is matter-of-fact, and Casey is right: however, he said himself that it was trivial to do this. Is it not acceptable that we use the same language?

Your "apology" really is anything but. If anything you and your team come off as combative, thin skinned and hostile to outsiders. But, you do you bro.

[grepfru_it]

This is Microsoft culture spilling into the real world. There were several times when I pointed out a fix for a flaw or problem we were suffering from and was mocked and told it’s a silly idea that I shouldn’t be wasting time on. Fast forward 1-3 months later and that same person is singing the praises for the same idea someone else “came up with”. Except it was me shopping my idea around. Seeing the tweet and the thread makes me realize this is systemic to MSFT as an org (who now is the champion and host for all major open source organizations)

[user3939382]

Cut scene to me explaining my new product to a Google VP (hoping to get funding) who instead made a crappy copy and released it 6 months later. Don't meet your heroes.

[meheleventyone]

This really is every org, even if someone starts lukewarm to an idea it can percolate, get established and then come back out again as a fresh opinion without any malice intended. It’s always fun to get your own ideas back almost verbatim.

[user3939382]

To clarify I didn’t work for Google

[LigmaYC]

Even in this case they seemingly "forgot" the idea that was told to them. I don't doubt that this is a possibility, but there is also a possibility that they could've just stolen it.

[meheleventyone]

Oh yeah people also steal other peoples ideas pretty regularly but I'd not automatically assume malice.

From this example the same feeling would be generated by someone else internally already working on the same idea without needing any prompting from anyone in the actual meeting. This can actually be quite common in games where people will give a lot of unsolicited design ideas as feedback or part of bug reports. There's going to be collisions there without anyone's ideas being copied or stolen without credit.

[jmspring]

Recently former Microsoft here. This is the culture of one specific team. My prior role interfaced with both customers and product teams in Azure. Interactions were constructive and collaborative. There certainly were the occasional individuals that lacked interpersonal skills, it was the exception not the norm.

[phendrenad2]

Yeah I get the feeling that the general "tone" around Microsoft is "making sarcasm your defining personality trait". Maybe that flies in Seattle, but in the world of silicon valley, we've moved past caveman-like sarcasm into the superior snark and passive-aggression personality traits.

[naikrovek]

yeah I get the feeling that people look for any reason to shit on Microsoft then do it with glee, without care about the human beings on the receiving end.

[phendrenad2]

Oh that's definitely true, even moreso for shitting on the company itself. Well I haven't encountered many MS employees, so I'm mostly basing it on the two who have been replying here. Extremely unscientific and probably wrong, but I couldn't help but dogpile.

[KennyBlanken]

> We admit this feature began with a kerfuffle we caused in the summer of 2021. When confronted with being told our rendering pipeline had terrible performance, we turned inward. We relied on our existing experiences and we leaned heavily on our partner teams’ work to conclude the DirectWrite general purpose renderer was the best fit for our product. We were wrong. As such, we dedicate this experimental renderer to the community as an olive branch. We know we have so much more to learn, but we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes. Thank you for sticking with us. We strive to make this an experience we can all learn from to not only improve ourselves, but to improve our product and delight you all.

That is "combative, thin-skinned and hostile to outsiders"?

They say they caused it. They explain the cultural attitude that led to it. They plainly state they were wrong.

The "We get it, Microsoft sucks, we should all be fired, rah rah" is responding to the typical outraged rants from immature people who think it's cool to leverage extreme levels of criticism at people and teams who work in large corporations.

[ineedasername]

>That is "combative, thin-skinned and hostile to outsiders"?

Yes. They reference an apology, didn't actually make one, and it was roughly a year after they were combative, thin skinned, and hostile to outsiders. So their words now don't negate the fact that they were actually those things.

And the original now-edited response here was itself still combative, so I don't have much reason to believe they've actually changed rather than just trying to put a nice public face on about it.

[KptMarchewa]

They do this because OP keeps twisting the blade. He was right, now whatever, maybe find another target.

[ineedasername]

I don't see it as twisting the blade. He's calling them out for having insulted him and then making a half-hearted (at best) apology without giving proper credit (which the MS employee up the thread admitted they should have actually done.)

[Aeolun]

I dunno. I can read that as a ‘sorry’, but it kinda feels like ‘we know we were being assholes but we’ll be good from now, forgive us please’ kind of thing.

There’s too many fluffy words in that.

“We were dicks to the person (people) that pointed out a better way. We didn’t truly investigate the proposed solution at first, we acted combative,

and we were wrong.

We’ve now implemented the proposed solution in an experimental renderer that you can all use and we’ll try to do better from now.”

[rob74]

I don't know about others, but that does sound like a real apology to me. At least they plainly write that they were wrong and not only "sorry for how this was handled" or something similar. I'm really curious what more you could expect...

[brothir]

Specifically naming Casey and specifically apologizing for the specifics of how it unfolded. The fact that a team member went into Casey's Discord to harass him would be one example to apologize for.