Large scale technology projects that people are suspicious and anxious about. There are a lot of people anxious that AI will be used for mass surveillance by governments. So you pick a name of another project that was used for mass surveillance by government.
It's really hard to maintain a product team where the mandate is just "don't break anything and keep the quality high". Especially something with as big of an installed base as Windows.
The team will look for excuses to build new and exciting stuff and new opportunities to increase revenue. Even if the product is pretty much "done".
I disagree, I think companies mostly just don't want to spend development money on existing "finished" products. That's the smell I'm getting from microsoft.
There are plenty of easily identifiable issues with performance in windows 11. There should be people in the windows team dedicated to eliminating "jank". MS product owners, on the other hand, are much more interested in getting copilot integrations into every menu. That's an "easy" task which looks good on a scorecard when you complete it.
No, it really shouldn't be... You can reduce headcount a lot, which they did, and concentrate on bugs (including security reports), while working with hardware vendors for if/when new features need to be integrated for better usability.
If/when you decide to do a redesign, it should be limited to a specific area, or done in such a way that all functionality gets moved to its' new UI/UX in a specified timeframe and released when done. Not, oh, here's a new right click menu that you now have an extra click 1/3 of the time for the old menu that has what you are actually looking for because the old extension interface was broken.
Want a real exercise in fun ... just for fun, because I know it's not as useful on a laptop, but was fun on desktops... get a screensaver working in windows that runs for an hour or so before going to sleep... just try it... that's a fun exercise in frustration... oh, it's still in there, but every third update will disable it all again. I get it... but you know what, I want my matrix screensaver to run when I'm only away for a few minutes or over lunch.
> Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote a blog post asking people to stop calling AI-generated content "slop" and to think of AI as "bicycles for the mind."
I can't believe Nadella stole Jobs "bicycles for the mind" metaphor without attribution.
I've noticed at my company after a lot of layoffs and restructuring and moving people between projects, when I ask "who is responsible for X now?" there can be a lot of confusion getting the answer to that question.
That is not an answer to the "who is responsible for X now" question. Laid off Bill is not responsible for X now.
Also, it is not useful answer at all, it is an uncooperative answer. Whoever is asking about the responsible person is trying to work. They have legitimate question about who they should contact about X, sending them to someone who does not work there is less then useless.
But it doesn't change that Bill was the person who was responsible, and now is gone. So what exactly are they supposed to say? In the context of the GP's post, that seems to be the point - there is no longer anybody there who is responsible for X anymore.
Several options, pretty much all of them involve being actually cooperative rather then intentionally unhelpful. If Bill was part of some other team, point to that team or its leader.
If he was in your team, you or leader can ask about what the person wants and move from there. Maybe you can actually answer the question. Maybe the proper reaction involves raising jira ticket. Maybe the answer is "we are probably not going to do that anymore". It all depends on what the person who came with the question wants.
> But it doesn't change that Bill was the person who was responsible, and now is gone.
The other people are still there. And the team IS responsible for X. And without doubt, they are fully responsible for helping figure out who should be contacted now and what should be done.
That is normal part of work after any reorganization.
I have seen it many times that when Bill leaves, the thing he was responsible for doesn't get picked up by anyone.
It doesn't necessarily even mean that the organization is "abnormal". Perhaps the reason Bill was let go was because X was not considered business-critical any more.
> I have seen it many times that when Bill leaves, the thing he was responsible for doesn't get picked up by anyone.
I LITERALLY offered the "we are probably not going to do that anymore" option. In your situation, you can scratch the probably away. That answer is still actually helpful unlike the original answer.
Amazon stock is flat over the past year. The rest of the "magnificent seven":
- Google: +70%
- Nvidia: +49%
- Apple: +7%
- Meta: Flat
- SHOP (closest comp): +19.41%
- Mercado Libre (international comp): +20.73%
So basically, the "tech world" is dividing itself, in the eyes of investors, into two camps: companies that will benefit from AI tailwinds and companies that will not. And all the money is going to the companies that will.
Amazon is more and more considered to be part of the latter group.
This is especially concerning of Amazon because it seems like AWS--the cash cow--has somehow missed becoming the cloud provider for AI compute needs.
As such, Amazon needs to give investors some reason to hold amazon stock. If you're not part of a rising tide, the only reason left is "we are very profitable."
So yeah, Amazon will have to cut costs to show more profitability and become further investable.
So yes, the layoffs have to do with AI...but not the way they are spinning it.
They just wanted to do a mass layoff and (for now) it looks better if you say “because AI”. It tranquilizes stakeholders because they think “AI is taking those tasks, the business will be unaffected”
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReedRichardsIsUs...
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