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Comments (219)

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  3eb7988a1663
  My favorite bit about this is how none of the execs want to take ownership of the change, but instead trying to put someone else in the hot seat and/or start a Committee.This feels like an email that should have been blasted to the entire company. Top-down, empower employees to think of a more unified experience. Then again, all of the external jokes about Microsoft indicate that every department is fighting for their lives against the others, so that kind of kumbaya togetherness was never going to happen.
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  bluegatty
  They think it's 'some issues' :) :) :)It's a fundamental, cultural and systemic lack of concern for those issues.An 'afterthought' that should be 'integral'.That Gates did not realize that means it's 100% on him.1000% actually.He was struggling with the language of design and usability in 2003, not even realizing even the implications of what he was seeing (because it would require total rethink).Like a cars coming out of the factory with missing parts ... blame it on the guy on the line?No. Something is deeply wrong.I really like Gates - but it's beyond shocking how these cultures work and how myopic they are.I worked for a Fortune 50 - and it's pretty amazing to watch how an army of actually smart people with 'one eye' can be so competent many ways, but blind in others.I don't like to put Jobs on a pedestal but obviously this is something he understood (even then with gaping holes).
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  sajithdilshan
  Read the whole thing and all I saw was zero accountability, zero ownership and zero consequences.That’s how great products die or become a nightmare. Every team keeps on passing the ball to other team and nothing gets fixed or done or improved.
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  johnnyApplePRNG
  Read it.Stopped halfway through thinking "Damn, this Mike Beckerman is a piece of work. Doesn't understand English grammar let alone software development."Looked him up...>Michael Beckerman is an American lobbyist who is vice president at TikTok.Not surprising at all.
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  Flux159
  Even today Microsoft can't get their shit together on a decent user experience. Tried to use Azure since I needed to code sign a binary on Github. My two previous accounts setup on Azure errored out with obscure errors and there was no way to fix them. I had to create a new account just to sign up for Azure Artifact Signing (which is now waiting for Microsoft to approve - no updates in a week). I don't know how anyone figures any of this out without reading pages of documentation. I honestly believe that no one actually cares about their products or user experience at Microsoft.
• pu_pe
  I often wonder how CEOs and executives fail to notice how obviously broken their products are. This e-mail thread is quite illuminating. Most "work" in there is figuring out who will be blamed for it and why it shouldn't be your team.
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  wqtz
  I feel like if he said, I feel like firing someone immediately for this issue would have sprouted a surprising level ownership to find the people or team (or teams) to be blamed.At the top level most people are not designed to get shit done. They are accountable for only reporting. So, even if you want to get things done finding the team or person from that point high is impossible as they are not designed for that.But as I write this I realized that even that wouldn’t work...as they will create a committee and hire an consulting agency whose exec was in the same sorority as them. And the consulting agency will recommend teams to be laid off. And then the same exec will come in pitching the board to buy a startup which has a great team and apparently was invested by a VC who went to same class of Wharton of that exec.
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  u1hcw9nx
  >So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipatedAnd it get worse from there. This is funny as hell. Billg eating his own shit.
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  whatever1
  I love the fact that 2 days after the ceo surfaced basic usability issues there was still no tangible action plan.It’s insane how much runway a monopoly can buy you.
• ripvanwinkle
  this is my favorite bit>So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?>So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated
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  jtwaleson
  Can someone in Microsoft confirm my suspicion that this thread is still going and nothing was fixed?
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  techteach00
  This is a good and bit surprising one. I have a hard time believing the CEO of Palantir has this many generational points I agree with, Zuck too, but I do.https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-peter-thiel-mil...
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  ebcode
  Culture flows from the top. Bill doesn’t take responsibility in his email, so he’s teaching everyone downstream to pass the buck like he does.
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  js2
  Tangent, but my favorite "Bill Gates does X" story is "Bill Gates Plays Petals Around the Rose":https://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htmhttps://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-j.htmHN has never found it very interesting though:https://hn.algolia.com/?q=petals+around+the+rose
• Levitating
  > Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?So even Bill Gates believed Windows wasn't usable in 2003. Yikes.
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  adamsvystun
  > So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated
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  omoikane
  I think this is an example of "shipping your org chart". The fix is proposed in the reply "we need one person/team to own the overall picture", but I am not sure they reached that fix by the end of the thread.
• xyzelement
  At this level none of it is about moviemaker. It's a mix of coaching and testing.Coaching as in: reminding people that this matters and encouraging them to care outside the strict lines of their task/scope.Testing as in: who's capable of hearing it, taking it to heart, and driving the necessary change. And who's not.Not evident in this thread but interesting how it impacted BillG's overall perspective on the people on the field and the impact of it on their careers with him.
• greazy
  > Bill's frustration is not unreasonable.I find this single sentence not only awkward but frustratingly annoying. Bills frustration is beyond reasonable.
• dang
  Discussed a few times:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41421018 - Sept 2024 (38 comments)Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker (2003) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34397436 - Jan 2023 (64 comments)Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34396958 - Jan 2023 (46 comments)Bill Gates Tries to Install Movie Maker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34392126 - Jan 2023 (1 comment)Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker (2003) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34391649 - Jan 2023 (2 comments)p.s. Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers!
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  dvh
  In 2002 after spending my first 30 minutes on windows XP (previously 98, 95 and 3.11 user) I realized that Microsoft will never improve their UX. Every new os will be different, but not better. So I left then and there and never looked back, after some distro tourism I settled on Ubuntu in 2006 and use it even now.
• whywhywhywhy
  > I reboot every nightThe fact he did is probably responsible for a lot of issues with Windows installing and problems. Normalizing a reboot as a common thing.I also suspect the fact he keeps re-iterating that the download was fast is because the teams have been using slow internet as an excuse for code speed problems.
• monkellipse
  The bit about updates not truly being critical if you’re behind a firewall doesn’t age too well lol
• jmathai
  I feel, many times, the way Bill did in that email. Seems most people don’t mind or care.I wondered how anyone successfully filed for unemployment a few years ago when I had to. But many seem to do it successfully.I tell my wife that I pay too much attention to the details and have a low tolerance for poor work. I wish I didn’t notice though as it seems like a nice life!
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  neilv
  Big-corporate dysfunction is one of the reasons I like working in early startups.(Startups that act like startups. Which means neither mimicking nor tolerating big-corporate style dysfunction. Otherwise, you have the worst of both worlds: soul-sucking big-corporate culture and difficulty executing, without the big-corporate paycheck and sometimes resume prestige boost.)
• manbitesdog
  It's so sad that 17MB was at some point considered a humungous update filesize and now we need 330MB of a web browser everytime we want to install anything.
• gherkinnn
  This explains my experience with any MS documentation. Links upon links, no information, feels circular but the UI changes every rotation.
• MASNeo
  The one time I got to ask Bill a question was probably why Windows didn’t have a “make world” that just works like in FreeBSD. I wonder if he remembered that question during his ordeal.
• faizshah
  This thread should be on the first page of every book on microservices.
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  trencedamp
  This happens when you have people at the top of the chain who don't use the product and people at the bottom who are afraid to speak up, or use it so much they can't see the problems.
• dzonga
  BillG discovering the negative effects of BigCo's not having a Directly Responsible Individual.in the whole email thread - no one owns up to fix it - they're just passing the hot potato around.26 years later - windows is still a mess.
• steve1977
  Just as an aside, that Amir Majidimehr taking part of the conversation is Amir of audiosciencereview.com fame :)
• hmokiguess
  I’m sure if he were to try and revisit this experience today he would learn that nothing has changed
• andai
  This is some Douglas Adams level comedy. My sides are in orbit.
• jgilias
  I chuckle that this is in Windows XP days. You know, the pinnacle of Windows usability in retrospect.
• pipes
  Reminds me of trying to download printer drivers or manual from Epson.Actually motherboard manufacturers are just as bad.Some god awful user hostile interface. Never just a direct link.
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  colechristensen
  The reason why Apple won is Steve Jobs cared about quality and was an asshole about it and the inertia from that after his death has not entirely decayed yet.The people in that thread need a good Linus Torvalds style rant about their incompetence and several of them should just have been fired.
• SpacePortKnight
  This is one of the reasons why people have stopped installing software and moved all programs to web.
• danillonunes
  > I decided to download Moviemake and buy the Digital Plus pack r so I went to Microsoft.comThat "r" from "Moviemaker" pushed to the end of "and buy the Digital Plus pack" displays the universally shared experience of writing something, then deciding to come back to add something else and fucking up the first sentence.I've been there too, Bill.
• mdavid626
  It’s not any better today. Probably the only difference is that you’ll get some ads too.
• utopiah
  Schadenfreude knowing that Gates, filthy rich owning the most popular OS ever, still have no agency on his own workflow, whereas the average Linux user, even a kid, has more. Love it.
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  danielb123
  I'm sure MSFT used this as a learning lesson and things got better since then, right?.......
• everybodyknows
  2023 post, recounting an incident from 2003.
• MeteorMarc
  Could it be the reboot thing is legacy code from Windows 1.0? Wait, then Gates himself was at th wheel.
• FireBeyond
  I will give Bill this, he does know how to play a typical user. Yeah, MS has some shenanigans (putting it mildly) in its birth and climb, but it was obvious from that that he was a relatively competent nerd, programmer etc., and that he was trying to paint the thought process of someone trying to put together family videos not "hurr, where this go, what this do?" like a Neanderthal.Amusing watching all the executives try to push responsibility on each other and stay out the spotlist or, if unavoidable, take ownership of the smallest possible part of the problem, and then convene committees (that largely caused the mess) to solve the mess.
• rdsubhas
  Everyone here saying about execs and so on - don't seem to catch a few nuances in this chain.1. Bill Gates is doing the "Internal Disruptor" CEO style2. Everyone is reacting in a way Bill Gates expects them to react3. The results of his disruptor style is that Windows is absolutely further unbearable and horrendous, as seen today own the line.Make no mistake: "Internal Disruptor" CEOs kill their own products and people from the inside, rather than competing or building good products outside.
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  techteach00
  I still reboot my desktop daily lol. I was born anti-tab pro fresh start
• brailsafe
  While reading this I pictured an irate BillG screaming at his shitty pc first thing in the morning, probably after getting off a Skype or WebEx call, like the guy in The Onion's classic "Sony releases stupid piece of shit that doesn't fucking work" https://youtube.com/watch?v=8AyVh1_vWYQAnd that's exactly how I felt trying to reinstall Windows 10/11 on a new motherboard recently.
• christkv
  Each little piece own by their own little hierarchy. Nobody owning the entire user journey. Classic.
• purpleidea
  I was reading through it and figured it had to be AI generated... But ... it's not? This email from billg is unhinged! Hilarious though.
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  akoculu
  Just last week, I was trying to sign up to Microsoft.com and got stuck in the captcha step. They have famously dysfunctional captcha system, people can't sign up to Microsoft and complain a lot about it online, and yet, it's not fixed.Microsoft always built dysfunctional software. They were never good at this. Hotmail was an unusable product, it was so painful to use it and Gmail took over the entire market in a year. Nobody ever said: "oh, I miss X about Hotmail"Windows products were also same. They were so easy to break, you'd need to format the disk and re-install once a month, otherwise it'd keep breaking all the time.
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  EGreg
  “Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.”That does not sound like something Bill Gates would say…
• microcantbuilt
  I've said this before but it's worth repeating.Microsoft can no longer engineer a software product, it simply cannot build anything innovative. It can certainly buy other companies and use what they have built. But even then they will over time ruin the product.
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  ThrowawayB7
  Microsoft needs Bill Gates back, the young, abrasive version of him that didn't tolerate bullshit, to call them out on what they're shipping these days.
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  486sx33
  Interestingly, Gupta didn’t reply at all, despite being named on bill’s original email directly. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/anoop/ He was natural-user-interface director at the time
• slipperybeluga
  [dead]
• prathje
  [dead]
• gryzzly
  Reads like Nikita from tonsky.me lol
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  rc1
  Anyway to know this is real?