Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Well if its done in a dumb-as-a-fuck hostile style that whole world complaints for years, such effort and PM is utter failure and their CV should be tarnished with this for next 2 decades. And its up to us as a IT community to make it happen.

They harmed massively their own company, and failed at the most core reason why they were hired - add long term value to the company.

Its a bit the equivalent of architect building huge bridge that then falls, no souls harmed. Such person would have issue finding any other work. Lets do the same, name and shame shouldnt be that hard.



I saw a presentation awhile back which included the slide (roughly):

"Give a PM a numerical goal, and they will burn the company down to hit it."

As someone who has worked in big tech and seen decision-making in action, I 100% believe it. This is how incentives are structured.


The mandate/goal went pretty far up the chain, too. Windows got moved from being under Azure to under "CoreAI" in the org structure. Incentive structures usually reflect org structure. In this case the fingers can point pretty far up on why incentives shifted the way that they did.


That's a dramatic but fitting characterization of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law


Human paperclip optimizers...


Their shareholders did not want them to add long term value to the company.

Their shareholders wanted AI.


Their shareholders never wanted AI.

Their shareholders wanted MSFT stock price to go up.


Thinking hard about how CoPilot fits into the MS ecosystem (Power BI, SharePoint, Dynamics, Office entrenchment, etc), and how their consultant mills work, I’m convinced there’s a meaningful space for unnecessary, unpopular, or suboptimal LLM solutions that can still be wildly profitable for MS.

Like, just because the outcome sucks and the solutions are user-hostile, let’s not assume the decision makers are dummies. I see profit motives as the likely delta between their decisions and our userland expectations.

Let me run the MS LLM department and I could easily explain to the board why we’re about to see a big upsurge Azure, office 365 integrated, and MCP-based solution spending… hint: it’s because the machine god will tell the consultants AND the customer those solutions are what’s SmartGood. We’ll sell ‘em a box that tells ‘em what to buy (lul, subscribe to!), the profitability part kinda writes itself.


You shouldn’t name and shame for following corporate policy. Your suggestion is ridiculous. If the decision has come down from the product leadership you are expected to follow it.

Knowing who the windows product leadership is should be easy. Find them on linked in. But even they may not be responsible if the direction came from the ceo or the cto. We know who those are.

Quit calling for naming and shaming of individuals just trying to make a living.


Thats ridiculous. Shielding folks that do amoral work that harms us all (while well aware of this) - why, because 'they are just following the orders' ? Thats pretty weak argument. Why are you so afraid that folks are to be held accountable for amoral work they do? Its pretty fair approach in these greedy times.

And I mentioned PMs but realistically its whatever decision makers that decide these, PM can be a middle manager cog with no real power or somebody adequately high. I know I myself won't affect some hiring of some CTO but somebody here eventually might. Thats a good start.

I am fed up with uncritical celebration of people who make this world a worse place and harm us all. Perfect execution of amoral goal is still purely a shit in negative sphere (this goes straight to worship of mr musk but thats another topic)




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: