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Contents tagged with Microsoft

  • Empower for ISV's: FAIL

    5 Comments

    I was just thinking back to Mix when I remembered some mention of the ISV program, where a couple hundred bucks a year gets you MSDN and such. The catch is that you have to release some kind "packageable" software. Seriously? Does this make sense from the company moving all of its stuff to Web-based solutions and driving the developer community in the same direction.

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  • Xbox support is completely useless, my console is dead

    8 Comments

    Like so many other lucky folks, I have the red ring of death. And just in time, I suppose, since the warranty extension ends for me in January.

    But I have to add my story about interacting with support the way everyone else does, because Microsoft really needs to be held accountable. The trouble began when I tried to open up a repair request online. It simply wouldn't let me, and told me to call. So I did, and that's where the failure continued.

    I speak with what I call the "American broadcaster" English accent, in part because I started my professional life as a broadcaster, and in part because that tends to be the way people in my area speak. We all sound like news anchors! So why is it that these voice recognition phone systems suck at understanding me? They never get it right. I had the same problem last week with the dining reservation system at Disney World. Admittedly, it was comical that phone voice guy is made to try and sound vaguely hip, answering with a "hey" instead of hello.

    What's even more amusing, at first, is that the guy at the call center in India is apparently instructed by his scripts to use the same casual hipster tone. It's hilariously bad. Anyway, at first he did the necessary check to see that it was the console and not the power supply, and then tried to put in a repair order. That's when things made another turn for the worse.

    For whatever reason, they could not "validate" my address, and couldn't create the order. I've been getting mail and UPS packages here for seven years, so I'm pretty sure my house exists. So he asks me for an alternate address. What does that even mean? I'm out of work, so it's not like I could send it to a workplace. I tell him, no, I don't have another address, so figure it out. He comes back and says he can't do anything about it, I tell him to find someone who can. He tries to get rid of me again, so I tell him to make something happen. At this point, 30 minutes have passed, and I'm getting pretty pissed off. He comes back again and tells me to call back in a few seconds because "my system is updating and I can't generate a repair order."

    This is the point at which I go ballistic. This jerk has been trying to get rid of me and I start dropping some four letter words. I've been patient as hell and he's not doing anything to help me. I tell him someone there can call me back when it's convenient for them, because I'm sure as hell not going to sit around on hold again like this. He very nearly hangs up (and I guess I would too, what with my sudden aggressive streak), when I ask him to put me through to someone who can actually help me.

    Supervisor guy is just as useless, and wants nothing more than to get me off of the phone. I'm too pissed to be constructive at this point, so I hang up and accept that I just wasted 40 minutes.

    I go back to the online request mechanism, and what do you know, now it works, which makes me wonder if they did something after all. I have a UPS tag and I'm sending it away.

    I've been relatively apologetic about the high failure rate of the consoles, because aside from this I think the 360 is a pretty great system, especially with the NXE interface. The online service, Arcade and the developer farm system with XNA is brilliant. But support is still shit. I still can't use my real name on Xbox Live because it's a dirty word in their eyes.

    In a lot of ways, the Xbox kingdom at Microsoft is representative of the company at large. Even within a specific division, there are these great wins just oozing with awesomeness, while some other area fails completely. It's like Xbox 360 vs. Vista, or Visual Studio vs. Hotmail. Sometimes it's amazing to think these products come from the same company.

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  • LINQ to SQL: Me too on the "Huh?"

    4 Comments

    OK, so admittedly I've questioned the usefulness LINQ to SQL, but I'd never stand up and say that it's gotta go. What was really said at PDC? Sure, the entity framework sounds super (I say "sounds" because the write ups for it on MSDN are terrible, and the very few books on it haven't been released yet), but why would you stop supporting something that is so obviously gaining momentum and fandom?

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  • Microsoft documentation fail

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    Before it sounds like all I do is complain, let me first say that the advances in C# 3.0, along with LINQ and ASP.NET AJAX, have made programming more fun than ever. I've spent a lot of time lately using all of this stuff on my own projects, and I'm having a great time. I'm going to make some lucky employer very happy (or annoyed because they're still using v1.1).

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  • Microsoft interview fail

    14 Comments

    Well, I don't have to worry about moving to Seattle, because Microsoft is not making an offer. So now that it's all in the past, I feel like I can talk a little more openly about the experience.

    I won't say which group it was that I was approached by, but I will say that it was not one that I expected. My expertise is largely in the ASP.NET space, and this was a PM gig definitely not in that area. It was initially pitched to me as being heavily related to my experience, so I figured, sweet, I could totally do that!

    The job was actually posted after that, and the written description was a little different than I expected. But still, this was Microsoft, and there is certainly a lot of opportunity there in the bigger picture. And did I mention they were footing the bill for the visit?

    My first interview was actually with one of the .NET PM's, which was cool because I felt like there was more to talk about there, even though I wouldn't be working directly in his group. We talked about how I'd handle a crisis with regard to shipping something, and I gave my best strategy based on my limited knowledge of the organizational structure (it was based on a real problem I'm not allowed to talk about :)). He also gave me a coding problem, which was surprisingly hard to get my head around without Visual Studio. I'm a refactor-until-it-works kind of guy, and boy do I realize that now! But it was still a fun exercise.

    The second interview was with a senior PM in the group I was interviewing for, and that's where my impression of things started to change. The conversation was all over the place, which perhaps was a symptom of going out for lunch. I started to also get the feeling he was very disinterested in me. That's kind of intangible, but I kept getting the feeling I was inconveniencing him in some way. That really put me off. Checking e-mail and using his mobile device while chatting put me off even more.

    From there, he asked me some very vague and abstract questions, leading me in kind of random directions. I know from reading other interview accounts that there tend to be a lot of complex scenarios thrown at you, but they're defined well enough that you can make actionable responses. This was not one of those. I asked a lot of questions, but I wasn't getting what I needed to make any kind of intelligent response. It's like someone asking you, "How would you make something?" It depends on if you're talking about software or woven baskets!

    The third interview was better, but again with the e-mail checking or whatever. Come on, man, I had to come 2,000 miles for this! If you can't do me the courtesy of listening and learning about me, it's really hard to sell myself! I was really put off by that, to the extent that I started to feel like this wasn't the gig for me. Honestly I was so excited about coming to Redmond that I never even synthesized that as a possible outcome. I left the building feeling really let down.

    Not surprisingly, I didn't get the gig. I think the position itself was a mismatch for my background, and that was the first issue. The second is that the quality of the interviewing wasn't particularly good (except for the first guy, who I wouldn't be answering to anyway). I've had far more vigorous interviews that did a better job of assessing my capability.

    Now that I've had a couple of days to think about it, and have a sort of closure with the non-offering, I think I have some conclusions I can draw. The first is to remember what I learned years ago with meat market recruiters who put me places like Progressive (the worst consulting gig I ever had), in that it's a good idea to understand for yourself if the position is right for you in the first place. Just because it's Microsoft calling doesn't mean that the gig is right. Duh.

    Second, while I was disappointed with the experience, it's not a reason to write off Microsoft as a whole. My experience as an author, and as a customer needing a little help, has been awesome. Heck, it has been better than awesome. There are a lot of very smart and passionate people there.

    Is there a big job change in my future? I'm not entirely sure. As I said before, I wasn't actively looking as much as I thought it'd just be a good idea to be on the radar in Washington. It helps to understand what your worth is every couple of years and evaluate if you're getting what you want out of your current job.

    Bottom line, the experience was worth it. And visiting my future brother-in-law and his family was certainly an awesome perk.

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