I’ll never understand why they ruined GitHub. They had everything they needed - the one place in the world where 99% of open source projects were hosted, where all the discussions happened. A product that people were so used to that it was a no brainer when it came to hosting private repos. And they had to ruin it and give space to GitLab and other competitors. What a waste…

Because it's Microsoft. Categorically incapable of respecting their users.

What's interesting to me is how many people went like 'Oh, Satya really gets open source, this time it will be different'.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17225599

Not to white-knight microsoft here, but I think the problem they run into with every product is that because of their ubiquity, they rapidly reach saturation with most every specialized product they sell. You cannot grow a business if your market is saturated, even if you're the only one selling. So they have to find a way to expand their market. With specialized tools, that's done by generalizing, right? And anyone who has ever driven a screw with a swiss-army knife can tell you, generalized tools never work as well as dedicated tools. Thus, Word ultimately sucks. Windows ultimately sucks. Github ultimately sucks. They are all of them trying to be everything for everyone, because the alternative is just mumbling along, being really good at being tools, but being really bad at conveying profit to their creators.

The worst part of Microsoft is whoever is running their marketing department, they just inject themselves into everything, like Windows. GitHub is different, they will 100% lose users and income if they don't learn to back the hell off of it though. Windows, well, everyone complains about Windows no matter what, so valid complaints are ignored.

With Office, well, your employer is paying for it, so you have no say in it anyway.

It's clearly the marketing dept at Microsoft swoops in and poisons all their software, who else would be doing this?

This is why I say, marketing driven development is garbage.

Product managers do not care about customers. They only care about their bonus and the line moving up.

Growth. It's a disease. Can't just work on a good product it's got to make arbitrary growth targets.

I'll never understand why anyone thought they wouldn't ruin it. It's a miracle it even exists anymore.

This type of behaviour seems to be endemic within Microsoft. They're like the scorpion in the Russian tale of the scorpion and the frog, seemingly a retelling of the Persian tale of the scorpion and the tortoise:

A long time ago, a scorpion came to the edge of a great river. Not being a good swimmer, it asked a nearby frog if it might get a ride across.

The frog eyed the scorpion warily. “I’ve heard of your kind. I see the stinger you hide behind your back. I wish I could help you, but I cannot risk it.”

“Why would I sting you?” the scorpion reasoned. “If you die, we would both drown.”

The frog was convinced. It let the scorpion climb atop its back, then began to swim across the great river. But when they were halfway across, the scorpion suddenly stung the frog.

As the poison spread through his body, the frog cried out, “Why did you sting me? You have killed us both!”

The scorpion replied, “I couldn’t help it. It’s my nature.”

Microsoft just can't help it that they end up destroying the goodwill they inherit when they buy a property. It is in their nature.

This is just the way MS is and always has been. It was inevitable. It's part of their longstanding EEE strategy. Anyone who thought otherwise was fooling themselves.

Microsoft can't help themselves. They ruin everything that they touch.

Because Microslop always hires cheap labor that ends up becoming management, and then things start to break. And the cycle continues. This is what happened at Bank of America, Citi and others.

Some Product Manager who wanted his promotion of the year went with: Oh how about we squeeze more revenue from our unpaid users