> Microsoft spent literal decades rehabilitating their reputation. And then set fire to the whole thing in an offering to their robot gods.

Probably they thought the new generations forgot about how awful they were in the not so distant past.

I think they set it all on fire because greed got the better of them again.

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makeitdouble 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> greed

Is a greed/not greed scale really useful to discuss company behaviors ?

I wanted to say I get what you mean, but even thinking about the company I root for the most, I can't think of a point where they're not driven by their desire to make a lot more money.

If your point is that there's good and bad ways to seek money, I'm not sure it's properly encompassed by "greed", which I interpret as the intensity of a desire, not its nature or validity.

To you "greed" might mean something else, but is it properly conveyed ?

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kukkeliskuu 18 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The Seven Deadly Sins provide an interesting perspective to human psychology even in modern times. Greed / avarice is defined as wanting more than you need.

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estimator7292 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Approximately everybody would like more money.

Greedy people put the desire for more money above the welfare of the business, themselves, and other. Greedy people literally put their desire for more personal wealth above the very lives of others.

Greed/not greed is a very fair way of putting it. One can operate a business that requires profit without wanting to destroy everyone and everything that stands in the way of more money.

	▲	pdpi 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think there's one more factor that is crucially important — greedy people lack long-term vision, and care a lot more about money now than they do about potentially much more money in the future. I suppose it's kind of interesting that you could measure greed as an unusually high discount rate for the time value of money?
	▲	parineum an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Greedy people put the desire for more money above the welfare of the business In my experience, it's much simpler. People are greedy if they make things I want cost more.

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ninjagoo 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Probably they thought the new generations forgot about how awful they were in the not so distant past.

More likely, never learned about it in the first place, save a few whispers. Who's got time to go digging in deep, when there's 'experiments to run, research to be done' ...

> I think they set it all on fire because greed got the better of them again.

new blood, new greed

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ProofHouse 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Whomever at Microsoft is making these decisions and oversees all this, yeeeesh

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jcgrillo 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Isn't that just like.. what Microsoft has always been? Browser wars, Tay, bad behavior around open source software.. This is how they roll. They're being their best selves.

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ethbr1 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The difference

(Previously) Microsoft EVP: "Dumb decision" -> org executes

(Now) Microsoft PM: "Dumb decision related to AI" -> team immediately executes

So they've pushed bad decision making down the hierarchy?

	▲	jcgrillo 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's a good point, but literally every company I know of is doing that rn. They're still doing it in a distinctly Microsofty way.

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hirvi74 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thank you for this. I completely agree. Microsoft has always been awful, and the likely always will be. However, the did strike gold a handful of times, and they are just reliable enough to feed enterprises.

	▲	jcgrillo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Apple, Oracle, Adobe, Google, IBM, Microsoft, etc... All the established players have their own distinct flavor of awful. This incident is just a very on-brand flavor for Microsoft.

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cyanydeez 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

AI psychosis. Divide between rich and poor. They live in their own golden bubbles and there's no sanity checks. The workers are so far removed from the realm of competentance and influence it's just CEOs and VPs trying to pump the next 6 months stock value regardless of anything.

It's like the zeitgeist has decided the only thing that matters is their own farts and how they dont smell.