Glad to know the frozen middle exists among the hyperscalers. High confidence you can swap the entire leadership team and nothing will change.

I spent 6 months working as a contractor in MS’ Chicagoland data centers. Nothing worked — phones on the walls ran Windows and did not give dial tone. Security systems unable to function because of Windows updates. Personnel more concerned with their required LinkedIn updates than their jobs. Not one FTE liked their role — everyone had a foot out the door.

When they offered to make me FTE I declined and moved on. Because it was an obvious absolute shit-show.

Sorry for those that are currently employed by MS.

Managing a vendor relationship is the act of distributing license usage through your people, reviewing contracts, having somebody that knows when and where you have to send money so that the software keeps working, and making sure you are not doing something against the contract.

With Microsoft that takes several people working full time. Corporations tend to not want more of those relationships to manage.

I'm convinced all engineers in the O365 org are call center techs in disguise

What do you mean "even get attention from someone"? Enterprise contracts have support included. You can get an engineer on the phone within 24 hours. As long as you are competent enough to answer their questions, their support has been fairly good in my experience.

> Anyone that's had to deal with Microsoft will tell you this means nothing...

In relation to everything you said in your post, let's just say "trust me, I know".

But you missed the point I was making.

The GP said "Makes me wonder why enterprises still flock there".

And anyone who's had to deal with enterprise procurement knows if you've got a vendor on the list then its easier to deal with that one than push for multiple.

And then there's the whole budgeting thing. If management can see you're already buying every single employee in the org a Teams license, then getting extra budget for some Azure toys will probably be an easier sell then "yeah, I know we're paying Microsoft a lot of money, but can we have some AWS too". Since in their eyes Azure and Teams licenses is the same thing, "money for Microsoft".

Sadly the tech desk experience in enterprises tends to fall low down the list, if it is considered at all.

Sure, in theory, if you've got a good CTO to fight your corner then YMMV, but not everyone does.

Wdym? Teams freezes my screen all the time!

  Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft’s Cloud Was “a Pile of Shit.” They Approved It Anyway.

  https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-cloud-fedramp-cybersecurity-government

If there is no cost for poor decisions, nothing will be learned. Incentives drive outcomes.