No surprise: Microsoft seeks Windows Update boss with 'ability to reduce chaos, stress' Microsoft wants to hire a particularly thick-skinned person to help run its Windows Updates team. The Windows Servicing and Delivery team Senior Program Manager will be tasked with overseeing the release of features, fixes and security patches Microsoft delivers for Windows. That means the person who fills this role will be …
Not likely, you're right. They're looking for me. I have 0 management experience and promise to stay drunk 20% of the time (%80 of time spent will be "Out of the office."). However, I promise each update will come with free porn and games. DEVELOPERS!!! DEVELOPERS!!! DEVELOPERS!!!!
And that is two orders of magnatude movement in a better direction for their update managers (not to mention giving users something they would like for a change).
You're hired, you start Monday, and I will *personally* walk you into the HR building if you show up in Redmond. (One of those three statements is actually true.)
Yeah, its like advertising for a ship hull repair expert and then giving them the Titanic.
Its not the Window's Update Boss that will fix the problem, its removing the CEO and starting again to produce an OS that the majority of users want.
"Its not the Window's Update Boss that will fix the problem, its removing the CEO and starting again to produce an OS that the majority of users want."
you got THAT right...
what I find interesting is they require a 4 year degree.
MANY competent software engineers (and quite possibly the MOST competent engineers) either have no degree, or it's in something else (like music). A requirement for a degree would only satisfy a bunch of CLUELESS H.R. dweebs. Yes, I have no degree, except in the school of ACTUAL APPLIED SCIENCES AND EXPERIENCE [where it REALLY matters].
A 4 year degree THESE days (in the USA anyway, where education ranks pretty low) requires suffering through 4 years of excessive tuition and liberal indoctrination. no thanks. I'd get 'F's if I were honest, or else have to "suck up and say the right key words and tricky phrases" to get the 'A' (like MOST people probably do).
THAT as opposed to 30 years of competent success...
So the person Micro-shaft REALLY wants isn't who they're advertising for. But the person they're advertising for will most l ikely "go along to get along", and that's what *certain* *people* inside Micro-shaft probably want...
[so YEAH if they wanted to FIX IT, they'd hire *ME*]
Maybe MS should start by getting someone to do QC on the code base and make sure that any code that gets used is way beyond beta quality.
Then they need someone to design a desktop operating system without pandering to smart phones and tablets.
Oh, and everything needs to be standards complaint.
Microsoft, a tip for you: I'd be looking to hire a Senior Software Architect from Dropbox.
Dropbox knows how to break a file down, structurally lay out those files across its customers/devices/localitiies, with the most seemless interface known to man, so you always have the latest version to hand. Dropbox does one job very well.
Windows Update is a quirk infested monster, and that's been polite. For this job, you need detailed knowledge of the ins and outs of 250+ Windows Patches (as a minimum) and what subsystems each interacts with.
It's a Venn diagram hell hole, to say the least.
@AC
After a Win7 fresh install, deploy KB3102810 to fix the unable to update problem.
It still take about an hour to sulk, but it then kicks off on the mammoth set of update followed by a number of smaller fits of activity that eventually brings you up to date.
I heard that they recently shipped a bundle of all the updates (used to be called a service pack in the olden days) but I don't know what its disguised as now as I don't do many Windows installs any more.
I've found an easier and more reliable way that does it all in one go, you run the following command
sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
This does one set of updates with no need for a reboot to unblock the next set of updates etc. Check it out
The problem is that the approach used by those distros requires proper partitioning so that the patches only address the bugs in the specific package.
Microsoft wants everything to be dependent on everything else - thus a patch to any part causes problems for all the OTHER parts as well.
If it were properly partitioned it would be easy to replace/substitute a package - and not affect anything else.
But that would change Microsofts bottom line...
In their internal documents they said Linux can be divided to very small parts fit for the purpose while Windows can't. That was in 1990s and they did almost nothing about it. Linux distributions can be updated so easy because even the updater has its own small package in a very simple container without 500 hex numbers filename.
"Microsoft wants everything to be dependent on everything else - thus a patch to any part causes problems for all the OTHER parts as well."
you're probably right. that would DEFINITELY explain it, yes.
The next question is: why? why put all eggs in ONE basket like that? What kind of CONTROL does Micro-shaft INSIST on having over our computers? [this deserves the W.T.F. emblem]
apt-get is what debian, ubuntu, mint, and others use. it works pretty well for me on my various installed Linux distros. And it's NOT forced.
Ah ha. I see your mistake
What kind of CONTROL does Micro-shaft INSIST on having over our computers?
This is where you are wrong. you might have actually shelled out hard earned £££ for the hardware but the moment you put Windows on it, it is then owned by Microsoft, lock stock and spyware.
They can (and do) what they want to your kit and you have no recourse especially in the USA where the EULA prohibits you from taking legal action against MS.
Get used to it. It will only get worse.
Despite all of the books that Microsoft Press has published in regards to quality and management, nobody inside Microsoft is fit for this job! I've always wondered, why don't any of the people inside Microsoft read those books and actually do what they say?
I interviewed with the Windows Update team many years ago. The interviewers were so clueless and unorganized that I led the interview with questions and prompts to help them along. They offered me the job later that same day. I politely declined.
One can only hope things have gotten better since then but I highly doubt it...
To me at least, the job description implies that delivering and testing updates is considered a separate function from developing the software in the first place. Why is the Windows Update manager responsible for anything other than the correct functioning of the WU software that delivers patches? Why are the products not responsible for the quality of the patches and WU is treated merely as a handy delivery mechanism?
You didn't actually believe all that "Win X is the last release ever!!!!one" bollocks from the BS corporation's marketeers, did you?
By now Win X is practically abandonware. All the half-competent coders will already be up to their eyeballs fucking up what's to be shat out as Win 11 10.1 ("Puma"): The best Windows(tm) ever!
I always found it curious that MS sold Windows 10 as "the best Windows ever."
From their perspective, shouldn't every Windows release be the "best Windows ever?" If the new one isn't better than the previous generation, why release it at all?
It's like they're admitting this has not always been the case. Of course, Win 10 is by no means the best Windows ever from a consumer perspective. From Microsoft's point of view, it certainly is; no other version has given them so much control over their users, and they ARE the ones making the claim.
...but every new version *IS* "the best Windows(tm) ever" (honest!)... at least according to the boilerplate M$ marketing B$ that accompanies each release... even the most putrid of their little turds like ME, Vista, 8 and 10! *ALL* were *SOLD* as the "best" Windows(tm) ever... just as the next one will be... and the one after that (if Microsoft isn't SCO by then)...
Same old.
"our best ever" always rings oddly with me as it's a weirdo marketing statement of nothing much. As in, it's stating what should bloody well be obvious and always the case. Similar to other gems that I've seen recently for example, "architect designed" on a new block of flats... who else would design them?
However the one that's a gem to watch for is "now our best ever" which really is an admission that what was being peddled previously really wasn't very good at all.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
