Part of that is due to the way they do employee reviews. People are rewarded more (in the form of control over their own job, promotions, and bonuses) for building new things in a short time frame than they are for fixing old stuff that's broken or flawed.
Backstabbing happens everywhere, unfortunately. The main problem with MS was that it was too profit driven for too many years instead of trying to do what was best for the users. Making profit eventually has a direct correlation to providing consistent quality that is better than the next guy or more consistently better. It all comes back to happiness; customers are happier when they get what they expect (intuitive) and what the need (low bugs, fast), not what they want (shiny UI).
> In short, there is nothing really surprising in this leak. Microsoft does not steal open-source code. Their older code is flaky, their modern code excellent. Their programmers are skilled and enthusiastic. Problems are generally due to a trade-off of current quality against vast hardware, software and backward compatibility.
"Their programmers are skilled and enthusiastic." How would you get that from a code reading? Comments? No developer I know puts enthusiastic comments in unless they are being sarcastic. So, I think the summary tries to whitewash it.
The comments show some problems that never got fixed or addressed properly. They are signs that code at the time was being developed quickly and haphazardly. That is what I mean by crappy. And I'm talking about it being historically crappy, not the way it is today. I can't speak for the state of their code in every project they currently manage.
Innovation? Hardly. Innovation should not be confused with new projects. Imagine a car with a broken radio and a weird steering problem that causes it to veer to the left too often. At Microsoft the culture and incentives would drive them to put a panel over the old radio and install a brand new radio along side it that did most, but not all, of what the old radio did. Then they'd add rockets sticking out from the left front fender which turned on periodically to correct for the drift. It may seem like this exaggerates the situation a bit but it really doesn't, it's just that bad.
