GoKawiilThis is the first of a series of articles in which you will learn about what may be one of the silliest, most preventable, and most costly mishaps of the 21st century, where Microsoft all but lost OpenAI, its largest customer, and the trust of the US government.
I joined Azure Core on the dull Monday morning of May 1st, 2023, as a senior member of the Overlake R&D team, the folks behind the Azure Boost offload card and network accelerator.
I wasn’t new to Azure, having run what is likely the longest-running production subscription of this cloud service, which launched in February 2010 as Windows Azure.
I wasn’t new to Microsoft either, having been part of the Windows team since 1/1/2013 and later helped migrate SharePoint Online to Azure, before joining the Core OS team as a kernel engineer, where I notably helped improve the kernel and helped invent and deliver the Container platform that supports Docker, Azure Kubernetes, Azure Container Instances, Azure App Services, and Windows Sandbox, all shipping technologies that resulted in multiple granted patents.
Furthermore, I contributed to brainstorming the early Overlake cards in 2020-2021, drafting a proposal for a Host OS <-> Accelerator Card communication protocol and network stack, when all we had was a debugger’s serial connection. I also served as a Core OS specialist, helping Azure Core engineers diagnose deep OS issues.
I rejoined in 2023 as an Azure expert on day one, having contributed to the development of some of the technologies on which Azure relies and having used the platform for more than a decade, both outside and inside Microsoft at a global scale.
As a returning employee, I skipped the New Employee Orientation and had my Global Security invite for 12 noon to pick up my badge, but my future manager asked if I could come in earlier, as the team had their monthly planning meeting that morning.
I, of course, agreed and arrived a few minutes before 10 am at the entrance of the Studio X building, not far from The Commons on the West Campus in Redmond. A man showed up in the lobby and opened the door for me. I followed him to a meeting room through a labyrinth of corridors.
The room was chock-full, with more people on a live conference call. The dev manager, the leads, the architects, the principal and senior engineers shared the space with what appeared to be new hires and junior personnel.
The screen projected a slide where I recognized a number of familiar acronyms, like COM, WMI, perf counters, VHDX, NTFS, ETW, and a dozen others, mixed with new Azure-related ones, in an imbroglio of boxes linked by arrows.
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