Summary: Indian telemarketing staff promotes Microsoft's software by phoning up more than once a day

A BUNCH of marketing folks have apparently been hired by Microsoft and here is what happens:

Microsoft cloud services: Phone scam or hard sell?

Remember reader Bob's recent Grip about a possible service-invoice con that turned out to be an error? Here's another dubious practice -- repeated phone calls about Microsoft cloud computing -- that proved worthy of investigation.

"Am I the only one getting multiple phone calls from Microsoft Cloud Computing every day?" asks Gripe Line reader Jim. "I've received no less than 10 calls this week alone from a call center in India claiming to be from Microsoft with questions about my cloud computing use. One fella named Mario has called four times already. Do you know if this is something Microsoft is doing, or is it some form of phone SPAM?"

[...]

As it turns out, the calls are in fact coming from an overzealous contractor hired by Microsoft to promote its cloud services.

Microsoft is also contracting external firms from next door in order to do its AstroTurfing, so the above is very noteworthy. Microsoft tries to distance itself from unethical or illegal behaviour that it chooses and endorses (sometimes sending it overseas where the laws are differently regulated or scarcely enforced). Why develop something decent when marketing and AstroTurfing can perform better? ⬆

'"Boy, do I ever hate this job," [Microsoft's] Eller thought. "God, just let me finish this miserable code."

'Eller wasn't the only one on the team hating his job. Almost all the key developers on the project thought of quitting or even tried to resign at least once. But not many actually did. Back then, the attrition rate was very low because people believed in the Windows vision. They believed that the software they were writing would revolutionize the world.'

--Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft's PR mogul