
Withdrawing from the Microsoft MVP Program - chemodax
https://www.osr.com/blog/2019/04/08/withdrawing-from-the-microsoft-mvp-program/
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mythz
The MVP program has become a marketing program to encourage becoming unpaid
shills of Microsoft and MS products, where the best way in is to evangelize
and write articles and tweets promoting Azure. Your social media presence is
more of a factor for determining membership than any technical prowess.

They've even used it to encourage members (behind closed doors) to shill
Microsoft links [1].

[1]
[https://twitter.com/rickasaurus/status/636269822595235840](https://twitter.com/rickasaurus/status/636269822595235840)

~~~
anbop
Well the program was always for helping the broader community, whether by
writing tools, or participating in StackOverflow, or whatever... it was never
a “Hall of Fame” for the best Windows programmers.

~~~
mythz
It's about helping MS market their products by encouraging devs to pimp their
tools/products under the guise of "technical excellence" that everyone used to
look up to.

An award for being one of MS's best pimpers just doesn't hold the same level
of street cred.

Now whenever I see someone wearing an MVP badge in their twitter bio I
immediately discredit their pro-MS "advice" as an MVP shill wanting to score
points towards their next renewal.

~~~
pknopf
Have you ever applied?

But really, if the MVP program was what it is said to be, people like you'd be
in it.

ServiceStack has been a _valuable_ contribution to the .NET community, and
your continued development/support of it should defacto make you an MVP.

~~~
otis_inf
I've been a C# MVP for many years before they didn't renew me because I was
too critical towards MS' direction (this was before they OSS-ed .NET). When I
was awarded, it felt like I received an award for my position in the .NET
community. When I didn't get a renewal years later it felt like I didn't get
it because I didn't fit into their marketing machine. It was fine by me btw.
The free MSDN universal subscription is nice, but that's about it.

> ServiceStack has been a valuable contribution to the .NET community, and
> your continued development/support of it should defacto make you an MVP.

Yes, and back in the days when I received my MVP title, this kind of thinking
was part of the criteria. Nowadays... no way. It started 7-8 years ago I think
when they decided there couldn't be more than X mvp's for a given category and
they wanted at least Y mvp's in a given region. So less in the west, and more
in say India. While it's fine to make it a more world-wide program and
recognize people in communities which are less known to people in 'the west',
the criteria to accomplish this changed with it: if you started a user group
somewhere in a region without an mvp and someone nominated you, you had a good
chance becoming one.

This is all OK btw, _if_ your criteria is about evangelizing. If your criteria
is about 'the people who are the most skilled in ABC' then it's not. So this
shift in who would receive the award changed the program.

Nowadays it's rather silly tbh. If you want to get renewed you have to fill in
a form where you describe why you want to get renewed. wtf... it's an award
you receive. Why would you need to tell MS why you'd want to receive an award
you haven't received yet as _they_ decide who gets it...

~~~
close04
I see the same thing happening with almost all "most valuable" type awards or
badges. Every big tech company that has it now uses it almost exclusively as a
PR campaign. The MV% roster of some companies looks more like a list of social
media influencers than a list of truly most valuable professionals, with the
latter losing ground year after year.

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asp_net
I have been a Microsoft MVP from 2006-2018. While I was proud to be part of a
group of so many smart people at the beginning, my professional and personal
life changed over the years and I stopped blogging regularly, never engaged in
their new web forums (which replaced the newsgroups – anyone remembers them?
;)) and finally filtered out all of the many emails and newsletters coming to
my inbox. So I would say for 10 out of 12 years I have been a ghost. A ghost
that has been "re-awarded" every year – for whatever reason. I think that
alone tells you something about the value of that "title".

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smith-kyle
A few years ago I told my friend "If I ever add 'Microsoft MVP' to my Twitter
bio shoot me"

I don't know why seeing this made me cringe so much. Probably because it was
so transparently a ploy from Microsoft to make their most loyal devs feel
special in hopes that they'd promote Microsoft tools more.

~~~
TomMarius
Hmm, but you can't say that many people hadn't had great experiences with it.

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mrmondo
I've seen this first hand at several conferences where Microsoft "MVP"s come
on to the stage and try to make Microsoft seem all "hip" and "rad" rather than
talking about real engineering and technical improvements, it was not only
nauseating - so many people could clearly see right through it.

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jesseryoung
> Where I used to get weekly updates, and focused, useful, invitations to what
> are called “Product Group Interactions” — stuff about the new WDK or changes
> to OS features — I now get an endless stream of invitations to SQL and
> SharePoint events.

If I had to wager why it seems like the MVP program dieing (I have no clue if
it is, this is the first post I've ever read about the MVP meta) it has to do
with this point the author called out.

I suspect that, at least in its early days, the MVP program help guide product
development teams. In return for helping guide development, these MVP's were
given preferential treatment over other customers and access to insider
information. Now that Microsoft is (at least appearing) more open, they can
get their feedback from their open source communities.

~~~
wvenable
Even Stackoverflow kills the need for MS MVPs. In the dinosaur days before SO,
you'd have MVPs answering questions around the Internet or within their
particular community.

~~~
quickthrower2
Before SO you had to scroll down on ExpertSexChange

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lennpryor
Hi, I’m Lenn from Microsoft, and I have responsibility for the MVP program. I
appreciate the feedback, and apologize that we didn’t respond to your earlier
emails. We will get back to you directly to address your questions and
concerns. The MVP program does evolve over time and our goal is to ensure that
it stays relevant and meaningful for participants. On behalf of Microsoft, we
really appreciate your support of the program and community.

~~~
Nextgrid
What a BS response. Now I don’t mean this personally (I’m sure you just wish
the best to all of us just like most people here) but it doesn’t take anything
away from the main point which is that the company can’t even be bothered to
respond officially and the best this “MVP” can hope for is an unofficial
acknowledgement from an employee outside of work time.

~~~
lennpryor
My team did indeed miss the email from Pete unfortunately, I am not afraid to
admit it. We feel bad about it and have sent him a personal apology that he
didn't get a reply after 15 years. We are heads down reviewing 3,300 MVP
renewal applications until the end of May and his CPM missed it in the flood
of emails that comes her way this time of year. Our bad, and we own it and are
sorry we made him feel disrespected for his 15 years of contributions to the
community and Microsoft.

~~~
hizanberg
s/email/emails

~~~
RyJones
Lenn Pryor did say emails in the parent reply. "Email" is used both as a
singular and plural, so I don't think his later reply is wrong, either.

~~~
hizanberg
> "Email" is used both as a singular and plural

Not in this case:

> My team did indeed miss _the email_ from Pete

The purpose of his comment was to downplay that his team only let 1 of his
emails slip through the "flood of emails" they receive. Whereas the whole
reason why Pete's resigning his MVP in the first place because he felt he and
his deep technical interests were being ignored. Not receiving a courtesy
reply after multiple emails and 15 years of Service confirms as such.

and lets be honest, the only reason why he's getting any kind of response now
is because it became an open resignation letter that's shining a light on the
purpose and current state of the MVP program.

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maxheadroom
Let's face it, MSFT is dropping all of their eggs into the cloud basket and,
whilst this isn't necessarily a bad thing, the byproduct is what the MVP sees:
Invitations to things like roadmaps for COSMOS DB, which is almost purely an
Azure service and has nothing to do with the scope of the MVP's expertise.

Others have suggested that SO and the OSS community, in general, are much
wider audiences for MSFT to receive feedback from and that's not, inherently,
true. MSFT still avails of things like the BETA program[0], so they still
(seemingly) recognise that they have a need for that feedback loop (for the
most part).

What seems to happen at Microsoft is constant culture shifts, based purely on
who's making the most money at the time. In the previous years, it was Office
that was the top dog, now it's Azure and, not surprisingly, things are
changing in the company to push the biggest seller.

The byproduct of that, of course, is that everything else gets thrown to the
wayside by chasing these new endeavours (by constantly changing directions)
and not having a plan to fluidly bring everything forward and inline.

[0] - [https://www.onmsft.com/news/join-microsofts-pre-release-
beta...](https://www.onmsft.com/news/join-microsofts-pre-release-beta-program-
office-and-help-make-next-version-better)

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c0achmcguirk
I remember the battle between Jamie Cansdale and Microsoft regarding Jamie's
MVP status [1]. The TL;DR was that Jamie developed TestDriven.NET as an add-on
to Visual Studio. He released it for the pay versions _and_ the free version:
Visual Studio Express. Microsoft wanted him to make it unavailable for Express
and decided to kick him out of the MVP program because they didn't want nice
features in the free version of Visual Studio. ;)

[1] [https://www.infoq.com/news/2007/06/TestDriven-Express-
Emails](https://www.infoq.com/news/2007/06/TestDriven-Express-Emails)

~~~
otis_inf
They also kicked out Karl Peterson, who designed the first MVP logo (the
diamond with the large MVP inside it) and wrote about 3000+ reply posts a year
in various visual basic groups. The reason? He was a VB6 MVP and very vocal
against VB.NET. Yes, you can't have the spear head of a community you just
kicked in the nuts with a 'VB.NET' in the program that is designed to promote
that successor tech, now can we...

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j16sdiz
Ten years ago, when I see a MVP give technical advice (they seldom do), they
are very helpful.

Now when I see technical advice from mvp, I wonder if they had ever read the
manual...

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miaklesp
What's the practical function of MVP in the era of GitHub and open source
where everyone can join discussion with devs and PMs without a need to be part
of any elitist group? Just to keep a handful of folks still proud of their MVP
badges they earned in 2001?

~~~
munchbunny
Are you asking why social validation is a useful tool for getting people to be
helpful with thorny or esoteric technical questions?

Regardless of whether I think the MVP program was good, your question answers
itself.

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ww520
The Windows kernel driver development was one of the most hardcore programming
in software development, requiring in depth knowledge of the kernel and a very
different mindset. Have to be very defensive and thorough, or things would go
badly.

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hateful
This is completely understandable. I've submitted for MVP for a product (not
Microsoft, but built on Microsoft technologies) and I never get it due to the
fact that I don't re-tweet all day and focus on development.

~~~
sk5t
Ditto. I was twice nominated a while back, by existing MVPs, didn't get it,
and had the distinct sense it was because I didn't tweet or run webinars or
whatever to the glory of MSFT. What I did do was write and release some pretty
decent free tools with .NET, and participated extensively on anything to do
with Active Directory or ADFS. It was rather demoralizing.

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peteforde
Before ASP came out, I wrote a DLL to connect IIS to VB5/6 applications. I was
also the VB guide on The Mining Company (which became about.com around 1997).
This was enough of a resume that I was awarded the title MVP for IIS/ASP. I
got a watch, notepad and pen. Seemed pretty cool for an 18 year old in
smalltown Ontario.

Eventually, they announced that VB6 was the end of the line for COM and VB.net
was VB in name alone. I was one of about 100 MVPs that signed a petition
encouraging MSFT to keep VB moving forward as a parallel product. "No, and
stop asking" was the reply.

Fast forward a few years, and I saw the original DHH "Build a blog in 15
minutes with Ruby on Rails" video. What I saw didn't even seem possible. I
knew that it was going to be a big deal, and the next day my friends and I
cofounded the first Rails consultancy in the world circa Fall 2004. This led
to my first Mac Mini, and deploying to Linux. Today I only boot into Windows
to do VR and hologram stuff.

I haven't thought about my MVP certificate in over a decade, but I'm confident
that it exists in a box. I'm honestly a little shocked to know that it's been
going all this time.

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nikanj
Writing low-level magic and solving gnarly bugs seems to be linked to making
hardware in the first place.

Microsoft MVP is still a very west-centric program. If I had to guess, I'd
wager the rising stars of this world are in Asia where the new hardware is
being made. Microsoft doesn't really reach out to them, and I guess the
feeling of disinterest is mutual.

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hudo
no response from PM, amazing! I've been MVP for (just) 6y, 2012-2016, and
probably replaced that many community PMs, and few categories also, that I
didn't know where I belong any more. And last year, when I thought I did my
biggest contribution by organizing workshops and meetup talks, writing OSS,
and finally got great feedback from real people, not just page views of blog
or twitter reach, they called me and said its not enough. And that I can apply
next year when I do more of the things they measure, whatever that is this
year! I just don't care any more.

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werber
I wasn't aware of the program till recently and just thought it was a
marketing gimmick for vaguely technical people who can throw a little open
source varnish on the company.

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Insanity
Sounds like it is similar to the MSP program now then.

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kgame
I used to aspire to become MVP.

