We’ve tried to withhold ourselves from sourcing our news from leaky valves in Microsoft as of late (and you can see where that’s gotten us. ahem), but we don’t just stay away for the sake of keeping ourselves out of that eternally stressful race for content. We tend to stay out of it because behind every leak, someone’s job suffers as a result.

I had a very open interview with someone at the launch event. This person frequently deals with product leaks, and as a result, it’s fair to say that the person knows exactly how said leaks impact work, the lives of everyone connected to the project, the public perception of a product, and so forth. My interview with this particular Microsoft employee was fulfilling in the sense that I’m able to offer an uncensored glimpse into what Microsoft has to deal with whenever someone decides to leak a build, leak a screenshot, break an embargo, and what not.

Check the break to read about how it all went down. Keep in mind that there’s no video or audio and that this is, indeed, a long read apparently not as long as some people have seen in the past. Thanks is due to the anonymous commentators who pointed this out.

Anonymous Softie: So, with regards to leaks

Bryant: Yeah

Anonymous Softie: Leaks can affect the public perception of a product. For instance, there’s a reason why we only release specific builds. You know, because we want to release a certain level of quality that people can take a look at, have faith in, and [say] "okay, this is the product, the product is progressing as planned." Sometimes, interim builds, leaked builds, they often haven’t passed any of our quality checks. They were never meant to be released.

Bryant: Right. They can easily have nasty bugs.

Anonymous Softie: Yeah, exactly, and all of a sudden, you’ve got everyone in the world taking a look at this build; everyone wants to see the leaked build, right? ’cause it’s mysterious. It’s rare. It’s from the inside. So yeah, there could be bugs in it. People [find] bugs in it. They question functionality they find in it. And so when all of that happens, my phone starts ringing [with] people asking for comments. I’m not doing my day job at that point.

Anonymous Softie: And so, one, it’s a huge distraction on all of us. Phones ring off the hook. [People say] "I can’t believe there’s this shitty quality build out there!" It’s like, look, I’m not going to take time to talk to you, first of all, ’cause you, you know, that was an unplanned leak. It’s not representative of what we ultimately want to sanction and release.

Anonymous Softie: So, there’s the distraction, the bugs… if it’s really buggy, people might think that that’s the current state of the product when, in fact, it’s not. Internally, we’re already many many builds beyond the one that’s leaked. We don’t really care about that one. It doesn’t exist.

Bryant: Right.

Anonymous Softie: –for all we care.

Bryant: Right. It never happened.

Anonymous Softie: It never happened! But everyone is quick to jump to an opinion about that particular moment in time. They often draw incorrect conclusions, "oh my gosh, the product is incomplete, it doesn’t have this, it doesn’t have that." So that’s one.

Anonymous Softie: And quite often we have features that come out over time, right? You don’t necessarily have all the features in [Windows 7 Milestone 3], for instance. We didn’t have any [of the new] UI.

Bryant: Right. Well when we posted [the article about Milestone 3], that was it. It was just very bare and everything was hidden by a bunch of switches. I remember when we originally posted the very suggestive "we know what’s coming but we don’t actually… know" article, we got a lot of hits. We really killed your day job with that one.

Anonymous Softie: Yeah. So it’s a big distraction; it causes people to form incorrect opinions which I as a communications professional ultimately have to fix. Right? The world starts thinking "Wow, this is it?" and I go "Wait, wait wait"

Bryant: "Yeah, this was like a few months in the past. We’re much further ahead of this now, and there are different branches [besides the one with the leaked build], etc."

Anonymous Softie: Exactly. It’s a distraction for developers that are… you know, so we have an enormous [Independent Software Vendor] community that tests various milestones. They test their software. They test their drivers. They test their apps.. and for them it’s a distraction too because they’re wondering "wow, what’s going on? Should I look at this? Should I stop what I’m doing and look at this leaked build?" and so it tends to slow everything down.

Anonymous Softie: Those are the biggest issues that we have. And then so many people get sucked into potentially having to respond to all the questions that people are raising about that particular moment in time. We just don’t have time to deal with that, and so, generally, we don’t comment on unreleased builds.

Bryant: There you go.

Bryant:
I guess… how does it affect, I mean, you talked about how it affects you guys, what you guys do, but let’s say… how does it affect the actual development of a product itself? Or, on a similar line, how does it affect the timeline? Let’s say you’ve got a bunch of leaks setting things back.

Anonymous Softie: It generally doesn’t affect the timeline. The developers are always heads down; they’re writing code, they’re fixing bugs, but even they will stop and read the reviews of the leaked build. So there’s loss of progress there, potentially. And so, when you add it all up, it really does no one any good. ’cause even all the people that pause to download it– we also have the problem of viruses. People leak builds. They stuff them with payloads, and everyone wants the leaked build. They get a bunch of viruses, and now I have to deal with that problem. So, in some sense, it’s "dangerous" as well, and we have no control over what’s out there, what the quality is…

Anonymous Softie: but leaks generally don’t affect the schedule, but they affect the communication. They affect the perception They’re a distraction for all of the outside developers in the world that are trying to be focused on the right builds, and they might see something they didn’t expect, but when you catch us in between, all bets are off. We establish a contract with developers. We say "here are the APIs." It’s a contract between Microsoft and the developers. [We tell them] "we’re not going to change these APIs." and interim builds could actually have changes, maybe some things that we’re actually just testing out, prototyping. And so, you get some people on the outside that are, you know, wondering "Gosh. Did Microsoft– Did I not– Did I miss something? Did Microsoft not tell me what’s happened?" And so it’s pure theater.

Bryant: Right.

Anonymous Softie: People like to see it because it’s secret and nobody else can see it, but if you download some rogue binary from some site and you get infected, or you download something that, you know… people accuse that, even, of being Microsoft’s fault, and I’m generally the one that has to deal with… you know, whenever press call, my phone rings. I would rather spend my time preparing for that next big real milestone, making sure people have the most accurate information and keeping everyone on track instead of being distracted by all of these external issues.

Bryant: Now that was with regards to, um, actual build leaks. How about news leaks? Like, um, if somebody leaks a screenshot of something in progress– I figure that would possibly be the same ordeal. You know, news leaks, perception leaks [such as reviews], let’s say an embargo is broken about something. How about those? How does that work?

Anonymous Softie: Both a similar and a whole different set of issues as well. You know, we have a… I have a very professional relationship with all of the professional journalists that I work with. And so, it’s difficult. When I en masse pre-brief journalists and I say "okay, all of the information that I’m telling you under confidence–" professionals embargoed under this certain date. For the most part, people respect that. But then, somebody breaks the embargo, and then all the other journalists look around [and think] "well, they went! I gotta go!" And then it jeopardizes my relationship with other people ’cause suddenly everybody is going. At the end of the day, it often causes a lot of misinformation to be out there because people– I haven’t had a chance to talk to you, Bryant, yet, to let you know what’s our intent, What do we do and what is this about, why are we delivering this thing, who is it for, what’s it capable of doing. And so, if I don’t have that opportunity to kinda frame everything with everybody and put it in context, everybody starts speculating. "Maybe it means this. Maybe it means this. Maybe it means that.” Again, huge distractions. The people that need accurate information don’t have that accurate information any longer, and I spend weeks trying to sorta put things back in order so that everyone has the accurate Microsoft view of things instead of 30 different conspiratorial opinions on what may or may not be true.

Bryant: Yeah, of course. And, well I suppose for now that’s all I’m really looking for.

Anonymous Softie: Cool.

Whether this person’s account of how leaks affect things at Microsoft represents the Microsoft way of thinking is beyond me. I didn’t ask, but it’s safe to infer that this person isn’t the only person who thinks along these lines.