Another ex-Windows head denounces Microsoft after it got slammed for "bad" performance

A Windows 11 logo with a bloom-like background wallpaper

It has only been a couple of days since an ex-Microsoft veteran engineer had heavily criticized the performance of Windows 11, especially the Start menu. In case you missed the story, a former Microsoft veteran engineer, Andy Young, took to Twitter (now X) to publish his thoughts about the current state of Windows 11.

Young felt that for the hardware he sported, Windows just did not seem fast enough, and he labeled the performance of the Start menu "comically bad," suggesting that the current state of the OS seemed to be on the unfinished side.

His sentiment was echoed by several on the social media platform, and many of our Neowin forum members felt the same too. Others found it hard to believe that a $1600 PC was being bogged down by the OS, suggesting the issue may be elsewhere.

Following Young's criticism, former Microsoft User Experience (UX) head Jensen Harris has now spoken against the company. Harris, like Young, took to Twitter and expressed, in a sarcastic tone, his disappointment and disapproval of the new ads system Microsoft is testing in the Windows 11 Start menu.

Harris' tweet was a direct response to a line in The Verge's report about the news, which remarked that "Microsoft has been experimenting with ads inside Windows for more than 10 years."

Hard to believe I left the Windows UI team a full 10 years ago, but I guess the math checks out! pic.twitter.com/nnrawCQ2fT
— Jensen Harris (@jensenharris) April 12, 2024

Harris' response is suggestive that he is not quite happy with the way things are currently going at the company since he left a decade ago. Therefore it's a double whammy for Microsoft as it has gotten reprimanded over its current Windows UI and UX decisions.

Before it went for Insider testing, we knew something like this was coming from previous build changes, and soon enough, it was publicly announced in build 22635.3495.

Interestingly, Microsoft is also currently contemplating adding a dedicated Taskbar menu button dubbed "Recommended" just for advertisements, and more such changes are likely to lead to performance issues unless the tech giant manages to better optimize the underlying code.