So true, voting with your wallet (for myriad of practical reasons) isn't always possible. And sometimes you/spouse/friend/whoever will often say "how bad can it be"! And often we ourselves wonder "Ah! I can get used to it".
This is true, but is effective only if the dogfooders' feedback is accepted and worked upon. Which is not the case, I can tell you this from first-hand experience (currently work at Msft).
Also unleashing and forcing tech savvy people to use immature tools is only asking for trouble when you don't have allocated enough manpower to deal with the fallout (that is, incessant downpour of improvement feedback). One cannot just force engineers to dogfood tools and then ignore them. This is precisely like Win-8 era mania, only this time it's infecting the whole company not just single org!
> Lately it has definitely felt as though Microsoft is resurrecting Ballmer's old meme as "AI! AI! AI!"
You nailed it! Having spent significant time (as low-level minion) under both Ballmer and Satya, it certainly feels like the old Ballmer-time meme is coming back with the AI!
Also with it, the forced-curve ranking that Satya disbanded is being re-instituted under a different name.