Slashdot Mirror
Satya Nadella Named Microsoft CEO
Nerval's Lobster writes "As widely expected after last week's rumors, Satya Nadella has been named the new CEO of Microsoft. Nadella is Microsoft's third CEO, after co-founder Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He's been with the company for more than twenty years, eventually becoming executive vice president of its Cloud and Enterprise division; Nadella and his team were responsible for the creation of 'Cloud OS,' the platform that powers Microsoft's large-scale cloud services such as SkyDrive, Azure, and Office 365. Under his guidance, Microsoft's revenue from cloud services has grown by several billion dollars over the past few years. In his email to employees, Nadella said that he was 'humbled' by his appointment, and that he had asked Bill Gates to act as a close adviser in the months and years ahead." He devoted much of the rest of the email "to explaining his philosophy of technology, and how that will ultimately influence his leadership. 'The opportunity ahead will require us to reimagine a lot of what we have done in the past for a mobile and cloud-first world, and do new things,' he added. 'We are the only ones who can harness the power of software and deliver it through devices and services that truly empower every individual and every organization.' A lot of tech companies would disagree the assertion that Microsoft is the 'only' company capable of merging hardware and software into forms that businesses and consumers find appealing, but Nadella must do his best to reassert his company's position as a technology leader. Nadella indicated near the end of his email that he would follow through on the 'One Microsoft' strategy formulated under Ballmer, which includes a massive reorganization currently underway." Reader rjmarvin notes that "Nadella will take over as CEO immediately, allowing Steve Ballmer to retire early," and reader SmartAboutThings says that "John Thompson, a lead independent director for the Board of Directors, will take over the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors that Gates held."
We need Elop, not Nadella!
Elop NOW!
Well, after being responsible for Office 365, what could possibly go wrong?
that Steve Ballmer retiring now is not 'early'. About a decade late.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hate Ballmer all you want but that dude knew how to make money.
did you forget to take your meds?
How they will survive, once it's evident they aren't magicians that can turn up company quickly as profitable they once were?
In other words, Microsoft is going to proceed with a vision which may or may not be of interest to consumers, and once again tell us what we want instead of listening to us.
So now the same idiot who was in charge of XBox being an always on-line nuisance is going to ram this philosophy through the rest of the product lines.
They might find this to their detriment.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...require us to reimagine a lot of what we have done
Following the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, where cylons look like humans, the reimagined Microsoft CEO will lose the borg mask.
An indication on Nadella's "rating" from a business perspective will be reflected by the MS share quotation tomorrow.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Finally, I can ditch Linux and go back to windows 8.1, skyDrive, office365, bing search and live accounts.
Well, let's at least not destroy this guy immediately. Maybe he has something good to bring to Microsoft as the CEO.
But ... He hath but a woman's name.
I operate in a pretty much completely OSX world. Whenever I see some crusty old Dell core2dou in some bean counters cubicle it just looks like a fucking relic.
It's a way of being polite and classy, and saying "I know there are a lot of really qualified people around me, and your selection of me has forced me to honestly reflect on my weaknesses." It's more a communication to his peers who were just passed over for the job than to the underlings who were never in the running.
Now, did you really need that explained to you, or were you just running your mouth?
I've been on Slashdot long enough to know that unless Linus accepted the CEO spot, whoever got it was going to get a lot of hate here.
The only thing I can say is that Microsoft is in dire need of engineering, and they promoted an engineer to the top spot. I think that's refreshing. What happens from here on out depends on what the roadmap looks like, but if the Surface Pro 2 is any indication, they are actually going down a good path on the hardware end of things. Time will tell on the software end.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
(C) He thinks that being made CEO is a punishment for some mistake he's made in his current job.
Or maybe a past life
Because storing your private/confidential information in a cloud is a stupid idea, because you don't really have control over your data.
I think your tinfoil hat is on too tight. There are plenty of cases where the data isn't all that confidential. It's not really all that hard to store confidential things locally or offline while using cloud storage for less sensitive items. We use Google Drive in our company to store work instructions and forms. If someone at NSA want's to look at those then they can go right ahead. It's nothing that requires deep levels of secrecy but it does require efficient controlled distribution and multiple person access.
When I saw the name of the new CEO, I thought ,"So, they finally started getting H1-Bs as CEOs."
You'll see folks, this will start supressing CEO salaries and before you know, boards will start screaming about the shortage of qualifed CEOs. And we'll see ads like this:
Looking for experienced CEO. Must have had at least 10 years of experience as CEO in the tech, automotive, banking and real estate industries.
Knowledge of MS Excel or equivalent.
To be humbled, to be made to feel small or modest. Pretty standard bit of English. Seems a natural reaction to being put into a massively auspicious position. You're not a robot powered by a 1900s dictionary and a copy of Stunk and White-Out are you?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I think he needs to read more.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You should also look up the word "idiom".
Chairman is a mostly ceremonial role so the only reason I can see for him stepping down is that he can see the cliff coming and wants to get off before the company goes over. Either that or he thinks his image has been so poisoned by Ballmer that he suspects he needs to go to make the company's image bounce back.
Very strange.
The main thing I can think of that makes Microsoft uniquely position for anything is its semi-monopoly status. Is he arguing that they'll use that to take over a new market?
Now, can I please have Windows 9 with the Windows 7 and Windows Classic UI as options?? It's literally the only reason why I'm not switching -- some of the Windows 8 UI is nice, but I can't stand the 2D desktop interface from Windows 2.0.
Seriously, the best thing that could be done for Windows right now is not to dump Metro, but to put it on tablets where it belongs and not force desktop users to buy into the whole touch-first thing.
I've met Satya. It was several years ago, as part of a larger groups of VCs who regularly met Microsoft execs. He comes across as technically knowledgeable, smart, decent "presence" and leadership. He didn't strike me as visionary, but that's hard to judge when you're in a group that's being given the corporate line.
Knowing a little about the Microsoft culture, and having seen it over the past 20+ years, I personally think that an outsider would have a horrible time. First, in a company that is strictly a technocracy (and that comes from Bill himself), a non-technical outsider would be derided and would have a very tough time. A Gerstner->IBM type of hire probably wouldn't work. A technical outsider would still have to deal with the pretty inbred internal culture.
We've seen disastrous "shake the company up with outsiders" hires at HP, Yahoo (not Marissa, the, um, previous errors), Motorola, Nokia and others. Satya is probably, IMHO, a good hire, he knows the culture, and he has to simultaneously manage transitions in various product lines, and keep the money engine going. Remember, while many people talk as if Microsoft is dead and irrelevant, just look around you at almost any conference, or on a flight, and see how many people are using Windows and/or Office. And Microsoft is still worth around a third of a TRILLION dollars. A decent chunk of the US population invests in Microsoft, directly or through funds. A CEO can't take big risks with that market cap.
I wish him the best. He's got a lot to do.
> (C) He thinks that being made CEO is a punishment for some mistake he's made in his current job.
That's known as the "Peter Principle" or "Dilbert Principle" ;-)
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
So he's the new chair man ?
Nullius in verba
This is a nerd website, my dear AC. The goonish bullies of high school are all working at Walmart now. Pretty sure I have nothing to worry about.
Good idea. Here are some books for a start (hint: being humbled by receiving an honor is a common expression in literature).
Google Books Search
Does anyone know why that's going on?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Chairman is the one who really controls the corporation, CEO only takes corporation where chairman wants. The board choose chairman who has power over board members.
Their stock opened at 36.97, hovering around 36.25 now. Not a lot of excitement either way for the announcement, but still slightly negative.
Do you have ESP?
Just sayin'...
He grew up in a privileged environment but didn't make it into IIT. What does that say about him and his technology skills?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
So I'm gonna bet those divisions are not going to see the focus they did under Ballmer. Assuming the company decides to shift away from chasing the competition with decent but never exciting consumer products. Makes sense too, the new CEO worked for a segment of the company that couldn't have been too thrilled to be bankrolling duds like those. It is pretty bizarre to think that Elop reportedly wanted to sell the Xbox (and Bing) group and now he has been put in charge of it. But maybe it was just a nice gesture to hand him some Ballmer legacy stuff that isn't really anything but an endless drain of company resources and focus. Or maybe they are just stupid and think that his skill at wreaking good organizations might have the the inverse effect on already broken ones.
He's writing content that Slashdot likes to read, and then submitting it to Slashdot, where Slashdot users decide to read it? That son of a bitch.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The trouble is, when people like you cavalierly redefine simple words, you make our language less meaningful for the rest of us. Jargon is like code, it keeps the "right" people in and the "wrong" people out.
Chairman is a mostly ceremonial role so the only reason I can see for him stepping down is that he can see the cliff coming and wants to get off before the company goes over
If the person holding the position of Chairman of the Board is acting as a figurehead then they are Doing It Wrong. Chairman of any public company is FAR from a ceremonial role.
(C) He thinks that being made CEO is a punishment for some mistake he's made in his current job.
Being made CEO of a dead end company with almost no help for salvation that's been run into the ground for the last 10+ years is Punishment
But he's just made it a lot harder on himself by volunteering to attach the boat anchor of Bill Gates around his ankle before starting the race.
I wouldn't read too much in the public politics. My guess is that he's just playing nice. No reason to burn bridges needlessly. With Gates leaving as chairman, Satya will (probably) have a relatively free hand. If Gates is off the board then he can be publicly nice but ignore him behind the scenes.
To be fair, that is an awful list of books. I don't like the expression, personally. I find it disingenuous and sleazy sounding.
Dear Satya Nadella. Windows 8 is total crap. Please give us back a usable desktop interface and the start menu.
Or we'll all buy MACs.
Yours, the windows lusers of the world.
Now who will throw the chairs out windows? Who will Fucking Kill (TM) Google? Who will do the developer rain dance by chanting "developers" while running around a stage in a pool of sweat?
We need you Ballmer. America needs you.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
His first official act should be to apologize for Windows 8 and promise customers that he'll remove the tablet interface from Windows 9.
Btw, SkyDrive is now going to be called OneDrive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyDrive
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Just out of curiosity, I looked at the MSFT SEC quarterly filings for the previous 5 years, and the annual filings 7 years prior to that. Did you know what I saw? Not a single year where their net profits (after all bills have been paid) were less than around 8 billion dollars (8 with 9 zeros) annually.
Do you know what that tells me? They have a massive amount of cash, and are making money hand-over-fist. I know it's a pipe-dream of /. that Microsoft is on the verge of bankruptcy at any given moment, but that isn't anywhere close to the truth.
Anything you store in Microsoft's cloud is subject to the PATRIOT Act and can be demanded with a secret warrant.
So what? It's just business data.
If it were personal data, sure I might not put documents in the cloud (although ha ha, I use Dropbox all the time).
Basically if you don't like the government looking into your cloud data, you are better off trying to fight against that than to stop using networks to hold data, and losing all of the advantages that can confer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most high school bullies are not from rich families, the exception doesn't define the rule. And there's nothing wrong with nerds working at Staples during/after high school. Hopefully that is not a real nerd's long term career, though. I started my first full time programming job as a teenager.
Not that the NSA folks will be foiled by my anonymous post, but both MS and Google have datacenters and offer hosting offshore for exactly that reason. These envrionments are owned and operated by owned though administratively different organizations, and have fully separate administrative staff for these reasons.
Not that is stops the NSA mind you, but an MS or Google offshore datacenter offers you the same legal protections as hosting with a foreign company. Working on implementations for both of these for large multinationals I can tell you MS offers the option of having your non-us subsidiaries administrated entirely by non-us companies quite readily. Extracting similar protections from Google was quite hard 2.5 years ago on my last Google implentation, but they were already working on smoothing that out back then.
These companies do not openly advertise their US Govt avoidance plans, but you can be sure these conversations are had in the board rooms and contract reviews. If you look at the O365 forums how to pull these things off are discussed quite openly by the implementors of these services. And the processes are documented, just not in flashing lights that say "How to avoid US jurisdiction".
Google was a little harder since they have a feature that moves which datacenter your mailbox is hosted in after you access it in that country between 5 and 10 times, but I am sure they now have a flag that prevents that.
Nadella will outsource everything to his homeland. There won't be anything left on this side of the pond for ELOP to destroy.
Hooray, now the Indians will have even more free reign to piss on the white guys at Microsoft. Not that it didn't already happen, but now what can the victims do, complain to the CEO?
Oh yeah, and anyone looking for equality for women should probably look somewhere else too... it's a cultural non-starter for an Indian boss. Women in the workplace are to be tolerated if they're good at what they do and quiet/submissive. Once they make it known that they have an opinion, gig's up. (To be clear, that's not my view on women in the workplace, that's what I've seen working for Indian managers at Microsoft, before I got the hell out of that soul-sucking place).
Office 365 is subscription office for individuals (with other perks like some cloud storage and Skype credits)
Because that's just what I need when I'm typing a business letter. Videochat.
If Microsoft ran a restaurant each sandwich would come with a bowling ball.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
>redefine simple words
That's a bad ass argument.
If he's in charge of their awful "software as a service" bullshit, that's DEFINITELY the end of Windows. We'll get a Windows 9 that's so stuffed full of app store bullshit and half the features missing, it will kill the company permanently.
He's a paid editor pretending to be a user in order to make corporate links to spinoff sites seem like user-generated submissions.
Poor guy doesn't stand a chance, nor does Microsoft in the long term. Both previous CEOs are on the board, so both former CEOs are amongst his bosses. On top of that, I'm sure he'll be expected to maintain the status quo as opposed to being allowed to think in new directions.
As long as Billy G. is still on the board it's going to be business as usual for MS. Sure, Gates stepped down from the largely ceremonial Chairman role only to transition to "technology advisor". Whatever that is. The point is, he's still got a seat on the board. Certainly, he's still the largest individual stock holder so some might argue that he deserves a seat on the board of the company that he built. That's a fair argument.
But if MS is going to thrive in this market it's going to need new leadership and new ideas. And it's going to need someone that can execute on those ideas without Gates hovering over him. Make no mistake - Gates still has a huge influence over MS no matter what his role is or what his title is.
Does anyone else miss the old BillG-as-a-borg icon? Using the former corporate logo is so... corporate.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
I've been terribly naughty; Can I have some of this well paid 'punishment'? :)
He is idiotic ! Why can we not have a normal person. I will never buy another MS product.
He is incompetant !
Bill has never been the kind of kid to follow nor take orders.
His Harvard disaster speaks volumes now that he has been ousted from Chairman to a mere 1/3 part time 'Product Reviewer[?]' in a corner cubicle. When Bill gives his first "review" in his new "position", something like, "Fuck this shit and You!" he'll be out the door faster than Balmer.
Likely, M$ will burn through 10 CEOs and 14 CFOs and a OPEC super tanker filled with Division CEOs in the next eight years really.
I don't. I'd rather they were like Caldera, Sinclair Research, or ICL.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Was your sole resource for learning English a compilation tape of chinamen from black & white movies?
I see you don't know this clown. He isn't very bright, and his coworkers don't respect him. I see him about once a month when he eats in my restaurant,and the Microsoft peacocks are very easy to read. He was only picked so that he'll do exactly what the board tells him to. He knows he's been promoted way past his abilities so he is simply going to be a lackey.
Putting the man in charge of the most successful division in recent years seems like a good move compared to the other options.
Also, reducing Gates influence over the company should help them to make better decisions. Gates has been more concerned with share price stability (since he has been selling large blocks of shares for the last decade) rather than growth and transformation which are essential for Microsoft to survive let alone thrive in the new environment. New classes of devices are changing the way we learn, work, and play and the majority of those new classes of devices do not run a Microsoft operating system. Microsoft needs to make its applications and server platform relevant to these new device classes rather than trying to own-it-all, which is a strategy that has failed for the last decade and depressed its share price.
Except, of course, Microsoft is not a "technocracy", and it hasn't been that for a very long time. Let me remind you, for the past decade the company was run by a completely non-technical guy with a sales background. At Microsoft the fast track to the management ladder is to become a program manager (PM for short), or to be one right from the start. PMs promote and hire still more PMs, to the point where you get 1:1 PM/Dev ratio, and they do nothing but report status to one another.
Therein lies just one of Microsoft's major problems. All this entrenched (and unnecessary) old boy network needs to be dismantled first and foremost. Nadella is not going to do that. So Microsoft will be just as fucked as it was before, because this is a prerequisite for any kind of forward progress over there.
So a European company should put their sensitive commercial data in a US hosted cloud, so the American government can pass it on to US corporations?
What do you think we are, China?
There great thing about the NSA is they only share internally! That's even their new motto "Your secrets are safe with us, plus a handful of contractors".
The real mistake you are making though, is putting ANY value on business documents. Have you ever read, or generated any? If some fell into the hands of "enemy" companies I would feel so sorry for them...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's not a new, cavalier usage: "humbled"has been used that way for a very long time, enough that it appeared more than once in 50-150 year old literature Iread as an English major in college.
The phrase also matches the more nuanced definitions for the term 'humble' and its root in humility, both referring to an individual that doesn't overestimate their worth or believe they're worthy of accolades or adoration. When people are given a powerful show of confidence -- nomination for a prize or position, admission to a highly competitive university, etc. -- many initially feel lucky that others believe in them that much, less worthy than others that weren't chosen, and worried they won't live up to their supporters' expectations. In other words, no matter how arrogant and proud they were when secure in their old position, being pushed towards the new one humbles them, thus the "Iam humbled by" phrase.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
If you meet anybody from India ask him "What Is Your Caste?" If he answers it, then you're doomed. Because he has already injected Cancer into your society. Caste is like Cancer. It cannot be Cured. It has to be Cut-Off.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Casteism