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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."
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?
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.
Your post was almost relevant, if at least you'd explain why Elop is better (?)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Well, let's at least not destroy this guy immediately. Maybe he has something good to bring to Microsoft as the CEO.
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.
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?
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.
For an immediate uptick in profits they could just kill off unprofitable ventures that don't show any promise going forward. Microsoft makes mountains of money from OS, server (SQL, Exchange, etc), and Office products. That is not going to change anytime soon. Even with the downturn in PC buying their bread and butter is still their business products, and those lucrative enterprise agreements. Drop the crap that's not working, then start working on new products that actually make sense. They have plenty of working capital right now to make such a transition possible and without a ton of risk.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
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.
So he's the new chair man ?
Nullius in verba
Because he would sink the ship, as he did with Nokia.
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'
We need Elop, not Nadella!
No worries - Elop will still be well rewarded for his efforts. Expect a new VP in MSFT soon.
(I only wish this were a conspiracy theory...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
Agreed. For one, I hoped that Microsoft was took over by a woman, which could mean that finally someone who cares about the look-and-feel is in control of the company. By the way, he's Indian, so it looks like it's a normal name there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And people complain management is never outsourced
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
Well, we already knew he has a mental illness.
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.
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.
Sorry, the decimal system was being used in other places than India over 3000 years ago.
And india is hardly a great use of numbers -- paying 10,00,000 rather than 1,000,000 rupees for something. Non standard and confusing.