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New Microsoft CEO Vows To Shake Up Corporate Culture
jfruh (300774) writes New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that he and his leadership team are taking "important steps to visibly change our culture" and that "nothing is off the table" on that score. While much of his declaration consists of vague and positive-sounding phrases ("increase the fluidity of information and ideas by taking actions to flatten the organization and develop leaner business processes"), he outlined his main goals for the shift: reduce time it takes to get things done by having fewer people involved in each decision; quantify outcomes for products and use that data to predict future trends; and increasing investment for employee training and development.
Ha, a real manager!
But seriously, hopefully Microsoft will benefit from him and become a bit more popular amongst nerds.
-- Cheers!
as a former MicroSoftie (research, don't be a hater) I can confirm that Ballmer was first and foremost a sales guy. He brought in the revenue but destroyed the culture and the company in the process. He was a corporate raider, he just did it from the inside.
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What does that even mean? How can you 'crease the fluidity' of anything? Sound suspiciously like typical management-speak, and I don't think that's what MS needs at all.
To think one man, with some initiative can change the culture of a company the size of Microsoft, with entrenched interests, history of turf warfare and empire building is blowing smoke. That company went through spectacular expansion and growth in the 1990s. All those very capable people, the ones who have the vision and ability and the guts to skate too close to or even past the edges of legal behavior have all cashed out, burnt out or pushed out. As the able ones leave, the fraction of PHBs who are clueless when there is not a de-facto monopoly increases. They are playing the same game that used to be effective when there was a WinTel monopoly on desktops, and desktops had the monopoly on computing.
A truly visionary CEO will realize this, break the company into pieces that will once again compete or perish and resign. But Satya Nadella is no Michail Gorbachev.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Am I the only one thinking this?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
It may be the management culture he was raised in, and I had higher hopes for the Indian-born CEO (diversity, new perspective), but he was also reportedly emailing employees the company would reinvent productivity.
So, likely we'll get SSDD... and less entertainment value than Ballmer provided.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I didn't know much about Satya Nadella, so I did some reasearch.
This is what Wikipedia tells me about him (I'm assuming it's valid; there are citations after all!):
Early life
Satya Nadella[9][10][11] was born in Hyderabad, in a Telugu family from Anantapur district[12][13] in Andhra Pradesh, India. His father was a civil servant in the Indian Administrative Service,[12][13] Nadella attended the Hyderabad Public School in Begumpet[14] before attaining a bachelor of engineering in Electronics and Telecommunications from the Manipal Institute of Technology in 1987 (then affiliated to Mangalore University), Manipal, Karnataka.[15][16][17][18][19]
Nadella subsequently traveled to the US on a student visa to study for an MS degree in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee,[20] receiving his degree in 1990.[21] Later he received an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.[22][23]
Nadella said he "always wanted to build things."[24] He knew that computer science was what he wanted to pursue.[25] But that emphasis was not available at Manipal University. "And so it [electronic engineering] was a great way for me to go discover what turned out to become a passion," he says.[26]
Career
Nadella worked with Sun Microsystems, as a member of its technology staff, prior to joining Microsoft in 1992.[2][3]
Microsoft
At Microsoft Nadella has led major projects including the company's move to cloud computing and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world.[27]
Nadella worked as the senior vice-president of research and development (R&D) for the Online Services Division and vice-president of the Microsoft Business Division. Later, he was made the president of Microsoft's $19 billion Server and Tools Business and led a transformation of the company's business and technology culture from client services to cloud infrastructure and services. He has been credited for helping bring Microsoft's database, Windows Server and developer tools to its Azure cloud.[28] The revenue from Cloud Services grew to $20.3 billion in June 2013 from $16.6 billion when he took over in 2011.[29]
Nadella's 2013 base salary is nearly $700,000, for a total compensation, with stock bonuses, of $7.6 million.[30]
Previous positions held by Nadella include:[31]
President of the Server & Tools Division (9 February 2011 – February 2014)
Senior Vice-President of Research and Development for the Online Services Division (March 2007 – February 2011)[32]
Vice-President of the Business Division
Corporate Vice-President of Business Solutions and Search & Advertising Platform Group
Executive Vice-President of Cloud and Enterprise group[15]
On 4 February 2014, Nadella was announced as the new CEO of Microsoft,[7][8] the third chief executive in the company's history.[33][34][35][36]
I've put the important points in bold.
He is no average man! He is a GOD among us mere mortals. All of the best technology experts come from Hyderabad. Hyderabad Public School in Begumpet is one of the most prestigious institutions to attend. And the Manipal Institute of Technology is world renowned for the superb learning experience it imparts on its students. To be honest, I don't even care about his other credentials or work experience. His origins alone show that he is more than me, his is more than you, and he is more than everybody else. He is more.
LAYOFFS
Nothing is off the table? Does the table include lying, doublespeak, file format lock in, using proxies to sue Linux users, bribing and strongarming standardization committee members, the whole embrace, extend, and exterminate strategy that they tried with Java and IE, Windows Genuine Advantage, staying in bed with the copyright extremists of the entertainment industry, continued support of organizations like the Business Software Alliance? Is any of that off the table?
If MS's new CEO isn't acknowledging that they went too far with that stuff, and that the company will go in a new direction, stop being anti-social, stop being evil, then the new CEO represents no real change, just some minor adjustments.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I'd much rather hear him say:
"I use Windows 8.1 on a desktop and it sucks. Windows 9 is going to be good on desktops and we are not going to release it until it is.
AND, we are going to play fair with users and make sure that every security patch we develop for Windows Embedded Industry is also SQAed on and made available to all Windows XP users. It may not make us the most money but it's the right thing to do."
Corporate culture? I am an end-user, I don't care what Microsoft's corporate culture is, I care about its products.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!