Slashdot Mirror
Satya Nadella At Six Months: Grading Microsoft's New CEO
snydeq writes The future emerging for Microsoft under Nadella is a mixed bag of hope and turmoil, writes Woody Leonhard in his review of Nadella's first fix months at the helm of Microsoft. "When Nadella took over, Microsoft was mired in the aftermath of a lengthy and ultimately unpopular reign by longtime CEO — and Microsoft majority shareholder — Steve Ballmer. Given the constraint of that checkered past, some might argue that Nadella hasn't had enough time to make his imprint on every aspect of Microsoft. Yet there have been many changes already under Nadella's watch, and patterns are certainly emerging as to the kind of company Microsoft will be in the years ahead." Leadership, product lines, financials — Nadella's scorecard shows strong strategic leadership, particularly around the cloud, but Windows and devices are murky at best, with Microsoft employees "taking it in the shorts, and not only in Finland."
Some very astute comments.
Apple has seen the light in not charging for OSX. They will make their margins elsewhere.
On the othehand, Microsoft can't even give Windows 8 away so they have a precidence already to not charge for Windows.
If they don't, where is the money (viz income) going to come from in the Operating System space?
They don't seem to have a clue really.
Their focus on the 'cloud' could have a big impact on their bottom line. Can they charge a $200-$1000 license fee for an Instance that may only last a few hours/days/weeks? Nope.
so, once again... Where is the income going to come from?
Satya is IMHO between a rock and a hard place. Balmer has left him up shit creek without a paddle.
IMHO, it will be up to his successor to make or break MS. Satya will fix a few of the more obvious things that are wrong with MS. Then he'll head off to pastures new, a very rich man.
Personally, I think MS is at a crossroads. They might do well to look at the maschinations of DEC in the 1994-1997 timeframe. I see a lot of similarities with MS in 2014.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
What I find particularly interesting is that your argument applies, pretty much word for word, to Mozilla just as well as it applies to Microsoft.
This probably shouldn't be surprising, though. Mozilla arose as a response to Microsoft's 1990s-era tactics. Mozilla's only remaining product that still sees any use, the desktop version of Firefox, was meant to compete directly with Internet Explorer back when it was the dominant browser. As the Microsoft of the 1990s has slowly faded, morphing into the rather different organization that it is now, the driving force behind Mozilla has lessened.
This may explain why Mozilla is such a mess right now. Like Microsoft, their cause is gone, and they're being out-competed at every step by Apple, Google, and other organizations. Their new products are me-too responses to what others have been successful at doing years earlier. They've trashed their existing products through horrendously botched UI redesigns. Their leadership and mission is in turmoil. There has been one scandal after another, from all those shenanigans involving their former CEO offending certain small but vocal groups to the recent MDN email and password data leak.
While some may have seen Microsoft and Mozilla as opposites, today I think they're more alike than they are different. They're both becoming increasingly irrelevant in a fast-changing world that really has no need for either of them. And neither really knows how to compete in this very different landscape.
The hiring manager was a Director and had trouble understanding moderately clever/optimized solutions to CS200 problems.
I fail to see why that's a problem unless he was the one conducting the technical portion of the interview.
It's a problem for two reasons.
1. Yes, he was conducting an interview that was partly technical in nature. So he asked me that lame CS200 question. Because the question was so easy I thought I'd present an optimized solution. Big mistake. The dude didn't have the chops to understand it. He was _really_ confused. Actually I suspect that he had learned the textbook answer and that's all he knew.
2. I don't know if you've ever worked in software development under a technically incompetent manager but I can assure you from personal experience (10 years at MS) that it's horrible. Basically you can see asinine decision after asinine decision being made. You _know_ the project is headed for the cliff and there's very little you can do to fix it because the guy in charge who's smarter than you (Why would he be your boss if he wasn't? The all powerful "system" is infallible) doesn't know any better.
If they don't, where is the money (viz income) going to come from in the Operating System space?
Windows is going to be a cash cow for some time to come. I really don't see that changing even with the debacle that is Windows 8.
Satya is IMHO between a rock and a hard place. Balmer has left him up shit creek without a paddle.
Not really because he has one HUGE card he can play. Microsoft has approximately $100 billion in cash and cash equivalents. They can simply buy other companies if their core business starts to erode faster than they can build up new businesses. They have almost enough cash to buy both General Motors and Ford at their current market caps. They could buy Hewlett Packard in cash and have enough left over to buy Best Buy, Blackberry, and the wildly overpriced Tesla Motors.
Microsoft may have serious problems in their Windows and Office business but they are by no means stuck for options if they care to exercise them.
From 18,000 job cuts m$ has a fine leader at the helm. Maybe we can see more reasons to flush the H1B visa?