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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."
CEO — and Microsoft majority shareholder — Steve Ballmer.
Ballmer doesn't hold a majority stake in Microsoft. In fact, no one does. Ballmer holds the largest individual stake, but his stake is in single digits as a percentage.
It was pushed out as a bug fix update and bundled in with a bunch of others so you wouldn't notice that they're trying to fix a major problem.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Given Nadella's short time so far as Microsoft CEO, some might argue that it would be stupid to try to review his progress so far. He hasn't had time enough to supervise a whole release cycle of Microsoft's most important products (not Windows nor XBox nor Office), but who says it would be a pathetic attempt at click-bait to write some nonsense about what he's done so far. Corporate culture takes a decade to change in an organization as large as Microsoft, but let's go ahead and scribble down whatever stupid thoughts pop into my head. There's no statistically significant evidence, but let's grab some random noise off the latest data and pretend like it makes a meaningful trend. We can't see the path forward, but I don't know why I shouldn't make a blend of wishful thinking, delusional futurecasting and gibberish to create a document that will drive ad revenue. The products of Microsoft are varied and numerous in amount. One thing they produce is Windows, or as the Indians call it, "Maize". In conclusion, Microsoft is a land of contrasts.
The problem I see with this is that even if Microsoft is starting to turn things around. "Employees are taking it in the shorts." That is what is really going to hurt. With the number being cut loose in the many thousands, and no clarification as who those thousands are, Microsoft now has pretty much everyone scared of losing their job.
That doesn't translate well into a strong improving company. People are going to spend a good amout of their time trying to find the exit, not making the company better.
I was an MS employee for 10 years (roughly from the mid-90's to the mid-00's).
It is a company that is fundamentally dysfunctional, especially in the way it identifies its top performers.
Nadella rose to the top under that system. There is no way he is the man to fix it.
A few years ago I had a lapse in judgement and interviewed to go back. What I saw was scary. The technical questions were way too easy. I suspect that the employees asking them found them hard. The hiring manager was a Director and had trouble understanding moderately clever/optimized solutions to CS200 problems. Portions of the interview process that dealt with management style, corporate culture and cultural fit left me with the impression that things had gotten way worse since I'd left as far as micromanagement and internal politics went.
In the end they made me an insulting offer, which in retrospect I am eternally grateful for because it was really easy to turn down without any second thoughts whatsoever.
Because at the end of the day it is "business as usual" -- no one really gives a fuck about Microsoft's new CEO.
Microsoft still doesn't a fucking clue about UI, it still shits on PC gamers with its crappy GWFL (Games For Windows Live), the Xbone has the stupidest marketing name ever, XP is still holding on because business can't be bought off with the latest untested shiny, DX12 will be only available on Windows 9 as MS tries to force gamers to upgrade, etc.
I learned quite a bit about Nadella from his e-mail which notified around eighteen thousand employees of impending layoffs and contained the word "synergies" no less than three times. Even his buzzwords are stale and unimaginative. This man either has no real vision, or he's very bad at communicating a clear vision. The article was correct in giving him a very bad grade in communication.
The one-platform tech base strategy actually seems sound, though, and in truth, is how they should have been pushing Windows 8 - not as a touch-first OS like we got, but one that's touch-capable, able to integrate seamlessly with other small form factor touch-focused Microsoft devices by using a unified API (write once, deploy everywhere). There's a lot of legacy products out there that people will still depend on for decades to come, and businesses are made nervous when the creator of the OS on which they depend veers off in a new direction, seemingly abandoning the current platform on which you rely.
It's a bit ironic to me that in trying to aim for the future, Microsoft is taking for granted and ultimately risking the core audience on which they've had a solid lock for the past twenty years. We'll see if Nadella manages to remember that while the desktop is no longer the face of new technology and is dwindling in importance, it's also a platform which is not likely to disappear as a significant market anytime in the near future. Rather than using that platform as a bully-pulpit to push it's other platforms, Microsoft needs to make it's other platforms compelling and attractive in their own right, and then demonstrate to businesses the value of a simple cross-platform deployment strategy, all while leaving it's "legacy" desktop platform in place in order to support more heavyweight computing tasks that individuals and business will still inevitably need.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.