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'This is Not Your Father's Microsoft': CEO Satya Nadella On Helping a Faded Legend Find a 'Sense of Purpose' (cnet.com)
News outlet CNET has two big stories on Microsoft today. The publication interviewed CEO Satya Nadella on the changes he has made since taking the top job. The stories, among other things, talks about Microsoft Hackathon, the diversity pushes Nadella has made at the company, and how Microsoft lost the touch with what made it successful, and how Nadella is trying to fix that. From story one: Nadella dreamed up the Microsoft Hackathon, which the company calls the "largest private hackathon in the world," when he became CEO in February 2014. Just a few of the thousands of projects pitched over the past five years have inspired mainstream products. Most of these let's-change-the-world ideas aren't the kind of business tech that Microsoft makes the bulk of its money on -- at least not today.
That's just fine with Nadella, because the meetup serves another purpose: rebranding Microsoft as a modern, relevant company. When he became the third CEO of the world's largest software company, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella made changing Microsoft's rigid, hierarchical and arrogant culture his top priority. He sort of had to. Though arguably one of the most successful technology companies in history, Microsoft's had a string of high-profile misses in mobile, search and social networking. Additionally, the company's toxic culture, characterized by corporate politics, infighting and backstabbing, fed an image of Microsoft as a fading legend.
Rivals Apple, Google and Facebook were seen as innovators creating shiny new opportunities with their disruptive tech. A generation grew up without ever having used a Microsoft product. "One of the things that happens when you're super successful is you sort of sometimes lose touch with what made you successful in the first place," Nadella tells us when we ask what he was trying to solve with the hackathon."I wanted to go back to the very genesis of this company: What is that sense of purpose and drive that made us successful? What was the culture that may have been there in the very beginning or in the times when we were able to achieve that success? How do we really capture it?" says Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992. It's about "the renaissance as much as about just sort of fixing something that's broken." From story two: CNET: What is the vibe or image of Microsoft you want the world to know?
Nadella: It's in our mission. It's empowering. Any association with this company should be, they put some tools, they put some platforms, they gave me the opportunity to really do something. Whether it's a student writing a term paper, whether it's a startup trying to create a company, a small business that's trying to be more productive or even a public sector institution that's trying to be more efficient and serve its citizens -- [they] should feel that association with Microsoft is empowering to them. That's what I want us to stand for.
That's just fine with Nadella, because the meetup serves another purpose: rebranding Microsoft as a modern, relevant company. When he became the third CEO of the world's largest software company, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella made changing Microsoft's rigid, hierarchical and arrogant culture his top priority. He sort of had to. Though arguably one of the most successful technology companies in history, Microsoft's had a string of high-profile misses in mobile, search and social networking. Additionally, the company's toxic culture, characterized by corporate politics, infighting and backstabbing, fed an image of Microsoft as a fading legend.
Rivals Apple, Google and Facebook were seen as innovators creating shiny new opportunities with their disruptive tech. A generation grew up without ever having used a Microsoft product. "One of the things that happens when you're super successful is you sort of sometimes lose touch with what made you successful in the first place," Nadella tells us when we ask what he was trying to solve with the hackathon."I wanted to go back to the very genesis of this company: What is that sense of purpose and drive that made us successful? What was the culture that may have been there in the very beginning or in the times when we were able to achieve that success? How do we really capture it?" says Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992. It's about "the renaissance as much as about just sort of fixing something that's broken." From story two: CNET: What is the vibe or image of Microsoft you want the world to know?
Nadella: It's in our mission. It's empowering. Any association with this company should be, they put some tools, they put some platforms, they gave me the opportunity to really do something. Whether it's a student writing a term paper, whether it's a startup trying to create a company, a small business that's trying to be more productive or even a public sector institution that's trying to be more efficient and serve its citizens -- [they] should feel that association with Microsoft is empowering to them. That's what I want us to stand for.
'This is Now Your Father's Microsoft'
I was always suspicious why my mum carried a photo of Bill Gates in her purse.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
'This is Now Your Father's Microsoft':
I think you mean "not".
I hope.
Apparently I'm smarter than the entirety of MS management with that title right there. Cut the force-installed game apps in Win10 and stop pretending I'm going to give you $1200 to run office for 10 years when we paid about $150/seat for Office 2003 in 2003 and used it until 2014.
Only peasants pay for Office and Windows, the rest of us abuse the ability to generate licenses at will from our MSDN accounts.
Dam right this isn't your father's Microsoft.
* Thinks MSVC telemtry is OK
* Thinks Forced updates is OK
* Thinks 100+ endpoints for Win10 is OK
* Thinks DX12 only for Win10 is OK
Yeah, no. Sorry, no longer interested in what spyware you are peddling today MS.
I will start to look into LibreOffice and the like, so long as compatibility problems don't arise.
Are you new here? Of course Microsoft will introduce compatibility problems...
The thing that made MS great was empowering their users to make choices. The primary choice was to throw out the forced IBM ecosystem that dominated computing in those days.
The problem is they got greedy and BECAME what IBM was and the cycle started all over again.
Our fathers' Microsoft was more honest than the current one. It made mediocre software, but at least it didn't try to steal (excuse me, cloud-connect) users' data or nickel-and-dime them for eternity for software that doesn't do that much more than the version from 5-10 years ago.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Linux and Libreoffice are free and don't steal my data. Who needs Windows? Not me.
Sub-point under "forced updates": Forced reboots.
Doesn't matter if you have unsaved work. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
Plenty of alternatives for the admins. Few for the lusers.
My father didn't have many OS choices. We do. That's the real difference.
Dad could use MS-Dos, PC-Dos or DR-Dos on his x86 compatible PC. That was pretty much it.
But MSFT wasn't in the business of demanding personal data back then as their OS crashed multiple times a day. They had enough work just making it stable.
NT4 was pretty stable. I was a developer and my NT4 workstation wouldn't usually crash more than once a month. It didn't spy.
Vista sucked. It didn't spy.
Then something changed. MSFT decided they knew better than I what I needed and started forcing changes. I stopped patching, because the new EULA wasn't something I could accept. More and more I switched away from using Windows to other options which don't spy.
My father wouldn't allow his computer to spy on him. That is something I'm certain about.
> Java Licensing, not even mentioning the finer points of Systemd
Those are two major problems. We've been an Oracle customer for over twenty-five years, but we still can't get a quote from them on continuing to get Java 8 updates. The licensing including the term NUP (named user plus) is so confusing even their salespeople don't understand their convoluted licensing. We're will to pay a good bit of money to not have to upgrade to 11 in September because of the high cost of testing and supporting users that would have to upgrade, but they can't tell us what we need to pay.
systemd is a huge improvement in most ways, but it's different which some people don't like and it's harder to troubleshoot with dropped log messages and how it always exits 0 even when there's a problem.
so much this. microsoft has alienated people trying to force a subscription model no one wants, spying on users, and forcing things on their os no one wants. I don't see any correcting of the course on that. Once folk leave for another os they are not coming back, and windows 7 looks to be my last windows os.
And we have the problem with updates not being forced for our developers. We recently did an SSAE 16 audit, and the first three Windows machines they looked at hadn't been updated since last summer. Ouch.
I don't understand why I can't seem to disable updates on my home Windows 10 machine. They're blocked for a while but every method I've tried has eventually stopped working. It's the worst of both worlds.
Right. The subscription model with huge cancellations. Promoted by cellphone producers, car leasers, new car manufacturers (like volvo), cable companies, satellite TV companies, digital / satellite radio companies. Autodesk. Katea. Solidworks. It's disgusting. The only one of these that I buy into is the cell-phone plans, and that may likely change when I am out of this contract since the off-contract companies are now very competitive.
Nope. Its better than 8 and 8.1 lol. Still not as good as 95 - 7 though lol.
"Honest" and "Microsoft" never went together. Sure, the methods of evilhood may have changed, but MS has always been slimy. I could tell you stories all day about the good 'ol days (or not so good).
MS could do somewhat of a turn-around if they made their terms clear. Consumers may be okay with ads and/or snooping if they are given a price menu and the effects are clear. One could get a discount and even free software if they accept various degrees of ads and snooping, and be allowed to change the terms. Same with purchase versus rent.
Honest slimebaggary is an under-explored niche. Zig when all the other big tech co's are zagging, and you may get an edge (lower-case).
Table-ized A.I.
Two big stories? MS boss tries to keeps its company relevant in 21th century. I am not sure these are big stories.
Applied Engineering built Apple II add on cards. MS also built a Z80 card for the Apple II, which was actually not a bad piece of engineering. I owned one and at the time MS was known mostly for BASIC and I was happy with the card and MS labeled CP/M.
It wasn't until I moved to the PC that I learned to hate MS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Once folk leave for another os they are not coming back, and windows 7 looks to be my last windows os.,
Me too, and what's especially sad about this for Microsoft is that I for one would have bought Windows 8 if they hadn't mangled the UI, and I would have bought Windows 10 as well if they hadn't made it spyware. And I know I'm not alone, as a gamer. Windows is where the games are, so it was a no-brainer that I'd keep giving Microsoft money even though I despised them... right up until they made those decisions. I'd have upgraded just to get DX12, and the desktop duplication API. Instead, I'm going to run Windows 7 into the ground, and then I'm going to put it into a VM and use it to run whatever Windows games I can. Any I can't, that also won't run in Wine, I just won't play any more. I'm going to let them go with Microsoft.
All Microsoft had to do to keep people like me was to unambiguously provide the ability to disable the spying. Instead, they doubled down on spyware, and started inserting it into Windows 7's update rollups, so that I have to install it and then remove it with every update. That makes me update less often, which makes Windows less secure as an ecosystem, which makes Microsoft look even more incompetent than they actually are. As such, they lose sales both coming and going.
Microsoft has derived substantial benefit from home users of their operating system, since the general familiarity with Windows provides network effects that have helped make it the de facto standard. If Microsoft wants to stem the tide of departing users, they are going to have to give up on being a Big Data company, and go back to their core business of providing an operating system with an easily comprehensible development system — you know, the way they attracted users in the first place.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"