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Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

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Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#51

Post by gzu »

tempsy wrote: post #25

Microsoft's P/E ratio is a bit nutty. Investors are expecting big things.

Also this Nadella period coincided with a massive rise in passive investing and buyback of shares.

Investors are buying the stock because it’s one of the largest in the indexes weighing in at nearly 5% of the SP 500 market cap. Because of passive investments and mutual funds trying to match passive (index) returns, a nickel of every dollar invested in the stock market goes directly to buy Microsoft without any human consideration.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#52

Post by darkmighty »

hylaride wrote: post #41
yodon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates built an amazing airplane. Steve Ballmer crashed it in the desert. Satya Nadella rallied the survivors, put it back together, and got it flying again. Yes, he absolutely deserves the credit just as Ballmer absolutely deserves the blame.

Actually, Ballmer did quite well at MS. He consistently increased earnings via Windows and Office during his tenure as CEO. He was a very good businessman. He was not, however, a product guy. Witness their failures with the Zune, mobile, early cloud computing. His problem was that he always tried to do what would be best for Microsoft and not the customer. You can get away with this if you already have an install bas…

I feel that reflects quite well Steve Jobs vs Tim Cook as well. Jobs just wanted to make 'insanely great' products [for their users], with the side effect of profit, while Tim Cook is probably fixated on efficiency and Shareholder value. Apple has had record profits and performance, but most will tell it's not the same and its future is not so certain.

It seems paradoxical that trying to maximize shareholder value at all costs could have the opposite effect long term; but think of it this way: almost every company in the world is fixated on profit -- that's not a differentiator. What makes the company is amazing products that people need, even depend upon -- once you have that, it is very hard to fail.

Profit singlemindedness can definitely lead you astray, be fragile (of course, the 'user-oriented' robust strategy can be thought as ultimately also a form of profit seeking).

What Nadella seems very competent at doing is also pleasing his workforce as an additional important stakeholder.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#53

Post by gph »

hos234 wrote: post #44

I am skeptical about the whole Cloud story. Has the faint stench of the housing bubble. It made sense when the story was about renting out spare data center capacity. Amazon and Google had a ton of excess which started the story. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM et al did not, but had to react to Amazon and Google Cloud and had to build up capacity. Then the game turned into ensuring all that new capacity was utilized. Enterpr…

I don't think it's dumb for most small to mid-size enterprise companies to migrate to the cloud. Being able to outsource IT/infrastructure is quite beneficial when your needs aren't so big that it makes sense to set up your own datacenter. And it's far more flexible, if you suddenly start getting a lot more or less traffic you can quickly upgrade/downgrade to what you need.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#54

Post by HlessClaudesman »

hylaride wrote: post #41
yodon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates built an amazing airplane. Steve Ballmer crashed it in the desert. Satya Nadella rallied the survivors, put it back together, and got it flying again. Yes, he absolutely deserves the credit just as Ballmer absolutely deserves the blame.

Actually, Ballmer did quite well at MS. He consistently increased earnings via Windows and Office during his tenure as CEO. He was a very good businessman. He was not, however, a product guy. Witness their failures with the Zune, mobile, early cloud computing. His problem was that he always tried to do what would be best for Microsoft and not the customer. You can get away with this if you already have an install bas…

Windows. Vista.

Ballmer was responsible for this blight upon humanity. How many human hour / lifetimes were wasted trying and failing to get things to work on Vista?

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#55

Post by cheschire »

stakhanov wrote: post #49
cheschire wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take him away then. Imagine he just vanished. Took a sabbatical, didn't say where he was going, and just disappeared for a year. What would happen? Things would function. They'd probably be fine for the first couple months, and they might even pass their first quarterly earnings without anyone noticing he's gone. If the department heads all were quiet and didn't notify the shareholders, things would seem completely f…

A country doesn't need a king to protect it from falling into tribalism. And a CEO is not the king of a company. The Board of Directors is the CEO's boss, and if the CEO did his job right, he is replaceable. If the Board of Directors did their jobs right, the CEO is replaceable. What you are saying seems to me to be completely groundless in every dimension. Also: I did not state the antithesis "Satya Nadella had noth…

The king analogy feels like a straw man, and tribalism is a generic social construct used well beyond the concepts of nations. I didn't state the CEO is irreplaceable. What I'm saying isn't groundless, you just either disagree or don't share my perspective.

I like your point about the board though, and I wonder how the MSFT board specifically feels about Nadella.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#56

Post by mywittyname »

hylaride wrote: post #41
yodon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates built an amazing airplane. Steve Ballmer crashed it in the desert. Satya Nadella rallied the survivors, put it back together, and got it flying again. Yes, he absolutely deserves the credit just as Ballmer absolutely deserves the blame.

Actually, Ballmer did quite well at MS. He consistently increased earnings via Windows and Office during his tenure as CEO. He was a very good businessman. He was not, however, a product guy. Witness their failures with the Zune, mobile, early cloud computing. His problem was that he always tried to do what would be best for Microsoft and not the customer. You can get away with this if you already have an install bas…

Short term thinking can make for excellent quarterly financials, but detrimental to long-term growth in ways that aren't obvious. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that Ballmer's Microsoft missed the boat on several important major technologies.

Imagine a world where the "iPhone" was a Microsoft product and Apple was a company left buying out other phone companies in a futile effort to catch up. That would would look very different.

IMHO, there is an alternate universe where Ballmer was never Microsoft's CEO, and instead, they had someone who could envision a future of mobile and cloud offering years before the competition did. Which means a world where the Windows Phone outsells iPhones and Androids combined, where Azure has 70%+ of the cloud computing market, where the Microsoft store is streaming original video content to customers through Xbox Live, etc. In this world, Microsoft crested the trillion dollar market cap several years ago and is well on their way to hitting the $2T mark.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#57

Post by kickscondor »

tikkabhuna wrote: post #19
kickscondor wrote: post #10

If you're curious why this run-of-the-mill PR piece is rising on HN, keep in mind that Microsoft (and other FAANG) posts like these are gamed by employees. https://www.kickscondor.com/satya-nadella-'reads''games'-hac...

Whilst that doesn't read well, is that quote confirming that he's "gaming" HN? To me that could be read as "We're focusing on interacting with the community to answer questions, gain feedback, and address concerns." I do tend to give people the benefit of the doubt though...

If Microsoft employees are 'working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity' on HN - what do you think the chances are that they are not upvoting as part of that? (I don't know - perhaps they are secretly following some monkish creed to abstain from clicking on triangles...)

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#58

Post by belltaco »

stakhanov wrote: post #4

First: A stock can rise for reasons having zero to do with the reality of the business behind the stock, for example mispricing, availability or the lack thereof of alternative investments, inflation, currency devaluation etc. Second: To me it always leaves a very foul aftertaste when the achievements of a team are ascribed to whoever the visible front-person is. I find it hard to believe that among the other 149999…

Interesting that similar comments don't appear on the top when blaming Ballmar or some top exec for failures. Don't you find it hard to believe that things going badly are not the fault of the other 149999 employees that Microsoft has, as much or even more than Ballmer?

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#59

Post by jessaustin »

notmyaccount wrote: post #27
maaaats wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, I upvoted because I thought it was interesting reading about the differences and how MS has changed over the years.

I upvoted it for the MS bucks I got.

Where do I sign up for that? I won't have to use windows, will I?

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#60

Post by khazhou »

cheschire wrote: post #38
stakhanov wrote: post #4

First: A stock can rise for reasons having zero to do with the reality of the business behind the stock, for example mispricing, availability or the lack thereof of alternative investments, inflation, currency devaluation etc. Second: To me it always leaves a very foul aftertaste when the achievements of a team are ascribed to whoever the visible front-person is. I find it hard to believe that among the other 149999…

Take him away then. Imagine he just vanished. Took a sabbatical, didn't say where he was going, and just disappeared for a year. What would happen? Things would function. They'd probably be fine for the first couple months, and they might even pass their first quarterly earnings without anyone noticing he's gone. If the department heads all were quiet and didn't notify the shareholders, things would seem completely f…

No one is saying a company should operate without a leader. And also, no one is claiming that just anyone can be a good CEO. Some competence in the unique CEO skillset is required. Every CEO is expected to keep their organization from devolving into tribal chaos, for example.
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