141–150 of 152 posts
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how could they have influenced that one in practical terms?
Not doing illegal shit and spitting in the faces of technically intelligent potential complainants. They're playing nice now so Windows 10 spyware gets accepted.
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Board members aren't there to invent the next iPhone, they're there to determine when the CEO should be fired, and to hire a new CEO when necessary. Right now, the Microsoft board is particularly pointless since Satya Nadella is one of the highest-performing CEOs in the world and isn't close to retirement.
If Satya got hit by a bus this weekend that "pointless" board would become very important very quickly.
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You have to wonder what a suit from Pepsi has to offer to a technology company. Pepsi sells sugar water that is causing obesity at scale. Pepsis most recent investment is a $4 billion energy brand called Rockstar. That romance between Jobs and the Pepsi CEO was in hindsight also a Hindenburg idea. What happend to we are changing the world with technology?
Business is business. No one on the board is debugging C++. Most of what they talk about is financials.
Whichever poster it was the other day saying that this was the optimal time to send out bad news as a company seems to have been astute.
Also stepped down from the Berkshire board as well. Given that he stepped away from a day to day role in 2008 and then stepped down as the chairman in 2014, I'm guessing he's focusing on his foundation. He's still the 8th largest shareholder according to Bloomberg's records(103,000,000 share), which is pretty impressive given that the 7 entities above him are all funds. Incase you wanted to know who the remaining 12…
If my understanding is not wrong, board members are representing shareholders and they themself are also share-holders.
So, is Pepsi Cola, Gap Jeans, GSK (Sensodyne) & Marriott Hotel (just the household brands I recognised) shareholders of Microsoft or are the people Shareholders of Microsoft and their day job is at those companies?
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Most of the board members seem to be partners at various investment firms. Many of them don't seem to even remotely tech people. It's kind of sad that the Microsoft board lacks any external visionaries.
It actually makes a lot of sense. Technical people sometimes think that the higher up you go the bigger the decisions, but normally decision making peters off around the Director level. Above that and it's really about how to keep the company going as a company, or in other words the business of maintaining a structure of people that continues to survive within the regulatory context that the company operates within.…
I do know how the stuff works in general, but my technical skills are probably a decade out of date because I've spent that time working up the management ladder and learning those skills instead. But management is more about being able to organize a group of people to do a task, not doing the task yourself.
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At a huge company like Microsoft the board isn't really a great place for visionaries. It's much better at things like helping the CEO understand the thoughts of large institutional investors that provide Microsoft with capital. A visionary is better suited as a "special advisor" to someone... like the role that Bill Gates is keeping.
At the same time, if the function of the board is to keep the ship from drifting too far off course, or to handle certain problems the company itself seems incapable of or oblivious to (mass cognitive dissonance) it could be useful to have a Jobsesque pitchman who can get a board to be accepting of radical risk taking. A board might lean conservative and risk averse, and sometimes companies need moments of extreme ri…
Big multinationals typically have advisory boards / subcommittees that advise them on certain topics. I assume Microsoft has a technology advisory board (and in their case, likely several) that includes at least some high-level engineering talent.
Leadership at the board level involves high level decision-making, but not a lot of actual work. The CFO of PepsiCo has a ton of responsibilities himself; his position on the board of Microsoft is likely only a few hours a month because it's limited to reading reports prepped by the C-suite and its advisors, then voting on decisions. Senior executives and investors are chosen for boards because their day jobs require an understanding of market context and a good bullshit filter to guard against the Jobsesque pitchman scenario.
Also stepped down from the Berkshire board as well. Given that he stepped away from a day to day role in 2008 and then stepped down as the chairman in 2014, I'm guessing he's focusing on his foundation. He's still the 8th largest shareholder according to Bloomberg's records(103,000,000 share), which is pretty impressive given that the 7 entities above him are all funds. Incase you wanted to know who the remaining 12…
Kind of odd, being an employee there, I've never heard of eleven of the twelve board members before.
This is the preferred employee experience.
A large employer is usually more comfortable having executives of other corporations being more familiar with board members compared to its own employees.
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Business is business. No one on the board is debugging C++. Most of what they talk about is financials.
Gates can still code. Larry and Sergei can still code. Zuckerberg can still code. Being to do this is still relevant for a tech company ceo or leader.
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At the same time, if the function of the board is to keep the ship from drifting too far off course, or to handle certain problems the company itself seems incapable of or oblivious to (mass cognitive dissonance) it could be useful to have a Jobsesque pitchman who can get a board to be accepting of radical risk taking. A board might lean conservative and risk averse, and sometimes companies need moments of extreme ri…
> Being able to sit in on board meetings, and talk during them would be enough, not necessarily having a vote, maybe thats a special adviser? Big multinationals typically have advisory boards / subcommittees that advise them on certain topics. I assume Microsoft has a technology advisory board (and in their case, likely several) that includes at least some high-level engineering talent. Leadership at the board level…
IBM purging its hardware divisions, and then buying Red Hat is another example, where a company maybe waited a little too long between moves. Would a more aggressive board pushed the company to do that earlier?