How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around • Hacker News Board

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#131

Post by asveikau » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

muststopmyths wrote: post #85

nah, he turned the stock price around which is why Wall Street and MSFT employees love him. Every single thing he's credited for "turning around" was launched under Ballmer. My reading of Ballmer from the outside (I'd left long before the recent transition years) is that he probably trusted his division heads too much. He figured they knew what they were doing and he just had to steer the giant ship gently in a gener…

> letting Sinofsky run amok with the horseshit that was Windows 8 ? Or Office refusing to ship WinRT apps, ever ?

Strikes me that these two things are the same failure. WinRT wasn't up to the task due to Windows 8 being poorly thought out, so Office couldn't use it.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#132

Post by hanley » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

ProAm wrote: post #116

Miraste wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cook hasn't damaged Apple nearly as much as Ballmer hurt MS. During Ballmer's tenure, Microsoft launched the Zune, the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone, Windows 8, and the Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360). Cook may not be innovative, but he has yet to have a real failure, much less a disaster on the scale of those.

> the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone Surprisingly the phone was loved. What wasnt loved was the one desktop everywhere so when they tried to push 'Metro' to the PC, tablet and phone it struggled. But the tiled phone interface was good, and a lot of people liked it. I really think Ballmer and Cook are manifestations of the same person. Mac OS quality is the worst it's been in probably a decade+? Hard…

The Windows phone was loved because it had excellent Nokia hardware. The software was not loved and the app store was lacking.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#133

Post by undefinednull » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

Why do they even allow posting a pay walled content here?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#134

Post by chanmad29 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

As a casual user, I actually like the "look" of W10, and do not pay much attention to the latency that others have pointed out. What irks me most though is the constant request for updates and strong arm restarts to install them.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#135

Post by kabdib » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

tiffanyh wrote: post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

Ballmer created an indescribably toxic culture around reviews with his David Welch inspired "up or out" and "fire the bottom five percent" policies. Stack rankings were more like knife fights than honest appraisals of people's abilities and contributions. Teams used to deliberately hire underperformers so they could fire them, thus shielding productive people they would otherwise have to get rid of.

I'm not going to get started on his miserable technical leadership. Things more or less just happened under him, he didn't seem that involved in the quality of what was being produced.

Microsoft is well rid of him.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#136

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

ProAm wrote: post #116

Miraste wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cook hasn't damaged Apple nearly as much as Ballmer hurt MS. During Ballmer's tenure, Microsoft launched the Zune, the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone, Windows 8, and the Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360). Cook may not be innovative, but he has yet to have a real failure, much less a disaster on the scale of those.

> the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone Surprisingly the phone was loved. What wasnt loved was the one desktop everywhere so when they tried to push 'Metro' to the PC, tablet and phone it struggled. But the tiled phone interface was good, and a lot of people liked it. I really think Ballmer and Cook are manifestations of the same person. Mac OS quality is the worst it's been in probably a decade+? Hard…

So who is “innovating” more in electronics hardware?

As far as the Macs, outside of the keyboard fiasco which has been rectified, the recent Macs are getting good reviews from people who were rightfully critical a few years ago. The ARM Macs will soon be as far ahead of equivalent PCs as the iPhones are Androids when it comes to processing power.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#137

Post by sumtechguy » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

metalliqaz wrote: post #77

tiffanyh wrote: post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

Under Ballmer, MS dropped the ball on mobile. They had Windows CE, Windows on every desktop, and Xbox on the set top. And with all that, they couldn't put together a viable mobile product? They had the chance to make a holistic ecosystem that would span desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, TV, and everything in between. And they dropped the ball. Now we have to deal with a Duopoly between the largest advertiser and t…

No kidding... WinCE should have been a stripped down NT. Instead it was this 'other' thing that they drug along that was 'windows' but not quite 'windows' and a pain to dev for. They were stuck in this weird spot where they had to create a build system that took into account of every BOM every crappy cell phone the ODMs could come up with. Then married to cell phones that would forget everything you setup on the drop of a hat. Apple did something different that changed the market. They put an unlimited plan on it, decent amount of NAND, a good touchscreen, and a straight forward GUI that worked in the small screen market.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#138

Post by lotso » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

tiffanyh wrote: post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

100%. A lot of these things were set in motion under Ballmer and he tee'd it up for Satya. That doesn't excuse Ballmer's missteps and of course Satya deserves credit for a lot of the execution, but I think people like to latch on to the simple narrative of Satya Good, Ballmer Bad.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#139

Post by kamilszybalski » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #23

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality…

I think the points you're making are accurate and fair, however I also think these issues are solvable only because of the strategic direction Satya has led, specifically referring to the evolution of MSFTs business models.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#140

Post by diarrhea » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

sbayeta wrote: post #107

xiphias2 wrote: post #23

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality…

I've changed the way I launch applications since W10. Now I just hit the Windows key and type the name of the app or setting I'm looking for. The search is very quick and usually throws what I'm looking for. Here are two examples of how I use this that I think are great: I created a quick ppt or xls file yesterday, not sure how I named it. I hit the Windows key, type Excel (usually you don't need to type the whole wo…

This is the way to go and so much more efficient. I don't understand or use the new Settings because I don't have to. The search is good enough, albeit barely. What really rustled my jimmies was when Bing was down (which I don't care for and don't use), but it caused your local search (from SUPER-key) to also be down, due to its tight integration with Bing. Silent failure with an all-black window, the worst of all.