How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around • Hacker News Board

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#251

Post by bennysonething » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #227

raunakdag wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter what technologies MSFT have, the number one thought in people’s minds these days when you say big tech is simply FB G Amazon and Apple. It’s no longer MSFT up there with them. Definitely a stigma thing.

Who cares? They have sustainable business models in several segments, and even though they aren't on the cutting edge of pop culture, they're doing well.

Plus c# seems to be usually much further a head than java. See lamdas, async await...

One thing about Microsoft, their tooling just seems more polished and things tend to just work.

I'd be surprised if a lot of start ups don't start using c# since it's now open source and more platform agnostic.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#252

Post by scudd » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

typon wrote: post #89

With VSCode and Typescript, Microsoft owned the web developer space - a feat that I would not have predicted them doing 10 years ago. How did Google/Facebook get beaten here?

I think WSL should also be listed among awesome new developer amenities from Microsoft. I know a lot of people view it as a capitulation considering its Microsoft, but WSL is such a great tool.

I purchased a Macbook about 2 years ago out of curiosity, as it seems a lot of developers prefer them. I'll admit the screen is beautiful, but so much of the developer niceties are simply the Mac taking advantage of POSIX interoperability. As WSL continues to grow, I could definitely see going back to a Windows machine.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#253

Post by tabtab » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

Compatibility and Stability

Sometimes success is a matter of being at the right place at the right time. As the article mentions, many customers were afraid of AWS because they feared Amazon snooping in their retail intel. Because MS doesn't have a big e-store presence, they were not a retail threat. And Azure integrates better with existing Windows networks. Compatibility is still a key here, not raw merit. AWS is technically better.

That being said, Satya has been a steady hand and has made it fairly easy to keep running legacy software rather than pulling the carpet out, like VB-classic (desktop) did. Google, on the other hand, changes products like a teen changes fashion.

The VB-Classic fiasco under Ballmer sent panic through the industry, making customers realize they can no longer bet the farm on any MS tech, which they had been doing. Dot-Net was not backward compatible. COBOL still lives largely because co's don't or can't F with it. That's a lesson to not be ignored. (The need for a network GUI standard with similar properties is still out there.)

Businesses hate upgrading just for the sake of upgrading. Satya seems to understand this, making transitions gentler and more gradual.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#254

Post by acoard » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #130

apetrovic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Ballmer was a guy who restlessly milked two Microsoft cash cows (Windows and Office) to accommodate investors quarter after quarter. He didn't have a vision or courage to push Microsoft in some other direction, and my impression was that all good things that started under his regime (Azure, more openness) was either reactionary or he simply didn't care (most of early open source push was from his lieutenants).…

As far as Cook. There is no next iPhone. The iPhone was a once in a lifetime product. There were already 1 billion phones being sold a year when the iPhone was introduced - Jobs said he wanted to sell 10 million phones and capture 1% of the market. The smart phone (not the iPhone) has 70-80% penetration. What we call an electronic communication device that’s always connected may change, but there is no larger conceiv…

Humour me – if the iPad isn't innovative as it's simply a larger iPhone, how is the Watch innovative? Is it not simply a smaller iPhone with a strap?

I recognize Apple's A series and S series chips are different, but both the chips and watch in general seem like incrementalism to me.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#255

Post by Silhouette » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

goalieca wrote: post #249

Silhouette wrote: post #46

It's tough to argue with success. They obviously wanted someone who was going to go all-in on the cloud angle when they picked Nadella, and to give credit where it's due, the stock price chart for Microsoft says everything you need to say about the results he's delivered. What's worrying in a broader sense is that our societies have come to depend heavily on Microsoft's previous flagship offering, Windows. As the art…

Does the world still need windows? I very much doubt that.

As long as important software still runs on Windows and isn't available on other platforms, the answer will clearly be yes. In time, particularly with the shift towards online systems where the browser is now playing the standardised platform role that desktop operating systems used to play, hopefully the dependencies on Windows are becoming fewer and weaker. However, I think we're still a few years away from being able to assume that anyone can move off Windows without losing anything important to them.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#256

Post by Wistar » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #81

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.

I remember being an intern at Microsoft in 2009 and going to a talk with Ballmer. What I remember is the most charismatic human being I've ever seen. The man could have been a cult leader. He had and maybe still has power in his ability to speak. Any question we asked (and we were interns, we asked lots of them) he had not just an answer but a good answer. He spoke of his failures well too: "They ask if we should mak…

The man's natural speaking voice is the loudest I have ever heard. I could identify him coming down a long corridor by his voice well before I could by sight.

He drove a several-year old dark red Mercury Montego in which he almost ran me over in a parking lot behind the EBC. He was on the phone.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#257

Post by scudd » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

orthoxerox wrote: post #160

neurobashing wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has always had a huge developer tools footprint, so it's a natural fit.

That they did, but VS had always been aimed at MS tech stack: VC++, VB, C#, F#. And then VS Code appeared seemingly out of the blue, rapidly becoming the editor of choice for languages all across the tech landscape.

I think the VSCode extension marketplace greatly helps with the huge breadth of tooling. Not sure if this is applicable to regular Visual Studio as well, I've honestly never used it.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#258

Post by ProAm » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #247

ProAm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of that was the size of the paradigm shift MS tried to accomplish. It was a huge gamble and its important to take chances like that, but to change all three platforms so drastically made it hard for developers (table, PC and phone). And then I dont believe MS either A) invested enough or B) gave it enough time so when they pulled support developers definitely felt it. They were also a couple years late,…

Indeed. I'm actually in the middle of dealing with blowback from some Google product yanking right now. The big difference is, Google pulls stunts like that small things that aren't critical to the company's business. Microsoft, on the other hand, was blithely jackhammering away at the foundation of their business. They did fine, insofar as they're still profitable and well-capitalized, but one has to wonder what thi…

> The big difference is, Google pulls stunts like that small things that aren't critical to the company's business. Microsoft, on the other hand, was blithely jackhammering away at the foundation of their business.

For sure, I think MS was panicking tbh. They missed the mobile revolution (This was Ballmer and Gates), and then cloud was starting to take off and realized their OS and Office products were not optimized or read for that shift. I think they realized they had to change, and change fast and as a result didn't go well. But at least it started the change we see today with MS (for good or bad).

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#259

Post by cxseven » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

Who are the geniuses / slimeballs at Microsoft who snatched the JEDI contract away from AWS for dubious reasons, and who partnered with Duck Duck Go, the most visible complainant about Google's search dominance, and central to the government's antitrust case that it just filed?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#260

Post by ogre_codes » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

moolcool wrote: post #238

ogre_codes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another example of such uninspired CEO that keeps making good quarters but tarnishes his company advantages is Tim Cook. I can't wait for him to be replaced. Comments like this make zero sense to me. Apple might be better if Jobs was still alive. But without a time machine, and potentially better medicine, that's not an option. Under Cook Apple: - Increased profitability and market share massively. - Created the mo…

Those bullet points mostly focus on scaling existing products, and seem more Ballmer-like than Nadella-like IMO.

Airpods/ Beats/ Watch is a $25 Billion/ year business with 40%/ YoY growth. Neither product existed when Jobs was alive.

That's something Nadella hasn't even managed, let alone Ballmer.