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How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

economist.com

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Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#401

Post by fakedang »

stickfigure wrote: post #219
nailer wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google hasn't had a major new product for a decade. Prior to 2010: Search, Doubleclick, Maps, Mail, GSuite, AppEngine (which was first serverless platform). All of which were category makers or category killers. Since 2010:

In fairness, Google Cloud Platform is a huge new product. GAE (which I love) was but a tiny drop compared to the vast ocean that is GCP today. And GCP is really a multitude of products. Android was launched in 2008, although I think it really deserves to be in the post-2010 category. Today's Android is a whole different beast. Google Home is a new product. And tied in with Home & Android is voice recognition, which i…

GCP is nowhere near Azure or AWS, either in terms of functionality, or in terms of support. GCP cannot compete at all with those two for enterprise customers, since a.) lack of functionality and risk of closure and b.) the big customers have already been locked in. Of all the GCP customers I've heard of, the only big one is Spotify, while the landscape is largely dominated by independent devs.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#402

Post by curyous »

apetrovic wrote: post #38
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.

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).…

Steve Ballmer made some mistakes, but after enough years went by, he realized that and changed his approach, setting up MS for success once again. He just didn't have enough time to execute on his new vision before he got ousted.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#403

Post by RestlessMind »

medium_burrito wrote: post #384
RestlessMind wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No strong opinions on Cook but a Ballmer of the current era is Sundar Pichai. Google of the last few years is utterly rudderless, losing all the mojo and goodwill they once had. That shows in the Stock price, in (a lack of) successful new products, in Google’s loss of reputation as the “coolest company to be at”, in the bloated middle management occupied in turf wars, in essentially most of the things that matter.

That's extremely unfair to Ballmer- Ballmer made lots of bets and put a lot of effort into them. Some were given up on- the phone, but you can't critize Azure, among many. Microsoft has developed lots of products and can develop more. They did plenty under Ballmer. When they fail they try again, or invest more effort. Google has only one cash cow. They don't know how to develop products and how to win customers. I fe…

> That's extremely unfair to Ballmer

LOL, I agree. Ballmer at least came across as a strong leader, if wrong-headed at times. Sundar just comes across as a weakling yes-man trying to please all the sides.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#404

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Beldin wrote: post #296
baldfat wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His cancer was the least deadly of the cancers and with treatment he would have lived much longer. My mom had stage one pancreatic cancer 4 years ago and she is still alive today and cancer free for over four years. So it is possible.

There's pancreatic cancer and cancer of the pancreas. (There might be more, i know about these two). The difference in life expectancy is staggering. One is basically starting the clock (in months to a handful of years), with the other, recovery is possible.

Pancreatic cancer essentially forms a barrier around the cancer that prevents drugs from reaching the tumors as I understood layman's descriptions of the disease when one of my friends died of it.

I think there was some initial success in attaching vitamin d to some drugs to bypass the "firewall", but it was still hard.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#405

Post by papaf »

microtherion wrote: post #390
codebolt wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there has been an improvement in other parts of the supply chain, but the situation in DR Congo (where e.g. coltan used for capacitors is mined) seems to only be getting worse.

Apple specifically used to call out the DR Congo as one area where their supply chain responsibility was not yet up to their standards, but in recent years, they claim to have established an audited supply chain: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Conf... (I'm going by Apple's own claims here, would be interested to hear whether you have information contradicting these claims).

Did the child labour lawsuit [1] get settled? I think your link is describing audited Smelters and Refiners. The kids work in the Cobalt mines and Apple is one of the biggest consumers of Cobalt in the world.

[1] https://industryeurope.com/5-tech-giants-sued-over-use-of-ch...

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#406

Post by papaf »

microtherion wrote: post #399
papaf wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think "designed to fail" is a downright false charge, and "repairability" is a trickier trade-off than repair advocates make it out to be ... Somebody should tell the UK Parliament, they need some feedback and Apple cannot spare anybody to clear up this "downright false charge" : https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/62/environmental-...

I don't see "designed to fail" or any corresponding language on that page. There is concern about repairability there. I seem to recall that the UK was a member of a trans-national organization that recently passed tougher repairability legislation, and quit that organization to be rid of all that burdensome regulation. For the life of me, I can't understand why Apple wouldn't take the UK seriously…

Specifically, the EAC is keen to obtain information on what Apple is doing to enhance the operating life of its products ...

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#407

Post by Ashanmaril »

RedShift1 wrote: post #76
cblconfederate wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree to this. They had a good going with windows 7. The freaking windows 10 photos app intermittently hangs forever when opening a simple image file. I was just using Videos and it crashed when opening settings. Skype is still a disaster years after swinching from skype classic. The abomination that replaced control panel is designed intentionally like a maze from which you cant get out. I dare you to find the bluet…

Open start menu, search for x. Can't find it. Close start menu, open start menu, search for x, instant result. Sigh

I don't even bother with Windows search any more

There's a tool called Everything that somehow does a search across all files instantaneously and I haven't touched start since then

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#408

Post by slaymaker1907 »

muricula wrote: post #343
vp8989 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB is big ad. To say that MSFT is not big tech is absurd. They have a widely used desktop operating system, a top-3 public cloud, they make their own laptops and other hardware, they make multiple widely used programming languages, they have one of the most widely used databases, they have a well regarded research division ... the list goes on The scope of tech that MSFT works on is as big as anyone, and is what they…

The Silicon Valley's idea of Big Tech didn't include MS a few months ago when they were leading the pack for most valuable company in the world. And somehow they're escaping anti-trust scrutiny right now too, so maybe it's better to have a less sexy profile.

Part of that could also be that Microsoft is much more willing to do things in order to avoid looking like a monopoly more than just forbidding the word monopoly. A lot of effort has been spent in bringing SQL Server to Linux as opposed to continuing to use it as a way to lock people into using Windows Server. That's not a charitable act mind you, but I doubt Microsoft under Balmer would have done it.

Disclaimer: I do work for Microsoft on SQL, but I am not in management nor do I speak in any capacity for Microsoft.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#409

Post by sneak »

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?

> With VSCode and Typescript, Microsoft owned the web developer space

I think buying NPM and GitHub, and inducing Docker to add Windows support, got them more (in the long run) in this space than those two things.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#410

Post by notJim »

anentropic wrote: post #333
RandallBrown wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at MS for his last company meeting and you're right. That guy has charisma and PASSION for Microsoft. I never liked working there, but watching him scream "I LOVE THIS COMPANY" while in tears made me feel like I was part of something huge and important.

It sounds terrifying TBH :)

Charismatic people often can be IME.
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