Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is Satya Nadella the best tech CEO of last decade?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 152 posts

Ask HN: Is Satya Nadella the best tech CEO of last decade?

#1

Post by oikawa_tooru »

He turned around an almost dying windows to become this Kraken that has the majority dev environment in its chokehold. That's impressive Other candidates in my list are Frank Slootman of Snowflake and Tim Cook of Apple for how he has not dropped the ball from Steve Jobs. What are yours?

Re: Ask HN: Is Satya Nadella the best tech CEO of last decade?

#2

Post by uberman »

I don't know how much of the MS turnaround can be attributed to him, but if we take it at face value that the CEO is responsible for everything, then MS definitely has had a dramatic positive run following Nadella taking the reigns from Ballmer.

MS still lacks a industry leading 21st century consumer device and Nadella has not been able to change that but his bets on cloud computing, embracing of Linux and open source and the rise of VSCode are something to behold.

As an "older-school" dev, I am constantly amazed that I can open a linux prompt on windows or do VSCode work with a local gui on a remote computer or inside a docker container.

Re: Ask HN: Is Satya Nadella the best tech CEO of last decade?

#3

Post by zamnos »

uberman wrote: post #2

I don't know how much of the MS turnaround can be attributed to him, but if we take it at face value that the CEO is responsible for everything, then MS definitely has had a dramatic positive run following Nadella taking the reigns from Ballmer. MS still lacks a industry leading 21st century consumer device and Nadella has not been able to change that but his bets on cloud computing, embracing of Linux and open sourc…

Balmer said it best, 'Developers, developers, developers!'

And then Microsoft bought Github.

Re: Ask HN: Is Satya Nadella the best tech CEO of last decade?

#4

Post by zamnos »

uberman wrote: post #2

I don't know how much of the MS turnaround can be attributed to him, but if we take it at face value that the CEO is responsible for everything, then MS definitely has had a dramatic positive run following Nadella taking the reigns from Ballmer. MS still lacks a industry leading 21st century consumer device and Nadella has not been able to change that but his bets on cloud computing, embracing of Linux and open sourc…

> MS still lacks a industry leading 21st century consumer device

The XBox division doesn't count?

Re: Ask HN: Is Satya Nadella the best tech CEO of last decade?

#5

Post by endisneigh »

whether you are using profit or market cap it's clear Apple, and therefore Tim Cook, is the winner. add to the fact that Apple clearly has been the most responsible in terms of keeping costs under control and therefore not having layoffs or other cost cutting measures now, says it all.

Re: Ask HN: Is Satya Nadella the best tech CEO of last decade?

#8

Post by blindriver »

I think his flexibility to not make Windows first gave his engineers new life. Not being forced into a set of predictable actions based on ideology and being flexibly minded to let his engineer follow the best path is why Microsoft has risen from its decades of stagnation. He didn't lead with fear the same way Sundar is leading Google.
Post reply on HN