I'm looking forward to learning more about him in the coming weeks.
I'm glad it's a tech guy.
Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
61–70 of 132 posts
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#62His twitter seems to suggest he really is into keeping up with the latest trends. https://twitter.com/satyanadella The article states there was a 5 month search. I'm glad they are hiring within the ranks.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it have been better to hire someone from the outside with no experience in software/technology AND no MBA? Just trying to see if you (parent and g-parent) consider an MBA an overall negative signal, regardless of someone's background.
Satya has an MBA too. I was just commenting on my previous comment. I guess author meant that someone just with MBA as a qualification and no relevant tech background would have been bad deal since MBAs get hired in leadership role even if they may or may not possess relevant domain knowledge.
Nobody is going to get hired as CEO of an $80 billion a year company with just an MBA. It would be an MBA plus 20-30 years of business experience, and these days it's almost impossible to avoid technology completely. I'm not even sure domain knowledge is important for a CEO of a company that size: once you become a $50 billion plus company, you don't have time to get involved with the details of the business.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#64His twitter seems to suggest he really is into keeping up with the latest trends. https://twitter.com/satyanadella The article states there was a 5 month search. I'm glad they are hiring within the ranks.
Is there a strong correlation between being active on Twitter and being a successful CEO?
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#65My personal opinion is that for Microsoft this is a much better solution than to hire an external CEO with an MBA and no background in software/technology. If the news are true then I wish all the luck to Mr. Nadella.
I disagree. Technology people tend to focus on the shiny, which really isn't what Microsoft needs at this point. They're just too big and they play in too many fields where they end up competing with themselves in half of the markets they play in. After ten years of Ballmer, what Microsoft needs now is a professional manager to sort out the mess he left. They have no shortage of great technology people; what they nee…
>what they need is someone to bring the organization to heel behind a universal vision.
Unless that vision is just next quarter's earnings, they can't afford a MBA type who doesn't have a deep understanding of technology.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#66A lot of Nokia employees are probably happy it isn't going to be Stephen Elop. I know this one is.
As a former NOKIAn I am sad. I want to see MS go down in flames and without Elop it's gonna be difficult. However Indians are also very talented at destroying the spirit of their own companies and alienating their users (see Harman or Adobe) so there is a hope...
@nokia_chi,
Wow! I'd like to hear your expert opinion on NSN CEO as well. /s
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#67As I said 50 days ago[1] Nadella was always the most likely internal candidate. It's a choice that makes some sense to me - he's a technologist, which I think is important (note that at some point the Ford CEO was tipped). However, his background is all in Enterprise software. Microsoft's most successful products recently have all been in the Enterprise field, so that reflects well on him. But there have to be questi…
Microsoft really isn't a consumer company: they make all their profit from enterprise software. Ballmer's biggest mistake was trying to convince an elephant to become a mouse. What he left was a mess that needs a lot of cleaning up. It doesn't help that he reorganized the company 6 months ago, effectively preventing his successor from making any substantial changes from the Ballmer way.
Given the number of people that were mentioned as front runners in this CEO search over the last few months, this seems to be a job that nobody outside Microsoft wants. Nadella was always the most likely internal candidate, and it really feels like they're settling on him because everyone external candidate they wanted turned them down.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Nobody uses bing Not sure if you are trying to pull out the old faded joke or being truly serious. Bing has about 18%-27% market share depending on Organic vs Powered By. No I am not nitpicking a specific blog article, infact its the first summarized link on a Google search for "Bing market share". Bing also powers Siri, which is another major contributor. >Windows is largely enterprise. Its revenue may be largely e…
> Infact I can blindly bet that majority of users here on HN is using Windows. I'd be willing to bet that HN has a lot more OSX, Linux and BSD users than the typical split...
Based off the majority of OS related post and comments, I would assume so too but there are a good number of lurkers and users who are non-vocal about their use of Windows. I couldn't find any HN Poll on this matter, but I hope someone who dealt with an HN effect would be kind enough to share their Analytics report on the OS traffic.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. Technology people tend to focus on the shiny, which really isn't what Microsoft needs at this point. They're just too big and they play in too many fields where they end up competing with themselves in half of the markets they play in. After ten years of Ballmer, what Microsoft needs now is a professional manager to sort out the mess he left. They have no shortage of great technology people; what they nee…
>what they need is someone to bring the organization to heel behind a universal vision. Unless that vision is just next quarter's earnings, they can't afford a MBA type who doesn't have a deep understanding of technology.
A CEO doesn't work in a vacuum, nor does he need to be the most knowledgeable person in the room. He can pay other people to think for him and ask the right questions. It's not an easy job, but it necessitates taking a 10,000 foot view of everything. Knowing how to navigate a corporate alliance or a merger is much more important than anything technology-specific.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Infact I can blindly bet that majority of users here on HN is using Windows. I'd be willing to bet that HN has a lot more OSX, Linux and BSD users than the typical split...
Based off the majority of OS related post and comments, I would assume so too but there are a good number of lurkers and users who are non-vocal about their use of Windows. I couldn't find any HN Poll on this matter, but I hope someone who dealt with an HN effect would be kind enough to share their Analytics report on the OS traffic.
Maybe it's like a sort of Stockholm syndrome...
Yesterday a buddy of mine (and partner in crime - the proverbial kind) tried to install a new language and dev environment on his machine. 4 hours and much frustration later, he still couldn't do much.
On Linux the same tasks would have taken 20 minutes (and did, as I had installed the same environment several months ago).
I couldn't imagine doing any development on Windows unless it's C++ or C# on VS... Everything is a hassle compared to Linux.