Nadella is a perfect fit for MSFT CEO.
MSFT's power and potential is in everything enterprise and Nadella understands this (or rather passionate about this) universe from top to bottom better than any other candidate.
Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
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Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#72As 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 tha…
"Microsoft really isn't a consumer company"
yeah, except the video game market and the whole hardware market...
It's definitely the most obvious area for growth that they have available. The enterprise market is more or less saturated by them already. They're sorta trying to push their cloud solution, but they're late to that game. They aren't going to sell a whole bunch more of MS Office... It's a segment that will continue to develop organically, but the place where they really wanna be dumping cash on is definitely the consumer market.
I know everyone hates on Balmer, but he seemed to follow a very sensibly strategy and there seems to have been a genuinely big effort to integrate their different platforms and services into something that pleasant to use and develope for. At least stylistically, Windows RT, 8, Phone and Xbox are identical. The underlying "meat" is in wonderful languages (C#/F#), with a great IDE (VS13), with - from what I understand - and well made new libraries. They've also aggressively tried to cut out the old moldy stuff, and have paid for it in the short term (ex: Windows RT not supporting Win32 & Windows Phone 7 not being very compatible with Windows Phone 8)
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think BillG would have allowed hiring someone with an MBA and no background in software/technology. He is still the majority shareholder (from what I've read) and sits on the board.
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.
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Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#74This won't end well. Microsoft is a bubble with an echo-chamber internally. Their employees are in the 1990s era, which is making DVD application software (Word, etc.). The problem is that they still think that way. Senior managers are from the 1990s. Or they hired from colleges and sheep dipped people in the same thinking. People from startups and industry don't last long there, and definitely don't rise in management.
The reason startup or industry people don't rise in Microsoft is that they are rejected as not matching the 1990s way of doing things.
Examples: Their UI innovation was in WPF because someone forgot to tell them that UI dev now happens on web pages and iPhone. Hotmail is a joke. MSN is a joke. Web hosted office 365 is a joke. Exchange web UI and client main usage is for 1990s customers and not 2010 customers. C# is charging in the opposite direction of the entire webapp industry's development platforms. (aka, they were late to MVC, Hadoop, Linux server hosting, etc.) They push Windows OS lock-in to win (but that fails).
The right leader comes from Silicon Valley in a startup gone big. That right leader will then replace many of the other leaders in MSFT with Silicon Valley highly strategic leaders. When the CEO is a Microsoft person, they will keep the same Microsoft 1990s style internal leaders and nothing will change in the category of what needs to change.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#75My 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…
I totally disagree on the "professional manager" - that's what ballmer was. and this is coming from someone who thinks ballmer is unfairly criticized.
(eg - what google and apple unleashed on the world in the past 10 years was a major historical shift - coming from product/technical people at their core. arguably, this shift was one that only a newbie or outsider could pull off. 20/20 hindsight to say "microsoft could have dominated those arenas" when they had so many other verticals of strength to tend to. (and 20/20 hindsight for me to say this as well...))
IMHO microsoft needs to keep focusing on hacker-friendliness - they have a great lock on the corporate world, but the corporate world is starting to look to the hacker community for direction.
what do i mean by this?
big companies can't be trusted to just get brand loyalty and keep buying your stuff until they go out of business. look at RIM - Blackberries were mandatory company accessories, now it is BYOD. Look at the server market - the biggest consumers of servers (FB, GOOG) are using designs they made themselves. Tougher for Dell and HP to keep selling ready-made servers. How long before other major corporations are doing the same?
the enterprise market is more tech savvy than times past, and only getting more so. high-level technical creativity and intuitive understanding of product potential is vital.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#76That's disappointing. I was really hoping that it would be someone external to the company who would be visionary enough to take them to new heights. Instead, they're picking the safe, enterprise bet, who won't change things too much. I would say Microsoft's consumer facing days are numbered.
They basically own the entire PC market, and most of the enterprise market. What more do you want? It's like bitching that Walmart hasn't cornered Starbucks. Jesus.
The thing is, the "PC market" is rather artificially defined to be that market in which Microsoft dominates.
If you take the generic concept of "personal computer", what people were using those for five or ten years ago, people are now often using smartphones and tablets. Due to how the market is segmented for analysis, this isn't counted against Microsoft, but the money doesn't care how we segment it. The PC, in the long term, is going to be a niche market. Not today, not tomorrow, but in 5, 10, 20 years, a Microsoft that owns the entire PC market and little else will be a tiny, broken Microsoft.
If we count tablets in with PCs, then MS's "PC" monopoly is already gone. Tablets are selling around 1/3rd of what PCs are selling, so that gives MS a 75% share.
If we count smartphones in with PCs, then PCs almost disappear. Smartphones make up about 60% of the combined smartphone+tablet+PC market, with tablets making up another 10%, giving PCs 30%.
I'm sure you'd point out how PCs are still very popular, how MS still makes tons of money off them, how they're not going anywhere soon, etc. And I completely agree. But in the long term, it's not going to last, not in the form it exists now. I'm sure MS could do decently well for a very long time as they are, but they will stagnate and they will eventually shrink if they do so. They might remain powerful, but not to anywhere near the same degree.
For your Wal-Mart analogy, imagine if Wal-Mart totally owned retail sales, but "retail" was defined to exclude all online sales, and Amazon was selling 3x as much stuff as Wal-Mart once you counted online. Even as Wal-Mart owned the "retail" market and remained profitable, it would be completely reasonable to think that they might need to change.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#77This won't end well. Microsoft is a bubble with an echo-chamber internally. Their employees are in the 1990s era, which is making DVD application software (Word, etc.). The problem is that they still think that way. Senior managers are from the 1990s. Or they hired from colleges and sheep dipped people in the same thinking. People from startups and industry don't last long there, and definitely don't rise in manageme…
I like all of your thoughts except that the leader has to come from a Silicon Valley startup gone big.
I just don't agree. There's too much risk of a culture clash. At the altitude that MS flies- you need someone who knows how to pilot gargantuan ships. I'd way rather see someone from a fortune 50 company take the reigns.
There's a huge difference between developing a horse to be an olympic competitor and riding a horse to multiple championships.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#78This won't end well. Microsoft is a bubble with an echo-chamber internally. Their employees are in the 1990s era, which is making DVD application software (Word, etc.). The problem is that they still think that way. Senior managers are from the 1990s. Or they hired from colleges and sheep dipped people in the same thinking. People from startups and industry don't last long there, and definitely don't rise in manageme…
Have any examples of a startup leader taking over a large, mature company and doing well? Seems like the skill sets of driving a race car don't necessarily transfer well to locomotives.
People who thrive at building a startup often are not particularly successful taking over a mature business. Meg Whitman comes to mind, though HP has its own world of hurt.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#79My 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.
One thing I can tell you is even the best MBA out there will probably run a software company in the best way a factory can be run.
Re: Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO
#80This won't end well. Microsoft is a bubble with an echo-chamber internally. Their employees are in the 1990s era, which is making DVD application software (Word, etc.). The problem is that they still think that way. Senior managers are from the 1990s. Or they hired from colleges and sheep dipped people in the same thinking. People from startups and industry don't last long there, and definitely don't rise in manageme…
C# is charging in the opposite direction of the entire webapp industry's development platforms.
I'm not sure if you're confused or I'm confused. C# is a programming language. What exactly about C# is "in the opposite direction of the entire webapp industry's development platforms"?