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Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

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241–250 of 584 posts

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#241

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I don't know, but unfortunately I am very skeptical of NGOs, and charities It looks like 80% of the money goes for "management" and the rest goes to the actual people in need. Not to mention the contracted "fundraisers" that are paid poorly. (I have nothing against the fundraisers per se, they're usually college kids trying to make some money)

Full disclosure: my mother and my sister both work in fundraising. I've also done some freelancing for university fundraising departments. 80% is pretty good in the fundraising industry. Usually it's closer to 90%. Don't ever do one of those "text 12345 to donate to hurricane victims in the tropics" sort of thing, the returns on those are abysmal. But really, what do you expect? People doing work have to get paid. Mo…

> In the US, only about 55% of your tax dollar goes towards social services

How are you defining social services? And do you mean all govmt spending, or only federal govmt spending?

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#243
post #218

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It's not Microsoft that was/is bad, it's having any single entity have too much power. In my opinion, right now, that is Google, and that's why we need a stronger someone - anyone. And Microsoft fit the bill.

Doesn't Microsoft have 90% of the desktop? About the same dominance in "Office apps", along with their proprietary formats keeping people uncomfortable using "compatible" software. That dominance is almost 2 decades old and it's quite hard to fix. When most people get a job, they're going to be using Microsoft because that's what they will be given. I've never been somewhere where I'm told which search engine to use.…

You're mistakening Microsoft's residual momentum for current acceleration.

The technology sphere is a lot bigger than the desktop now. This year there will be almost twice as many Android devices shipped than Windows + iOS/OSX devices combined. The future of technology is going to decrease the importance of the desktop even further, and Google has 90s-Microsoft level market share of every other type of consumer networked device. This is what scares people about Google.

http://redmondmag.com/articles/2014/01/07/android-growth-ecl...

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#244

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Why? What good would a strong Microsoft provide us? What void would that fill? We've been there, done that and frankly, I don't care to go back. They abused their power when they had it and I have no intent of giving it back to them to give them another crack at it. No, I much prefer today's world of Google, Apple, Samsung and FOSS in all its myriad forms battling it out. There's more developer frameworks than ever a…

.NET, C# and Visual Studio

Neither is very useful if you need to support many platforms. Microsoft it too entrenched in their walled garden mentality. Cross platform development never will be their strong side and it's their downfall.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#245

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> I can't even remember when I last used any MS product > Microsoft has a massive foothold in enterprise > You must not work in the corporate world You said you never interact with MS products, those products have a massive foothold in the corporate world, therefore you probably do not work in the corporate world. If you are doing corporate work, not just software development (though even that too) in a corporate set…

Well, count me outside that norm too. I work in a pretty corporate environment and nobody here uses Microsoft stuff. In fact, I've never worked anywhere where the vast majority of people weren't on a Mac.

>I've never worked anywhere where the vast majority of people weren't on a Mac.

If you are a web designer or creative professional I could see how this could be true for your team. My company provides people with a Dell but for those that wish you can BYOD. 98% of people use the company laptop.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#246
post #149

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I'm most familiar with the example of the Kin, and it was not an example of " experimentation and innovation ", but a case study in how Microsoft has largely lost its ability to execute on a proven concept. For that matter, the Zune was a (late) iPod clone; sure, it had some experimental features (that didn't pan out, but, hey, they tried), but it was hardly seriously innovative. It also was yet another example in ho…

Both the Zune Pass and Zune Share were much more innovative than anything beyond the first iPod.

Execution matters. Zune Pass died a few months ago. I can still use account credit I put on my AppleID from 10 years ago (in fact I still have a few bucks on one of my early accounts).

A small startup that gets squished by larger competition has an excuse as to why it shut down services and let down it's customers. Microsoft has no such excuse. They failed to compete, then the failed their customers. Innovation is wasted if it's improperly handled.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#247

Microsoft should spend the next 10 years running conduit and fiber to most homes in North America and building out the highest capacity network. No one else quite wants it badly enough, not even Google, and the incumbents are no threat at all. They have the money. They'll never win at software again in a big way. Micronet is the answer.

Yeah, I'm sure the FTC would love that. I'm not saying it's a bad idea in theory, but MS is still a monopoly in many ways... they don't need to invite further scrutiny in that regard.

On the other hand, the last time they got busted in the U.S., they got off with a slap on the wrist. The E.U. seems to take that stuff a little more seriously.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#248
post #145

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I find it particularly interesting that they highlighted his work with *Nix systems in his early career. I don't want to draw any conclusions, but I have a good feeling about that.

I think the #1 thing Microsoft needs to do in order to right itself is become a platform that developers love, which isn't the case today. Becoming fully posix compliant would be a great start to that.

The CLR, .NET and Visual Studio are quite nice, some of the best in the IDE world.

However, it's Microsoft's tendency to squeeze and coerce compliance that drove people away. Proprietary everything means you don't play nice with everyone else.

Now the web has leveled the playing field somewhat, and they can't be coercive to be successful. It'll be interesting to see them play will on other companies' turf and platforms.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#249

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The decline of Microsoft will be a generational thing. At some point, those offices are going to be inhabited by kids who grew up with google docs, dropbox, a variety of IM options, and who have never seen a native email client. When these kids grow up and enter the workforce, they will want to use the tools they know, and will not understand the point of in-house Windows sysadmins, or the software licensing fees. My…

"I give Microsoft ten years until their first quarterly loss." Hahah - If i had a penny for every time I've heard that. I'm an apple user myself - but MS offers all of what you are describing your daughter to be using as well - in fact I know many companies are already rolling their staff onto Office360 and so on. As for google docs etc - if you ever had to really crunch data - nothing comes close to Excel even today…

It doesn't matter that Office360 does blah blah blah -- the next generation of office workers aren't using it now, and that's a problem for Microsoft.

I agree that google doc products are inferior to MS Office. (I find that Libre Office is good enough for me.) It's a funny argument to bring up though. Ignoring the cheaper, inferior alternative is exactly what led to Microsoft's dominance over IBM.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#250
post #191

Can someone in the know shed some light on how a CEO of a corporation this big gets selected, from searching for and vetting candidates to the competition involved amongst nominees vying for the position? I imagine it's less about an admissions-type board reviewing applicants' credentials and accomplishments and more about years and years of strategic positioning, favors, and relationship building with people that ma…

It's actually much like the hunger games ... a bunch of candidates go into an arena, and the new CEO emerges from the carnage.
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