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

Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO

microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 55 posts

Re: Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO

#21

Post by skannamalai »

merry-year wrote: post #15
legutierr wrote: post #9

> Today is a very humbling day for me. The first sentence of the email, statement that seems entirely appropriate given the circumstances. Nonetheless, I find it curious that we expect people who reach the highest levels of accomplishment to describe those accomplishments as humbling. It seems natural to us for someone promoted to the heights of their profession, such as Satya Nadella in this case, or the winner of a…

> Today is a very humbling day for me. When I read that I knew this guy would fail as MS CEO. It's a proper jungle out there and a humble Indian guy will be eaten alive by the aggressive confident westerners.

It must be comforting to view the world so simply. All it takes is some stereotyping to knock your world-view right back to how you like it.

Re: Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO

#23

Post by darkrabbi »

merry-year wrote: post #15
legutierr wrote: post #9

> Today is a very humbling day for me. The first sentence of the email, statement that seems entirely appropriate given the circumstances. Nonetheless, I find it curious that we expect people who reach the highest levels of accomplishment to describe those accomplishments as humbling. It seems natural to us for someone promoted to the heights of their profession, such as Satya Nadella in this case, or the winner of a…

> Today is a very humbling day for me. When I read that I knew this guy would fail as MS CEO. It's a proper jungle out there and a humble Indian guy will be eaten alive by the aggressive confident westerners.

what a ridiculous comment, please never post again.

Re: Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO

#24

Post by Uhhrrr »

gregschlom wrote: post #11
sfermigier wrote: post #4

"Who am I? I am 46. I’ve been married for 22 years and we have 3 kids." -> Who cares?

Are you American? I was wondering about this too. As a Frenchman, I had the same reaction as you, but I think Americans care a lot about this. I've been told for example that in the US it would be completely impossible for a president to be elected if he didn't had a solid marriage and family. I find those cultural differences fascinating

I don't think Americans really care either. I am American and don't remember that sort of thing from any C-level announcements at any company I've worked with. But my Indian-born coworkers have pretty consistently asked me about family, including how many sons and how many daughters. So maybe it's a mix of that culture and also a show of American openness.

Re: Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO

#25

Post by rmrfrmrf »

robodale wrote: post #2

As I read that email, I wondered - would the typical MS employee read this with skepticism...or truly be inspired, hopeful, and ready to take action?

I'm hoping they're inspired--they should be! In a lot of ways, this type of e-mail can be impossible to write; simultaneously writing about your pride in a company while acknowledging the recent missteps of your predecessor and also keeping the tone of the message completely optimistic is really challenging. I feel like I, as an outsider, knew exactly what this e-mail needed to say to give me hope for Microsoft as a customer, but had no idea how I would go about saying it. After reading, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where Nadella takes Microsoft in the next few years.

Re: Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO

#27

Post by rmrfrmrf »

gregschlom wrote: post #11
sfermigier wrote: post #4

"Who am I? I am 46. I’ve been married for 22 years and we have 3 kids." -> Who cares?

Are you American? I was wondering about this too. As a Frenchman, I had the same reaction as you, but I think Americans care a lot about this. I've been told for example that in the US it would be completely impossible for a president to be elected if he didn't had a solid marriage and family. I find those cultural differences fascinating

It's a strange dichotomy in a way; we, as Americans, are supposed to be aggressively family-oriented while, at the same time, relentlessly dedicated to our work. Corporate culture here definitely has a certain intensity to it that can be a little off-putting.

What I will say, though, is that statements like that from a CEO can often give comfort to employees raising families. It can be jarring, for example, to transition from a boss who allows flexible workdays to take your kids to school, drive them to practice, etc. to one who doesn't. For a CEO, there's even the possibility of changing policies on parental leave, etc. that can definitely affect morale.

There's also the aspect of Nadella offering himself as a role-model for those who are wondering if there's life after 30 in the tech world. It can be reassuring to know that you can get married, have children, get older, have a personal life, etc. and still become CEO of a company. IMO it's a good counter-argument to the no-holds-barred hustle culture that is peddled to 20-somethings.

Re: Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO

#28

Post by swalsh »

legutierr wrote: post #9

> Today is a very humbling day for me. The first sentence of the email, statement that seems entirely appropriate given the circumstances. Nonetheless, I find it curious that we expect people who reach the highest levels of accomplishment to describe those accomplishments as humbling. It seems natural to us for someone promoted to the heights of their profession, such as Satya Nadella in this case, or the winner of a…

He is a man in charge of the lives of thousands of people. According to wikipedia there are 100k employees. As a Microsoft platform developer myself, I too am somewhat beholden to his decisions. He needs to find a balance between making the world a better place while at the same time ensuring some sense of stability for the people who have put their trust in the company. Humbling seems like the right word.

Re: Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO

#29

Post by ensignavenger »

legutierr wrote: post #9

> Today is a very humbling day for me. The first sentence of the email, statement that seems entirely appropriate given the circumstances. Nonetheless, I find it curious that we expect people who reach the highest levels of accomplishment to describe those accomplishments as humbling. It seems natural to us for someone promoted to the heights of their profession, such as Satya Nadella in this case, or the winner of a…

One can be humbled by choosing to be humbled, or they can be humbled from some outside source (being turned down, demoted, etc.)

Generally, society finds it better to choose to be humble. It can be quite a complex feeling in real world practice, though.

Re: Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO

#30

Post by Pxtl »

CmonDev wrote: post #12
doppenhe wrote: post #7

As an ex-MSFT employee and somebody who actually got a chance to talk to Satya I found the letter to be very true to his personality. Excited to see what he does in Redmond.

Is he a conservative type of manager who will try to come-up with completely new kind of products or someone who will keep chasing Google in Apple in what they do best?

Honestly? Except for Bing, I've been pretty impressed with microsoft's "Chasing apple and google" offerings. Outlook.com, Sky^H^H^HOneDrive (and its related MS-office webapps), and the Windows Phone OS actually impressed me. Imho, WP8 provides a much more polished user experience than Android, although Android offers far more features and a far more mature market-place of course. And unlike Google, they've succeeded in a consistent UI styling across Web, Mobile, and Desktop.

The problem, of course, is just that Win8 is in a screwed up transition both in the UI and under-the-hood.

Yes, Microsoft has ADD - constant re-brandings and the MSDN-churn of new platforms are frustrating. But they've built a good family of products in their counterattack against Google/Android.

Post reply on HN