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How Satya Nadella Has Changed Microsoft In 3 Months

businessinsider.com

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Re: How Satya Nadella Has Changed Microsoft In 3 Months

#11

Post by ryanburk »

jljljl wrote: post #2

I wonder how many of these major changes were decided on while Ballmer was still in charge, and simply didn't take effect until Nadella's turn at CEO began. I also wonder how many of them were strategically delayed until a new CEO was in office, to really underline the regime change nature of his promotion.

so I was at microsoft until recently and I can say that almost everything on this list had nothing to do with the CEO change outside of him being on the earnings call and the exec changes.

at a company as large as microsoft and after the billg era of constant product reviews, most of these decisions were never "ballmer" decisions, they were made by the folks who run their divisions. e.g. changes to windows for the start menu in 8.1 update were made over a year ago and by folks working for terry myerson, not ballmer and definitely not nadella.

Re: How Satya Nadella Has Changed Microsoft In 3 Months

#12

Post by yuhong »

ryanburk wrote: post #11
jljljl wrote: post #2

I wonder how many of these major changes were decided on while Ballmer was still in charge, and simply didn't take effect until Nadella's turn at CEO began. I also wonder how many of them were strategically delayed until a new CEO was in office, to really underline the regime change nature of his promotion.

so I was at microsoft until recently and I can say that almost everything on this list had nothing to do with the CEO change outside of him being on the earnings call and the exec changes. at a company as large as microsoft and after the billg era of constant product reviews, most of these decisions were never "ballmer" decisions, they were made by the folks who run their divisions. e.g. changes to windows for the st…

I have my own personal wishlist: http://hal2020.com/2014/03/03/satya-shuffles-his-leadership/...

What do you think?

Re: How Satya Nadella Has Changed Microsoft In 3 Months

#14

Post by richardlblair »

Microsoft has always had a diverse product offering (outside of windows) with Office, dev tools, entertainment (xbox), and now cloud services.

What Nadella realizes is that not every device needs to run windows, they all just need to run the diverse software microsoft offers. I was at the bar last night and I overheard a group of like 10 people (all over 40) talking about how awesome office 365 is. People, at the bar, talking about office 365... This alone is big because Office accounts for a large amount of microsoft's revenue.

Re: How Satya Nadella Has Changed Microsoft In 3 Months

#16

Post by sremani »

Dorian-Marie wrote: post #15
onedev wrote: post #4

This is probably a standard PR piece.

Exactly what I thought: www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

I read that article from PG.This is not a submarine - it just a puff-piece by 20 somethings. There is no trying to paint the conversation like "suits are in vogue again" to add stealth or mystic.

To fellow hacker news readers/posters - please do not post anything from BI, they are most of time light on content and context.

Re: How Satya Nadella Has Changed Microsoft In 3 Months

#17

Post by kosei »

jljljl wrote: post #2

I wonder how many of these major changes were decided on while Ballmer was still in charge, and simply didn't take effect until Nadella's turn at CEO began. I also wonder how many of them were strategically delayed until a new CEO was in office, to really underline the regime change nature of his promotion.

At the very least, it was smart of Microsoft to make the leadership change on the cusp of these new developments. If successful, they can point to Nadella being the catalyst. If unsuccessful, they can point to it being the last gasps of a dying regime.

Re: How Satya Nadella Has Changed Microsoft In 3 Months

#18

Post by gedrap »

jljljl wrote: post #2

I wonder how many of these major changes were decided on while Ballmer was still in charge, and simply didn't take effect until Nadella's turn at CEO began. I also wonder how many of them were strategically delayed until a new CEO was in office, to really underline the regime change nature of his promotion.

Excellent comment. Reminds me an idea from Soccernomics (a great book on soccer by economists who happen to love football), that a club manager is mainly a PR person and goes on to statistically prove that he has almost nothing to do with the teams performance (except very rare exceptional cases). While it certainly doesn't 100% apply for CEOs but there is something in common.

Re: How Satya Nadella Has Changed Microsoft In 3 Months

#19

Post by pistle »

Serendipity. For the past 3 years, movement has been coming to a couple recent waves of watershed moments. It has taken a long time for insiders - many related to Scott Gu's organization, but also included numerous (maybe even legions) other proponents of openness and "happy dev story" folks who all wanted to go in this direction.

There has been leadership from within the ranks for a while.

It's to the point where the overall story is objectively compelling and move shave been made to adjust the footing and direction which enable now to be.

There couldn't be now without everything that's been baked into the web landscape (great strides in shortening cadence and solid foundations to support that quicker responsiveness), cloud tooling and infrastructure (Azure), Win+8/Xbox One/RT/WinPhone8+ etc which refactored the OSs to support and drive the momentum, etc.

People could complain along the way about each piece, but, organizationally, under Ballmer's reign transformation was taking place.

Sinofsky is a great example. He did drive Windows (and indirectly Office) changes with which people weren't necessarily happy. But, the foundations were solid and the talent undeniable. From there, we get here.

The blossoms are coming out now, and the benefits are widely being appreciated. But plowing, sowing of seeds, and feeding the plants and sprouts is all coming together.

It's a good time for everyone. A strong, more open Microsoft is good for driving Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. to continue their drive. Competition is good for us all, even if we don't all get sold on any one team's garden.

Re: How Satya Nadella Has Changed Microsoft In 3 Months

#20

Post by brown9-2 »

He convinced developers to create more apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone by offering them what is known as the "Holy Grail" in app development, tools that let an app developer write the app once and easily convert it to all Windows versions (Windows 8, Windows Phone and Xbox) and also to iOS and Android.

That seems like the sort of thing that needs much much more time, and data, to actually judge.

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