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Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

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Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#41

Post by hylaride »

yodon wrote: post #32
stakhanov wrote: post #4

First: A stock can rise for reasons having zero to do with the reality of the business behind the stock, for example mispricing, availability or the lack thereof of alternative investments, inflation, currency devaluation etc. Second: To me it always leaves a very foul aftertaste when the achievements of a team are ascribed to whoever the visible front-person is. I find it hard to believe that among the other 149999…

Bill Gates built an amazing airplane. Steve Ballmer crashed it in the desert. Satya Nadella rallied the survivors, put it back together, and got it flying again. Yes, he absolutely deserves the credit just as Ballmer absolutely deserves the blame.

Actually, Ballmer did quite well at MS. He consistently increased earnings via Windows and Office during his tenure as CEO. He was a very good businessman.

He was not, however, a product guy. Witness their failures with the Zune, mobile, early cloud computing. His problem was that he always tried to do what would be best for Microsoft and not the customer. You can get away with this if you already have an install base (windows/office), but with net new products people will look at what's best for them first. Even with developers developers developers he tried too hard to get people to use pure MS tech and made developing for the web on MS ugly if you using anything other than .NET. The result is a generation of developers on Macs and to a lesser extent linux.

Funny enough, thinking of the customer is what MS did with the xbox and it worked out well enough.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#43

Post by cryptica »

The title is bs. Microsoft had a lot of legacy software which served as an on-ramp for Microsoft Cloud. MS success in the cloud is all a result of MS's past monopoly and has nothing to do with any individual who works for Microsoft.

I bet Satya Nadella is just another corporate bureaucrat who is skilled at taking credit for success which has nothing to do with them.

I don't buy it for 1 second that someone who is good at creating value could have the patience to spend almost 30 years working in a bureaucratic and monopolistic corporation like Microsoft and I doubt that it's even possible to learn these kinds of skills there. On the other hand, I think there is probably no better place to master the art of social manipulation and backstabbing.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#44

Post by hos234 »

I am skeptical about the whole Cloud story. Has the faint stench of the housing bubble.

It made sense when the story was about renting out spare data center capacity. Amazon and Google had a ton of excess which started the story.

Microsoft, Oracle, IBM et al did not, but had to react to Amazon and Google Cloud and had to build up capacity. Then the game turned into ensuring all that new capacity was utilized. Enterprise needing to make the shift to Cloud is driven almost mindlessly by that fact, much more than actual Enterprise needs and issues. Utilization is achieved by smart marketing, a ton of it, targeted at dumb Enterprise.

This feels like some honeymoon period.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#45

Post by blobbers »

The CEO does not deserve all of the credit. American compensation mechanisms for executives are completely broken.

The concept of WAR (Wins Above Replacement) needs to be brought into the business world.

An sub par player on the Yankees will still win a lot of pennants.

I'm not saying Satya is that guy, but generally speaking these sensationalist headlines are a problem!

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#46

Post by coliveira »

He didn't add anything! Most of the fluctuation in a stock are due to market conditions. Second, almost all the work was done by workers in that company. The narrative that CEOs can do anything by themselves is a stupid myth that needs to be combatted.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#47

Post by soared »

hos234 wrote: post #44

I am skeptical about the whole Cloud story. Has the faint stench of the housing bubble. It made sense when the story was about renting out spare data center capacity. Amazon and Google had a ton of excess which started the story. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM et al did not, but had to react to Amazon and Google Cloud and had to build up capacity. Then the game turned into ensuring all that new capacity was utilized. Enterpr…

> Enterprise needing to make the shift to Cloud is driven almost mindlessly by that fact

Is your claim that there are almost no legitimate reasons to move enterprise applications to the cloud? I don't want to hire more engineers, buy more servers, etc. I just want to pay money and skip everything else.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#48

Post by ShteiLoups »

tikkabhuna wrote: post #19
kickscondor wrote: post #10

If you're curious why this run-of-the-mill PR piece is rising on HN, keep in mind that Microsoft (and other FAANG) posts like these are gamed by employees. https://www.kickscondor.com/satya-nadella-'reads''games'-hac...

Whilst that doesn't read well, is that quote confirming that he's "gaming" HN? To me that could be read as "We're focusing on interacting with the community to answer questions, gain feedback, and address concerns." I do tend to give people the benefit of the doubt though...

Well there's a fine line between employees having a job duty as "participate in online forum" and straight up astroturfing.

Especially on sites like HN and reddit which are relatively easy to manipulate.

I don't know how comfortable I am with any company posting and promoting their own product/content. Even employees voting on posts seems like a potential conflict of interest to me.

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#49

Post by stakhanov »

cheschire wrote: post #38
stakhanov wrote: post #4

First: A stock can rise for reasons having zero to do with the reality of the business behind the stock, for example mispricing, availability or the lack thereof of alternative investments, inflation, currency devaluation etc. Second: To me it always leaves a very foul aftertaste when the achievements of a team are ascribed to whoever the visible front-person is. I find it hard to believe that among the other 149999…

Take him away then. Imagine he just vanished. Took a sabbatical, didn't say where he was going, and just disappeared for a year. What would happen? Things would function. They'd probably be fine for the first couple months, and they might even pass their first quarterly earnings without anyone noticing he's gone. If the department heads all were quiet and didn't notify the shareholders, things would seem completely f…

A country doesn't need a king to protect it from falling into tribalism. And a CEO is not the king of a company. The Board of Directors is the CEO's boss, and if the CEO did his job right, he is replaceable. If the Board of Directors did their jobs right, the CEO is replaceable.

What you are saying seems to me to be completely groundless in every dimension.

Also: I did not state the antithesis "Satya Nadella had nothing to do with MSFT adding $850b to their market cap". I'm just stating "It's not true that MSFT adding $850b to their market cap is attributable solely to Nadella".

Re: Satya Nadella Added $850B to Microsoft

#50

Post by bitxbit »

Really, it’s the fact that MS had enough cash to burn through all the bad mistakes and arrive at the next technology leap in cloud computing. They were able to fail their way toward success because of the monopoly they enjoyed for two decades. I am afraid the same thing will happen (or is already happening) to Apple.
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