How Satya Nadella Has Changed Microsoft In 3 Months
businessinsider.comI 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.
I have my own personal wishlist: http://hal2020.com/2014/03/03/satya-shuffles-his-leadership/...
What do you think?
hal berenson is super smart and I think says it best in his reply to your comment[1].
microsoft, just like google and apple and redhat and linkedin and facebook, is a company - it is there to make money for shareholders. what they do to make money and how they do it can be very different and cause disagreements. but I think people don't always think of that when considering tech endeavors, particularly when there is any entry in a market that is free.
[1] http://hal2020.com/2014/03/03/satya-shuffles-his-leadership/...
Well, at least some of this stuff was unethical, for example OOXML.
This wishlist was partly inspired by this comment BTW: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7281319
Probably all of them. Making this many changes in 3 months in a company the size of Microsoft seems unbelievable. Especially considering how anti-OSS they've been in the past.
It might also be that Ballmer knew he was going to be stepping down soon and decided to let Nadella's initiatives get a head start.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yep, it's Business Insider, land of bogus lists that they never feel the need to fact check.
>all Windows versions
Except the most popular one, apparently: Windows 7.
"Microsoft said it would end the tactic of making Xbox users pay for an upgraded Live Gold subscription just to use the entertainment features included in the console."
Well, considering I didn't renew my Gold sub because the price almost doubled (3 users for $99 to 3x$60), I'm not surprised. I think they made the move because they realized they were losing subscribers because of it.
Honestly, are there people (techies) who buy Gold membership at the regular price? Everytime my renewal rolls around, I search and find them around $30-$35 online. Also with Xbox One doesn't MS allow one membership to be shared among family members with different gamertags. [1]
[1] http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/xbox-live/xbox-live-g...
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.
This article was terribly biased. Many of those decisions could go either way. Stock price being up just means the company is being perceived more positively. We'll see how this really plays out.
Stock would go up regardless of any other change. Just getting rid of Ballmer was enough for that.
IMHO one big challenge is missing from the list: He needs to convince the non-US world that a centralised cloud (and internet of things) is a good idea. I can see how that'll work for consumers who need to sync their contacts, but will e.g. foreign governments move from classic Microsoft to Office 365 anytime soon? Does anyone have data on this?
I see most of those steps as being bad for Windows. I guess that has been one reason Ballmer was resistant.
Advertisement wall; didn't read. Can anyone mirror it?
Don't bother.