satya nadella

The passing of an era — Microsoft’s rise, fall and reboot

Vanity Fair has a fascinating piece on the rise, fall and reboot of Microsoft. The story is really about leadership; from the days of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer; to Ballmer succeeding as CEO; and finally to Satya Nadella. It’s a great piece and definitely worth reading.

I’m a big admirer of Ballmer, but must call him out on something he said in the article:

“The worst work I did was from 2001 to 2004,” says Ballmer. “And the company paid a price for bad work. I put the A-team resources on Longhorn, not on phones or browsers. All our resources were tied up on the wrong thing.” Who shoulders the blame is a matter of debate, but the fact is neither Ballmer nor Gates stopped the failure from happening, even as almost everyone else saw it coming.

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Satya Nadella’s mission-styled memo in plain English

Satya Nadella posted a mission-styled memo to Microsoft employees yesterday. There’s good stuff in there, and while Nadella writes in clear prose, he does use jargon and corporate speak that might make it difficult to read between the lines. So we will attempt to distill his words into plain speak. Here we go:

Our Worldview

  • The world is changing with mobile and cloud, and we will lead that change
  • And more subtly: while my predecessor is sales-oriented, I’m mission-oriented

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