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CEO's make very consequential decisions. 15 years ago Paul Graham declared Microsoft dead [1]. Today it is a 2 trillion dollar company, behind only Apple. How

CEO's make very consequential decisions. 15 years ago Paul Graham declared Microsoft dead [1]. Today it is a 2 trillion dollar company, behind only Apple. How did that happen? 15 years ago Microsoft was the master of a technology that was already passee, the desktop OS. The new money-making technologies (search, social networks, internet commerce, smartphones) were dominated by other players (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple). They tried to compete (anybody remembers Zune?) but they just could not execute. Then they changed their CEO, and under Nadella they pivoted to cloud. Big time. So now they are one of the 3 big names in cloud (Amazon and Google being the other ones). Maybe there are other reason (Microsoft is an immensely complex company), but few could argue that Nadella had nothing to do with the turnaround. If he just worked as much as 670 regular engineers, then Microsoft would still be dying, if not already dead today. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

al_borland 4y ago
Exactly this. 670 people pointed in the wrong direction aren’t going to be effective. The turnaround of Apple under Jobs was another example. They went from 3 months away from bankruptcy to the most valuable company in the world. The value multiplier of a world class CEO is huge. They being said, some of them suck and should be forced to pay the company back for how much harm they have done. Like Léo Apotheker, who spent a brief period as the CEO of HP… selling off the recently acquired WebOS and almost selling off their PC division. I can’t help but ponder what might have been if he didn’t sell WebOS and they had a CEO that invested hard in mobile and integrations with the desktop. We might have another viable mobile platform. That one bad decision likely cost HP more than their entire staff salary.

al_borland 4y ago

Exactly this. 670 people pointed in the wrong direction aren’t going to be effective. The turnaround of Apple under Jobs was another example. They went from 3 months away from bankruptcy to the most valuable company in the world. The value multiplier of a world class CEO is huge. They being said, some of them suck and should be forced to pay the company back for how much harm they have done. Like Léo Apotheker, who spent a brief period as the CEO of HP… selling off the recently acquired WebOS and almost selling off their PC division. I can’t help but ponder what might have been if he didn’t sell WebOS and they had a CEO that invested hard in mobile and integrations with the desktop. We might have another viable mobile platform. That one bad decision likely cost HP more than their entire staff salary.