5 ms·
Welcome to the Room: A lesson in leadership by Satya Nadella
- hulitu 8mo ago> Satya was not giving us a pep talk, he was giving us an architecture for success. His ass was a bit hairy, but damn, it was sweet. /s
- rrgok 8mo agoMan I thought some teenage girl was fawning over her crush. I sure don't want to be led by these little girls.
- abujazar 8mo agoIs this not satire?
- andrewstuart 8mo agoSatya has succeeded greatly in transitioning Microsoft to the cloud and open source coexistence. These successes alone make him one of Microsoft’s great leaders. Satya has also completely fucked Windows and has been unable/unwilling/uninterested in making it a product that people love. Satya has led to people hating Windows.
- pragmatic 8mo agoYes, spot on! Both things can be true. Paul Graham (bless the maker and his passing) declared MSFT dead, but it came back strong. The copilot fiasco is classic Microsoft Bob territory. They have so much entrenched tech in govt and big corps they can shamble on for years. Typical Microsoft, not great, not the worst but the overpriced fast casual hamburger of the tech world. An ok meal, somewhat disappointing leaving you feeling greasy with a feeling you paid too much but you know you’ll be back.
- observationist 8mo agoI'd like to thank and applaud Satya for finally ushering in the year of the Linux desktop.
- gamesbrainiac 8mo agoThis is the same guy that forced XBOX to increase profit margins to 30% and therefore destroyed any hope that Xbox would be a legitimate choice for gamers going forward. This is the same guy that shoved AI down the throats of millions of Windows users that forced me to just turn off Windows updates and add bazzite in dual boot. I remember a long time ago I was talking to an executive that worked at a startup that was eventually acquired by Cisco. After the acquisition, the executive team got coaches to train them to be "inspirational" leaders. One thing that was common was adding a quote from say Marcus Arelius in the signature of their emails to make them sound wiser. We need to stop this hero worship. Microsoft built a moat, and capitalized on it. They used their connections to block others from coming into the fray. I don't care what their theory of success is, their definition is cancerous; a malignant one.
- baal80spam 8mo agoI'm no MS lover, but this is the same guy that increased the MS share price tenfold.
- mrbungie 8mo agoWell, this is a good example of "Shareholder value != customer value".
- wolvoleo 8mo agoAls also shareholder value != Positive effect on society
- gamesbrainiac 8mo agoYou know what? I bet if you got rid of stock buybacks, there'd be more consequences for making a shit product.
- MrDresden 8mo agoPretty much all of the major tech stocks have risen by 10x since 2014.
- robotresearcher 8mo ago> Every single line, every sentence, every phrase contained within Satya’s speech is a critical lesson, a foundational principle, and vital insight. Revolting sycophancy is not a good sign for the leadership culture.
- simoncion 8mo ago> Revolting sycophancy is not a good sign for the leadership culture. IME, it's the status quo. We all would do well to keep that in mind whenever we read something they write, listen to an interview or speech they give, or get their "wisdom" repeated to us second- or third-hand.
- inkysigma 8mo agoMaybe this is why execs love LLMs a little too much? It's probably not unconnected at the very least.
- Wobbles42 8mo agoAre LLMs slowly evolving to be more appealing to narcissistic personalities? Given the dynamics here that could be the main selection pressure on them.
- tanseydavid 8mo ago> Revolting sycophancy is not a good sign for the leadership culture. You seem to think this guy is going to go ask Nadella "hey, did you read my blog post?"
- robotresearcher 8mo agoI'm more thinking of the people under him reading this and taking onboard how fawningly one talks about one's manager in this company. If this sticks, before long no one will be able to say anything other than flattery, and critical thinking is over.
- Dig1t 8mo agoHow can anyone look at Microsoft’s products and consider their leadership to be good? Literally the only metric that’s been good has been market cap, but that will not last forever if they continue with their current trajectory.
- mpalmer 8mo agoI'm sure Microsoft is and has been host to some incredibly smart technologists and designers over the years, OP included. But this only serves to reduce my confidence that much more in the ELTs which have sired the modern incoherent shiny-object-obsessed ecosystem that is Windows and MS at large.
- avazhi 8mo agoNadella and Microsoft are both clowns. His enduring legacy will be fumbling the window Microsoft had two years ago to catapult itself into AI-assisted search and Microsoft was primed to be at the front. Today? All anybody except for Microsoft’s C suite execs want Copilot to do is turn itself off. He’s an idiot. Ballmer 2.0, except even Ballmer got some cloud stuff right.
- wolvoleo 8mo agoAt least he's not throwing chairs and giving coked-up hype chants ("developers developers developers"). That guy was everything a leader shouldn't be.
- jrm4 8mo agoI trust this is getting attention and votes for the same reason I'm paying attention here -- to highlight the absolute mediocrity and blah-ness of this whole thing. Like this was some deep insightful journey and not your entirely typical cheerleader corpo-speak.
- CamperBob2 8mo ago[flagged]
- tanseydavid 8mo agoThis comment makes no sense. Flagged? Seriously?
- CamperBob2 8mo agoIf you feel that a low-effort content-free article that is either AI slop or indistinguishable from it doesn't meet the criteria for a good HN article, you can flag it for deprecation from the front page. Clearly some people with serious influence disagree; either that, or the large number of users complaining about the article aren't taking advantage of the flag feature. Another useful HN feature is the ability to leave comments to gauge (or influence) other users' opinions, as you've done yourself. Any other questions?
- andrewmutz 8mo ago> Achieving the Senior Executive status is often mistaken for a comfortable reward, a final destination with enhanced perks and support. A more fitting analogy is reaching the NFL Super Bowl. You are now part of an elite team where nothing less than peak performance is acceptable. As the Navy SEALs put it... I can't believe anyone actually wrote this.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- simoncion 8mo agoIn my experience, so many execs love their sportsball and war metaphors.
- burnte 8mo agoSome of that is extremely bad advice and explains why MS is in the pickle it’s in. “Don’t come whining that you don’t have the resources you need. We’ve done our homework. We’ve evaluated the portfolio, considered the opportunities and allocated our available resources to those opportunities. That is what you have to work with.” Right out of the gate they’re telling you that your judgment is irrelevant to the scope of the problem. Immediately the chances of success are reduced quite a bit because the SME is not trusted to help craft the terms of engagement. If you aren’t at the table to help draft the terms of engagement, to help define the scope and to help define the resources needed, you’re always going to be working from someone else’s plan. Success is defined by not by your ability to execute, but someone else’s ability to plan. They’re telling you that you may be the SME, but they’re the ones who will be making the judgement calls. Politics has risen above engineering and above business strategy. “You only have 2 controls: 1) The clarity, culture, and energy you give your teams ; and 2) Resource allocation .” Except we’ve determined you don’t get much of a say in resource allocation, they’ve allocated the resources you get. If you determine the way to win with the plan you were given is to change that, you have to convince other people why their planning was wrong, and that’s rarely easy. And you, as a leader, have far more than “clarity, culture, and energy”, too. This shows that some of the major flaws that drove me out of a cushy role in MS in 2004 are still there today. I think Nadella is a better leader than Ballmer in knowing how to respond to markets, but this speech explains to me with crystal clarity why the AI push has gone so poorly. They think they can still dictate the terms of engagement with the market.
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo agoI completely disagree with you. Anyone could solve every problem in the world, if only they had the resources. However, it's also an extremely convenient and versatile excuse. I think removing this excuse is more important than any downside you mention. At my company I see people hiding behind the "I don't have the resources" excuse literally several times a day.
- rawgabbit 8mo agoEngineers instead of saying this requirement is infeasible and a bad approach will jack up the story points hoping the requirement goes away.
- Pacers31Colts18 8mo agoI've always thought c suites probably give each other applause and tell each other how great they are. Now I know it's true.
- dgxyz 8mo agoI've watched it happen at two orgs now. Lay off 500 people because you fucked the company for 2 years then congratulate each other for making the decision to write off all the accumulated debt by getting rid of all operating costs. Then come up with some new bullshit vision. Rinse, repeat while extracting wealth from gullible investors and treating staff as expendable.
- dgxyz 8mo agoYeah valuations are up but the business and products are looking progressively more fucked every month. If there's anything I've seen it's there are barely any people without macbooks coming out of university now and they are the next wave of influence over the whole sector. No one in the sector wants half the stuff that changes - they just want it to work and stay working. No longer a guarantee. Literally there are teams of people all over the planet all trying to simultaneously unfuck Satya's entire vision to keep their businesses from going down the toilet. That is not someone you should not take advice from.
- paulryanrogers 8mo agoWhen I graduated college my friends and classmates enjoyed Windows because it was a stable platform for gaming, despite its EEE strategy. I had even bought a used laptop when they were a luxury few other students had, dual booting RH7 and Win98. Now I'll probably get my kids MacBooks, despite how buggy MacOS has become. Or maybe a Framework laptop with Linux, if they're feeling adventurous.
- aucisson_masque 8mo agoThe speech is great and all but cmon, don't tell me that Microsoft is "delivering outsized success". Have you seen the recent windows update bugs, the enshitification of office, recall, bing, etc.. I don't know who else to blame but Nadella for all of that. Seems more like the guy would be a great politician, great speech to inspire fresh employee, but delivers nothing in reality.
- yodon 8mo agoWith all the Microsoft haters in this thread, I'm surprised no one has pointed out this is just another example of Microsoft copying Apple. Satya's speech is essentially the same one Steve Jobs used to give to new VP's at Apple[0]. [0]https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/steve-jobs-said-1-thing-separates-great-leaders-from-all-rest-and-makes-all-difference-for-success.html https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/steve-jobs-said-1-thing-separ...
- rawgabbit 8mo agoHmmm. Based on the current state of MSFT products, MSFT theory for success involves making shitty products. Jobs may have been nightmarish to work for. But he had reputation for demanding excellence in his products. MSFT? Not so much.