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I disagree, it wasn’t Phil that dug a hole but Asha who pushed Phil out with no plan. Why is Asha finally revealing her plan years later if she was such a good

I disagree, it wasn’t Phil that dug a hole but Asha who pushed Phil out with no plan. Why is Asha finally revealing her plan years later if she was such a good fit? She came in trying to automate away peoples jobs with AI for the last year or so and that is obviously failing. It wasn’t Phil that invested the entire company’s well being on stochastic parrots. She has done everything but focus on delivering games (product).

nhinck2 4mo ago
a) Asha didnt push Phil out. b) She's been in the role for 4ish months, not years.
- righthand 4mo ago
  I can guarantee you Asha has been making this move for years.
  - dagmx 4mo ago
    Based on what? This just feels like baseless conjecture given she hasn’t been at Microsoft for that long.
    - ascendantlogic 4mo ago
      "I can guarantee you" without any backing evidence is the very definition of "Source: trust me bro". I think at this point this is just trolling.
  - johnnyanmac 4mo ago
    I don't think a long time executive leaves, and the expected successor (Sarah Bond) refuses to suceed because of some intimate backstabbing behind the scnes. Especially not by an executive who was previously running the AI division during an AI gold rush. Occam's razor: Spencer and Bond jumped off a sinking ship, Asha wasn't doing enough in AI. Push her to be the fall gal for the sinking ship and put in whoever will milk AI more in her place. Win-win. Asha will be gone in a few years with her job done and a cushy parachute, and Xbox will be a shadow of its former self. But that's not a failure; that's the goal.
scott_w 4mo ago
Just looking at Sharma’s history, she rejoined MS in 2024. Xbox was struggling long before that, so I don’t see how anyone can blame Sharma for the past 10 years…
- WorldMaker 4mo ago
  Xbox has been profitable almost continuously since a few years into the Xbox 360. It's fascinating how "profitable but low margins" equates to "struggling" to so many.
  - saghm 4mo ago
    Right? It seems intuitive that markets can eventually saturate, and that there's a floor for how low you can get costs, so growth can't be infinite. Maybe you could make an argument that you want to grow in scale with inflation so that your profit doesn't eventually become meaningless, but you don't need to "reset" your multi-billion dollar revenue business to achieve that; you can get that by just bumping prices in line with inflation every few years.
  - munificent 4mo ago
    > It's fascinating how "profitable but low margins" equates to "struggling" to so many. A high revenue but low margin business is a lost opportunity to invest that same revenue in a different area with better margins.
    - WorldMaker 4mo ago
      If you shut down the things that bring in $5 billion revenue, you no longer have $5 billion revenue, you have a gamble that some other industry can ramp up to that quickly. $5 billion has never been "quick money". (Inflation would have to get a whole lot worse for that to happen and that point the company has too many other problems.) That's "Opportunity Cost" among other bits of what used to be past corporate wisdom that companies have seemed to have forgotten.
      - 4mo ago
dagmx 4mo ago
How would Asha pull him out? How do you think she even had that kind of authority or seniority?
- righthand 4mo ago
  By making big arguments to C-suite that were invested in the company’s direction. Same thing that happens in meetings where some dumbass says something like “we could build a cookie banner ourselves or pay Y company $12k/yr to run our cookie banner”. C-suite is full of these types of people that just make baseless arguments. Most management is not knowledgeable in their domain.
  - dagmx 4mo ago
    Okay so your entire argument hinges on her having the ear of Satya , and out arguing Phil? But even then you wouldn’t be able to deny that Xbox was floundering under Phil. And for all of this you’d still be left with conjecture?
  - markus_zhang 4mo ago
    Even if she did push him out, Phil only has himself to blame. After all he is the manager of Xbox. Xbox definitely did not do well.

nhinck2 4mo ago

a) Asha didnt push Phil out. b) She's been in the role for 4ish months, not years.

righthand 4mo ago
I can guarantee you Asha has been making this move for years.
- dagmx 4mo ago
  Based on what? This just feels like baseless conjecture given she hasn’t been at Microsoft for that long.
  - ascendantlogic 4mo ago
    "I can guarantee you" without any backing evidence is the very definition of "Source: trust me bro". I think at this point this is just trolling.
- johnnyanmac 4mo ago
  I don't think a long time executive leaves, and the expected successor (Sarah Bond) refuses to suceed because of some intimate backstabbing behind the scnes. Especially not by an executive who was previously running the AI division during an AI gold rush. Occam's razor: Spencer and Bond jumped off a sinking ship, Asha wasn't doing enough in AI. Push her to be the fall gal for the sinking ship and put in whoever will milk AI more in her place. Win-win. Asha will be gone in a few years with her job done and a cushy parachute, and Xbox will be a shadow of its former self. But that's not a failure; that's the goal.

scott_w 4mo ago

Just looking at Sharma’s history, she rejoined MS in 2024. Xbox was struggling long before that, so I don’t see how anyone can blame Sharma for the past 10 years…

WorldMaker 4mo ago
Xbox has been profitable almost continuously since a few years into the Xbox 360. It's fascinating how "profitable but low margins" equates to "struggling" to so many.
- saghm 4mo ago
  Right? It seems intuitive that markets can eventually saturate, and that there's a floor for how low you can get costs, so growth can't be infinite. Maybe you could make an argument that you want to grow in scale with inflation so that your profit doesn't eventually become meaningless, but you don't need to "reset" your multi-billion dollar revenue business to achieve that; you can get that by just bumping prices in line with inflation every few years.
- munificent 4mo ago
  > It's fascinating how "profitable but low margins" equates to "struggling" to so many. A high revenue but low margin business is a lost opportunity to invest that same revenue in a different area with better margins.
  - WorldMaker 4mo ago
    If you shut down the things that bring in $5 billion revenue, you no longer have $5 billion revenue, you have a gamble that some other industry can ramp up to that quickly. $5 billion has never been "quick money". (Inflation would have to get a whole lot worse for that to happen and that point the company has too many other problems.) That's "Opportunity Cost" among other bits of what used to be past corporate wisdom that companies have seemed to have forgotten.
    - 4mo ago

dagmx 4mo ago

How would Asha pull him out? How do you think she even had that kind of authority or seniority?

righthand 4mo ago
By making big arguments to C-suite that were invested in the company’s direction. Same thing that happens in meetings where some dumbass says something like “we could build a cookie banner ourselves or pay Y company $12k/yr to run our cookie banner”. C-suite is full of these types of people that just make baseless arguments. Most management is not knowledgeable in their domain.
- dagmx 4mo ago
  Okay so your entire argument hinges on her having the ear of Satya , and out arguing Phil? But even then you wouldn’t be able to deny that Xbox was floundering under Phil. And for all of this you’d still be left with conjecture?
- markus_zhang 4mo ago
  Even if she did push him out, Phil only has himself to blame. After all he is the manager of Xbox. Xbox definitely did not do well.