8 ms·

Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO

97 points by rfreytag 13y ago

robodale 13y ago
As I read that email, I wondered - would the typical MS employee read this with skepticism...or truly be inspired, hopeful, and ready to take action?
- toggle 13y ago
  It seems like the usual "Hi, I'm the new CEO" letter can't be very inspiring. I mean, it would be rude for him to slam Steve Ballmer right after replacing him -- he needs to have some tact. And, he can't be to enthusiastic and claim that they'll be making devices with rainbows shooting out of their SD card slots -- that'd make everyone say, "Who does this guy think he is?" I'm sure everyone read it with a neutral response, because it was pretty boilerplate (as it kind of has to be).
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  I'm hoping they're inspired--they should be! In a lot of ways, this type of e-mail can be impossible to write; simultaneously writing about your pride in a company while acknowledging the recent missteps of your predecessor and also keeping the tone of the message completely optimistic is really challenging. I feel like I, as an outsider, knew exactly what this e-mail needed to say to give me hope for Microsoft as a customer, but had no idea how I would go about saying it. After reading, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where Nadella takes Microsoft in the next few years.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
sfermigier 13y ago
"Who am I? I am 46. I’ve been married for 22 years and we have 3 kids." -> Who cares?
- gregschlom 13y ago
  Are you American? I was wondering about this too. As a Frenchman, I had the same reaction as you, but I think Americans care a lot about this. I've been told for example that in the US it would be completely impossible for a president to be elected if he didn't had a solid marriage and family. I find those cultural differences fascinating
  - CmonDev 13y ago
    "a president to be elected if he didn't had a solid marriage and family" + religious.
  - Sharlin 13y ago
    Surely, if he strongly identifies as a family man, and having a family is something that has shaped his growth as a human being, it's something he finds worth mentioning, no?
  - Uhhrrr 13y ago
    I don't think Americans really care either. I am American and don't remember that sort of thing from any C-level announcements at any company I've worked with. But my Indian-born coworkers have pretty consistently asked me about family, including how many sons and how many daughters. So maybe it's a mix of that culture and also a show of American openness.
  - rmrfrmrf 13y ago
    It's a strange dichotomy in a way; we, as Americans, are supposed to be aggressively family-oriented while, at the same time, relentlessly dedicated to our work. Corporate culture here definitely has a certain intensity to it that can be a little off-putting. What I will say, though, is that statements like that from a CEO can often give comfort to employees raising families. It can be jarring, for example, to transition from a boss who allows flexible workdays to take your kids to school, drive them to practice, etc. to one who doesn't. For a CEO, there's even the possibility of changing policies on parental leave, etc. that can definitely affect morale. There's also the aspect of Nadella offering himself as a role-model for those who are wondering if there's life after 30 in the tech world. It can be reassuring to know that you can get married, have children, get older, have a personal life, etc. and still become CEO of a company. IMO it's a good counter-argument to the no-holds-barred hustle culture that is peddled to 20-somethings.
sfermigier 13y ago
"Steve and Bill have taken it from an idea to one of the greatest and most universally admired companies in the world." -> Are you on crack?
doppenhe 13y ago
As an ex-MSFT employee and somebody who actually got a chance to talk to Satya I found the letter to be very true to his personality. Excited to see what he does in Redmond.
- CmonDev 13y ago
  Is he a conservative type of manager who will try to come-up with completely new kind of products or someone who will keep chasing Google in Apple in what they do best?
  - Pxtl 13y ago
    Honestly? Except for Bing, I've been pretty impressed with microsoft's "Chasing apple and google" offerings. Outlook.com, Sky^H^H^HOneDrive (and its related MS-office webapps), and the Windows Phone OS actually impressed me. Imho, WP8 provides a much more polished user experience than Android, although Android offers far more features and a far more mature market-place of course. And unlike Google, they've succeeded in a consistent UI styling across Web, Mobile, and Desktop. The problem, of course, is just that Win8 is in a screwed up transition both in the UI and under-the-hood. Yes, Microsoft has ADD - constant re-brandings and the MSDN-churn of new platforms are frustrating. But they've built a good family of products in their counterattack against Google/Android.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    I think MS's strategy thus far has actually been pretty good. It's a company with good strategic vision mired in terrible execution. WinPhone7 was a great product on paper - still is - that was released half-baked missing a great number of features that consumers expected to be standard. It was further undermined when Microsoft decided to cut the early adopters and run (WP7 phones that never got the WP7.5 update). Hell, even the much-maligned Kin I think was a great idea. In an era with stupidly expensive data plans, the idea was to come up with a social-media-only (Twitter, Facebook, SMS) device coupled with a kid-compatible cheap monthly plan, based on the existing expertise of Danger. Then they decided to rewrite the whole tech stack, pushed the product way out of its launch window, and lost out on the core offering: cheap plans. What ended up launching was nowhere near what was envisioned. I believe Windows 8 and the merging of touch and desktop was, and still is, a great idea. A platform that can seamlessly transform between mobile and desktop contexts can be incredibly powerful and reflects the combination of MS's traditional strengths in work-products and the newer consumer mobile space. Of course, the execution there was well off the mark - Metro was foisted upon the desktop context and was strictly inferior to what it tried to replace, and key productivity tools were removed in the name of unification. MS gets the big picture, but they keep fucking up the details. Here's hoping Nadella can turn this around.
aytekin 13y ago
Pretty weak when you compare it with Steve Job's “Fuck Michael Dell” talk when he came back to Apple in 1997. http://lilly.tumblr.com/post/11230723028/steve-jobs http://lilly.tumblr.com/post/11230723028/steve-jobs
- mbreese 13y ago
  Different companies, difference circumstances. In 1997, Apple needed to be scrappy just to survive. Microsoft in 2014, is still an enormously profitable company that has been in a lull for most of the last decade. For an email to start the process of waking a sleeping giant, I thought the tone was good.
legutierr 13y ago
> Today is a very humbling day for me. The first sentence of the email, statement that seems entirely appropriate given the circumstances. Nonetheless, I find it curious that we expect people who reach the highest levels of accomplishment to describe those accomplishments as humbling. It seems natural to us for someone promoted to the heights of their profession, such as Satya Nadella in this case, or the winner of a Nobel prize or an academy award, for example, to describe the accomplishment as "humbling", when logically speaking it should be anything but. Is such a statement part of a defense mechanism against egotism that prevents the honored individual from loosing the discipline that allowed them to excel in the first place? Is it an attempt to say, "this doesn't change me, I am still who I was before"? Is it just a manipulation, a defense against envy and derision, an attempt to reduce the motivation of others to "take them down a notch"? Or is it something else? Without thinking about it too deeply, it seems right to read that Satya Nadella is humbled to become one of the most powerful corporate executives in the world, but why? And is it correct?
- sjg007 13y ago
  It is humbling because you are elected by a group of your peers to lead. It also gives implicit credit to all the people that helped make him successful. Leadership is not zero sum and it doesn't follow specific rules. If anything the rules of promotion are codified by practice and not necessarily logical and prescribed but in general most people aspire to be fair and merit based.
  - TheCraiggers 13y ago
    > It is humbling because you are essentially elected by a group of your peers to lead. I don't understand this. It would be more humbling if, being at the top of your game and fully expecting to get the job, you were turned down for the CEO position. Or they demote you to a lower position. /That/ would be humbling. You're humlbed when you suddenly are forced to re-evaluate your self-worth after it's made clear it doesn't match the real-world scenario, not when you reach the top or reaffirm your position.
    - 13y ago
jpessa 13y ago
"Sent from my iPhone" xD
- onedev 13y ago
  Go back to Reddit. You don't belong here if you can't make an intelligent comment. Sorry.
  - minwcnt5 13y ago
    If you think HN comments are anything more than Reddit comments dressed up in ostentation then you would be well-served by paying more careful attention to the actual content of what you read in the future.
    - onedev 13y ago
      No I recognize that for sure, but at least in those cases, the poster took time to dress up the comment and type original words.
    - dasil003 13y ago
      You mean apart from the 50-deep run-on pun/meme threads right?
kjhughes 13y ago
I liked this part of his letter: We sometimes underestimate what we each can do to make things happen and overestimate what others need to do to move us forward. We must change this.
lucb1e 13y ago
> our core value of empowering users and organizations to “do more.” Oh they are going to ditch Windows and Secure Boot and help develop Linux for mainstream users? This must be the news of the year! Every day they continue requiring Secure Boot on Windows RT, this lie continues to get bigger.
jinushaun 13y ago
Boring generic corporate pep talk email. It would've been better with GIFs. Doesn't give me much hope for the future of Microsoft. Seems like more of the same. I was really hoping for an outsider with new ideas that could energise the organization and make tough decisions. I wonder what the sentiment is on the ground among softies.

97 points by rfreytag 13y ago

As I read that email, I wondered - would the typical MS employee read this with skepticism...or truly be inspired, hopeful, and ready to take action?

toggle 13y ago
It seems like the usual "Hi, I'm the new CEO" letter can't be very inspiring. I mean, it would be rude for him to slam Steve Ballmer right after replacing him -- he needs to have some tact. And, he can't be to enthusiastic and claim that they'll be making devices with rainbows shooting out of their SD card slots -- that'd make everyone say, "Who does this guy think he is?" I'm sure everyone read it with a neutral response, because it was pretty boilerplate (as it kind of has to be).
rmrfrmrf 13y ago
I'm hoping they're inspired--they should be! In a lot of ways, this type of e-mail can be impossible to write; simultaneously writing about your pride in a company while acknowledging the recent missteps of your predecessor and also keeping the tone of the message completely optimistic is really challenging. I feel like I, as an outsider, knew exactly what this e-mail needed to say to give me hope for Microsoft as a customer, but had no idea how I would go about saying it. After reading, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where Nadella takes Microsoft in the next few years.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

sfermigier 13y ago

"Who am I? I am 46. I’ve been married for 22 years and we have 3 kids." -> Who cares?

gregschlom 13y ago
Are you American? I was wondering about this too. As a Frenchman, I had the same reaction as you, but I think Americans care a lot about this. I've been told for example that in the US it would be completely impossible for a president to be elected if he didn't had a solid marriage and family. I find those cultural differences fascinating
- CmonDev 13y ago
  "a president to be elected if he didn't had a solid marriage and family" + religious.
- Sharlin 13y ago
  Surely, if he strongly identifies as a family man, and having a family is something that has shaped his growth as a human being, it's something he finds worth mentioning, no?
- Uhhrrr 13y ago
  I don't think Americans really care either. I am American and don't remember that sort of thing from any C-level announcements at any company I've worked with. But my Indian-born coworkers have pretty consistently asked me about family, including how many sons and how many daughters. So maybe it's a mix of that culture and also a show of American openness.
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  It's a strange dichotomy in a way; we, as Americans, are supposed to be aggressively family-oriented while, at the same time, relentlessly dedicated to our work. Corporate culture here definitely has a certain intensity to it that can be a little off-putting. What I will say, though, is that statements like that from a CEO can often give comfort to employees raising families. It can be jarring, for example, to transition from a boss who allows flexible workdays to take your kids to school, drive them to practice, etc. to one who doesn't. For a CEO, there's even the possibility of changing policies on parental leave, etc. that can definitely affect morale. There's also the aspect of Nadella offering himself as a role-model for those who are wondering if there's life after 30 in the tech world. It can be reassuring to know that you can get married, have children, get older, have a personal life, etc. and still become CEO of a company. IMO it's a good counter-argument to the no-holds-barred hustle culture that is peddled to 20-somethings.

sfermigier 13y ago

"Steve and Bill have taken it from an idea to one of the greatest and most universally admired companies in the world." -> Are you on crack?

doppenhe 13y ago

As an ex-MSFT employee and somebody who actually got a chance to talk to Satya I found the letter to be very true to his personality. Excited to see what he does in Redmond.

CmonDev 13y ago
Is he a conservative type of manager who will try to come-up with completely new kind of products or someone who will keep chasing Google in Apple in what they do best?
- Pxtl 13y ago
  Honestly? Except for Bing, I've been pretty impressed with microsoft's "Chasing apple and google" offerings. Outlook.com, Sky^H^H^HOneDrive (and its related MS-office webapps), and the Windows Phone OS actually impressed me. Imho, WP8 provides a much more polished user experience than Android, although Android offers far more features and a far more mature market-place of course. And unlike Google, they've succeeded in a consistent UI styling across Web, Mobile, and Desktop. The problem, of course, is just that Win8 is in a screwed up transition both in the UI and under-the-hood. Yes, Microsoft has ADD - constant re-brandings and the MSDN-churn of new platforms are frustrating. But they've built a good family of products in their counterattack against Google/Android.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  I think MS's strategy thus far has actually been pretty good. It's a company with good strategic vision mired in terrible execution. WinPhone7 was a great product on paper - still is - that was released half-baked missing a great number of features that consumers expected to be standard. It was further undermined when Microsoft decided to cut the early adopters and run (WP7 phones that never got the WP7.5 update). Hell, even the much-maligned Kin I think was a great idea. In an era with stupidly expensive data plans, the idea was to come up with a social-media-only (Twitter, Facebook, SMS) device coupled with a kid-compatible cheap monthly plan, based on the existing expertise of Danger. Then they decided to rewrite the whole tech stack, pushed the product way out of its launch window, and lost out on the core offering: cheap plans. What ended up launching was nowhere near what was envisioned. I believe Windows 8 and the merging of touch and desktop was, and still is, a great idea. A platform that can seamlessly transform between mobile and desktop contexts can be incredibly powerful and reflects the combination of MS's traditional strengths in work-products and the newer consumer mobile space. Of course, the execution there was well off the mark - Metro was foisted upon the desktop context and was strictly inferior to what it tried to replace, and key productivity tools were removed in the name of unification. MS gets the big picture, but they keep fucking up the details. Here's hoping Nadella can turn this around.

aytekin 13y ago

Pretty weak when you compare it with Steve Job's “Fuck Michael Dell” talk when he came back to Apple in 1997. http://lilly.tumblr.com/post/11230723028/steve-jobs http://lilly.tumblr.com/post/11230723028/steve-jobs

mbreese 13y ago
Different companies, difference circumstances. In 1997, Apple needed to be scrappy just to survive. Microsoft in 2014, is still an enormously profitable company that has been in a lull for most of the last decade. For an email to start the process of waking a sleeping giant, I thought the tone was good.

legutierr 13y ago

> Today is a very humbling day for me. The first sentence of the email, statement that seems entirely appropriate given the circumstances. Nonetheless, I find it curious that we expect people who reach the highest levels of accomplishment to describe those accomplishments as humbling. It seems natural to us for someone promoted to the heights of their profession, such as Satya Nadella in this case, or the winner of a Nobel prize or an academy award, for example, to describe the accomplishment as "humbling", when logically speaking it should be anything but. Is such a statement part of a defense mechanism against egotism that prevents the honored individual from loosing the discipline that allowed them to excel in the first place? Is it an attempt to say, "this doesn't change me, I am still who I was before"? Is it just a manipulation, a defense against envy and derision, an attempt to reduce the motivation of others to "take them down a notch"? Or is it something else? Without thinking about it too deeply, it seems right to read that Satya Nadella is humbled to become one of the most powerful corporate executives in the world, but why? And is it correct?

sjg007 13y ago
It is humbling because you are elected by a group of your peers to lead. It also gives implicit credit to all the people that helped make him successful. Leadership is not zero sum and it doesn't follow specific rules. If anything the rules of promotion are codified by practice and not necessarily logical and prescribed but in general most people aspire to be fair and merit based.
- TheCraiggers 13y ago
  > It is humbling because you are essentially elected by a group of your peers to lead. I don't understand this. It would be more humbling if, being at the top of your game and fully expecting to get the job, you were turned down for the CEO position. Or they demote you to a lower position. /That/ would be humbling. You're humlbed when you suddenly are forced to re-evaluate your self-worth after it's made clear it doesn't match the real-world scenario, not when you reach the top or reaffirm your position.
  - 13y ago

jpessa 13y ago

"Sent from my iPhone" xD

onedev 13y ago
Go back to Reddit. You don't belong here if you can't make an intelligent comment. Sorry.
- minwcnt5 13y ago
  If you think HN comments are anything more than Reddit comments dressed up in ostentation then you would be well-served by paying more careful attention to the actual content of what you read in the future.
  - onedev 13y ago
    No I recognize that for sure, but at least in those cases, the poster took time to dress up the comment and type original words.
  - dasil003 13y ago
    You mean apart from the 50-deep run-on pun/meme threads right?

kjhughes 13y ago

I liked this part of his letter: We sometimes underestimate what we each can do to make things happen and overestimate what others need to do to move us forward. We must change this.

lucb1e 13y ago

> our core value of empowering users and organizations to “do more.” Oh they are going to ditch Windows and Secure Boot and help develop Linux for mainstream users? This must be the news of the year! Every day they continue requiring Secure Boot on Windows RT, this lie continues to get bigger.

jinushaun 13y ago

Boring generic corporate pep talk email. It would've been better with GIFs. Doesn't give me much hope for the future of Microsoft. Seems like more of the same. I was really hoping for an outsider with new ideas that could energise the organization and make tough decisions. I wonder what the sentiment is on the ground among softies.