- Microsoft has the money
- LinkedIn is the biggest thing in recruiting (I don't especially like it either, but it is). I wouldn't personally hire someone via recruiters or LinkedIn, but I would hire someone via a recomendation from a contact I maintain on LinkedIn.
- Microsoft makes business tools
- There's a bunch of interesting opportunities for intrgating Dynamics, Yammer, and other MS tools with LinkedIn.
Actually looking forward to MS's UX folk cleaning up LinkedIn.
Edit: Nadella said re: how MS looks at acquisitions (http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/13/11920306/microsoft-ceo-sat...) "Is this asset riding secular usage and technology trends?" - anyone know what that means?
In general English, "secular" means "non-religious."
In MBA-speak, "secular" means "non-cyclical."
An example of cyclical growth would be ExxonMobil between 2004 and 2007. They couldn't keep up this growth, because it was due entirely to swings in the price of oil.
An example of secular growth would be Google between 2004 and 2007. They were able to ride the trend of advertising moving online. (Advertising is a cyclical business, but Google won't feel it until advertising stops moving online.)
Nadella is saying that he believes LinkedIn is riding a sustained trend.
It's not "MBA-speak"; this sense of the word "secular" is used in economics, time-series analysis, astronomy, etc.
A saeculum is a length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person or the equivalent of the complete renewal of a human population. The word has evolved within Romance languages (and Swedish) to mean "century".
Doesn't that come from centum (100) like cent and centurion?
Of course it's MBA-speak. MBA-speak does not mean that they invented the word, or that only MBAs use the word. It just means that MBAs prefer to use the word where another one would do.
Nadella could have talked about "long-term trends" or "ongoing trends" or "sustainable trends." However, he chose to use "secular trends." His fondness for jargon makes him harder to understand.
Another example of MBA-speak is "synergy." The OED traces "joint action, cooperation" to 1632, and "a combined effect which is greater than additive" to 1904 ("synergism"). The first listed MBA-speak usage of the term is a 1981 article in The Economist on brokerage mergers.
Does that mean that "synergy" is "not MBA-speak" because the term is also used by scientists? Of course not! It just means that the MBAs adopted a term that others had already been using.
I would place "secular" into the same category as "synergy." The OED traces its astronomical usage to 1801 and its economics usage to 1895. Its first appearance outside a scientific context is in 1973, in an article in The Daily Telegraph on interest rates.
I'm a recruiter, and fully understand reluctance to use recruiters (expensive, not to mention a host of other reputation issues).
I don't quite understand "I would't hire someone via...LinkedIn". 'Hire someone via LinkedIn' could mean a host of things.
The most obvious would be an ad - you might place an ad on LinkedIn, and that could be 'hiring via LinkedIn'. LinkedIn ads are relatively expensive, so I wouldn't fault you for not placing ads there either.
But to many, LinkedIn is just a database or catalog of people who you can reach out to (or who can reach out to you).
If you saw a LinkedIn profile that you thought would make a good addition to your team, would you not reach out to that person just because you found them on LinkedIn?
If someone approached you and said "I saw your profile on LinkedIn and I like what your company is doing, I'd like to get together and discuss the possibility of working with you", would you say no?
I expect the answers are "no" to both questions, but when we (in recruiting) talk about using LinkedIn for hires, we generally would agree that there are a handful of ways LinkedIn might be useful in the hiring process.
I'd never approach someone cold like that.
>If someone approached you and said "I saw your profile on LinkedIn and I like what your company is doing, I'd like to get together and discuss the possibility of working with you", would you say no?
I'd absolutely say no, because that kind of unsolicited approach means that you're just fishing, and that I happened to wind up in your net along with umpteen others. In other words, you approaching me via a LinkedIn profile doesn't mean you're actually interested.
Your answer to the 2nd question is a bit more troubling to me. If someone stumbles on your profile on LinkedIn, does some additional research to see about your company, finds out it's a place he/she might like, why do you say this is "fishing"? You may be the only person this job seeker reached out to - why would you assume otherwise?
LinkedIn can be a valuable tool for job seekers to find information about a company - usually a bit more informative technically than standard company PR (other than a tech blog).
I think if you're dismissing candidates simply because you happened to see them on LinkedIn, or simply because they learned about the existence of your company via LinkedIn, you aren't doing your employer any favors.
But this is the real world and standards aren't going to be kept that high. Even if you stick to doing things well, your competitors won't and they will turn us off you too.
I agree entirely with your second point. Identifying myself as a recruiter immediately is the end of conversation with many in the industry due to the actions of a growing percentage of recruiters. It's unfortunate, and one reason I'm expanding business into consulting with companies to help them attract job seekers without using recruiters. Candidates these days are often inclined to go directly without a middleman.
No it doesn't. I've contacted companies who weren't advertising jobs a few times and it was because I had a specific interest in working at the company in question. In my experience people are usually quite pleased to get these kinds of inquiries, whether or not they have a suitable position. Of course your initial inquiry has to be tailored and not just some kind of generic "gimme a job please" spam.
That aside, who exactly do you think you are? Most people who are going to be applying for jobs are naturally going to be applying for jobs at a bunch of different companies. After all, it would be a bit presumptuous to assume that the first company you contact is going to hire you, and most people are able to identify quite a number of companies where they would probably be happy to work. Is your outfit really so special that you can demand serial monogamy from job applicants?
You can search open jobs, but everyone is doing that.
If you want startups, you can look into PR and press releases about funding.
LinkedIn is great for this. As I wrote in another comment, go to LinkedIn and do an advanced search for some word that applies to your background (say 'Python') and within 30 miles of Philadelphia. You'll get a lot of profiles that come up, and many will currently work for companies that are using Python in your area.
Do a bit of research on those companies that come up, find an employee that does what you do (or a level up, or even a CTO at a small shop), find their email address (or ping thru Linked) and make a simple approach.
"Hey, I am currently exploring some new opportunities and while doing some research I came across $COMPANY. I'm not sure if you are currently hiring or not, but based on what I've read (ADD SOMETHING SPECIFIC HERE TO SHOW YOU DID AT LEAST A BIT OF HOMEWORK ON THEM) I'd certainly be interested in learning a bit more about the company. My background is $BRIEFBACKGROUND. If interested, I'd be happy to buy you a cup of coffee to learn some more."
That doesn't make me think you're interested in my particular talents. It makes me think you're desperate and a sociopath who has no respect for other people's time or wishes. If I wanted to talk to you, I would have responded after one of the first 10 attempts to contact me. Get a frickin' clue!
There's a good reason for me not to have a linkedin profile. Recruiters somehow still manage to find me but this is fortunately less of a problem than it would be otherwise (judging by my colleagues and friends).
It's a bit like not being visible in google: if you can't google it, it doesn't exist. And if you're not on linkedin the laziest contingent of the recruiting profession will be unable to locate you. Fine by me.
There used to be an "interested in" section at the bottom of profiles. It appears to be gone now, and you could check off things like "Career opportunities", "networking", etc. That section appears to be gone now.
Using LinkedIn isn't lazy for recruiters, it's smart - it's just the easiest way to find people. The easiest way to find active job seekers would be resume/job boards.
Recruiters who limit themselves to only using LinkedIn to identify potential candidates are lazy. Many devs could be found in a host of other places, and many like you don't want to be on LinkedIn.
The other reason recruiters tend to rely on LinkedIn is they can get quite a bit of value out of it even at the free level.
I think this is my problem with LinkedIn, that conversation doesn't happen. I get connection requests and I'm left baffled to what their angle is. I literally scan the bio of the one connecting for the words 'recruiter' or 'business development' and then reject them. It's because I'm not looking to use LinkedIn for that reason.
Turns out it was this exact frustration that sparked the motivation to create a startup in my daily vlog.
Link for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGTowTy88dEKxrFibOimY...
If you're a Python dev and you want to work within 30 miles of Dallas TX, you can do an advanced search on the word Python (maybe add a couple others) and then set location to Dallas metro. Your results will be individuals, and those individuals all should be working for local companies that are using Python (with some false positives obviously). That's a decent list to start off for someone, because it's not just companies that are currently listing open jobs - applying only to open jobs isn't the best way to find jobs.
I get connection requests and I'm left baffled to what
their angle is.
If someone is scanning the bio just to find out whether the messenger is a recruiter or in biz dev, chances are the difference between a free or paid account is trivial.
As a recruiter, I was reluctant for many years to use a paid account, as I received feedback from some candidates that seemed to equate a paid account with the most aggressive recruiters that overstepped bounds in LinkedIn. I eventually caved to get a paid account, but I don't know that the additional features are worth both (a) the expense and (b) any negative stigma that some may associate with having a paid account.
That said, I log into my LinkedIn account maybe a half-dozen times a year, so I doubt my usage is typical. Take the above with a grain of salt.
This. This the only reason im excited about the acquisition. LinkedIn UX is awful.
What makes me nervous though, is some things could get worse. (skype has gone downhill ever since the acquisition i feel).
I'm slowly migrating away from any Microsoft product. Luckily I closed my Linkedin account a while back. This is my new Linkedin: http://francisco.io/ (my own website).
Yeah well they acquired Skype and see what a mess that became. Even Windows itself sometimes...
I suppose it depends on which team gets the job?
I bet! The number of people in here that think a company with >118,000 employees is always going to make the same tech and design decisions is baffling.
This is actually documented on management literature, with empirical studies and quantitative results.
Would love to read some of these management studies; it sounds intuitive but (as always) it's much easier to grok the bigger picture with concrete examples. Can you point me to some of the literature?
About the microclimates, looks to me that how much of the environment is dictated by the top itself is one of those decisions affected by the environment. No idea how Microsoft is structured.
If anything, MS is starting to slowly take it to a better direction, even though it is nowhere near the ideology of the original Skype.
I believe that LinkedIn will end up being a similar case, where it will continue to suck, but you'll see some slow progress eventually.
EDIT: As pointed out, LinkedIn will likely continue operating independently, as did Skype, which explains the slow progress.
There are many holes in LI's UX which I'm hoping will get fixed after the purchase is complete. I just hope it doesn't break as Skype did (you're not the only one to feel that). Even though it's Microsoft, it's not Ballmer's MSFT anymore, so I'm hopeful. And if it does, there'll be a big gap for some other company to fill.
On the other hand, I absolutely hate Microsoft's UI on everything from their Flat Design, Xbox Menu, (everything except Office)
It might be pleasing to look at but it's quite horrible to use.
Imagine this scenario:
- User is logged in to LinkedIn
- User visits your website
- Their visit is logged by some JS to Dynamics CRM
- A record is created/updated in Dynamics CRM, populated with their name, job title and contact details from LinkedIn
Further down the line, I can see LinkedIn fully becoming part of Office 365.
This isn't Microsoft's attempt to get into the social networking game. This is Microsoft wanting accurate data to augment their enterprise collaboration/digital workplace platform.
You can't do it all at once, of course; you'll have some edge cases to deal with. But if you can manage it you'll have tremendous leverage.
Step 3 is you get an email (marketing or sales) because Dynamics notified assigned a task to a sales rep or started a job in marketing automation.
Then, based on you opening/ replying/ not opening the email, a whole new series of tasks are created.
If MSFT / Dynamics do this right, they will have a very strong Salesforce competitor.
Have you seen Windows 10 yet?
It's actually quite wonderful and usable OS, IMHO.
He's referring to whether usage is going mainstream, shifting from early adopters to the general market[1]. He's looking at technology that's already big but has the potential to get even bigger.
When usage is limited only to early adopters, it's not useful to Microsoft since it's such a large company. But when general folks are also beginning to adopt a piece of technology, it's a sign that things are going right.
I doubt there are any "get $26 billion dollars back" opportunities...
If managed right, over the lifetime of the investment, this could easily make back 10x what they paid.
Along those lines, maybe they'll fix the very broken email alerts for group postings. For quite a while, my experience has been that if I have it set to weekly digests I do get them weekly as expected, but if I set a group to daily digests I get nothing at all. So I get nothing at all for the groups that I have the most interest in. I opened a support ticket about it but got nowhere with it. I don't know if this impacts everyone or just some subset of users, but I've seen others complain about it.
This seems like a pretty arbitrary distinction.
Why? I don't care how someone got the interview, it's the person and their skills and abilities that I am going to assess (also recruiters get lots of work off my head, which is good, especially when our HR dept. isn't able to do it)
Sure, Microsoft don't have a great record with their acquisitions, but the opportunity for them to generate more revenue directly and indirectly from this is huge.
Why do you think that will happen? Azure had AWS as a model, yet the UX is not just worse but surprisingly worse. MS bought a product I was on, and I was excited to clean it up. The exact opposite happened; we were given no time to fix design problems, and instead had to pile on features. The MSDN site has been tired for almost two decades now. I feel as though we were talking about two different companies.
Wait, what? Are you saying you want Microsoft to "Metro-ify" LinkedIn? Forget the OS, even, for a minute... Just look at what they did to Skype and Office.
Are you saying you LIKE their current UX ideology?
* IRC: UX is pretty awful, any persistence of chats is ad-hoc and hand-rolled, plain text only, relatively high burden on sysadmins. * Jabber/MSN/Yahoo/etc.: very poor group chat support * Skype: very difficult to integrate with anything else, no support for self-hosting. * Slack/HipChat - good options, more or less contemporary, very much in direct competition with Yammer. Both more ephemeral though - IME Yammer ends up better than either, because it's just persistent enough that you can find old discussions/documentation when you need to.
MS's UX - Like the one where they consider closing a dialog box to be a consent to upgrade to Windows 10? ;)
You buy the shades, and I'll get ready to search the registry for a lower case hack.
When I first heard the news it made no sense; but after pondering, I think I know what they are trying to do, and it does makes sense. Also, LinkedIn was relatively cheap compared to its counterparts, I've already seen some shareholders raising some ire because they were trading a LOT higher not long ago.
Microsoft doesn't have a good track record with big acquisitions, but this is Satya's first and we have seen other deals turned down by him for being too rich. Salesforce being the prime example.
They paid with all cash (which was yielding nothing,) so now they get the benefit of a company that has pretty good revenues, is really close to profit, and they get a massive tax write off. It also integrates well with their core businesses and like I said, it's fairly cheap.
Let's not forget Satya has had some smart aquisitions lately. Minecraft & Xamarin. So, maybe it's worth having confidence in this one.
This is the thing I find hard to understand about these big corporate acquisitions. What multiple of "really close to profit" makes a bigger number than $26B?
If it's a start-up with obvious potential but relatively early in its life, or an established business that is currently reinvesting revenues on a large scale to drive growth, I can understand not being concerned about the profits.
But this is LinkedIn. It's not like it's a new company. It's already dominant in its market, and I don't see obvious potential for spectacular growth within the same area. If it's not already making big profits, what makes it worth $26B to Microsoft?
Yes, Microsoft could have achieved the same result by giving Lynda some $ per user that watches their Microsoft training...This is just one scenario...I hope they have more.
That seems a little optimistic to me. With LinkedIn in such a dominant position, there is only so far for them to grow in user numbers. That means they need to increase revenue-per-user as well to maintain anything like that kind of growth, but again there is only so far you can push with things like advertising rates before your customers can get better returns on their budget from other channels.
Big companies hate to be caught in the middle of controversies. LinkedIn's content is safe to a fault. Buying Twitter and making it uncontroversial would drain two-thirds of the value right away. Maybe more.
LinkedIn on the other hand is, depending on your point of view, either a database of incomplete, mostly outdated and uninteresting resumes, or a circle jerk of HR folks and dubious "coaches".
People stay on LinkedIn because they are afraid of missing out. But really, it's a genuine ghost town, a once promising service that was completely destroyed by their monetization needs and most of us have classified LinkedIn emails as spam long ago, after realizing you can't unsubscribe from it. And the only reason I haven't deleted my account yet is because once in a blue moon I get to take a look at forwarded profiles. You don't get anything interesting really, LinkedIn profiles are boring, superficial and generic, but hope never dies.
You can unsubscribe from all it.
This means that they can keep adding categories. For example I don't remember an option for receiving invitations for joining groups. If this option was available I would have disabled it and guess what, it's now enabled on my account.
But far more aggravating is that I'm receiving emails straight to my Inbox from HR people even though I unsubscribed from such email. Do you know how I know that LinkedIn has sold my email address against my preferences? It's because I'm using an unique email address just for LinkedIn.
You know, I can use a menu, I can find a link, have been doing it for quite some time ;-)
Couldn't agree more.
LinkedIn has to be one of the most under-powered network out there. It's UX is still reminiscent of Orkut days. It's notifications and messaging system is the worst of breed. The network updates and posts on the "wall" are so bad that I stopped reading them years ago because it feels like spam. It prompts me every now and again to congratulate people on job anniversaries--maybe people do that but it's a weak play when a company reaches to those depths.
Looking forward to Microsoft cleaning this up but I haven't seen anything from Microsoft as of late that would inspire confidence on the web. I was at MSN circa 2004 and it has always had an inferiority complex compared to the rest of the industry.
LinkedIn won't bring much engineering talent to the table either. So revamping it will be a true test of Microsoft's resurgence into the web following a string of bad executions.
So what? Facebook prompts me to congratulate on people's birthdays, and Facebook is doing quite well.
Click here to congratulate Jill for reaching her ninth anniversary at Yoyodyne!
"..But Jill left that company 5 years ago.."
Dave died two years ago. Really don't want to contact his widow to make this stop.
So What? :) Snapchat compels people to post videos of their cats and daily humdrum. And it also does quite well.
Google takes telemetry data from your search results, which frankly are far more invasive than how you scroll through your start menu or how often you use the action center. It's all anonymized, I don't see the problem. I certainly wouldn't call it "spyware," that just a smear and has nothing to do with reality.
They don't track your keystrokes, unless you are using Cortana, which guess what? So does Google/Apple/Amazon when you use their assistants. So you're going to switch to a competitor of Microsofts because they started doing what their competitors already did? Fantastic logic.
Do you have a better term for code that does user-unwanted tracking of their behavior, on any level, which hides itself from view, is difficult (in many cases impossible) to disable, and resists the will of the user when they try things like hosts file filtering?
The only difference between 3rd party spyware and Microsoft spyware is the stated intention of the author. Oh, and the former generally being easier to remove.
Somehow, we improved OSes and UIs before this kind of always on bullshit was commonly accepted. And I see it as a negative besides, it means that any "improvements" are always going to be pointed at the lowest common denominator, which has a habit of leaving power users out in the cold.
Power users usually remove any influence they might have by opting out of telemetry....
On the other hand, most people on the Windows Insider rings are technically adept, so maybe that balances out.
Of course, the Insider builds have a lot more telemetry....
> Somehow, we improved OSes and UIs before this kind of always on bullshit was commonly accepted.
Everything you do that involves Google (or Facebook etc) provides complete telemetry and those products are continuously updated whether you like it or not.
Now Microsoft has stopped developing stuff on a three-year cycle and switched to 6 months or less. (So you won't have to do any more Big Bang upgrades that take 18 months to plan and 18 months to implement, leaving you permanently behind.)
Either way, it probably makes sense to do more or less continuous OS updates when the OS is integrated with apps and online services (Outlook.com, OneDrive, Office 365 etc).
I "draw the line" at the definition I gave in the previous post. Where's the off switch?
At least with a browser client you have control over how you're traced on the web. With the OS (that you paid for), you're forced to install some third party software and give it admin access. That's not a security problem waiting to happen at all.
You're right, it's not.
> I'm not sure how you're equating cookie-level tracking to being more invasive than OS-level tracking.
Google does far more than cookie level tracking. What do you think Google Now use? Magic?
Blocking OS-level tracking is a security issue because the third party software can be bought and sold to malware companies, who can push an update to infect your computer.
Also, I think windows 10 is closer to adware than spyware. I think it is adware as it sneakily installs itself, and it has ads.
That's debatable, but why should Microsoft allow its competitors have an advantage over them because of telemetry data? The collection doesn't do you any harm, it's not invasive. They aren't looking at your file names, or the text in your documents or your keystrokes. The only time they gather keystroke information is when you're in Cortana...which is literally useless without gathering telemetry for search terms.
> Microsoft has done just fine with windows without taking all this additional information
Except for losing marketshare and people complaining about UX and how OSX is better?
This kind of thinking sickens me. So you would be fine with me rampaging through your room and your house looking over your stuff, making a catalog of the things you own, the things you buy, what you do with them, at what hours, and how often, watching you eat, work, play, sleep, be with your friends, taking notes on who you speak to, at what hours, and about what...
Since, as you say, this doesn't do you any harm?
Imagine a world without old versions of IE that your webapps still have to support because else you're losing 10% of your users.
It would be nice if things didn't break with updates, though.
The idea behind their update system is generally sound, but their execution is not good.
The only time forcing all updates in that way makes a difference is when Microsoft wants to override a user's deliberate preference not to have their system changed in that way. This cannot possibly be in the user's interest, only Microsoft's.
What can't be fixed by security updates, as opposed to OS upgrade?
Yuck.
Microsoft: Enjoy the safety (and the ads), because you have no choice.
Mom: Honey, what's this thing stopping me from [shopping]?
Dad: Don't click the button!
Mom: [long lecture about how she's trying to do stuff for her grandkids].
Dad: Fine, just hit the damn button.
Me: DON'T HIT THE BUTTON! I'll walk you through it.
I proceeded to explain it to them. 5 days later they don't even remember/care. I guarantee you my grandmother doesn't give a shit either, nor do most of my siblings. So far, I'm at a 6:2 ratio of not caring (one of my brothers is a developer). My parents aren't exactly ignorant in regards to tech, but it simply doesn't effect them to the extent it bothers you/us.
Soon it was running iOS 7 after prompting to update to the new OS.
Soon after that it went back to the shop for a full refund, because the person who had liked it before found the new OS and the things that broke in the process of updating that annoying.
Most adults probably don't really know what a meme is yet either (they've probably seen a few, just don't really get it yet).
Sure, 9GAGgers are still at least capable of operating a computer or smartphone, but if you move even further down in tech-capabilities, it also becomes quite unlikely that those people will buy something from Microsoft to begin with.
http://9gag.com/gag/3325624/9gag-demographics
They aren't consumers. Beyond that, Microsoft isn't a company that targets individuals. They make their money from companies. They don't need to care about 22 year olds that have $100k of student debt and will pirate most software anyway.
It was originally coined by Richard Dawkins (way back, before he went senile); perhaps in _The selfish gene_. HTH!
And a lot of people who advise non-technical friends and family on technical matters are, too.
Also, Windows 10 updates have broken so many things for so many people that it seems quite a few of my less technically inclined friends and family are aware of the potential problems anyway.
http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?...
Or, here's the legwork done for you from 2011: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/11/30/bfp-report-meet-t...
When I update windows, I have to buy a new printer or, the headphone jack no longer works...
Recent MSFT behavior was making me think they've changed. I guess not. This genius acquisition indicates the old MSFT is alive and well. Given the dollar amount, the good news is that they can't do too many of these moves without sinking their ship.
And Microsoft bought Yammer - an "enterprise social network for businesses".
Well played!
Missing steps: opened Excel, created a new document, pasted them in, did 'Text to columns', clicked the 'Price' column header, went to the 'Data' tab, clicked 'Sort', expanded my selection to include adjancent cells...
I feel like I am in a strange wonderland.
LinkedIn isn't a hypergrowth company. Every professional I know has a profile on it and so is every recruiter. Their stock is below its peak. They make a paltry income as a mature company. So, all that's left are magical buzzwords to make you think "something is brewing that will eventually make money." Nope. MSFT gets conned once again buying a trophy.
Yes, LinkedIn and it's also the most "business minded" social network. So it seems an obvious (good) choice ( don't forget, MS also bought Yelp - which was also considered a 'business social network')
There isn't any social network that has this much paying users.
I'm not surprised to see MS say "screw it" and just buy their own.
Facebook paid $30 to acquire WhatsApp. (And afaik similar what Murdoch paid for MySpace.)
I thought the same when they invested in "Facebook" and gave some kid with a website 17M or so.
And then when they overpaid for Skype.
I would not say "probably" any more. They are buying users. Maybe it's the only way they can stay in the game.
Still, please don't respond by making the thread even worse.
I suspect MS is destined to enter a Yahoo-like phase of remaining semi-relevant via acquisitions and legacy products enterprise finds difficult to move off of. Skype, Linkedin, Minecraft, etc make little sense for MS to own especially at the incredible prices they paid for them. There's no practical ROI here for any of this. Lets call a spade a spade here: MS is just buying customers at this point.
The only rational move MS is doing is a me-too copy of AWS. And only because running Windows of AWS was unsupported for a long time and a PITA. People don't use Azure but because they like it, its because its the one that run Windows.
Nadella isn't the Steve Jobs of MS. He's, at best, the Melissa Mayer of MS. He'll stick around for a while, cash out, and leave a worse running company in his wake. Sadly, when investors demanded Xbox and other divisions be spun off, Nadella fought them tooth and nail. I suspect the investors were right and these divisions would have been more competitive without being tied down to the MS mothership and its questionable leadership and unbelievable spending.
MS has money for these buyouts, but where's its PSVR/Vive competitor? Why are bing results still terrible? Why is Win10 still unliked? Why isn't MS taking ransomware seriously? Why is its licensing still overly expensive and impossible to figure out?
I wish Nadella was more focused on fixing what's broken with MS instead of just buying customers, many of whom will end up leaving anyway when a new competitor comes around. There's no loyalty to Linkedin. In fact, professionals just see its as another nuisance in their lives if they want to maintain competitive in the job market.
* Exec B: Ok, I've *Binged a list of top 10 social networking sites for sale, and ordered them by price, but really we'll need to come up with a strategy first to make a good choice...
At this point, it's more like Microsoft's ad ground where shitty ads that didn't make it to youtube go to die.
* Exec A: Social things are Good (coming to the conclusion about 10 years too late)
* Exec B: Shall we create our own Google+?
* Exec C: No, that didn't turn out that well for Google. Let's buy something existing.
* Exec B: Ok, I've Googled a list of top 10 social networking sites for sale, and ordered them by list price, but really we'll need to come up with a strategy first to make a good choice...
* Exec A: Booooring. Let's just buy the cheapest one and be done with it. What's the worst which could happen? Gimme a bonus.
To be honest, they're probably buying the users, not the product.