Satya came from cloud and enterprise (c+e). His big bet was on the fact that everyone will have a computer in a pocket augmented by the cloud. Capitalizing on that was very important.
Windows growth had been stagnant and ballmer lost the mobile opportunity.
Satya encouraged open source at Microsoft and putting customers need first.
I was part of this transition and the change was definitely felt. He deeply understands where the puck will be rather than where it is.
He announced huge layoffs (18,000 people) almost as soon as he took over. A lot of Nokia people, but also 5,500 people not related to mobile and 1,400 of them at HQ. A year later he made another huge cut of 7,800 people.
Eh... According to Wikipedia, MS had 114k employees total as of mid-2016. Given that, I'd say a 18k layoff definitely counts as a big deal.
"It's not like Nadella fired every one and started afresh." is a colloquialism. d--b was basically saying "it's not like Nadella did a major overhaul.
With which jonknee disagrees, citing a layoff of 18,000. To which simonh claims is not a major overhaul since Microsoft is nebulously enormous. To which piaste disagrees, as 18k was actually 15.7% of the company.
You can all continue to debate whether or not 15.7% is a major overhaul, whether the actual people they fired were significant, etc...
But you quoting a colloquialism and asking us all to take it literally is not helpful to the discussion, or the culture of HN.
I don't disagree, but the parent was being just as pedantic as I was. Perhaps my snark was an attempt to end the petty discussion (apparently, improperly so). Read these two statements in the context of the discussion:
> burning it down and starting from scratch.
> started afresh
15.7% is a major overhaul, but IMO in no way insinuates "burning something down" or "starting afresh". Do you think either of those statements is consistent with a 15% cut in workforce?
PS - 12,500 of those 18,000 came from Nokia[0].
> with 12,500 of those coming out of the streamlining of Microsoft’s acquired Nokia assets.
[0] - https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/17/microsoft-to-cut-workforce...
The article is all about how the guy changed everything so quickly while in fact this was already happening.
What's possible though is that the big guys at Microsoft planned to give the job to Nadella a while ago, and that Nadella, under Ballmer, did actually take all the decisions that took Microsoft in the right direction.
Well, just look at that stock prices graph, seems in line with this: sure there's a flat line during Ballmer's first 10 years, but then it suddenly started going up and the trend just continued in the same trend when Nadella got assigned. Not saying he's not doing a good job: from what I see I'd say he's doing well, though of course there's a whole lot of information I don't see so I really cannot tell.
It's not like Nadella fired every one and started afresh.