4 Microsoft Executives to Leave in Top-Level Shake-Up

New York Times ^ | June 17,2015 | Nick Wingfield

[dayglored]

Summarizing:

• Stephen Elop, the former chief executive of Nokia who has been leading Microsoft’s devices group
• Eric Rudder, the leader of its advanced technology and education efforts
• Kirill Tatarinov, the head of its business solutions group
• Mark Penn, Microsoft’s chief strategy officer

Sounds fairly significant to me.

[dayglored]

Microsoft top-exec shakeup, of possible interest to the Windows Ping List members ... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: search on keyword "windowspinglist".

[tacticalogic]

Mr. Nadella said that Mr. Penn, Microsoft’s chief strategy officer, informed him several months ago that he planned to leave Microsoft in September to form a private equity fund, among other pursuits. While Mr. Penn has worked for Microsoft for a number of years, he is best known as a former campaign strategist for Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Good riddance.

[Gay State Conservative]

Nokia? Didn’t they go from #1 to done in about 5 years?

[rktman]

So sad to see them on the street and homeless. Oh, never mind.

[Cyclone59]

They need to fire the idiot who made the latest version of MS Office products look just like Google docs and sheets.

[Sgt_Schultze]

Mr. Tatarinov’s group will become part of a cloud and enterprise team led by Scott Guthrie.

[umgud]

One of their H1B replacements.

[dayglored]

>> ...While Mr. Penn has worked for Microsoft for a number of years, he is best known as a former campaign strategist for Hillary and Bill Clinton.

> Good riddance.

No kidding. A "chief strategy officer" for a tech company, after working for the Clintons? That's hardly a resume enhancer.

Of course, Microsoft does lean significantly to the left....

[Steely Tom]

Nokia? Didn’t they go from #1 to done in about 5 years?

Yeah. Finland reorganized its whole higher education system to feed more engineers into it.

In 2014, Microsoft purchased Nokia's mobile phone business for about $7 billion. Mr. Elop came to MS as part of the deal, which was completed on 25 April 2014.

This means that Mr. Elop's tenure as a Microsoftie lasted exactly 418 days.

[DesScorp]

Entirely for the reason Blackberry did: Apple came out with the smartphone, and only Google was rich enough and brazen enough to steal it. Everyone else just declined or died.

[Solson]

Did you know that 81% of all people, in one survey from 2014, thought that weather affected the peformance of "the cloud"?

SMH

[dayglored]

> They need to fire the idiot who made the latest version of MS Office products look just like Google docs and sheets.

Microsoft has never lacked for design ideas... if they can't buy them through acquisition, they just copy them.

To be fair, Microsoft's hardly the only outfit around that does that, but geez, are good design ideas THAT hard to come up with, that they all have to follow each other around in a circle?

[who knows what evil?]

I think I was on the phone with him this morning...small world.

[RayChuang88]

Most of those people were those who worked under Steve Ballmer. Nadella in many ways wants a “fresh start” for Microsoft and putting in new people is important to changing the Microsoft culture.

[Brad from Tennessee]

I don’t expect to see any of them in a soup line tomorrow.

[dayglored]

> Most of those people were those who worked under Steve Ballmer. Nadella in many ways wants a “fresh start” for Microsoft and putting in new people is important to changing the Microsoft culture.

Yep. There was a considerable "echo chamber" going at Microsoft for the past two decades, centered on Steve (and to a lesser extent, Bill). It's great to see it breaking up. Hopefully it's not too late to turn that giant ship around and get it going in a healthier direction.

[glorgau]

The guys making the big bucks should always have their necks on the line.

[Erik Latranyi]

Apple came out with the smartphone...

You do know that Apple did not invent the smartphone, right?

[setha]

Wouldn't that be IBM's doing with the Simon?