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[Ozriel]

Microsoft absolutely is failing upwards.

For a company that makes as much money as they do, and are pervasive in every IT system, their software is absolute fucking trash. Azure is doing fine I guess. But the fact that Microsoft has been able to get away with producing absolutely trite software for over a decade and still make money hand-over-fist, is evidence that entrenchment is good for nobody.

Office 365 works well for me. No issues with word, excel and PowerPoint. Windows just works for most people too.

Maybe it's a user issue?

All of Wall Street has been on an upside swing from 2010 till 2020, just look at the stock. Then Covid helped tremendously by putting emphasis on online collaboration and anything related to online. I don't see Nadella as some sort of a genius, he got extremely lucky with his business environment.

This goes well beyond just general trends. Azure is Nadella's baby, and he's grown that to be a pillar at MS. He's also made some very savvy investments and acquisitions, including LinkedIn. That's a major success for Microsoft.

 

[dave_d]

He made extremely consequential decisions for MS that guided the company to directly to its current position at the top of the tech world. Yes, that's worth tens of millions of dollars and then some.

Especially since most of his "salary" is made up of stock which is basically based on the company being at the top of the tech world.

 

[darrylgorn]

Complaining about American CEOs stealing money is like eating literal shit and complaining you're sick.

 

[TheGrat1]

A man's gotta eat

Don't forget he has a family to support!

 

[BattleScar]

Office 365 works well for me. No issues with word, excel and PowerPoint. Windows just works for most people too.

Maybe it's a user issue?

Excel is fine. Word is frustrating if you want to do anything other than write paragraphs. PowerPoint isn't even the best slide deck editor software, its just the most common.
The ultimate failure is Teams, which is the worst corporate comms software on the market. Worse than Slack, Zoom or even WebEx.

The advantage for Microsoft is that Office 365 is a package deal if you want Excel and Word, so they can just muscle in everywhere else. But the actual quality of the software is mid given how much fucking money it makes them.

 

[amigastar]

There is a saying which goes something like this:
"We hang the little criminals and bow down to the big criminals"
Don't you just love aphorisms, especially when they telling the truth?

 

[PaintTinJr]

Irrelevant. Everyone has challenges and sacrifices in their life to keep their dream alive, but don't end up being paid $260mil a year!




"Generic selfish suits" don't get to become CEO's of corporations the size of MS in the same way not every boy with a footballing dream gets to have a career like Ronaldo; And yes I am comparing the two because they both represent the highest echelon of achievement in their respective fields.

And I really have to laugh at the idea that a soccer star is somehow morally superior to a businessman! Like seriously, how are you judging the moral equivalence? Because a CEO has actual responsibility over of the livelihoods of his employees and thus has the capacity to do "damage", versus a career as supremely selfish as an elite athlete, they are somehow worth less?

My point is that you are making a value judgement based not based in rationality, but emotion. Its much easier to love people who are presented as heroes because that's part of their jobs. People love and admire their "stars", whereas with CEO's and business the default perception is usually negative.



So you're saying that he's worth £260m because of the income he generates for his team. But the amount of income a CEO generates for his stake-holders is now suddenly irrelevant, because part of the process of generating that income can involve lowering headcount?

Or have you just proved my point, for me by demonstrating why a CEO like Nadella can justify that they are worth such obscene amounts of monet?

TL;DR; My argument is not based in any sort of love for suits, or any particular animus towards movie stars, athletes, musicians or whomever it is is raking in vast income for more palatable reasons.

My point was that journo's taking cheap shots at soft targets (in the sense of people whom the public doesn't really "like" for doing what they do) is just rabble-rousing for profit.

Which is fucking gross in my opinion as its preying on the readerships worst instincts.

Especially as we all know that our individual distaste/anger over their ridiculous incomes means nothing. No amount of harrumphing over what either Nadella or Ronaldo get paid is going to change how much they get paid.

No I made the point he exclusively - in a tiny fraction of footballers - earns what he earns because he uniquely brings that earning capacity to the table.

CEOs rely heavily on nepotism, historical wealth and connections to get their jobs, and are just one of 10k or more employees and can have their function easily replaced, as the turnover of CEOs across blue chip companies is certainly more frequent than the finding of rare players that can earn a contract like Messi, R7 or Beckham

Gates, Balmer and Satya on the other hand were all in the top five shareholders while CEO of Microsoft, meaning their personal wealth to be in the job played a large part, by comparison R7 grew up poor, poorer than even working class Beckham, and the other kid at United from Sporting Lisbon(Nani) never reached the earnings of Beckham or R7, despite being a major success as a footballer that the millions of other kids each year that are committed as hard got nowhere close to living.

TLDR
Footballers at R7's level are special and talented and earn accordingly- even though he seems professionally self centred -CEOs of major companies are not typically special at all, the companies do the same things day-in day-out even if they were incapacitated for 3 months. Footballer at R7's level gets injured for 3 months and half the audience switches off to the league he currently plays in.

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

Remember when people were saying that MS buying Activision would be good for the devs and help gaming?

People like Satya are who the ABK buyout deal helped. The deal took a huge shit on the devs and did nothing positive for gaming.


All those people that were cheerleading this deal are total morons.

 

[Felessan]

No I made the point he exclusively - in a tiny fraction of footballers - earns what he earns because he uniquely brings that earning capacity to the table.

CEOs rely heavily on nepotism, historical wealth and connections to get their jobs, and are just one of 10k or more people and can easily be replaced as the turnover of CEOs across blue chip companies is certainly more frequent than the finding of rare players that can earn a contract like Messi, R7 or Beckham

Gates, Balmer and Satya on the other hand were all in the top five shareholders while CEO of Microsoft, meaning their personal wealth to be in the job played a large part, by comparison R7 grew up poor, poorer than even working class Beckham, and the other kid at United from Sporting Lisbon(Nani) never reached the earnings of Beckham or R7, despite being a major success as a footballer that the millions of other kids each year that are committed as hard got nowhere close to living.

TLDR
Footballers at R7's level are special and talented and earn accordingly- even though he seems professionally self centred -CEOs of major companies are not typically special at all, the companies do the same things day-in day-out even if they were incapacitated for 3 months. Footballer at R7's level gets injured for 3 months and half the audience switches off to the league he currently plays in.

You are downplaying CEO job (or any managers job) a lot.

And btw - Nadela started from the very bottom - he was born in India in common family and went a long way before he became CEO.

 

[Shifty1897]

I mean, under his leadership Azure became a viable competitor to AWS, and software execs leapt at the chance to buy GitHub Copilot licenses. I've never seen my VP spend money faster than on that bullshit.

 

[MarkMe2525]

I don't know if it has been mentioned, but it was reported today that Nadela recommended a pay DECREASE. The board decided to increase his pay instead. He gamed the system

 

[PaintTinJr]

You are downplaying CEO job (or any managers job) a lot.

And btw - Nadela started from the very bottom - he was born in India in common family and went a long way before he became CEO.

His input to the company's actual output of producing anything is still a fraction of what Gate's was, - it is easier to make money from destruction like layoffs than creating- and certainly orders of magnitude less than R7's importance to his companies/teams,.

None of these CEOs like Satya would earn a democratic place on a limited seats Ark based on their ability to contribute to humankind. Even 200-300years ago in an industrial revolution they would need to have status to have a future that was above any other fit but poor working class person. It is pay to win no matter how you look at it.

 

[Felessan]

His input to the companies actual output of producing anything is still a fraction of what Gate's was, - it is easier to make money from destruction like layoffs than creating- and certainly orders of magnitude less than R7's importance to his companies/teams,.

None of these CEOs like Satya would earn a democratic place on a limited seats Ark based on their ability to contribute to humankind. Even 200-300years ago in an industrial revolution they would need to have status to have a future that was above any other fit but poor working class person. It is pay to win no matter how you look at it.

He is doing decisions those weight thousands times heavier than whatever R7 is doing. It's his decisions that define - will company be Microsoft, Intel or even Enron. And he did a good job - he added 100k jobs, not lost them. While R7 just "trading face" for his team.
You can stick to your viewpoints however you like, it doesn't make his work less rare and important.

 

[PaintTinJr]

He is doing decisions those weight thousands times heavier than whatever R7 is doing. It's his decisions that define - will company be Microsoft, Intel or even Enron. And he did a good job - he added 100k jobs, not lost them. While R7 just "trading face" for his team.
You can stick to your viewpoints however you like, it doesn't make his work less rare and important.

There is no weight to a decision where you give yourself a multi-million pound pay rise at the expensive of making 10's of thousand of working people redundant and damaging their lives and the economies of the world. And not because your company is going out of business or because the employees were doing a bad job, but just because it was a target of shareholder returns, of which he happens to be one of the biggest individual shareholders.

Weight suggests he would make a decision that doesn't start from a morally reprehensible default strategy. Moving clubs weighs heavier on players like R7 than any of those default shitty actions IMHO and I stand by my view their contribution to humankind is nothing or negative and in no way comparable to an pinnacle footballer like R7, and they certainly don't deserve pay rises for cynical redundancies that destroys lives .

 

[Clear]

TLDR
Footballers at R7's level are special and talented and earn accordingly- even though he seems professionally self centred -CEOs of major companies are not typically special at all, the companies do the same things day-in day-out even if they were incapacitated for 3 months. Footballer at R7's level gets injured for 3 months and half the audience switches off to the league he currently plays in.

1. Way to fail to engage with the point I was making about Eurogamer going for what Mick Foley legendarily described as a "cheap pop", which is why my initial post concluded with a yawn. My complaint was about their facile pandering.

2. Also, way to fail to engage with the larger point that it doesn't matter because we aren't the ones directly paying them. The reason they get the money they do is because somebody, somewhere thinks they are worth it.

The consequences of which are that your subjective opinion of their relative value is worthless and irrelevant to the discussion. As is mine.

I only introduced the argument as an example of how CEO's aren't the only class who are paid vast sums, disproportionate to their worth. All you've achieved is to prove my point that some have more apologists for their excess than others.

 

[wolffy66]

Investors LOVE layoffs. Less people the better in their mind

 

[Felessan]

There is no weight to a decision where you give yourself a multi-million pound pay rise at the expensive of making 10's of thousand of working people redundant and damaging their lives and the economies of the world. And not because your company is going out of business or because the employees were doing a bad job, but just because it was a target of shareholder returns, of which he happens to be one of the biggest individual shareholders.

Trimming out fat is a neccessary evil to keep company efficient. Like Sony fires whole studios because they underperform.
It's a business, not a charity. Every department have performance metrics, if they are not performing, they are dead weight to a company that, if left unmanaged, will only multiply problems (why strive to be better if there are no punishment for leniency) and eventually pull company under the water.
Big companies operates on the basis that each structural division is kinda small company under big umbrella. And if this small company not perform, it'll face the usual consequences of failing company - shareholders (upper management) may save it if they think troubles are temporary or there are really good prospects, may force it to reorganize or even default and dissolve.
It's sad to be in defunct company and get a layoff, but keeping those companies afloat is a burden for market economy. Weak companies (inefficient, missmanaged, wrong positioned etc) should die so more competitive ones to take their place.

 

[pasterpl]

His input to the companies actual output of producing anything is still a fraction of what Gate's was, - it is easier to make money from destruction like layoffs than creating- and certainly orders of magnitude less than R7's importance to his companies/teams,.

None of these CEOs like Satya would earn a democratic place on a limited seats Ark based on their ability to contribute to humankind. Even 200-300years ago in an industrial revolution they would need to have status to have a future that was above any other fit but poor working class person. It is pay to win no matter how you look at it.

This is obviously not about Nadella, since he became the MS CEO, number of employees at MS increased by staggering 100k, in the last 3 years alone they hired 47k new employees. Since 2017 there is yearly net grow in numbers of employees at MS.

Microsoft Number of Employees 1990-2024 - Stock Analysis

stockanalysis.com

They recently signed a deal to buy exclusively whole electricity from currently closed down nuclear plant in the USA so after it is restarted it will revive local economy there and create jobs etc.

BTW. You obviously don't have an idea what CEO does, probably don't understand role of the board either as well as high level managers and execs.

BTW.2. Who should in your opinion, be put on an Ark with limited seats? Food growers, live stock keepers or scientist (theoretic or applied sciences?), humanists or maybe mathematicians, maybe politicians, developers, doctors, lawyers, judges, pharmacists, biologists etc. who in your opinion is more important in contribution to humankind? Point I am trying to make is your strange analogy with Ark is shitty.

 

[Laptop1991]

WoW what a shock!, even when companies go under, CEO wages and bonuses go up!

 

[pasterpl]

There is no weight to a decision where you give yourself a multi-million pound pay rise at the expensive of making 10's of thousand of working people redundant and damaging their lives and the economies of the world. And not because your company is going out of business or because the employees were doing a bad job, but just because it was a target of shareholder returns, of which he happens to be one of the biggest individual shareholders.

Share more with us, it seems that you have got internal knowledge regarding these redundancies at MS. Such an expert like you should also give us his opinion on Sony firing people when apparently they are doing so hot in the console industry. Look at my post above, since Nadella took over number of people employed at MS increased from 128k to 228k this year.

To the main point MS is post 2 massive acquisitions, as a result of these acquisition there are lots of overlapping positions in some departments in gaming division eg. Zenimax and ABK had their own accounting teams, hr teams and MS have their own as well, so what you do, keep those people doing exactly same thing while you can making it more efficient for everyone and consolidate? Same with multiple other departments. This and some other reasons lead to MS laying off 12% of workers in the Gaming division.

Wondering what were reasons behind Sony laying off 8% of their gaming division and it cannot be because company is going out of business or because the employees were doing bad job, it was probably to boost profits by cutting costs. Boost shareholders returns and execs bonuses for the price of destroying lives of these people and the economies around the world (btw. Nice hyperbole - seriously wtf man). Am I right?
.

 

[pasterpl]

Trimming out fat is a neccessary evil to keep company efficient. Like Sony fires whole studios because they underperform.
It's a business, not a charity. Every department have performance metrics, if they are not performing, they are dead weight to a company that, if left unmanaged, will only multiply problems (why strive to be better if there are no punishment for leniency) and eventually pull company under the water.
Big companies operates on the basis that each structural division is kinda small company under big umbrella. And if this small company not perform, it'll face the usual consequences of failing company - shareholders (upper management) may save it if they think troubles are temporary or there are really good prospects, may force it to reorganize or even default and dissolve.
It's sad to be in defunct company and get a layoff, but keeping those companies afloat is a burden for market economy. Weak companies (inefficient, missmanaged, wrong positioned etc) should die so more competitive ones to take their place.

You need to understand that some users here spin everything re MS, Xbox, anything related to these and try to make it like a bad thing. They are very salty. Typical fanboys that don't understand how the real world works.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

You need to understand that some users here spin everything re MS, Xbox, anything related to these and try to make it like a bad thing. They are very salty. Typical fanboys that don't understand how the real world works.

This post is fucking hilarious coming from you

 

[pasterpl]

TLDR
Footballers at R7's level are special and talented and earn accordingly- even though he seems professionally self centred -CEOs of major companies are not typically special at all, the companies do the same things day-in day-out even if they were incapacitated for 3 months. Footballer at R7's level gets injured for 3 months and half the audience switches off to the league he currently plays in.

You makes you self look like a fool. Do you really believe that someone athletic running, chasing air filled balloon (the ball) should earn this kind of money vs someone making pennies in comparison - like let's say a brilliant - cardiologist, neurologist or oncologist or maybe some brilliant engineer? Coming back to your shit Ark analogy, do you think that R7 should get place on this Ark of yours and he would benefit humankind? You are slowly loosing it my friend.

 

[pasterpl]

This post is fucking hilarious coming from you

Tell me more please.