Microsoft's turnaround

Back in 2014, Microsoft was a lagging dinosaur in tech.
Microsoft had missed the search wave to Google, the mobile race to Apple and Android, and the cloud wave to Amazon.

Microsoft was a place for empire builders and teams fighting each other.

Then Satya was made the CEO.

Microsoft's turnaround under Satya’s leadership is a leadership case study.

Microsoft’s market cap has grown ~10X in <10 yrs. More importantly, he has inspired Microsoft employees with his empathetic leadership while delivering this transformation.

In this post, I summarize the key moments in Satya Nadella’s inspiring career journey and curate the best career advice from Satya.

1988 - Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology.
1990 - MS in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin.
1990 - First job as Member of the technology staff at Sun Microsystems.
1992 - Joins Microsoft as a program manager in the Windows Developer Relations group.
1997- Adds skills while working. Satya traveled every weekend to travel to Chicago to complete his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
2007- Promoted to Senior VP of R&D for Online Services.2011 - President of Server & Tools Division
2013- Executive VP of Cloud and Enterprise group.
2014- Promoted to CEO of Microsoft. MSFT stock price was 36.46
2015- Announced the "One Microsoft" strategy, to unify Microsofts products and services. Restructured Microsoft on productivity and cloud-first goals
2016- Buys LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.
2016- Invests $100 million in OpenAI.
2018- Announced the "Intelligent Cloud" strategy, focus the company on AI.2018- Buys GitHub for $7.5 billion. 2019: Invests $1B more in OpenAI. These investments continued in 2021 and 2023 giving Microsoft access to OpenAI’s breakthrough research.
2019- Microsoft became the most valued company. Market cap above $1 trillion.2021: Buys AI and voice recognition business Nuance Communications for $19.7 billion.
2021- More investment in openAI.
2022-  Intent to acquire Activision Blizzard (call of duty, warcraft maker)for $68.7 billion in cash. Under gov review. Microsoft becomes gaming behemoth with this.
2022- Azure has market share of 21% vs 33% of AWS. But Azure’s revenue growth rate is 27% vs 16% AWS. So Azure has a shot to surpass AWS.
2022-  Padma Bhushan Award from India.
2023-  Introduces the world of AI copilots into key Microsoft products. Positions Microsoft as the clear leader in AI race.

My curation of career advice from Satya is in the comments due to character limits.

Thanks for reading!
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