Showing posts with label Bill Gates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Gates. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Nadella's Compensation, Mayer's Compensation


Inside Satya Nadella’s CEO Comp Package From Microsoft
Nadella will pick up a $1.2 million yearly cash salary ... Nadella is also eligible for a cash bonus of up to 300 percent of his salary each year, or $3.6 million. The new chief is also set to pick up a target stock bonus of $13.2 million in fiscal 2015..... for fiscal 2015, Nadella should pick up a total of $18 million..... Nadella’s compensation includes three five-year periods in which Microsoft’s stock performance will be compared to the S&P 500′s performance over the period. .... So the new executive could warrant up to 2.7 million shares total at the end of the three five-year programs in aggregate. .... Nadella stands to land north of $100 million
New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella could earn $18 million next year
Nadella earned a total compensation package of $7.7 million in fiscal year 2013, when he served as president of the Server and Tools division at Microsoft. .... Nadella’s predecessor as CEO, Steve Ballmer, received $1.26 million in total compensation in fiscal year 2013
The new Microsoft: How Satya Nadella will transform the company
“He has a track record of making things happen in an organization where that’s hard to do.” .... “He also understands how to work within the Microsoft culture — and this is not a trivial thing.” .... Nadella has previously demonstrated the ability to navigate rough political waters — even while working with Gates and Ballmer .... He’s technically proficient and highly personable. He’s humble, but unafraid to lead by example. And he’s unwilling to accept the ordinary.
Satya Nadella's base salary 70% more than Ballmer's

Yahoo to Pay Mayer $100 Million Over Five Years
Marissa Mayer's first-year pay: $6 million
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's pay package could be worth $129 million
Marissa Mayer's Yahoo CEO compensation nearly $60 million
Adding Up Marissa Mayer’s Pay at Yahoo
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's salary revealed
Yahoo Paid CEO Marissa Mayer $36.6 Million in 2012


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Friday, February 07, 2014

Microsoft’s New Indian Face




In case you did not notice, Microsoft now has a black Chairperson and an Indian CEO, and Bill Gates will now be reporting to Satya Nadella three days a week. Bill is back! Someday Sundar Pichai might end up CEO of Google, and Bobby Jindal might end up President Of The United States. And Nitish might wipe out poverty from India. And Jayalalita might help architect genuine federalism for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. And India is already on its way to Mars. Jupiter is not far.

Amitabh is the most recognized face on the planet. 




Bill Gates is the ultimate Maoist, if you ask me. I only got to “know” the guy after he launched his global war on poverty. Computers only became interesting to me because of the Internet, and Bill was a PC guy. My company to love is Google.

My tribute to Satya Nadella was a blog post bit.ly/1lGw3Cs An Opening For Microsoft: Supercheap Smartphones.

I think the biggest new opening for Microsoft to get back on the tech map is for it to cash on its Nokia acquisition and a CEO who grew up in India, a country that has more poor people than any other, and to offer the cheapest smartphones across the Global South. That steep price gradient is the only hope Microsoft might have to become a significant third force in the mobile space where Android is the new Windows. If it were to move fast enough I think there is a slim chance that Microsoft might end up with Apple like global market shares.

The large number of Android manufacturers are tough competition though. Android is free. And those hardware makers are doing their best to offer cheap phones. But I have a feeling Nokia knows a thing or two about cheap.




And to think Nadella is not an IIT guy. He claims pretty much everything he learned about leadership and teams he learned playing cricket. That is a true Indian! This is no lost Desi. He is true to the roots.

If India were the Al Qaeda the recent humiliation of the Indian diplomat would have ignited a call for jihad. That organization has a simplistic two dimensional cartoon idea of what America is. It is a large, complex country that can also put Nadella on the top. For every Nadella there is also a Pichai, waiting in the wings, ready to take over.

I think Bill Gates’ comeback cannot be overlooked. That is a big story in its own right. Gates will still give the majority of his time to his foundation, and I think that is awesome because I am a huge fan of his foundation. But this time away from Microsoft has been good for him. He now has new, global, non-Microsoft perspectives. This is not a Personal Computer world we live in, not anymore. But then he was thinking tablets a full half decade before Steve Jobs, only Gates’ tablet had an accompanying pen, and it never took off, not even inside Microsoft. So don’t think the guy is behind.

How would you design super cheap smartphones? I say, ask Nokia. But smartphones are no good without data. How do you bring wireless broadband to vast swaths of the Global South (that is like saying African American) also known as the Third World (that is nigger)? Google is throwing balloons up into the upper parts of the atmosphere. Microsoft might try satellites and cheap antennas on the ground. My point being, it’s got to compete in the space of taking internet to the masses, the left out billions. A smartphone with internet access is the 21st century voting right. If you don’t have it, you are disenfranchised.

So imagine a $20 Nokia smartphone that someone in Darbhanga, Bihar, buys on the roadside, that immediately connects to wireless broadband beamed down by a Microsoft satellite for free. The phone runs Windows Mobile, which is free. It has the Bing search engine by default, and Hotmail Mobile, and Office Mobile. And Skype comes preloaded. And every Skype account gets a free phone number too. As in, calls are free. Skype gives you unlimited free SMS. And of course the keyboard can be in English or Hindi.

How does Microsoft make money? $20 for the phone, and ads served on the phone through the various services. Ads that are super relevant, because your usage of the phone builds a rich profile of you at some Microsoft data center. And Microsoft ends up rich, and we all end up happy.

This part is obvious. Steve Jobs gave us the Graphical User Interface, or the mouse. He stole it from Xerox, but then Picasso was also known to steal. Jobs also gave us the touch interface. But I think Microsoft gave us the next big thing before Jobs gave us the touch. Gestures are more natural than touch. And Microsoft’s Kinect is master of the gesture universe.

There is something called the Natural User Interface. I think there is so much more Microsoft could do in that space.

Supercheap smartphones with the accompanying wireless broadband and the Natural User Interface fully scaled together can easily take Microsoft past a 500 billion valuation. And Nadella could stay busy for a decade. And that is enough time before another Indian takes over. Maybe Pichai? And Vivek Wadhwa perhaps is Mayor of Silicon Valley by then, or is it Vinod Khosla? Khosla is already Dean.




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Monday, October 07, 2013

Larry Page Has Been Underrated


Not Google. Google has been rated just fine. But not Larry Page. When we think of Larry Page, we don't think of him in terms of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Steve Jobs is even more mysterious than Bill Gates. Jobs had the theatrics done right. There was plenty of essence to him, but he was the master of how the media plays itself out. Compared to that Larry Page is boring. He does not have much of a stage presence. But the guy is a tech genius. And Google is the bright star in the sky.

I have felt this a long time. I am on record at this blog saying Larry Page should have been the Google CEO the entire time. If it were not for Larry, Google might have missed the Android boat altogether.

Now there is an article that supports my long held feelings towards Larry Page. Heck, compared to Larry Page even Marissa Mayer has more media wattage.

I think Larry Page will be truly appreciated when the Google Car hits the road in droves, universal internet access becomes a reality, gigabit broadband becomes the norm across the US, and we are all not ageing so fast no more. Give the guy until 2020 to give us a trillion dollar company.

Larry Page's Google Rules the Digital World
When Bill Gates was 40 he had just released Windows 95. When Steve Jobs was 40 he was still in exile at NeXT and Pixar. At age 40, Page is worth about $25 billion, and his days as Google CEO are just beginning.

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Friday, August 23, 2013

Ballmer's Successor

Image representing Vic Gundotra as depicted in...
Image by Google via CrunchBase
I think the next CEO can not be an outsider. For a company like Microsoft the next CEO necessarily has to come from inside, just my opinion. And the cloud and enterprise vice president Satya Nadella would be a decent choice. The next CEO has to be about the future, not the past.

Or Microsoft could pull a Yahoo, and bring in Vic Gundotra, a former Microsoft soldier. Gundotra just might bite, since Larry Page is just getting started and Vic might already have hit the glass ceiling at Google. Gundotra's Microsoft past and Google present is an amazing combination. And many would say Microsoft has also had the Yahoo problem: it is widely considered a has been company. The shine just is not there anymore.


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