Thursday, February 06, 2014

What's the Most Important Task for Microsoft's New CEO?

"Bill Gates’s first day at work in the newly created role of technology adviser got off to a rocky start yesterday as the Microsoft founder struggled for hours to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade" (New Yorker, 5 February 2014).

Lots of people have expressed amusement or sympathy about this. But the twist comes later in the story.

"After failing to install the upgrade by lunchtime, Mr. Gates summoned the new Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella, who attempted to help him with the installation, but with no success."

What is really going on here? Has Nadella nothing better to do? One wonders whether Gates really didn't know how to install the software or whom to call, or whether he was just making a point about who was really the boss.

When someone as clever as Gates asks a stupid question, it may not be a stupid question at all. See my post On the Difference between Judges and Geeks.

A Microsoft spokesman said that Mr. Gates’s first day in his new job had been “a learning experience.” Yes, but for whom?

As they say in Italy, se non è vero, è molto ben trovato.

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