Satya Nadella’s career has grown from student to CEO of Microsoft

The resurgence has been attributed to Nadella’s savvy embrace of partnerships, dedication to innovation and transformation of the company’s culture.

Here’s how Nadella, 57, rose through the ranks at Microsoft and executed this amazing turnaround.

This article has been updated since its original publication in 2016.

Growth and education

Satya Narayana Nadella was born in Hyderabad, India in 1967.

His father was a civil servant and his mother was a professor of ancient Sanskrit.

From a young age, Nadella wanted to be a professional cricketer and played in school. However, he realized that his athletic talent was outweighed by his passion for science and technology.

Nadella received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in 1988. “I always knew I wanted to build things,” he once said.

The institution did not have a comprehensive computer science program, so he traveled to the US to attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and graduated in 1990.

He later received an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Joining Microsoft

Nadella stayed in the US and got a job in the technology team at Sun Microsystems, then one of the most innovative technology companies.

But in 1992 he joined Microsoft, where co-founder Bill Gates was still CEO and Windows had just begun its march to world dominance.

“I remember walking into Building 22 at Microsoft in 1992 thinking that this is the best job I’ve ever had and I don’t need anything else,” he said in an interview with CEO- LinkedIn’s Ryan Roslansky.

Nadella’s first projects included Microsoft’s ill-fated interactive TV product and the Windows NT operating system.

A baby-faced Nadella also helped introduce Microsoft Visual Basic in a telethon-style show designed for developers around 1993.

Early career

In his early years at Microsoft, Nadella impressed colleagues and managers alike by commuting every weekend from Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus to Chicago to finish his MBA.

By 1999, Nadella had landed his first executive role as vice president of the newly created Microsoft Central, a suite of web services for small businesses that included website hosting and email.

In 2000, Microsoft got its second CEO: Steve Ballmer.

A year later, Nadella was promoted to corporate VP of Microsoft Business Solutions.

By 2007, Nadella had taken another step up the ladder. He was named senior VP of Microsoft Online Services, putting him in charge of the Bing search engine, as well as the early online versions of Microsoft Office and the Xbox Live gaming service.

In February 2011, Nadella was promoted to president of the Server and Tools division. It included data center cash-cow products such as Windows Server and SQL Server databases.

But it was also home to one of CEO Steve Ballmer’s boldest bets, Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

Problems at Microsoft

In the early 2010s, Microsoft was in trouble.

On the PC side, Windows 8 was a disaster, iPhone and Android outpaced Windows phones by leaps and bounds, and Bing just couldn’t make a dent in Google’s search dominance.

The company was facing an antitrust lawsuit from the European Union and its share price continued to fall.

In August 2013, a troubled Ballmer announced his departure, triggering a search for a new CEO. The search committee included Ballmer and Gates.

Nadella takes control

In February 2014, after much rumor and speculation, Nadella was announced as CEO, with the support of Ballmer and Gates.

He was awarded an $84 million compensation package for the first year.

Nadella quickly won over employees by making big changes, quickly, in an effort to right the ship and win back customers.

He sent a company-wide email when he took over, calling for Microsoft to “prioritize innovation that is centered on our core value of empowering users and organizations.”

Partnerships with rivals

Nadella proved he wasn’t afraid to shake things up and reinvigorate the company, embracing partnerships with rivals like Apple, Google and Amazon.

It started by adopting rival Linux operating system for the Azure cloud – a move once unthinkable.

But soon, Nadella oversaw the launch of Microsoft Office for the Apple iPad; spent $2.5 billion buying Mojang, the studio behind the hit game Minecraft; and released top-notch apps for iPhone and Android, including Outlook.

Innovation also led to the development of HoloLens, Microsoft’s super-futuristic holographic glasses, and its first laptop, the Surface Book.

When something went wrong, he wasn’t afraid to abandon projects, such as skipping Windows 9 to go straight to the superior Windows 10.

Nadella’s philosophy is about partnership and making sure Microsoft software and services are available wherever customers are, even if that’s not Windows.

In fact, in 2015, Nadella used an iPhone on stage at an event to show off his favorite Microsoft apps. His predecessor, Steve Ballmer, pretended to step on one at a company meeting.

Leadership style

Nadella’s approach to leadership has been credited with reforming the company’s culture.

Many workers are fond of his leadership style, which emphasizes learning and mistakes as a hedge against overconfidence and arrogance.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a top executive or a front-line salesperson—he has exactly the same quality of listening,” said Microsoft Executive Vice President Jean-Philippe Courtois.

Personal life

Nadella, 57, and his wife, Anu, have three children and live in Bellevue, Lake Washington.

Their eldest son, Zain, was born with severe cerebral palsy and needed specialized care. He died in 2022 at the age of 26.

“Becoming a father to a son with special needs was the turning point in my life that shaped who I am today,” Nadella wrote in a 2017 essay on LinkedIn.

He called Zain “the joy of our family, whose strength and warmth inspires and motivates me to keep pushing the boundaries of what technology can do.”

Nadella said the experience encouraged him to lead with empathy, saying Good Housekeeping “had a profound impact on the way I think, lead and relate to people.”

Nadella’s acquisitions

Under Nadella, Microsoft has made some of its biggest acquisitions, including the $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016, the $7.5 billion acquisition of code-sharing site GitHub in 2018, and the deal to $69 billion with video game publisher Activision Blizzard in 2023.

Nadella said he has two main criteria when looking at acquisitions: what value Microsoft can add and how much financial sense it makes.

What’s next

Nadella has been busy. And investors love it: From 2014 to 2015, its first year, Microsoft shares rose 14%.

But in the past decade, it has reached new heights, and Microsoft started this year by knocking Apple off the top spot to become the world’s most valuable public company and becoming only the second to surpass a $3 trillion valuation. Apple has since regained the number one spot, but both milestones were very notable.

Nadella’s biggest move in recent years has been to invest billions in OpenAI.

In the week of leadership chaos at OpenAI, Nadella stood firm on ousted CEO Sam Altman, offering him a job at Microsoft. This gave Altman crucial leverage to reclaim his CEO position, while cementing Microsoft as a critical partner for the AI ​​pioneering company.

Microsoft is also making its own mark with a generative “AI companion” called Copilot, which will be integrated into its suite of apps. It’s a bet on a future where every person and organization has their own personal AI assistant to handle mundane tasks.

Vodafone and Microsoft are also partnering to bring generative AI, digital and cloud services to European and African markets.

January 31, 2024: This story has been updated to clarify that the specific numbers associated with Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI have not been officially confirmed.