Inside The Microsoft Machine

In Cupertino, California, Apple is about to complete its mother ship: a brilliant monolith of the immaculate design of Norman Foster. Its impeccable curves and wall-to-wall glass ruthlessly dominate the landscape of the city: a description that could easily refer to the iPhone itself. Further north, in Mountain View, the home of the infamous Googleplex, oddly shaped furniture, motorized scooters and multi-colored poufs are part of Google's work experience: fun, fun and perfectly in style.

Unlike its counterparts in Silicon Valley, Microsoft's headquarters clearly shows its age. Not in the sense that they are decrepit or outdated, but there is an element of maturity that is rarely seen in the offices of some of the other great hitters of technology. Far from being a spectacular symbol of power, its offices in Redmond, just north of downtown Seattle, seem almost picturesque, free, closer to a campus than to a business. True to its reputation for being reliably useful, there are some trinkets or ornaments that serve no obvious purpose. Even its buildings, numbered numerically from one to 127, reflect a company that places functionality at the center of their concerns. "More adults" was the succinct expression of a journalist at desks during our corporate tour. "There are no work groups, not like Facebook or Google."

Outside Washington, there is a feeling that Microsoft's best days are far behind. This is a great reason why the company is now spending large amounts of media from around the world (including The Spinoff for this story) to visit its headquarters four to six times a year. The hope, presumably, is that journalists can see and judge for themselves if the company really has what it takes to get back to the news.

For those of us who grew up in the Internet era, Microsoft really started: chatting on MSN, playing in Paint and surfing the Internet in Explorer served as building blocks for a generation that is now stuck on the Internet. He dominated the industry for much of the 1990s, and its founder, Bill Gates, has long been considered the richest and most powerful CEO in the world.

But since then, the world of technology has evolved at a phenomenal pace, with the arrival of Apple, Samsung and Google in recent years. And while the company is still making a huge profit of more than $ 22 billion a year, the last decade has seen the once-powerful technology giant struggle to keep up with the great kids. People hated Windows Vista, their acquisition of Nokia was a failure, and the Zune mp3 player was relegated to little more than an archaic joke. However, although these errors have undoubtedly damaged Microsoft's reputation, its inability to adapt to the smartphone market may have been the most expensive. In 2009, Microsoft's participation in all the computing devices used to connect to the Internet was 90%. Today, with the omnipresent presence of smart phones, it is rather 20%.

But due to the failure, Microsoft has managed to get back on its feet, recalibrating its business away from its weaknesses (smartphones) to make room for its strengths (cloud computing, software, games, artificial intelligence). "Once upon a time, we were the Windows and Office company," says Tim O'Brien, global head of global communications at Microsoft. "Life was pretty simple at the time, we only had a few companies, and the health status of the company was in those two companies, and now we do business, games, hardware, software, skills complex."

It is precisely this portfolio that Microsoft expects to present on its campus, so vast that it covers 200 hectares of land (for context, the Waikato Stadium in Hamilton has approximately one hectare), employs more than 40,000 people and deploys more than one hundred ferries each week to transport workers from one building to another. Only Amazon, the other son of technology and innovation in the city, competes with its impressive status in the Seattle area.

Like Amazon, which focuses on everything from groceries to retailers, to film and television, Microsoft's extensive Redmond campus reflects the company's broad network of commercial interests. In his lab of mixed reality, hidden in the basement of building 92, a demonstration of HoloLens allows us to travel to Mars with Buzz Aldrin, install a stairlift from scratch and customize our Ford Car. A simple movement of the finger.

In its top-secret hardware lab, Microsoft's 'Area 51' industrial 3D printers, CNC machines and precision lasers are working hard to create advanced prototypes of future consumer products. This is where the precise texture of a tablet rubs against your skin, the custom tone of red or blue on your laptop, and the precise sound of a keyboard when you play on it.

In The Garage, its space for the "makers, hackers and handymen" of the company, employees have the freedom to experience their unrealized ideas and their original concepts. Paper, plastic, cloth and wood are scattered on their desks, and their "reality room" is equipped with VR / AR helmets of all types and external screens to observe current projects.

As a concept focused on the freedom to fail, The Garage, in many ways, sums up the leadership style of its CEO, Satya Nadella. He started at Microsoft in the early 90s and became the company's third CEO in 2014, an appointment that at that time was quite surprising.

When Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO, announced that he would retire in 2013, there were few outside stakeholders willing to take on the role burden. While profits doubled under Ballmer's rule, the company was plagued with internal disputes and was quickly heading for insignificance. The stock price had stalled as Apple shot up, and many expected to name a stranger, someone with an objective (and immaculate) perspective. So when Nadella, a self-styled "internal consumer", was hired instead, naturally there was surprise, if it was not a small disappointment.

Seeing Nadella speak at the GeekWire Summit 2017 in Seattle, her calm, measured and thoughtful tone marked a sharp contrast with Ballmer Bull and even discreetly with Gates. And his attitude reflects his leadership approach, slowly helping to transform Microsoft from a knowledge-based culture to an all-inclusive learning culture. And although several crucial steps (such as the elimination of the controversial performance review system) were initiated by Ballmer, his Nadella, who is often credited with introducing a cultural renaissance for the 42-year-old company; An open, innovative and collaborative approach, internal and external.

One of Nadella's first acts after becoming CEO in 2014 was to put Microsoft Office on iOS. It was a movement that reflected his new mission for the company, focused not on indicators of delayed success, but on leading indicators. "Whether it's Outlook, Skype, Office or Minecraft, we want to make sure that our best work is on iOS and Android," Nadella told GeekWire Summit. "We do not have the part to make our smartphone equipment a real option for the consumer ... it's the reality, the reality is that we can not compete as a third ecosystem without sharing and attracting developers."

"The real question for us is: how can we respond to today's reality and then invent our own future?" The way I think about it is to make sure that our software and our applications are used on iOS and Android. "

Ten years ago, Microsoft employees who used Apple products would have been a kind of blasphemy. But in 2017, it is a perfectly natural spectacle. On campus, iPhones are an almost ubiquitous presence, such as iPads, MacBooks and various Samsung and Android devices. That is the reality of today, and Microsoft agrees with that, especially because it seems to work. Since 2014, Nadella has not only been able to restore Microsoft's relevance through greater investments in cloud computing, software and future technologies such as HoloLens, but has also generated more than $ 250 billion in market value. Bubble caps. It is a success that only a handful of CEOs (Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg) can boast the same thing.

In fact, in the most recent episode of the Inside the Hive podcast, presenter Nick Bilton asks his guest, Scott Galloway, why Microsoft was not included in his new book The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. "CA should be". It should be called "The Five," Galloway replies. "If I'm intellectually honest, they should have been included."