Satya Nadella only exists for the third CEO Microsoft for his 50 years, which is a mind-making when you think about it.
Back in 2017, when he still had only a few years in his role at the top of the company’s org chart, Nadella (with the help of a couple of Ghosters) wrote a book Hit refreshIn which he called “humans and unique quality we call us empathyWhich will ever become more valuable in a world where the edge of technology will disrupt the status quo like never before. ,
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After decades of aggressive, tech-no-prisoners’ mentality, after the mentality of their predecessors Bill Gates and Steve Balmer, the emphasis on sympathy seemed fresh. This is a theme, Nadella has repeatedly returned to interviews and public speeches during the last decade. One in 2023 Publisher interview with Axl SpringerHe said, “I don’t think sympathy is a soft skill. In fact, it is the most difficult skills that we learn, to be related to the world, belong to those who matters the most to us. In fact, innovation is about meeting customers unwanted, unwanted needs.”
Last month, in an employee-Cowl Town Hall, a current Microsoft employee faced directly from the CEO, arguing that the company is no longer living for that aspiration. In Notepad newspaperFor a long time, Microsoft-Vacha Tom Warren quoted the worker who clarified a general complaint: these days, life in Microsoft feels clearly different, cold, more rigid, and decreased sympathy. “
“I have spoken to dozens of employees in the last few months,” Warren’s report, “and all of them told me that the morale inside Microsoft is an all -time low.” No wonder, given that the company has trimmed five rounds so far in 2025, Loose over 15,000 employeesOr about 6.7%of its global workforce. And this is despite the fact that the company is earning record profits and is one of the three most successful corporations on the planet.
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There is no question that Microsoft is facing heavy pressure as it tries to compete in a leading expensive, ridiculous fast -moving battle, which becomes the leading AI platform. But this pressure is visible in the company’s conversation with customers. In three decades of seeing what Redmund says and what he does, I have never seen Microsoft so different, out of touch, and lack of sympathy in 2025. It is almost as it is trying to push customers away – especially if those customers are poor and powerless.
I have not heard of any customer recently who feel that their “unmatched, uncontrolled needs” are being met. More often, they feel ignorant or that they are being forced to use and pay for products and characteristics that they neither want nor need.
First, the AI-Inaccurate Recall feature was the last year’s sambolic rollout, in which the company forgot to consider the privacy concerns of its customers.
Then, earlier this year, the devastating Microsoft 365 Copilot was launched. Existing customers suddenly increased the price of 30%, and Microsoft’s marketing droids blamed it on AI. The response from customers was cruel. As I wrote at that time, “As far as I can tell, customers’ response has been heavily negative. I monitor Microsoft-centric online forums, and I read hundreds of complaints without seeing a single praise.”
All traditional office apps that are part of Microsoft 365 now sport a copylot button. Each time, I try to use one of those features in Word or Excel or Outlook, and the results are luxurious and often wrong. They feel like prerelease versions and certainly 30% are not sufficient to justify price growth. Earlier this year, Microsoft counted 84 million customers for its Microsoft 365 family and personal products. The most common request I hear from the group is to remove the Copilot button.
And then there is an infection from Windows 10 to Windows 11, with Microsoft unimaginable, telling hundreds of crore people that their Windows PCs are obsolete and will no longer receive security updates as as October 14, 2025.
This is a curious decision of a company that has talked about its commitment to make its software “default safe” over the last 23 years. The latest whitepaper is the headline for a safe future initiative “Safety above all“In July 2025, the CEO itself said,” security and quality are non-pervasive. ,
Yes, let’s talk about that.
You can jump through some hoops to enroll in membership for Windows 10 Extended Safety Updates and delay recording for an additional year. Those who are at the highest risk are the least likely to understand how to do so.
I get emails from people (many of them old) every week who are on certain income and can’t take the risk of changing their middle -aged but still completely functional PCs. They lack technical skills to understand why this is happening and how to preserve their investment. Microsoft has no sympathy for them. On October 15 at 12:01 pm, those Windows 10 PC will no longer be safe by default.
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Once, Microsoft understood that its value as a company was calculated using a complex equation that included the contribution of hobbies and enthusiastic and enthusiasts and students and retired people and part -time developers, whose contribution could not be determined in old revenue. He helped maintain an ecosystem that increased from suburban basement to corporate datastery. When you take away the amateurs, the market becomes very interesting.
Redmund seems to be under great pressure to care about those heritage customers, instead focusing on the deep pockets of their corporate customers, who believe that their Microsoft will pay an extra $ 30 per seat to add a chatbot to the office – forgiveness, forgiveness, Microsoft 365 License. AI is the only way for Redmund’s crushing investment in infrastructure ($ 80 billion alone!) Will pay anytime.
good luck with that. In fact, economics is no meaning to a firm that sells an enterprise license on the basis of a seat. If the next generation of Microsoft technology is going to help organizations in the headchant by giving the remaining human workers operating, it would mean that the prices of each license will have to increase only to keep the revenue line flat. And the price per seat will be doubled to pay for all those datasters.
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Back in July, soon after the financial year shutdown, Nadella was still working in Microsoft 220,000 either employees. (As a reminder, this number is more than 15,000 than the beginning of the year, thanks to the trimming.)
There was also email Published to Microsoft’s Corporate BlogWhich could be your first indication that this was actually a PR step and not an honest communication for employees whose future is in Nadella’s hands.
This is a notable missile, and after reading it, I am sure Nadella helped write it. I am not speaking about the competent PR professionals and legal brains at the corporate headquarters of Microsoft, who probably had some limited inputs.
No, it reads like some things that have become a passion for Microsoft these days that was draft and renovated by Copilot LLM Chatbot. It is the cloying, inhuman tone that most humans cannot match, when you ask that when you ask, “What does it mean, really?” And it will not surprise me; Nadella has been proud of his dependence on Copilot in the past. “At this point, if someone snatched my 365 Kopilot, I would not know what to do!” He Told a viewer At a London event in 2023.
Let me give you an example:
It is a puzzle of success in an industry that has no franchise value. Progress is not linear. It is dynamic, sometimes inconsistent, and always demands. But this is a new opportunity for us to have size, lead, and more impact than ever.
The success we want to achieve will be defined by our ability to undergo this difficult process of “Anling” and “learning”. We need to maintain our current business with new business models and a new production ceremony, to maintain our current business, to maintain our current business, to maintain and score our current business, to maintain our current business. This is naturally difficult, and some companies can do both.
But I am confident that we can, and we will once again detect resolve, courage and clarity to distribute our mission in this new paradigm.
Some of those words are inspiring, but at a certain point it all sounds like the same vague, but cheer pap talk you can get from Copilot if you ask how to start a new business or solve a relationship problem. Or maybe all chatbots have been programmed to speak in the same neutral, brand tone adopted by the CEO of each trillion-dollar company. U never know!
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Are these devices that Microsoft and its rivals are really miraculous? Two professors at the University of Washington, a few miles on the bridge from Microsoft Headquarters, is one. A little less enthusiastic opinion Of devices such as Copilot of Microsoft and Chatgpt of Openai. They call them “bullshit machine”.
Technologists and campaigners think that big language models (LLMs) will revolutionize our way of working, learning, playing, communicating and connecting others.
They are true that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will affect almost every aspect of our daily life.
And they are right that by providing people a way to talk with machines in ordinary language, LLM takes a dramatic step forward in making computing accessible to all.
Nevertheless, the AI ​​systems for all good will saturate our information environment on the scale with bullshit that had faced before.
After spending wrestling last year with Copilot, I completely agree.
As part of an attempt to succeed in the Battle of AI Titans, Microsoft has turned into a painful close rhetoric of the borg – emotionless, skilled, inspired by the will of victory, and – yes – a decrease in sympathy. I am not eager to assimilate. This is not to say that I am planning to switch all my PCs for Linux Distro this week. But I have no desire to maximize Redmund’s cash pipeline.
I think it makes me part of resistance.
