Leadership is tough
Trying to be a leader is tough. There are often a few ways to succeed and so many ways to fail. We can all learn from observing other people's attempts at leadership and their failures, and perhaps avoid some mistakes.
Microsoft Copilot
I had several online conversations this week with friends and colleagues, many of whom used to work at Microsoft. And they all have great affection for their time at Microsoft and great respect for what Satya has done to maintain the company's relevance. That being said...
We were discussing AI tools. Everyone is using ChatGPT. Many people are using Grok. A growing number are using Gemini. No one mentioned Copilot. And this is a set of people who have an affinity for and respect for Microsoft.
Microsoft made a giant splash early in the AI transition with its aggressive partnership with OpenAI. But something seems off now. Copilot has branding and availability problems. The implicit strategy of embedding Copilot into every other product is not yielding the desired results. Who is responsible at Microsoft for winning the battle for AI tool usage?
Microsoft layoffs
The other concerning note about Microsoft this week is its big layoff. Hard to square this with the financial success of the company. In several talks, the company has claimed this is about flattening the org — “…building high-performing teams and increasing our agility by reducing layers with fewer managers…”. But as Dare points out, the data says this layoff was mostly individual contributors.
Microsoft culture
Peter Drucker has said that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It is remarkable that Microsoft has remained relevant for 50 years — only Apple and Microsoft have remained relevant from the early days of the PC industry. Obviously, Microsoft has some pretty powerful cultural assets – the focus on developers is probably pretty key.
Microsoft’s Copilot struggle seems to be a long-standing cultural issue within Microsoft — an overemphasis on enterprise and an underemphasis on individuals. Microsoft’s ham-fisted layoffs though, I just don’t know. They seem hard-hearted and inappropriate; I don’t understand where they are coming from.
The real disaster of DOGE
This chart is a few years old but the picture has probably only gotten worse. Tesla’s sales are struggling while Chinese OEMs have hit the accelerator on EVs.
OTOH, the US has a massive lead in commercial space launches and LEO satellites. Can we hang onto this lead? Can we accelerate the buildout of capability and services?
Critical issues in two key industries — and our leading industrialist in these two industries has been dorking around with government bureaucracy, saving pennies. Our government's financial issues can only be solved by economic growth; Elon is wasting valuable time.
Or no, this is the real disaster of DOGE.
Every foreign nation is licking its chops, thrilled to have a chance to recruit away US researchers. Our loss of research leadership will affect our children’s standard of living and our grandchildren’s standard of living. From the Foreign Affairs article:
“The United States has long benefited from an enormous brain gain, with the most talented scientists and engineers around the world coming to U.S. research universities to teach and to learn. But with its funding cuts, academic censorship, and hostile immigration policies, the Trump administration is provoking a brain drain. Three-quarters of the respondents to a recent poll of U.S. researchers by the journal Nature said that they were considering leaving the United States because of the Trump administration disruptions to science. European universities are now gladly recruiting that U.S. scientific talent. Research centers in cities including Barcelona and Madrid are reporting dozens of applications from U.S. scientists. Promising and distinguished researchers of Chinese origin in fields essential to U.S. competitiveness—artificial intelligence, robotics, mathematics, and nuclear fusion—are leaving leading U.S. research universities to return to China. This outflow is an acceleration of the exodus of Chinese-born scientists that began during the first Trump administration, when U.S. academics of Chinese descent were targeted unfairly for prosecution by the Department of Justice’s China Initiative.”
Shorts
The argument for holding a 2x S&P ETF as a core part of your portfolio — the central idea being that you should have some leverage in your individual investment account, and a 2x S&P ETF is a simple way to add leverage.
5 habits of super calm people – great counsel for aspiring leaders. If you can keep your head while all around you people are losing theirs...
28 slightly rude notes on writing. 16, 17, 18 really resonate with me.
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