A young Microsoft technical marketing manager demonstrated how to use Windows NT, and he methodically explained to customers how to move data from an AS 400 mainframe to Excel, wearing glasses; 29 years later, the man is still doing demos for Microsoft, but now he’s the company’s chairman and chief executive. He’s Satya Nadella.
Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 and this was his first appearance on stage to introduce Excel products. Prior to that, he attended the prestigious Hyderabad Public School in India and then completed his engineering at the Manipal Institute of Technology. He then moved to the United States to complete a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. After a short stint at Sun, he joined Microsoft where, as a new employee, he was tasked with explaining how Excel works.
Technology demonstrations in the past were very similar to what’s happening today — company executives came out, talked about parts of the product, and then handed things off to their colleagues. In an old video that recently surfaced on the Web, Nadella uses a CRT monitor to demonstrate the entire process. He looks a little nervous as he demonstrates Excel in a single take.
After 1993, Nadella quickly rose through the ranks. By 1999, he had become Microsoft’s vice president of small business services. 2001, he became corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions. 2007, he was promoted to senior vice president of research and development for Microsoft’s online services division, and in 2011, he became president of Microsoft’s server and tools business. 2014, he was named Microsoft CEO, becoming the third person to hold the position after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. In 2014, he was appointed CEO of Microsoft, becoming the third person to hold this position after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
