I’ve known Satya Nadella for over 20 years, and I got to know him in the mid-1990s, when I was a Microsoft executive working on our server software, which was in the process of being released. We took a long-term approach to building the company, which had two benefits: It gave the company another engine of growth, and it inspired many of the new leaders who run Microsoft today, including Satya. I later worked with him extensively when he moved on to lead our effort to build a world-class search engine. We were falling behind Google, our core search team was gone, and Satya was part of a group that was going to change things. He was humble, ambitious, and practical, and he asked smart questions about our strategy. He worked well with difficult engineers.
