We went to Nadella's launch of Hit Refresh so you didn't have to As soon as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's book Hit Refresh was introduced as a "masterpiece" of how to scale up the "growth mindset" by his on-stage interviewer, it quickly became apparent this wasn't going to be a Paxman-esque grilling. The book launch was at Lord's Cricket Ground in London, UK, a venue chosen because of …
Yes.
"The question was what would you do if you found a baby had just fallen on street? "I thought about it for a couple of minutes and and said call 911," he recalled."
The correct answer of course for Microsoft is "Eat it".
Once a soul has gone to hell there's no way back.
But it turns out the interviewer was looking for the more human response of picking it up and hugging it.
Interviewer displays reduced understanding of how modern society has evolved.
Response for many is to quickly assess situation to determine if severity of situation is serious enough to balance the charge of inappropriate contact.
Thereafter to call 911, "hug it" or feign ignorance in the hope that someone will get there before them.
"Response for many is to quickly assess situation to determine if severity of situation is serious enough to balance the charge of inappropriate contact."
yeah, I figure that "huggy" stuff is the parents' job. If I do their job FOR them, they won't have anything to do, now will they? So a) check for obvious injuries, b) notify someone in authority, and c) find the kid's parents. And if the kid is in immediate danger [of being run over by a bus] then move the kid to a safer location. That concludes my civic responsibility for taking care of someone else's kid. And DELEGATE the rest [that would make me a better manager!]
(except when snowflake interviewers are looking for touchy-feely types that usually nauseate me if I'm forced to work with them...)
I'm confused by why the correct answer isn't Call an Ambulance *then* Check For Injuries. Though if the baby is screaming loudly it's most likely fine and I wouldn't call an ambulance with as urgency - perhaps the original question Nadella was asked had more details.
If baby is screaming then holding it whilst supporting its head and bouncing with your knees (not your arms) often brings more cheerful noises.
If the parents are funny about an adult caring for a lost or distressed child, it's often to mask their embarrassment at having had the lapse in awareness that led to said sprog straying.
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Picking it up and hugging it would probably get you charged with attempted abduction around these parts, so calling 911 seems appropriate. Either that or balling out the parent for being an irresponsible douche and dropping their baby. Either works...
Do not pick up anyone who has fallen. They may need to be stabilized. Picking a victim up can cause further injury.
Do not try to move a victim unless there is an immediate threat of more harm if left in place.
Nadella was correct in his immediate response.
Still won't change my opinion of Microsoft and Windows.
wayne 8 wrote:
Do not pick up anyone who has fallen. They may need to be stabilized. Picking a victim up can cause further injury.Do not try to move a victim unless there is an immediate threat of more harm if left in place.
Nadella was correct in his immediate response.
Jeezus! Does anyone on El Reg forums have children?
It was a supposed to be a baby (toddler) that had fallen over, they are learning to walk and fall over all the time without hurting themselves. They'll cry, but all you need to do is pick them up, give them a hug to reassure them, and put them back on their feet. Their parent will normally do this, but may be struggling with other children/shopping/buggies etc, and need a hand.
It was a supposed to be a baby (toddler) that had fallen over,
Then the interviewer should have said "fallen over". Nadella (like most of the commentards here, it seems), appears to have assumed "fallen" as in "fallen from a building", in which case his answer was the safe one.
At least he didn't suggest switching it off and on again to see if it would get up.
"A Preacher fan, Mephistro?"
YES! I was also following the comics. Both are GOOD, And I'd advice you to read also the comics -if you haven't done so already- after the TV series ends, of course, as to prevent spoilers. Lots of corrosive black humour, lots of fun. :-)
Heads up: If you like this show, you'll probably also enjoy "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency", loosely based on the book by dear & missed Douglas Adams.
Nadella should have just recited one of his Microsoft speeches to the Baby, that always has the required effect of sending me into an induced coma/trance like state pretty quickly, even when I have a 2am case of insomnia.
Though Nadella was much better than usual in his Newsnight interview this week, I did manage to stay awake the whole way through. A first.
Just the fact that he poses the question, is enough to make me believe that that is exactly what it is intended to be ... isn't that part of the CEO's leitmotifs
He's probably also trying to achieve some personal credibility at the same time but for that first you need a character.....fail.....
"The culture at Microsoft was, we used to go to a class about precision questions. The idea was to destroy anyone's [argument] in the first five minutes by asking highly precise questions... but it was being used as an instrument of offence,"
Isn't this discourse in this style called science?
Perhaps without the agression but am I the only one who thinks that some of Microsoft's recent products could have benefitted from a little more precise questionning before release?
Coat: Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery in one pocket and Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations in the other.
Isn't this discourse in this style called science?
It's science if you're interesting facts and the truth or law if you're just interested in winning the argument. Effective interview technique falls somewhere between the two, whereas this sort of thing:
introduced as a "masterpiece" of how to scale up the "growth mindset" by the on-stage interviewer
Is clearly channelling Nadella's Marxist Dad by adopting a tone appropriate for 1930's Pravda.
So, because HE likes "the boring game", he chooses to launch his book for employees in a country that is host to what, 2% of Microsoft's workforce, and at a venue that probably most Microsoft employees have never heard of. And in case you missed it, your corporation is soooo committed to the UK, that it uses every opportunity to avoid paying tax here.
OI! NADELLA! You BERK. Its bad enough that a volume of CEO brain-droppings are going to be foisted on your employees, but if you're going to delude yourself that you're an author, and need a book launch, why not do it somewhere you can bus a stadium of unwilling drones in to to offer you some faux-applause?
Bit harsh old chap
I didn't think so. Imagine if the boss of Sage software wrote a book, and then launched it in a country which represented a trivial proportion of sales, a yet more trivial share of employees, and the actual event were hosted at a sporting venue that was home to sport alien to most employees?
So if Sage's boss Stephen Kelly writes an employee handbook, which I'll title "Amazing yawns and how to do them", he goes to Thailand, and launches this book at Bangkok's "700th Anniversary Stadium", well known in that part of the world for hosting the King's Cup, the world championships of sepaktakraw.
If he did that'd I think most people would conclude he had a screw loose. So am I really being too harsh on Nutella?
...... was what Microsoft does think it's for now. Which might be the real problem. For the last few years they've been chasing other companies' achievements. Probably since they missed the boat when the internet started to become a thing. Instead of finding what the world needs and trying to provide it they are consistently trying to do what the other companies have already succeeded with. Apple, Samsung and a few others have the high end tech hardware. Google have mobile OS, search, data capture and web advertising.
But Microsoft have been trying to play catch-up by copying each of those. The one area where they were ahead of the market, operating systems, they've sacrificed on the alter of those other aims. Making Windows more like a mobile OS with Win 8.x, introducing data slurping like Google, trying to create a walled garden like Apple. And since their software (Office) is at saturation point they've just messed around with what worked fine to try and make people buy new versions that they don't need.
I have to update my initial post
from ...... was what Microsoft does think it's for now. Which might be the real problem. For the last few years they've been chasing other companies' achievements. After today's announcement that they re now dumping their Groove music service too. Because it was yet another poor copy of yet another service that beats them, Spotify in this case.
They just made my point for me..
FIrst of all, "Marxist Economist" isn't very "scholarly" unless your tongue is firmly embedded in your cheek.
Second, THAT! EXPLAINS! A! LOT!!!
No _WONDER_ they've taken on an evil,oppressive, "You will take this or we'll shove it up your a down your gullet" aproach to marketing things _LIKE_ Win-10-nic.
It totally makes sense now. A socialist (Ballmer) handed off the leadership of the company to a *FEELING* COMMUNIST! ['feel' being the 'F' word In My Bombastic Opinion]
And, like Mrs. Clinton, he writes a book. I'm sure the "fan club" will ADORE it. The rest of us will go "meh"
Word salad and !!! are Bob's mode when one of his involuntary reflexes has been triggered. It doesn't mean he's a bad commentard, just... a bit intellectually unsophisticated.
I'll bet there's a fair helping of pseudo-intellectual word salad in Nadella's tome, though. Won't be reading it, meself; many other priorities rank higher.
"Hey kids! Unlike Uncle Ballmer, I wear a t-shirt and jeans on stage whenever I give a keynote address. I'm a cool dude just like Steve Jobs. Therefore, Microsoft is as cool as Apple. Please love me, and read my refreshing book."
From Microsoft's perspective, if a baby fell from the sky...
First check what version of the baby it is. Is it Windows 10 Baby Edition - if not, move along and leave it alone.
Is it running anything previous to the Baby Anniversary update? If yes, we don't support it, so leave it in the road.
Assuming it's full patched and up to date (baby probably fell from sky after the latest humungous patch which forced a reboot of said baby), then next consult lawyers - can we legally pick up the baby?
If consulted lawyers agree, pick up baby, return to side of road
Three months later, ensure mid-level manager in grey suit no-one has heard of posts a blog entry saying that MS only thought of the baby at all stages, and no unauthorized information was gatherd during the 'saving' process. MS did get the nappy size, but the baby agreed to this without realizing when the Baby Creator's Update was installed.
"Pissing Into The Wind - How I failed to get 100k sociopaths to not be sociopaths"
I've been inside US megacorps: The culture is so pervasive that only two types of people survive in any numbers; the totally clueless/harmless, or the alpha political backstabbers. Initiative is stifled, customers ignored, innovation crushed... mostly by middle-upper management relentlessly getting one over on their peers.
Doubtless well intentioned, a book isn't going change that culture; that dog is too old and too set in its ways to stop biting itself.
The other minor hurdle is that there is nothing to drive this change. Microsoft is so big and so ubiquitous it can't even kill itself - take the whole Nokia thing as an example; create a platform, then buy a hardware business to promote it further, then immediately stop both hardware and software you've spent years and billions on without even blinking.
In fact, I'm struggling to think of something the reverse Midas touch of Redmond hasn't completely crippled (usually without any external influence)... "yeah, if we're really nice and groovy to each other then that WP10/Win8/Lync/Skype/OneDrive/Zune/Xbox/Explorer/Edge/Vista/ME/Band/insert name debacle won't happen again." Yet still it rumbles on.
Seriously a baby in the middle of the street and you 'wait a few minutes?'
What for? The five second rule? Utter D*ck.
Look forward to the book review, I assume it will be filled with utter tripe and management bingo as he tries to leave his mark on history. Other than getting rid of windows mobile, killing Nokia and introducing the world to mainstream data rape with windows 10.
Seriously a baby in the middle of the street and you 'wait a few minutes?'
It takes some time to unhook one's jaw and relax one's throat.
"One of my biggest worries of this book and talking about it is: 'Will it be viewed cynically as corporate propaganda?'"
Don't worry, Nad, I view it as a big bag of self-important ego wank.
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