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Satya Nadella is only the third CEO Microsoft has had in its 50 years of existence, which is mind-blowing when you think about it.
Back in 2017, when he was still only a few years into his role at the top of the company's org chart, Nadella (with the help of a couple of ghostwriters) wrote a book called Hit Refresh, in which he rhapsodized about "us humans and the unique quality we call empathy, which will become ever more valuable in a world where the torrent of technology will disrupt the status quo like never before."
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After decades of the aggressive, take-no-prisoners mentality of his predecessors Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, the emphasis on empathy seemed refreshing. It's a theme Nadella has returned to repeatedly in interviews and public speeches during the past decade. In a 2023 interview with publisher Axel Springer, he said, "I don't think empathy is a soft skill. In fact, it is the hardest skill we learn, to relate to the world, to relate to the people that matter the most to us. In fact, innovation is about meeting the unmet, unarticulated needs of customers."
Last month, at an employee-only town hall, a current Microsoft employee confronted the CEO directly, arguing that the company is no longer living up to that aspiration. In his Notepad newsletter, longtime Microsoft-watcher Tom Warren quotes that worker, who articulated a common complaint: These days, life at Microsoft feels "markedly different, colder, more rigid, and lacking in the empathy we have come to value."
"I've spoken to dozens of employees over the past few months," Warren reports, "and they all told me that morale inside Microsoft is at an all-time low." No wonder, given that the company has conducted five rounds of layoffs so far in 2025, cutting loose more than 15,000 employees, or about 6.7% of its global workforce. And that's despite the fact that the company is making record profits and is one of the three most successful corporations on the planet.
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There's no question Microsoft is facing enormous pressure as it tries to compete in the insanely expensive, ridiculously fast-moving battle to become the leading AI platform. But that pressure is showing up in the company's interactions with customers. In more than three decades of observing what Redmond says and does, I have never seen Microsoft so aloof, out of touch, and lacking in empathy as it is in 2025. It's almost like it's trying to push customers away -- especially if those customers are poor and powerless.
I haven't heard lately from any customers who feel that their "unmet, unarticulated needs" are being met. More often, they feel ignored or that they're being forced to use and pay for products and features they neither want nor need.
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