Reinventing Microsoft — 4 Cultural Hacks by Satya Nadella

The transformation to a trillion-dollar company

An illustration created waves in the technology realm in 2011. One reason was that it featured the top tech companies of that period. But the main reason was the illustration of Microsoft, it caught more eyeballs than the rest.

A group of pyramidal-shaped organizational hierarchies with one leader at the top and two or three subordinates at the next level and so on. The disturbing factor was a hand coming out of each pyramid pointing a gun at one another as if they are at war.

The image portrayed Microsoft’s toxic culture, internal politics and bureaucracy at that time.

This illustration was created by an ex-google employee Manu Cornet.

Microsoft has had only three CEOs in its 47-year long history.

But during the same period, it disrupted the operating system market under and the growth surged when the US government trusted them with multi-million dollar federal projects.

In 2000, Gates passed the baton to Steve Ballmer, the 30th employee of Microsoft.

Ballmer, a non-technologist continued Gates's philosophy — aggressive expansion, suppression of open source development and trying to…