Former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is leaving Microsoft as part of a fresh reorganization. “We are aligning our engineering efforts and capabilities to deliver on our strategy and, in particular, our three core ambitions,” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an email to employees today. “This change will enable us to deliver better products and services that our customers love at a more rapid pace.”
And not a single tear was shed.
I guess they send him on the mission to ruin some other company now?
Unless he Eloped. Ba-dum-tish.
Gave you a +1 for the pun!
MS sent him off to wreck Nokia and he pretty much succeeded.
OTOH Nokia was stagnating and needed a kick up the ass – instead, Elop gave them a knife in the back.
Mac
Don’t worry about Elop, he’s not exactly poor, e.g. having gotten millions of dollars after sinking Nokia:
“Elop’s Nokia ‘golden parachute’ swells to $33 million”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/30/us-nokia-ceo-payout-idUSB…
Edited 2015-06-17 22:29 UTC
Yeah, that’s pretty dumb, isn’t it? I would’ve sunk the company for a quarter of that amount
Nokia’s board of directors should be named and shamed for that.
But they are never held liable for anything.
Just for info here are the newspaper articles where they confess that one of Elops KPIs was to sell Nokia.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/09/24/nokia-admits-g…
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/09/24/nokia-board-critici…
Both the board and Elop are to blame. The board for thinking only on their bank accounts and Elop for accepting such KPI targets on his contract.
Its really not poetic enough. The announcement should have referenced the burning platform memo. Something about “energy” or “conflagration” or at least “platform”. Someone that special deserves to be be roasted in a public forum by the men smart enough to dismiss him.
My esteem for Microsoft is on the rebound.
Nokia was a technical powerhouse with remarkably high-quality products, a proud tradition of openness and customer service, and many loyal team members and fans.
Elop foolishly Osborned their cash flow while simultaneously setting them on a financially disastrous technical dead end that eventually resulted in selling their mangled smartphone remains to Microsoft. In doing so, he collected tens of millions of dollars – for abject failure! Yet even at Microsoft, what little remained of the carcass has withered.
I’ll shed a tear for Elop when he repays every penny and apologizes to the thousands of hard working employees harmed by his incompetence. He didn’t start the decline, but he certainly finished it with amazing alacrity.
But I do shed a tear for Nokia and the community lost through Elop’s fiasco.
Remember how less than a couple of years ago, Elop was one of the contenders to become the CEO at Microsoft. Is Nadella eliminating internal competition?
I don’t imagine Nadella has to worry about anything like that for a long time. After all, the board let Ballmer do the monkey boy dance for about a decade past his “sell by” date, and Nadella actually seems to have a clue.
Ah, what a pity. He could ruin MS for good
More like clearing out the dead wood than eliminating the competition. Elop probably had no future at MS after the job he did at Nokia. I suspect that his name may have been thrown into the ring for CEO simply to make the more serious candidates look better.
Hi,
“This change will enable us to deliver better products and services that our customers love at a more rapid pace”.
As an occasional customer; I’m not sure that I want to love their products and services at a more rapid pace. Sometimes a man needs romance, like chocolates, and pizza.
– Brendan
Fuck you Elop. You ruined employees lifes, and Nokia, for a few millions. Fuck you.
Tell us how you really feel! Don’t hold back now!
He thought that he was going to be the nextboss. But in Microsoft they are too smart for that.
Not a tear was shed? I cried like a baby when I heard this, because I couldn’t stop laughing.
I think the only reason he isn’t the CEO is because of the board actually doing their job. Balmer’s plan failed, and Elop was the second in command.
http://www.wired.com/2015/06/microsoft-stephen-elop/
MS is now a post-gates post-ballmer company. Although their history brings a lot of kudos, some associations are also very very bad.
Elop was the last remaining ‘hate figure’ at MS, and also represented the old mentality. It was a matter of time before he was asked to leave so the company could finally repair/reinvent its brand.
If someone from Nokia read this post, he will understand what I said the 2011-03-02 :
http://www.osnews.com/thread?464534
.. Unfortunately…
This is just sad : “From the top, to the ground”.
🙁
Off course Nokia and MS will still leave, the brand Lumia may even continue.
But the glory of the Nokia phones for the mass is definitively over. This is the past.
We have just the hope to see a new major product from Finland’s Company.
Maybe… One day…
Wow are a seer from the Middle-earth ?!? ;-P
Ha ha ! Nice comment…
🙂
Let say it is a kind of lesson… Of history ? 😉
Interesting. Are you still in the same industry? I have an ex Nokia guy I know that’s looking to jump. The guy’s name is on some crazy fundamental patents. ( yes I know patents can be evil and everything, but this is more of a credit to the work he’s capable of).
writing patents is a skill in and of itself taht requires some investment of time. I wouldn’t necessarily equate patent writing with technical expertise although that can be true.
No, he didn’t literally write the patent application. He’s not a secretary. He developed the invention that the patent covers. Large companies have patent lawyers that draft them.
Microsoft should have made him the CEO. He has experince in managing a higly profitalbe giant company that has mobile platform issues.
More accurately, he has experience in mangling a highly profitable giant company that has mobile platform issues.
Wouldn’t that be counter-productive to the quality of the products and services, rushing them out at a more rapid pace?