Microsoft's LinkedIn Chief Is Now Running Office (theverge.com) 15
Announced in an internal memo from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky has been appointed to also lead the Office, Outlook, and Microsoft 365 Copilot teams as part of an internal AI reorganization. Roslansky will report to Rajesh Jha for Office while continuing to run LinkedIn independently under Nadella. The Verge reports: "LinkedIn remains a top priority and will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary," says Nadella in his memo. "This move brings us closer to the original vision we laid out nine years ago with the LinkedIn acquisition: connecting the world's economic graph with the Microsoft Graph. And I look forward to how Ryan will bring his product ethos and leadership to entertainment and devices." Sumit Chauhan and Gaurav Sareen, senior executives in the Office and Microsoft 365 teams, will remain on the entertainment and devices leadership team, but along with their teams they'll join Jon Friedman and the UX team to work directly for Roslansky.
Charles Lamanna and his BIC team are also moving to report to Rajesh Jha as part of an AI shakeup. "Charles has consistently kept us focused on what it takes to win in business applications and the agent layer, and I look forward to the impact he and his team will have in entertainment and devices," says Nadella. In a separate memo, Lamanna also announced that starting July 2nd Lili Cheng will take on the newly expanded role of CTO of the BIC team. Dan Lewis is also taking on the role of corporate vice president of Copilot Studio. "We are poised to reinvent every role and every business process, and start to reimagine organizations as composed of people and agents," says Lamanna in an internal memo.
Both the Lamanna and Roslansky moves are very interesting, as the business Copilot team and Microsoft 365 Copilot team have been in separate parts of Microsoft's sprawling AI and cloud teams up until this point. This has led to a situation where nobody really owns Copilot all up inside Microsoft, but now the separate leaders of Microsoft 365 Copilot and the business Copilot teams now both report to Rajesh Jha. The consumer Copilot will still be run by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.
Charles Lamanna and his BIC team are also moving to report to Rajesh Jha as part of an AI shakeup. "Charles has consistently kept us focused on what it takes to win in business applications and the agent layer, and I look forward to the impact he and his team will have in entertainment and devices," says Nadella. In a separate memo, Lamanna also announced that starting July 2nd Lili Cheng will take on the newly expanded role of CTO of the BIC team. Dan Lewis is also taking on the role of corporate vice president of Copilot Studio. "We are poised to reinvent every role and every business process, and start to reimagine organizations as composed of people and agents," says Lamanna in an internal memo.
Both the Lamanna and Roslansky moves are very interesting, as the business Copilot team and Microsoft 365 Copilot team have been in separate parts of Microsoft's sprawling AI and cloud teams up until this point. This has led to a situation where nobody really owns Copilot all up inside Microsoft, but now the separate leaders of Microsoft 365 Copilot and the business Copilot teams now both report to Rajesh Jha. The consumer Copilot will still be run by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.
Linking Office with LinkedIn? How would that work? (Score:5, Funny)
LinkedIn is nothing more than a cesspit of AI generated resumes these days where you can see your (ex) colleague hallucinate about all his achievements.
Re: (Score:2)
LinkedIn is nothing more than a cesspit of AI generated resumes these days where you can see your (ex) colleague hallucinate about all his achievements.
but, but, I did do (most) of that! I think.
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In a striking coincidence, MS is shoveling AI into Office. If we're lucky, AI will kill Office dead.
I see where they're going (Score:5, Insightful)
Not enough nag screens for Office, Outlook and Copilot, so they need to take more inspiration from the spam-fest that is LinkedIn.
Sounds like the announcement was written with AI (Score:2)
LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky ... will bring his product ethos and leadership to entertainment and devices. ... ... impact he and his team will have in entertainment and devices
Charles (BIC team)
Both will be reporting "to Rajesh Jha for Office"; Ryan will be leading Office, Outlook, and MS 365 Copilot teams.
Am I missing something? What do any of those role changes have to do with "entertainment and devices"?
it's just bureaucratic turf battles (Score:1)
By the way, LinkedIn is very independent of the rest of MSFT. Why, I don't know, but it's basically completely independent up to the point where the CEO reports to Satya. They even used to have their own benefits programs though I'm pretty sure that got consolidated for the simple fact that not being consolidated was retarded.
So to have someone straddling these roles ... and doing LinkedIn CEO on a part-time basis like he's delivering newspapers ... is crazy. Either that means one of the positions is intend
Re: (Score:3)
But I have LinkedIn NFTs. Surely they will only boom in value.
Re:Sounds like the STORY was written with AI (Score:3)
LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky ... will bring his product ethos and leadership to entertainment and devices. ...
Charles (BIC team) ... impact he and his team will have in entertainment and devices
Both will be reporting "to Rajesh Jha for Office"; Ryan will be leading Office, Outlook, and MS 365 Copilot teams.
Am I missing something? What do any of those role changes have to do with "entertainment and devices"?
The summary (and The Verge's rephrasing) is much more confusing than the actual internal memo -- which is short and crystal clear:
Rajesh heads the E+D Group, Mustafa heads the AI Group, Scott Guthrie heads the Cloud + AI Group (and these are the 3 "Engineering" Groups, while most of the other groups are more distinct, like Gaming, IT, Legal, HR, etc.)
Ryan (CEO LinkedIn) is also becoming EVP Office/Microsoft365Copilot (which reports to Rajesh in the E+D Group),
Charles (BIC Team) is moving adjacent to Rya
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Thanks. That helps to clear it up some. However, I still don't see how their roles (that of Ryan and Charles) will bring anything to "entertainment and devices". They will be reporting to Rajesh, who heads E&D, but they're not overseeing any thing that is entertainment nor devices (Office, Outlook, CoPilot).
IMO, it sounds like the "internal AI reorganization" is also an AI designed reorganization... any why wouldn't they go whole hog and "leverage" AI to help manage their vast employee base? If it's not
"Microsoft's LinkedIn Chief Is Now Running Office" (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Linux + LaTeX, and Vi. I'm afraid the Linux Mint community has lost another desktop user to Windows 11. That MS Office suite sure is hard to compete with.
Putting someone more capable in charge of AI (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft CFO was publicly complaining during last month's earnings call that the current Microsoft AI chief wasn't cutting it, so they're putting it under this guy instead. Who knows how long it will last; they'll keep reassigning it until it becomes a profitable, or path-to-profitability. Right now Microsoft is just barely ahead of Apple in public AI success, despite being an early partner with OpenAI.
LinkedIn makes no effort to get rid of fakes (Score:1)
If LinkedIn got rid of the many members who are clearly fake, their fake number-of-members statistic would go down.
Ryan (Score:2)
you can keep your fidgety fingers away from office, don't change it. It's a good product and you don't need to ruin it.