Ryan Roslansky Is Leaving After Nearly 18 Years At LinkedIn and Microsoft (theverge.com) 19
Ryan Roslansky is leaving Microsoft and LinkedIn after nearly 18 years, triggering another leadership shuffle across Office and Teams. "Roslansky, who until recently was the CEO of LinkedIn, was promoted to the head of Office last year and then took control of Microsoft Teams earlier this year," notes The Verge. From the report: "Ryan leaves the organization in a strong position," says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an internal memo. "Over the past year, Ryan's team has done critical work bringing together the product, engineering, and design foundations that have made this next phase possible."
Roslansky is leaving a week after Microsoft announced its new Copilot, which the company is positioning as "the OS for work." He's also leaving around a month after calling fully AI-generated documents "a doom loop" for workers. "If we're not careful, we'll end up with a very expensive way to avoid writing and reading in an ocean of sameness, genericness," said Roslansky in his LinkedIn post.
Microsoft is now moving the teams behind Office and Microsoft Teams over to Charles Lamanna, as part of the Copilot, Agents, and Platform (CAP) organization. [...] Microsoft's chief design officer, Jon Friedman, is also moving to report to Copilot chief Jacob Andreou. Microsoft appointed Dan Shapero as its LinkedIn CEO earlier this year, and he will continue in this role and report directly to Nadella.
Roslansky is leaving a week after Microsoft announced its new Copilot, which the company is positioning as "the OS for work." He's also leaving around a month after calling fully AI-generated documents "a doom loop" for workers. "If we're not careful, we'll end up with a very expensive way to avoid writing and reading in an ocean of sameness, genericness," said Roslansky in his LinkedIn post.
Microsoft is now moving the teams behind Office and Microsoft Teams over to Charles Lamanna, as part of the Copilot, Agents, and Platform (CAP) organization. [...] Microsoft's chief design officer, Jon Friedman, is also moving to report to Copilot chief Jacob Andreou. Microsoft appointed Dan Shapero as its LinkedIn CEO earlier this year, and he will continue in this role and report directly to Nadella.
in other words he failed (Score:1)
The dude is 48 years old - if he had succeeded at his task then MSFT would have kept him around. And at that level of MSFT people make god-tier money. People who are ambitious enough to get to that level don't suddenly think, whelp I've got enough, time to start spending time with the dogs and building chairs in my woodshop.
So the reason he's out is, he couldn't hack it at his new job. Or Satya set unrealistic goals. Either way, sayonara.
Re:in other words he failed (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh no. He dared criticize AI, so he's out.
Re: in other words he failed (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and he was right, which they also can't tolerate apparently.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. He spoke truth ti power and power (the cretin at the top of MS) cannot have that. ne wonders how somebody like that managed to raise at MS though.
And he apparently did some good work, like finally getting Teams a way to test Audio, the absence of which causes problems time and again due to the crappy Windows audio set-up. I am now investigating alternatives as enshittification and sloppification is to be expected.
Not drinking the koolaid (Score:5, Insightful)
Look here at my pretty chat that goes up and to the right. That is AI enablement. It'll 10x your productivity.
Re:Not drinking the koolaid (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed.
But, to be fair, LLM-type "AI" does enhance Bullshit generation by 10x or more, just as he pointed out. His mistake was not recognizing that MS products are mostly used for bullshit generation and hence the gains are real.
Morale at MS is bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
That seems very likely. They certainly have burned all goodwill they could burn and they essentially committed suicide in the EU. Because their crap is so deeply embedded, it will take a while to get rid of them, but the process is well underway and this time there is only one way this can end.
Speaking of AI, "And here's the part that..." (Score:3)
And here's the part that most people don't {$VERB}.
Surely other people have noticed this, too, yes?
Could be worse (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is pretty standard when someone leaves Microsoft.
The management above the person leaving sends a nice message about them and their work and NEVER tells the truth about _why_ they are leaving.
At the upper levels I don't think there's really any sincerity about anything said, one way or another. This is just how corporate America operates.
Teams (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you want to be in charge of Teams?
Here is a hot potato that makes everyone hate you. Make it better, no you can't do that, or that, or that.
Better Work or More Slop? (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft reported $133.749 billion in net income for fiscal 2026 [microsoft.com], up 31% from the year before. The June quarter alone brought in $35.766 billion. With profits like that, Microsoft can afford to redraw the Office and Teams org chart. The harder part is making the next versions of those products worth using.
Roslansky says [microsoft.com] the next phase of the job would require him in Redmond full time, while his family is in the Bay Area. I take him at his word. His warning about an "ocean of sameness" still feels relevant to the people taking over. If Copilot writes a document and then summarizes it for the person receiving it, what exactly did Office help anyone do? Give me a better way to communicate and I'll use it. Give me a faster way to produce generic paperwork and I'll pass.
Re: (Score:3)
We do know that generating more "slop" type bullshit is what LLMs are really good at. Roslansky is perfectly right about that, if you want to obscure that you add no value, have no ideas and no insights, LLMs are the tools for you to hide that. Probably explains why so many people like them.
We still have to see any other uses outside of isolated and probably carefully crafted "examples" to the contrary. For example, apparently, that Hugging-Face stunt did cost them $20M in tokens, two or three orders of mag
So? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. On the rare occasions I till use MS office, I am constantly surprised (and annoyed) how dysfunctional MS office is compared to LibreOffice. They should have stopped "improving" it 20 years ago, before the atrocity of the "Ribbon" that only makes doing anything harder and wastes vertical screen space on top of that.
Re: (Score:2)
Who gives a turkey? (Score:2)
Honestly... Since when reshuffling in a company's upper management is of any interest to anybody other than the people working for that individual at that company?
What next? They're gonna replace Bob at accounting because he didn't use AI to format his Excel sheets?