All right. David i dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . David you have now had to follow bill gates and steve ballmer, two legendary figures. Did you feel at that time you were really ready for the job following those legends . Or were you saying i could do a better job than they did . Satya the best advice i got from both bill and steve i think helped me a lot. Their clear message was, dont try to be like us. Dont even bother to sort of succeeding these people. Just be your own. In fact, i remember very distinctly, even during the interview process the board was conducting they asked me, do you want to be the ceo . And i said, only if you want me to be the ceo. The feedback i got was that people who want to be ceos are like, i want to be ceo. I said, look, that is not me. I remember going and talking to steve, and he said, yeah, just be yourself. It is too late to change. David since you have been the ceo, 3. 5 years, the stock is up, i guess about 120 . When you go to your annual shareholder meetings, do you get a standing ovation for what you have done . Satya no, i get a lot of people asking me, hey, look, come home and fix my computer. [laughter] david ok. You are an native of india. What part of india . I was born in hyderabad, which is in the central part of india. David and so growing up, your parents doted on you, i assume . Satya yeah, they did. David and they told you you were going to be Prime Minister or something important in the country. What did they want you to be . Satya they just wanted me to stop playing cricket and take my studies a little more seriously. David you were an avid cricket player, is that right . Satya yes. That is correct. I was in love with it. David and when did you realize you wouldnt be a professional cricket player . Satya it was pretty soon. [laughter] satya quickly i realized at best i would play what is considered perhaps firstclass in india, but i was not going to go much further than that. But that is when my dad, in fact i remember one of the Big Decisions that changed my life was my entire outlook was so provincial when i look back at it. Which is, hey, i want to stay in hyderabad, maybe study economics and Political Science and work for a bank. That was about the extent of my ambition. He looks at me and says, what are you doing . You have got to get out of this place. He pushed me out to get to an engineering school, and that pretty much, of course, defined the trajectory afterwards. David your father was a member of the senior civil service, which is an important position, i guess, in india, is that right . Satya my dad was a different me in terms of his academic prowess, which is humorous when you look at my report card. He was always humorous. He would look at my report cards and say i dont understand how anybody can have these kinds of marks. But the nice thing about it was he would say it in such endearing ways, that he would never make me feel bad. [laughter] david the marks werent high enough . Satya not high enough. The guy never met an exam he did not ace, as he would say. [laughter] david ok. Satya and so, it was astounding to me that he would have a son who couldnt ace an exam. David your father is still alive . Satya yes. David and he must be very proud of what you have achieved . Satya not enough. [laughter] david so, you went to college in india, and then you decided to go to graduate school in the united states. Satya yeah. David so where did you go . Satya i went to the university of wisconsin in milwaukee, and that is when i switched from Electrical Engineering to computer science. David but, if you are from india, the university of wisconsinmilwaukee could not be that well known in india, so how did you happen to wind up there . Satya i had never been to bombay, and then i showed up in milwaukee. David did you have a winter coat . Satya that was my first very valued possession in life, a winter coat, which is very important. Unfortunately, i picked up this bad habit of smoking in india, in college. The one nice thing about going to school in milwaukee is if you are a smoker, you have to go out in the winter and smoke. And that one winter in milwaukee cured me of my smoking habit. [laughter] david wow. Good. So, you got a job after you graduated at sun microsystems. And what was your job there . Satya i was a software developer. David ok. And then you got recruited to go to another Company Called microsoft. And that was in 1992 . Satya thats right. David so, but you also had applied to go to the university of Chicago School of business, so how did you decide to do one or the other . Satya you know, quite frankly, david, i was very committed to saying oh, i want to go to the business school, maybe even go to wall street. That was my david the highest calling of mankind, right . [laughter] satya says david rubenstein. [laughter] david right, right. Satya and i thought, wow, maybe that is what i should do. Then somewhere along the line, i started talking to people. And they said, hey, why would you do that . You are in tech. You should really come back. It was an amazing time because windows nt, which became silver business and what have you, was just starting out. And i subsequently went and did some combination of parttime and other courses, and actually finished my mba, which i find stunning. David you were commuting, working, and on weekends commuting to the university of chicago. And that mustve taken a lot of energy to do both. Right . Satya it was crazy. David so, you are beginning your ascent up, but dealing with some personal issues. Your first child was born with Cerebral Palsy. He is now 21 years old. So how did you realize that was going to change your life and how have you dealt with that issue . Satya yeah, even, i was 29 years old when our son was born. And if you had even asked me an hour before he was born what was going through my head, it was all about is the nursery going to be ready . What is going to happen to our weekends now we have a son, and when will my wife get back to a job, and so on. But obviously everything changed that night. He was born because of an undetected in utero distress and asphyxiation with severe brain damage. That led to Cerebral Palsy and he is quadriplegic now. The first, maybe even two years or more even, i was more about, why did this happen to me . What happened to us and all of these plans that i had are now all been thrown up in the air and changed . Whereas my wife, what came naturally to her as a mother was she said, ok, im not going back to my job. I am going to really care for my son, drive him around for therapy after therapy. And i watched that. Without schooling me, i got schooled. That Nothing Happened to me. What happened was to my son, and that it was time for me to understand that, realize that, see life through his eyes and then do my duty as a father. That to me, perhaps, did not come in one moment. It is something i think that took time, but as i figured it out, it changed me, both as a parent, but also who i am today and how i approach everything. David now your wife is trained as an architect. Satya thats right. David and she has given up doing that for a while . Satya thats right. David and you have two daughters. One daughter has a severe learning disability as well. And how did that affect you and your wife . Satya in fact, one of the things that happened because of our son is we built up a Tremendous Community of people, whether it was therapists, or other parents of children with disabilities. And so we were involved in that community. By the time our youngest daughter came into our lives, i must say we had the richness of this community to support us, and in turn when we recognized very early on, my wife and i, my wife in particular was quick to realize she would need additional help. And so, we found this school in vancouver, bc, which was all around neuroplasticity. The idea was you can train your brain to learn, sort of compensating. And so we decided you know what . We are going to move the family to vancouver. My son would stay with me in seattle. My wife and daughters would move to vancouver and we would commute, but that is where it came all naturally to us. My son had taught us what had changed to give people with disabilities the best shot, and that is what we took on. David and your son lives with you now . Satya yes. David one of the qualities you say you got from all this was empathy. That the result of having empathy made you a better ceo and a better person, is that fair . Satya yeah, in fact, most people think empathy is something you reserve for your life and your family and your friends or what have you, but the reality is i think it is an existential priority for a business. Because you look at it like what is our business . Our business is to meet unmet, in unarticulated needs of customers. There is no way our innovation to meet unmet, unarticulated needs is going to come about if we do not listen. Not just listen to the words, but go deep to understand what the needs are behind it. So i think empathy is core to innovation, and life experience, if you listen and learn from, teaches you. I would not claim to have talked about it, but i would not claim any innate capability of empathy that i was born with. It is life that taught me. If anything, i pursued is every my pursuit is every year is a growing sense of empathy for people around me. David did steve say if you do this well, we will be happy. If you dont do this well, you might not get another job . Satya one of the Amazing Things about bill and steve is their candor. They do not sugarcoat anything. They are very honest about most things in life for everything in life or everything in life. If you do a good job, maybe you are have another job. If not, you wont. [laughter] david you are rising up in microsoft and running the Business Solutions division, but then they said, we would like you to run the search business called bing. And did you say you cant compete against google, i do not want to do that . Or did you say no, i am happy to do that . Satya i had just been promoted to lead our Business Solutions team. I mean, i was loving that job. It is something that i aspired to do. And steve comes around and says, hey, you know what, i have an idea for you. I think you should go run this group that has high attrition and we have a very tough task ahead. And i dont know whether it is a good career move, but i need help and, you know, think wisely and choose. [laughter] satya and i was like, wow, this is an interesting choice in front of me. And i remember very distinctly going that night to the building in which the bing team and our search team was housed. And it was what, maybe 9 00 or so, and the parking lot was full, people were in. And i said, wow, what is the deal here . I mean, these people are working hard, inspired, so i said well, i have got to join this team. I have got to the fight that they showed caused me not to take the easy path and get in. David did steve say if you do this well, we will be happy. If you dont do it well, you might not get another job . Satya that is correct. Steve was one of the Amazing Things about bill and steve is their candor. It is not like they sugarcoat anything. They are very, very honest about most things in life, or everything in life. And you are lucky. If you do a good job, maybe you will have another job. If not, you wont. David so you did a pretty good job, and then they came along and asked you to run another business that was not that competitive at the time, and that was your Cloud Computing business. How did it happen that amazon, which was not a computer company, more or less, became a giant in cloud and microsoft, right nearby, wasnt a giant there . Satya the interesting thing is what happens when a Company Becomes successful is this beautiful, Virtuous Cycle that gets created between your concept of product, your capability, and your culture, right . You really have all of these three things fall into gear and they are working super well, but then what happens is the concept that made you successful runs out of gas. It is not growing anymore. You now need new capabilities, and in order to have that new capability, you need a culture that allows you to grow that new capability. Our solo business was growing strong double digits, a highermargin business, and you look around on the other side of the lake here is a very low margin business called the cloud, and people would look at that and say, why would we do that . Why would we do that when we have such an amazing, fastgrowing, highmargin business . And that, i think, is the challenge. To be able to see the secular trends long before they become conventional wisdom change your business model, your technology, and change the product is the challenge of business. In tech it is unforgiving, but quite frankly, now that tech is part of every business, it is i think all of us have to deal with it. David you get to be ceo of this company, and are following two legendary figures. How did you go to them and say by the way, a lot of things you did i do not want to do anymore. I am going to change things . Satya i was the consummate insider. Right . I spent 25 years, 22 years or so when i became ceo. Growing up in the company that bill and steve built, i understood like the back of my palm all the things we got right, and all the things we got wrong. And i had a point of view on what i wanted to do if i was going to become ceo. [video clip] satya we now need to make microsoft thrive in a mobile first and cloud first world. [applause] satya it was not about trying to criticize or replace the past, it was about what are we going to do in the future. David one of the things you try to do to change the culture was to change what was known as a very proprietary culture at microsoft. Microsoft said, this is the way we do things, and we dont want to cooperate with other firms, competitors or other kinds of firms. How did you change the culture . Satya i said look, let me not view these things as zerosum. If anything, let me approach, even our traditional competitors and say, well, customers are heterogeneous, they use some of what we do, some of what you do. Lets figure out a way to combine forces where it is market expansive and satisfies customers. So that is how i have approached it. And it is a lesson i learned in my early days at microsoft. David historically, windows and office are your two cash cows. They are still the biggest source of profit . Satya absolutely. David so after those two and you suspect they should be a big source of profit for a long time but after those two, you have other things. You spent 26 billion, the biggest acquisition for microsoft ever, to buy linkedin. What does linkedin have to do with microsoft . Satya if you look at it, we have a billion users of windows and office, or microsoft 365, and what is the Common Thread . They are all professionals. They are all people who are trying to get things done. So we have the professional cloud and the professional devices in the world. And the vision was to combine that with the professional network of linkedin. In fact, if you look at some of the integrations we have since launched, you can be in outlook, you can get an email, i can get an email from david rubenstein. I can go look up your linkedin profile, which i hope you have. David i will get one today. [laughter] satya and then sort of look up all the mutual connections we may have, so the idea of the professional network, and the professional content can be brought together. I think, ultimately, it can be a big driver of productivity. So that is one. But one of the other big pieces that has been a real game changer for us is linkedin is the way people do business to business sales. If you want to be able to reach customers and sell, this integration is going to be a game changer. Same thing with talent management. So i think we have a lot of synergies between the products that are now coming to. David you gave a statement about womens pay. Satya i just gave such an absolutely nonsensical answer. When i talk to women who are very close to me, very senior, very successful women, that are key to microsoft and heard even their own personal experiences, that is when it struck me. David did you hear from your wife about that . Satya absolutely, my mom and my wife. David almost everything you have done since you have been ceo, the last three and a half years, has worked perfectly. The stock is up, the market value is up, everybody likes you. The only thing that i could find that anybody criticizes you for was you gave a statement about womens pay at one point, and you correctly, i think, changed your position the next day, but can you explain what happened . Satya absolutely. I was asked about pay equity and in fact i gave such an absolutely nonsensical answer, which the woman who was interviewing me was kind enough to correct me while i was on stage. I was answering a question literally using some past i mean, my own personal experience without understanding the broader context, the depth of that question. Which is, what is a person like me, who is the ceo of a company, doing to make sure that one, women can fully participate in our companies and in our economies, there is equal pay for equal work, and more importantly, there is an equal opportunity for equal work . That was the real question. It was not about what about you, what works for you and what career advice you have for me . It was a great learning moment for me. It is something i have obviously taken back. In fact, when i talk to women who are very close to me, very senior, very successful women that are key to microsoft and heard even their own personal experiences, that is when it struck me how the job of a ceo in particular is to make sure that everyone, whether it is gender diversity or ethnic diversity, can first come into the company, do their best work, so that we can then serve our customers. So that is a realization which i thought i had, quite frankly, but i was glad i messed up so publicly because i think i internalized the lessons from it. David did you hear from your wife about that . Satya absolutely. At that time, my mom was alive, so my mom and my wife. My wife had to give up her career because of our son. But even in my moms case, she struggled. Now i realize it a lot more than i even did, obviously, growing up. The tradeoff she had to make, where the system that she was working in did not support her reentry into the workforce after she had both myself and my sister. David so you have about 125,000 employees, Something Like that. So, what percentage are male, what percentage are female, and how many senior women do you have . Technology is not a place where a lot of women have risen to the top yet, relatively speaking. Satya in fact, one of the things that we have made Good Progress on is on the womens representation, which we have a long way to go. I mean, you have to remember that in tech, we have a particularly tougher issue because of our technology disparity in terms of gender diversity, but lets start with the progress, which is that in the last year, we have gone from around we improved to 27. 7 of women coming into the organization, which is two points more than historical. And in the technology side, where we have improved by four points. So that, i would say, is movement in the right direction, but not enough, obviously. One of the things our board also did was to change the compensation system for me as well as my director board. To say, look, numeric progress decides all the work that we may do, programs that we have at the top, let me tie compensation of the seniormost people, including the ceo, to real numerical progress. And so we are doing everything, but quite frankly, it is going to take continuous vigilance, a continuous push, and it is a top of mind issue for all of us. David you have only been doing this 3. 5 years, which is a relatively short tenure for microsoft ceos. How many more years would you like to do this . [laughter] satya you know, i have been at microsoft now for 25 years. And i think the thing that i feel that gives me that source of energy is really that sense of purpose of the company. Because quite honestly, i do not know how many years or if it is up to me, or how many years i will be there. I think it will be fun for me to do it each day and it is a real privilege to do it each day