The congratulatory texts and tweets started the last week of November. Microsoft had overtaken Apple to become the world’s most valuable company, a stunning climax in a year that also saw it pass Amazon and Google’s Alphabet Longtime employees, who’d grown accustomed to thinking of Microsoft as far removed from its glory years, when it was run by Bill Gates and feared as the “Evil Empire,” were flooded with messages from friends and family.

Yet not a word of this achievement was uttered when chief executive Satya Nadella gathered his senior staff for their weekly meeting that Friday. In an interview at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Nadella appears irritated by questions about the company’s ascendancy.

Bloomberg