Julie Larson-Green has been at Microsoft for 20 years. For the past few years, she's been Head of Devices - Surface, Xbox - but then Redmond decided to buy Nokia.
As part of the deal, Nokia boss Stephen Elop (ex-Microsoft) moved back to Microsoft as Head of Expanded Devices division.
Still with me?
So, something had to be found for Larson-Green.
She's to become Chief Experience Officer. That means she's in charge of Skype, Bing and Office.
She was tipped to become Microsoft head honcho, as was Elop, with the retirement of Steve Ballmer. But that job went to Satya Nadella, another Redmond veteran.
Keep up!
Anyway, here's a short Q&A between Larson-Green and Ina Fried of Re/code:
Ina Fried: Why did you decide to take on this role?
Julie Larson-Green: I like the hardware stuff. It’s not quite as close to product design as I’d hoped. I knew that after Stephen Elop came in I would have an opportunity to rethink my role and what I wanted to do.
Were you offered other positions?
Oh yeah. There were other things, staying and working for Stephen, other things. I thought this was exciting and new and part of the strategic direction of where Satya (Nadella) is taking the company. It’s kind of his first strategic move. It’s fun to be that person.
You’ve been there 21 years. It is a time of big change for Microsoft. What are your thoughts of where Microsoft is?
I think it is a time of re-evaluating and re-thinking what we stand for and how we are going to help customers in the future. It’s a good team atmosphere.
When people are talking about companies leading the technology future, increasingly Microsoft isn’t the company named by outsiders. Does that bother you?
Of course. But I just look at the customer impact that we have. We have a lot of impact, maybe not inside that, call it technorati bubble. But we have a lot of impact around the world.
What was it like to be the first woman to lead the Windows team?
It was really fun. I worked closely with (Steven) Sinofsky over the years in developing the strategy. I had driven a big part of the team to start with so it wasn’t a huge leap. I had to take on dev and test and those things. There is a different communications style you need when you are driving a giant team versus a small one.
Within a fairly short time Microsoft is going to be a maker of phones, tablets and wearables. What do you think of Microsoft’s prospects in those markets.
I think the vision of a computer on every desk has just evolved to be in every hand, in every pocket and every surface around you, no pun intended. We are going to be there with things you care about. That’s one of the things that was nice about hardware.
Do you anticipate in your new role you will be working not just on things for Windows devices but on creating things for iOS and Android?
Sure. People need access to our services and their data on other devices as well.
Is that going to be new for you? Do you have to go out and get an iPhone or an Android device?
You know me. I always use everybody’s everything. I have an iPhone, I have a Galaxy Note. I have an HTC One. I am a gadget girl. I have a FitBit, a FuelBand, all that stuff. You should see my living room. I have it all–TiVo, PS4, Xbox One.
I think you have to live the life and understand how people are using technology and how it is fitting into people’s lives and what benefits it is providing for folks. I use my Nokia phone most of the time.
One of the comments you made that got the most attention was suggesting that three versions of Windows (Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone) was probably too many. There are still three operating systems. Is three still too many?
(Windows head) Terry (Myerson) has been talking a lot about how we are going to bring things together and how the experience is really continuous, from phone to tablet to a PC. People kind of misconstrued it to mean it is the end of ARM(-based) Windows or Windows RT, but that is certainly not the case.
Windows 8 was such a big project in trying to bridge the past–everything Windows had been–and an App-centric mobile future. Yet people seem ready to write it off.
Change is super hard… There’s definitely things I would think about doing differently to ease that transition. I think change was needed… I don’t know that building just another Windows 7 would have been helpful.
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