Ben Gilbert: commitment

Transcript context

…No, but I was viewed as a spender, and I was much louder on this than Satya is on anything financial, because it’s how I’m programmed. He’s programmed a little differently. And Amy is more balanced. She’ll talk about balance, and I would say we’re going to win with Surface, whatever it is. If I could paraphrase my view of it, you were willing to say, we’re going to spend whatever it takes. Amy goes and says, I’m going to account for every dollar of spend real tight and make sure that every dollar demands a return. Yeah. I had no credibility in terms of what some investors wanted to hear. And my actions were consistent with that. It’s not like they were inconsistent. Then lastly, people did worry about the future of a couple of our franchises, most notably Windows. You get all these things, narrative, transition from high price, some issue about franchises, and me being a big spender, no wonder the stock stayed flat. By the end of my tenure, it was even bothering me.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.