The question then arises: what unforgivable offense did Satya Nadella commit that caused the mighty Microsoft to be unable to patch its own backdoor?
In reality, he didn't do anything major; he simply did what every Indian would do.
That's right, Satya Nadella is an Indian, and like countless other Indians holding executive positions in Silicon Valley, Satya Nadella had a tragic childhood. He was born in India, and not into the highest caste, the Brahmins, but into the next highest, the Kshatriyas.
Despite being of a high caste, Satya Nadella had to immigrate to the United States with his parents, leading a life like an ordinary person. How truly tragic.
From a young age, Satya Nadella understood the importance of education. Through his diligent efforts, he joined Microsoft in 1992, steadily climbed the ranks within the company, and was eventually designated as the second-ranked, now first-ranked, and future successor to take over Microsoft and become its third CEO.
As previously mentioned, Satya Nadella made a mistake that all Indians would make.
Now, don't misunderstand; it's not a mistake that would warrant a death sentence in China. Rather, it cannot even be called a mistake, but an outstanding strategy.
Indians have a habit of sticking together and promoting their own people.
Anyone who has worked in American tech companies knows that people of Indian descent are the most prone to forming cliques. Once a company hires an Indian or an employee of Indian descent, that employee will continuously recommend other people of Indian descent to the company.
And as soon as such a recommendation succeeds once, the company will have two employees of Indian descent. This will then turn into four, and then eight.
This is because employees of Indian descent are diligent and, most importantly, obedient. They never offer suggestions that bosses don't want to hear and exhibit unconditional submission to their bosses.
After all, this is an excellent national character cultivated over thousands of years under their caste system. Bosses also favor such personalities, so they don't mind the fact that their company will have a large number of employees of Indian descent.
In any case, people of Indian descent are more useful than the arrogant white people, the foolish and troublemaking black people, and the taciturn Chinese people.
Once the number of employees of Indian descent in a company becomes significant, these employees will find ways to concentrate their efforts and recommend some of their own to become middle management.
This middle management will then find ways to bring more lower-level employees into the company. A larger number of lower-level employees will, in turn, promote the emergence of more middle management. Through this virtuous cycle, the natural emergence of Indian descent high-level executives becomes inevitable.
Eventually, more and more people of Indian descent will permeate the entire company. It will become extremely difficult for bosses to get rid of an executive of Indian descent, as it would offend the majority of the company's employees.
Satya Nadella is the ultimate beneficiary of this method. Through his efforts, the proportion of employees of Indian descent at Microsoft has risen from the original 3% to the current 28%. Nearly one-third of the employees are of Indian descent, making Satya Nadella's succession position as stable as Mount Tai.
However, every position in a company is limited. With more and more employees of Indian descent joining, an equal number of employees from other ethnic groups are naturally displaced.
Furthermore, people of Indian descent are very clever; they do not choose to provoke white employees first. After all, even a powerful dragon would not dare to challenge a local snake, let alone the fact that they are not even powerful dragons.
It is also difficult to target black employees. This is because it is very difficult for black employees to enter high-tech companies, and those who can are few and far between.
With the continuous development of various civil rights movements, tech companies need to ensure their workforce appears more diverse. Black people have thus become an essential element that must be present in companies. Their numbers might not be large, but they must meet a minimum standard, or the company will face public condemnation.
Therefore, the already small number of black employees cannot be touched. This leaves Chinese employees, who were originally more numerous than people of Indian descent but are taciturn, do not tend to form cliques, and are even afraid of being outcompeted by their accomplished compatriots for their positions, as the ideal targets for displacement.
A large number of employees of Indian descent have displaced Chinese employees from their positions. This is why the number of Chinese people in Silicon Valley has been declining over the past decade or so.
It is worth noting that around the peak in 2000, employees of Chinese descent accounted for 24% of the total technical staff in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley also had a large number of executives of Chinese descent. Whether it was Apple, Microsoft, or any other company, Chinese people were the mainstream among ethnic minorities. It can be said that Silicon Valley as a whole was born out of the outstanding efforts and contributions of technical personnel of Chinese descent, while people of Indian descent were still an almost invisible group at the time.
Microsoft was no exception at that time. Take Microsoft's most proud Windows XP system, for example. It was developed through the joint efforts of a group of engineers, primarily of Chinese descent. Although Satya Nadella was already middle management at the time, he had no opportunity to participate in the development of Windows XP.
However, over the years, with Satya Nadella continuously recruiting employees of Indian descent and replacing Chinese employees.
Almost all of the engineers who developed Windows XP have been driven out. These positions are now held by people of Indian descent, and Windows 8 and Windows 10 were developed under their leadership.
Of course, it cannot be said that this is wrong. After all, new generations replacing the old is a very normal thing. If this disastrous incident had not occurred, Satya Nadella would have smoothly become the new CEO of Microsoft, right up to the present.
But now, a crisis that never occurred in another world has emerged. Microsoft urgently needs to patch the backdoor to prevent such a terrible situation from continuing.
However, the problem is that Microsoft suddenly finds itself unable to find anyone capable of patching this backdoor.
As previously mentioned, this backdoor was built directly into the foundational architecture of the Windows system; otherwise, it would not have been possible to achieve such exaggerated functionality.
The earliest contributors to this backdoor were naturally the Windows XP system engineers, so the backdoor was developed under the guidance of that group of engineers of Chinese descent.
Although Windows 8 and Windows 10 were later released, these two systems still used the basic architecture of Windows XP. After all, countless facts have proven that the architecture of Windows XP is the most stable system architecture, the one that makes you almost never see a blue screen. This was unimaginable during the Windows 95 and Windows 98 eras. In those days, if a computer system didn't display a blue screen once or twice a day, you felt as if you hadn't even been online.
So when it comes time to patch this backdoor, the Indian engineers currently on staff are dumbfounded. All they have ever done is decorate the existing system architecture. Now, you are asking them to tinker with the entire foundational architecture and produce a patch that not only blocks the backdoor but also does not affect the stability of the architecture, all within a week. Sorry, even if you killed these engineers of Indian descent, they couldn't do it! At the very least, they would need a month or two to understand the entire architecture from scratch, pore over millions of lines of code, and tens of millions of lines of code comments.
Thus, it is only natural that Satya Nadella became the target of the current CEO's wrath. Moreover, due to the crisis facing Microsoft, employees within the company felt utter despair about their future.
They had initially hoped to release a patch quickly, allowing Microsoft to escape the quagmire promptly, perhaps giving them a chance to keep their high-paying jobs.
But Satya Nadella completely extinguished their hopes. In addition, many employees from other ethnic groups had long harbored dissatisfaction towards people of Indian descent. Naturally, they would vent their anger furiously towards Satya Nadella.
What about the employees of Indian descent within the company?
Well, after an emergency meeting, they unanimously agreed that Satya Nadella's presence would only continue to lead to discrimination and persecution of employees of Indian descent within Microsoft.
It would be better for them to proactively distance themselves from Satya Nadella. This way, they could stand with the other like-minded employees and avoid suspicion. Although it might require sacrificing Satya Nadella, it's fortunate that only he needs to be sacrificed, not all employees of Indian descent. This is the most beneficial outcome for the entire group.
Consequently, within Microsoft, Satya Nadella, overnight, went from being Microsoft's heir apparent to someone even dogs wouldn't favor.
However, what's peculiar is that Microsoft did not dismiss Satya Nadella. Instead, a few days later, they urgently announced that the current CEO, Steve Ballmer, had resigned from his position due to health reasons, and Satya Nadella naturally took over as Microsoft's CEO.
This decision might suggest that Satya Nadella was not disliked by the shareholders, and his position at Microsoft should have been quickly restored.
But in reality, even after taking over as CEO, Satya Nadella found himself completely isolated. This CEO of Microsoft can barely even get his own secretary to follow his instructions.
This is because everyone is well aware that Satya Nadella's ascent this time was not due to the board's continued trust. Instead, the board understood that Microsoft, incapable of even producing a backdoor patch, was destined for a bleak future, facing massive compensation claims and even legal liabilities.
Therefore, Satya Nadella, as the CEO of Microsoft, is naturally the best scapegoat. When the case erupts, pushing all the blame and problems onto Satya Nadella, who had always managed program development, is the best choice. This at least can protect the safety of other executives and the board. Isn't this the wisest decision?