I agree, Satya is an operator. He translated a mess into a historic opportunity for Microsoft. They'll get some significant chunk of some of the best AI talent on the planet. All the heatseakers will go there. That, plus the IP they already have, will turbocharge Microsoft.
OpenAI, in contrast, will become more like an academic research unit at some university. Those who prefer life slow and steady, will select to stay there, making tech for effective altruists.
Operator in this context refers to someone who successfully runs a business that someone else founded. Often the visionary founder is not good at the nuts and bolts of running and growing a business so they hand off the reins to someone who is. Think Steve Jobs vs Tim Cook.
For a decade, "operator" in Silicon Valley as has been used exactly as the commentator above describes it.
Which creates separation from "investor" or "engineer" or "founder" or "PM" or "sales" or "finance". Somebody has to make stuff happen in organizations. And the people who are good at it (Satya is excellent) set their organizations up for unique success.
And yes, ex-special forces people roll their eyes at it. Which is appropriate! But the usage is now totally distinct.
I learned the business context before the spec ops context and honestly the former makes way more sense to me than the latter.
A business operator is like a machine operator. You're pulling levers on a machine that someone else built while optimizing and tweaking to get the best performance out of that machine as possible.
I was quite wrong about this, but I still don't think it's especially relevant that someone else built it. You would never call Zuckerberg an operator? Or when someone else built it does that not mean that you had no role in building it? That would be the exception, but it would be analogous to owner/operator in general business parlance.
Edit: here's a post with "Founder Operators". Which seems like maybe if you just heard "Operator" you would assume they're not a founder, but also that the term can be applied for those running businesses they founded: https://startupceo.com/2023/01/5-things-successful-founder-o...
It seems like underselling the successful part and overselling the part about not being the founder, but I can see it's a slang term. Thanks.
And yeah I'm wrong about it being the same term, though I did imagine a different use, I was also thinking of smooth operator, apparently I was unfamiliar with the term in tech.
OpenAI, in contrast, will become more like an academic research unit at some university. Those who prefer life slow and steady, will select to stay there, making tech for effective altruists.