Easy come, easy go
For the second time in five years, Stephen Elop is leaving Microsoft. Elop last resigned from Microsoft in September of 2010 to take charge of Nokia, replacing Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo as the company's CEO. That position came with a $6 million signing bonus and $1.4 million annual salary.
It was during Elop's time at Nokia that the Finnish handset maker went all-in with Microsoft's Windows Phone platform. Microsoft ended up acquiring Nokia's mobile business and brought Elop back on board last year. Now he's out the door as Microsoft boss Satya Nadella restructures the company from the top down in an attempt to align "engineering to strategy."
Elop isn't the only high level executive leaving Microsoft. Also gone are Kirill Tatarinov, head of the company's business solutions group; Eric Rudder, a Microsoft employee of 25 years who most recently drove the company's advanced technology and education efforts; and chief strategy officer Mark Penn.
Penn had told Nadella back in September that he was planning to leave to form a private equity fund. Rudder, who has played a number of key roles at Microsoft over the past two and a half decades, "decided to try something new." And Tatarinov is "going to explore what's next for him."
It's not known what's next for Elop, who's a casualty of Microsoft's reorganization efforts. According to Nadella, the two mutually agreed that this was the right time to retire from Microsoft.
Going forward, Nadella is organizing Microsoft's engineering strategy into three groups that will work together -- a new Windows and Devices Group (WDG) led by Terry Myerson; Cloud and Enterprise (C+E), which will continue to be led by Scott Guthrie; and Applications and Services Group (ASG), which will continue to be led by Qi Lu.
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