Mr Nadella recalled how his childhood shaped his professional journey.
Microsoft's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Satya Nadella opened up about his time growing up in India in an interview with Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn's CEO. He also recalled how his childhood shaped his professional journey.
"My parents played a massive role in who I am today. My father was a civil servant, an economist, and my mother was a Sanskrit professor. They were exact opposites of each other in some sense, they could not agree on anything, except giving me lots of room and a lot of confidence to become my own person, pursue my own passions," Mr Nadella said in the video.
Mr Nadella claimed he never had an interest in studying and instead liked to play cricket. However, he vividly remembers the first time he used a computer. He added, "Growing up middle class in India, that sort of sometimes is challenging. One of the interesting things I distinctly remember is American technology. I remember the first I started using a computer. It was the malleability of software that got me hooked."
“I won't say that I was like those people who took it and said 'That's my future' but it was there, it was latent,” the Microsoft CEO added.
Furthermore, Mr Nadella looked at his journey at Microsoft, which spans almost three decades. "There was never a time where I thought the job I was doing, all through my 30 years of Microsoft, that somehow I was doing that as a way to some other job. I felt the job I was doing there was the most important thing. I genuinely felt it," he mentioned.
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Talking about career advice, the Indian-origin executive said, "Don't wait for your next job to do your best work." He also noted that "leadership is such a privilege".
"Whenever you're leading someone, don't think of it as an entitlement, you should think of it as a privilege. Leaders have this innate capability to come into a situation that is ambiguous, uncertain, confusing and brings clarity. Leaders create energy. It's about bringing all constituents- inside your organization, outside your organization. Don't be confined," he concluded.