New Boss at Microsoft, With Gates at His Side

Bill Gates is back in the building at Microsoft.

Microsoft announced that Gates, a longtime titan of the tech industry, was shedding his role as chairman to dig in more with products and technology at the company, which he co-founded nearly 40 years ago. At the same time, he is expected play a distinctly secondary role to Satya Nadella, whom Microsoft named as its new chief executive. Nadella asked Gates to become a part-time adviser to him, a change that comes with great potential upsides for the company, but some potential land mines, too. Gates will substantially increase his involvement with the company, spending more than a third of his time there. In recent years, as the company’s chairman, he has been a more detached and infrequent actor at Microsoft, devoting less than a fifth of his time to it. Despite his new role, though, he will continue to stay deeply involved in his work as a globe-trotting philanthropist.

The prospect of having a luminary of Gates’s stature kicking around the hallways on a regular basis has easy appeal. He can help lift morale -- he remains a revered figure at the company -- and is known as a strong judge of products and technology. But the company has not nailed every product that Gates has been closely involved in. In addition, Gates, 58, could also complicate matters for Nadella, a low-key, 22-year employee of the company who can afford no confusion about where the buck stops.