Can Microsoft afford losing its Silicon Valley ambassador?
Microsoft has a sprawling campus in tech’s heartland, right by the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif. It has thousands of employees in the Bay Area. But the departure of a high-profile evangelist once called the software giant’s “ambassador to Silicon Valley” raises questions about whether its strategy can work. Anand Iyer, whose formal title is senior product manager and who led Microsoft initiatives to woo startups and mobile developers, wrote on his blog today that he was leaving the company because his managers had made it clear he had to move to the Seattle area, where Microsoft is based. His response: “I would have to give up my home, my family, my friends and move from one of the best cities in the world to, well, Redmond.” Ayer joined Microsoft in 2005. Microsoft has 89,000 employees worldwide. But unique voices like Iyer, a ubiquitous presence at tech conferences and on the startup scene, connected those armies of implementers with the Valley’s innovators. Reached on the phon
