Ali PartoviCEO, Neo · Sway & Code.org cofounder

Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella on Empathy

13 Oct 2026 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:56

In this YouTube interview segment, the host (Ali Partovi) asks Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella to reflect on painful moments, mistakes, and hard‑learned lessons across his 35‑year career. Nadella recounts a formative interview he had early at Microsoft with interviewer Richard Tate, a Scottish senior engineer. After a series of technical whiteboard questions, Tate asks a seemingly simple scenario: a child falls while crossing the street. Nadella initially treats it as a technical problem, searching for an algorithmic solution, before finally saying he would call 911. Tate interrupts, stating that the right response is to pick up and hug the child, emphasizing the need for empathy. This anecdote illustrates how a pivotal moment taught Nadella the importance of empathy in leadership, a theme he now embraces as a core value at Microsoft. The exchange ends with the host acknowledging the power of the story.

Talk about painful moments that you maybe haven't shared before or lessons learned, mistakes you've made. So I'd love to have you— take you back to think through across that 35-year arc. Are there themes or specific stories that you look back thinking, oh man, I messed up, or where you learned something the tough way?
Yeah, I mean, there are many, Ali, in the sense that there are a couple of different arcs that we can pull the thread on. I mean, the thing that I have talked about, but it's still, I think, one of the formative stories of my journey is, you know, you worked at Microsoft for a brief time. So there's this last interview, it's called the As Appropriate interview. Used to be the thing. The guy who was doing my interview, his name was Richard Tate. I distinctly remember he was a Scottish guy, just an unbelievable human being who unfortunately has passed since. The entire day was all these coding interviews on the whiteboard and, you know, all kinds of memory management and algorithms and blah, blah, blah. And at the very end, the last question the guy asked me is, hey, you're crossing a street, a child falls, what will you do? And I said, oh God, is this some variant of The Traveling Salesman that I don't know about? Computer science challenge? This is some computer science challenge. I went everywhere except for the thing. So I kind of tried to Oh, then I eventually blurted out, saying, I'll call 911. And he gets up and he says, when a child falls, you pick them up and hug them. And he walks me out. You need more empathy. And that was his word. And I said, oh my God, I think that's it. I'm definitely not getting this job. But it was a fascinating thing that somehow he felt like he needed to deliver that message to me. That was the last question. I did get the job.
That's so powerful, Satya.