In early 2016, two years into running Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella needed advice from one of his newest employees, the cofounder of an app-tool maker Microsoft had just bought. Nadella was close to pulling off his blockbuster $27 billion acquisition of Linkedln, but he wanted to talk about another company he coveted: GitHub. "Can we do it?" Nadella asked the executive. "Have we earned the trust?" Back then, the answer was no. GitHub is the virtual watercooler of software development, a site where millions of programmers talk shop and share code across company boundaries. Microsoft had earned a reputation during its 1990s heyday as its polar opposite, an insular software belligerent, and GitHub was seen as wanting nothing to do with it. But after watching Nadella lead the Redmond, Washington-based giant for two years, GitHub made a surprise move, choosing Microsoft over Google as its acquirer this past June.
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