Nash Trades Microsoft for Kindle

After spending nearly two decades at Microsoft, Corporate Vice President Mike Nash has announced he'll be leaving to move to Amazon and work on the Kindle team, according to industry observer Mary Jo Foley.

 

Nash 'headed Microsoft's (News - Alert) security efforts before spending the past several years in product management and strategy roles in the Windows unit,' CNet said. He was the first product manager on the original Windows NT marketing team, according to CNet, and oversaw development of Microsoft.com and led the launch of Windows 2000 'before shifting to head the security team.'

 

Bill Veghte (News - Alert), another redwood at Microsoft, also departed recently after putting in nearly 20 years in Redmond. His last day was Jan. 31.

 

'We can confirm that Mike Nash is leaving Microsoft in a couple weeks,' a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement. 'In his 19 years, Mike made an impact in a number of key roles at the company. We appreciate his service and wish him well.'

 

Last month industry observer Ina Fried  reported that Veghte, 'who began his career as associate product manager on the Office team and who also headed North American sales, was most recently head of the business side of Windows.'

 

By the time of his departure, she wrote, he had turned over those responsibilities to Steven Sinofsky, 'who last July was named to head both business and engineering efforts for the flagship operating system.'

 

Veghte told Fried that he wanted a role in which he could lead a business 'from end to end' and that the right fit just wasn't there within Microsoft: 'There's only a couple of those senior jobs,' he correctly noted.

 

'I called my future wife after the interviews and told her I had found a magical place... a place full of wonderful people with intelligence, passion and a strong belief in what they were doing,' Veghte wrote, remembering when he started at Microsoft. 'They were so excited about a product they were about to ship -- something called Windows 3.0. I told her I wasn't entirely sure what the company did.'