Microsoft is losing Joe Belfiore, who has served as Corporate Vice President of the Office Group since 2020. Of course, Belfiore has a much longer history with Microsoft and has been with the company across a number of roles for 32 years. According to the outgoing exec, he is leaving Microsoft to enter retirement.
While the news is now public, Joe Belfiore told Microsoft management about his plans via internal emails sent on October 27.
ZDNet reports that Belfiore made a personal decision to leave Microsoft and is not being pushed out by the company. In terms of the Office Group, the executive structure will remain the same. Belfiore will simply hand off his role to Corporate Vice President Ales Holecek (who has been partnering Belfiore) and Corporate Vice President Sumit Chauhan (previously with Office AI).
Today I shared with my team that after 32 fantastic years (!) I'll be retiring from @Microsoft!
What's next? 1) I'm staying on until summer to help with the transition (SO MUCH GOODNESS COMING), then 2) focus on the two kids still at home & the 1 who just started college. 🙂
— Joe Belfiore (@joebelfiore) October 27, 2022
Belfiore will remain as a senior advisor and coach until next summer. He has sent out a tweet to put a publicly official stamp on his decision, while Microsoft has confirmed the following email content is accurate:
“After a lot of personal reflection, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to draw my very-long career at Microsoft to its end after 32-years of amazing experiences building software and services with all of you.”
“This summer I went through the experience of sending my oldest off to college, which crystallized my realization around the limited time that remains for me to prioritize kids and family before the last of our crew moves out of the house.”
History
Joe Belfiore first joined Microsoft in 1990 on the development team for Windows 95. Over the years he has also worked on Windows XP, Internet Explorer, Entertainment & Devices, Windows 10, and Windows Phone. He has also taken several sabbaticals from the company over that time, including a one-year leave of absence in 2015.
He returned in 2016 as head of Windows 10 Consumer Shell and was the man who first broke the news that Microsoft was effectively abandoning Windows 10 Mobile.
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