Microsoft communications chief Frank Shaw sits for an exit interview

Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft's longtime communications chief, sat for an exit interview on the GeekWire Podcast published Saturday. He announced in September that he is leaving at the end of the year. Shaw has shaped the company's public face for nearly three decades and worked for all three CEOs, from the antitrust years through AI. Longtime Microsoft reporter Mary Jo Foley, editor in chief of Directions on Microsoft, joined the conversation.

Shaw said the three CEOs share intensity expressed differently: Steve Ballmer was outwardly intense, Satya Nadella is quietly intense, and Bill Gates is cuttingly intense. He said Ballmer was the hardest to explain in public because the loud-salesman image hid a thoughtful, detail-oriented leader. He also talked about arguments with reporters that changed how he saw the job, and about why trust still depends on believing the person telling the story.