Sources: Qi Lu, Microsoft's EVP of applications and services, is leaving the company due to health issues; Corporate VP Rajesh Jha to assume many of Lu's duties
Rajesh Jha will assume many of Lu's responsibilities — Longtime Microsoft executive Qi Lu is leaving the company following medical issues …
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2016 report is the origin point of a decade-long succession chain at Microsoft. Qi Lu's health-driven exit handed the applications and services portfolio to Rajesh Jha, who absorbed many of Lu's duties and went on to lead Experiences and Devices for roughly ten more years.
The arc closes in the related coverage: Jha's retirement announcement after 35+ years triggered a reshuffle in which LinkedIn chief Ryan Roslansky took over a new Work Experiences Group spanning Teams. Lu himself reappeared in the corpus at Baidu, joining as COO in January 2017 before stepping down just sixteen months later.
First-order effects
- Microsoft must redistribute an EVP-level portfolio mid-flight, with Corporate VP Rajesh Jha absorbing many of Qi Lu's responsibilities rather than an external hire arriving.
- Lu exits immediately for medical reasons, removing one of Microsoft's senior applications-and-services leaders from day-to-day operations.
Second-order effects
- Lu's departure opens the door to his January 2017 move to Baidu as COO, transferring a Microsoft veteran's operating experience to a direct search rival before his early exit there.
- Jha's expanded remit consolidates Microsoft's productivity and applications leadership under one executive, setting up the org structure whose eventual split between Roslansky's Work Experiences Group and other successors followed his 2026 retirement.
Third-order effects
- A single health-driven 2016 handoff proves structurally consequential: the Jha era it began lasted a decade and its end forced a multi-way redistribution of his portfolio, showing how dependent Microsoft's apps organization became on individual tenures measured in decades.
- The pattern — long-tenured executives holding consolidated portfolios until abrupt exits force reshuffles — points toward Microsoft institutionalizing succession planning around pre-promoted lieutenants, as seen when four of Jha's direct reports were elevated to EVP at once.
The trend: Microsoft's productivity empire is being reshaped by generational handoffs, where each decade-long executive tenure ends in a reshuffle that redistributes power among the next cohort.