Here’s the opening of Satya Nadella’s statement, as reported by The Verge

After nearly 20 years at the company, Panos Panay has decided to leave Microsoft. Panos has had an incredible impact on our products and culture as well as the broader devices ecosystem. Under Panos’ leadership, the team created the iconic Surface brand with loved products. More recently, as the leader of Windows, the team has brought amazing services and experiences to hundreds of millions with Windows 11 on innovative devices including those from our OEM partners. He will be missed, and I am personally very grateful for his many contributions over the years. Please join me in wishing him well.

I have mixed opinions on Panos Panay.

On the one hand, my sense is that he was a, if not the, driving force behind Microsoft’s Surface hardware. While not a success in marketshare, I think the Surface has been immensely important to the PC industry. In 2015, I speculated it was a “Reference Design” that the rest of the PC could follow that wasn’t just “offbrand MacBook Air“.

On the other hand, I think Panay has a track record of grossly over promising and under delivering outside of the core Surface line-up, and that these frequent missteps have been largely glossed over by the wider tech press because of his undeniable onstage presence and charisma.

Given these mixed opinions, I don’t have a sense for how much Panay was a great product leader versus an overpromising pitchman. Maybe he started out more the former, but ended up being more the later? In either case, the people I know with Microsoft Surfaces love them, and I can’t help but feel Microsoft is worse off without Panos Panay.