Jonathan Que’s new vision for Microsoft Philippines

We sat down for an in-depth chat with Microsoft Philippines’ new Country Manager, Jonathan Que. This is an exclusive, no-holds-barred first look into the vision of a new Microsoft in the Philippines.

Jonathan Que’s career started with a typing test. Back in 2000, fresh out of college, he applied to what he thought would be an interesting web design job at a BPO. The company gave him a typing speed test as the main hiring criteria. He typed so fast the system flagged it as an error.

“I didn’t want to join a company that would hire me just for my typing skills,” Que says now, sitting in Microsoft’s Manila office where he recently took over as Country Manager. It’s a small detail, but it sets the tone for how he’s approached the past 25 years in tech sales: never taking the obvious path.

That early skepticism — the refusal to be valued for the wrong reasons — is the same instinct driving what he’s trying to do at Microsoft Philippines now. He’s betting that the company’s reputation as a renewal-focused, transactional operation can be completely rewritten by changing what Microsoft actually does when it shows up.

“Companies like Microsoft and Oracle have historically been known as not very customer-centric,” Que admits without hesitation. “It’s renewals. The sales rep comes in, renews your contract, leaves. That’s it. The only way I can help change that culture is if I’m in a position like this.”

From grassroots to birds-eye

Que’s trajectory is unusual for someone running a major tech subsidiary. He started as a web designer, moved to IT support where he learned to crimp network cables, spent a year in presales at IBM before realizing he disliked the depth of technical work, then reluctantly tried sales — a role he thought completely opposed to his personality.

“I’m very direct. I’m very transparent. I don’t like the typical sales approach where it’s all about relationships, nice dinners, golf outings. That’s not me at all,” he says. But that directness became his edge.

“I’ve never taken advantage of any relationship to close a deal. If a customer needs something we can’t deliver, I’ll tell them. I’ll suggest another partner. Customers appreciate that, and they trust me because of it.”

That approach followed him through stints at HP, Dimension Data, VMware, and eventually AWS, where he was employee number one in Manila in 2014. By the time he left for a seven-year run at eCloudvalley — the longest he’s stayed anywhere — he’d seen what happens when companies prioritize long-term customer outcomes over quarterly license targets.

Microsoft called last year. He’d turned them down before, but this time the role was different. The role of Country Manager meant he could actually reshape how the organization operated locally, not just execute a playbook handed down from regional leadership.

The skills gap no one wants to talk about

When we talk about Microsoft, the topic of AI cannot be avoided, having invested before in OpenAI, and now running Copilot on all their Windows 11 devices.

The conversation about AI in the Philippines has been stuck in two modes: hype about what’s possible, or fear about job displacement. Que’s pitch is neither. It’s more specific, and more uncomfortable.

“Everyone keeps saying AI is going to replace people’s jobs. But AI isn’t supposed to replace you. It’s supposed to make you better at your job.”

The distinction matters, especially in the BPO and enterprise sectors where the skills gap isn’t just a buzzword — it’s a supply problem. Jack Madrid, president of IBPAP, has been saying it for over a year: the IT-BPM sector is growing at nearly 9% annually, but the Philippines is struggling to upskill agents fast enough to meet demand. Revenue is there. Talent supply is something else.

Que sees this firsthand when Microsoft brings customers into the office for AI education sessions. “We do this almost every day. We bring in AI experts, black belts, to just educate people. And what we find is that most organizations already have the tools — they’re just not using them, or they don’t know how.”

The example he keeps coming back to is a partner whose main business is bidding on government contracts. The biggest bottleneck? Filling out the required forms — 50-page documents that used to take weeks for one or two people to complete. Microsoft helped them build an AI agent that auto-fills most of the form using existing company data, flagging only the gaps that need human input.

“Now they’re joining 70% more bids and winning 50% more. No one is getting replaced! It’s about removing the friction so people can actually do the strategic work.”

Rethinking what Microsoft sells

The bigger shift Que is pushing internally is philosophical. Microsoft’s licensing model — Office 365, Azure, enterprise agreements — has historically been the end goal. Close the deal, renew the contract, move on. Que wants to flip that.

“Licensing is a byproduct of everything we do properly. If we go to a customer and actually understand their problems, the licensing will follow. But we have to invest time. We have to earn trust first.”

It’s the same approach he used at AWS, where he spent five years taking market share from Microsoft by focusing on what customers actually needed, not what fit neatly into a sales quota. Now he’s applying it in reverse.

“I keep telling the team: if we do the right thing for the customer, the sales will follow. It’s always worked that way for me. You need to sacrifice a few months to earn that trust, but you get the long-term business.”

This isn’t just sales philosophy. It’s a structural bet on whether Microsoft can move fast enough to meet Philippine enterprises where they are — not where Silicon Valley assumes they should be. The country has the English fluency, the workforce, the BPO infrastructure. What’s missing is the bridge between existing operations and AI-augmented workflows.

Que’s answer is specificity. Not “AI will transform your business,” but “here’s how a loan officer at your bank could approve 50 more applications a month, which translates to 100 million pesos in additional revenue and 50 more families with access to credit they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.”

Focus on education with government

The clearest example of this approach is Microsoft’s work with the Department of Education. The company is rolling out Reading Progress — an AI-powered tool that assesses literacy and comprehension across 24 million students in the public school system — alongside Copilot Chat for students and teachers.

“The goal isn’t just to put AI in every classroom. That sounds nice, but what does it actually mean? Our goal is to teach students how to use AI responsibly, and to give teachers tools that reduce administrative burden so they can focus on teaching.”

Reading Progress works by having students read a passage aloud, then answer comprehension questions. The AI tracks pronunciation, flags mispronounced words, and measures improvement over time.

For teachers, the tool is about reducing grading workload and identifying where individual students need help. “How can a student be better than their teacher?” Que asks. “We’re not just training students. We’re training teachers too.”

The broader play is a year-long initiative Microsoft is calling “Road to 24” — training 24 million students to use Copilot Chat across thousands of schools and school division offices. Once that’s done, Que wants to run a national “Copilot Cup” — a competition where universities nominate their best students to compete in AI prompting challenges.

“The goal is that some far-flung university we’ve never heard of comes out number one. That would mean we’ve reached them. The talent is there. They just haven’t had the opportunity.”

It’s the kind of ambition that sounds impossible until you realize it’s already happening. The infrastructure exists. The licenses are distributed. The question now is adoption, not access.

On AI and the unknown

Que is quick to acknowledge the limits. When asked about AI safety — whether parents should let their kids use ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot — he doesn’t give a clean answer.

“What’s the definition of safe? If a student wants to learn how to build a bomb for educational purposes, is that safe or not? It’s a very gray area. Our job is to put in guardrails based on age, usage context, and what’s appropriate. But I don’t think anyone has the secret formula yet. We’re all still figuring it out.”

One of Copilot’s features is that certain versions don’t use machine learning on user inputs — every session is treated as new, with no memory of past conversations. It’s a privacy feature, but it’s also a trade-off. Some users want the system to remember context. Others don’t.

The same tension exists in enterprise adoption. Companies want AI to deliver measurable ROI, but they’re often asking the wrong questions. Que’s pitch is that Microsoft’s breadth — security, infrastructure, data, AI — gives it an advantage over competitors who only solve pieces of the puzzle. But breadth also means complexity, and complexity means longer sales cycles, more education, more trust-building before anything gets deployed.

That’s the bet Que is making: that slowing down the transaction is what ultimately makes Microsoft more valuable. That earning trust today leads to long-term partnerships, not just renewed contracts.

Whether that works in a market where quarterly targets still matter, and where competitors are moving just as fast, is still an open question. But at least the strategy is clear. And at least someone is willing to say the quiet part out loud: that for years, Microsoft Philippines has been leaving value on the table by not understanding what customers actually needed.

“If we make it more human, if we show how AI changes someone’s day-to-day life — a loan officer, a teacher, a student — that’s what matters. Not the dollar value. The human factor. That’s the story we need to tell.”

(Editor’s Note: Several AI tools were used to edit and expand the interviewee’s portrait and to transcribe this interview)