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How to be like Steve Ballmer
- MattBearman 11y agohttps://xkcd.com/323/ https://xkcd.com/323/
- mahouse 11y agoNo, please.
- allenbrunson 11y agoi was prepared to snark. i don't like steve ballmer, i don't want to be like him. i don't like what he stands for. i can't think of one positive thing about the guy, other than perhaps his loyalty. but this article has a bunch of interesting insights nonetheless, delivered in a funny way.
- exelius 11y agoSo Ballmer is the ultimate PHB? This is a great way to build a career, but if you look at his track record at Microsoft, I'm not sure Ballmer is the guy we want to be emulating. He was hard-headed, amazingly risk-averse when it came to Microsoft's core platforms, and was not a great manager (he was unable to control a lot of the culture problems that plagued Microsoft in the early 2000s). It's fine to make bold moves that fail, but Ballmer's failed moves weren't really all that bold. They were big, but not incredibly bold, and were often doubling down on a failing business inside Microsoft.
- allenbrunson 11y agoout of all of ballmer's blunders, this one is my favorite: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2007/04/ballmer-says-iphone-has-no-chance-to-gain-significant-market-share/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2007/04/ballme... ... he says, about the product that is about to do to his company's phone division (and arguably the entire industry) what microsoft did to ibm, a few decades earlier. but the article you are commenting on is not about that. it's about how you can use your less-than-stellar god-given gifts to propel yourself to the top, just like ballmer did.
- rabidonrails 11y agoThe most interesting part here is the second quote where he describes that a modern iPhone is as compared to what the iPhone was then: > "We wouldn't define our phone experience just by music. A phone is really a general purpose device. You want to make telephone calls, you want to get and receive messages, text, e-mail, whatever your preference is." edit: Turns out he was dead on. Problem was that the iPhone combined two devices people already had AND eventually gave you all of this.
- cookiecaper 11y agoPeople had been trying to make devices very much like the iPhone for decades before Jobs pushed through a mass-market-acceptable iteration. MS had a tablet and natural voice UI projects as major priorities around the turn of the century while Apple was working on the click-wheel of the original iPod. It takes a lot of iteration before something becomes mass-marketable, and there's almost always a long, multi-competitor heritage in devices that seem to appear overnight, like the iPhone.
- 72deluxe 11y agoI suppose it is also a skill to make it seem fashionable and desirable, in the way that Apple did. Compare that to PocketPC and Palm Pilots etc. that came before the iPhone, and remember that you wouldn't see a teenager using one. I suppose it also helps that mobile phones have become widely acceptable. I remember when it was rare to see someone with one (can't even imagine how bad the coverage was with so few masts around), and people would label them as "posers" for having one or using it in public. Perhaps the earlier Windows devices (which were very capable, and allowed apps to be installed, albeit not from a central repository like the App Store) were just too early in the market, and by the time people accepted them they wanted something different and new. Android and iPhone rode this wave.
- keepitsurreal 11y ago:P Am I doing this right?
- talles 11y agoI thought the article was serious until I reached the "Steve Ballmer mission pack". Author can't be serious.
- MichaelGlass 11y ago"Here’s somebody who’ll wear their mediocrity with such energy, with such boundless enthusiasm and unbridled passion, that nobody else even tries to compete. You’re not Steve Jobs. You’re mediocre, like me. You’re reading shabby online articles about how to be like somebody else. Do you think Steve Jobs did that?" A+ Be all the Balmer u can be. Balmer forever and ever.
- puredemo 11y agoNo, this is dumb. Balmer was never mediocre.
- CamperBob2 11y agoWhat other term do you use to describe his failure to see modern smartphones coming, even after Apple waved one under his nose? That said, while I've often been critical of Ballmer, I've been reconsidering my attitude towards him now that I've seen the aggressively-invasive direction in which Satya Nadella is taking Windows. Under Ballmer's leadership, Windows 7 never popped up unsolicited ads for Metro on the toolbar, much less ads that I couldn't turn off.
- Spearchucker 11y agoBy that measure Dr. Chris Barnard is mediocre, for supposedly performing ~50 heart transplants on dogs. Similarly Nelson Mandela would qualify for his role in founding and leading a militant wing of the ANC. One fact, error, moment or even period do not a mediocre person make.
- CamperBob2 11y agoWell, this thread got irrelevant in a hurry.
- oldmanjay 11y agoSince your initial complaint was the start of the irrelevancy, this is mighty disingenuous of you
- rthomas6 11y agoYou know, in the same vein... Salieri was a pretty decent composer. He got some fame and recognition. Maybe it's not so bad to be a Salieri and not Mozart, because he's still a hell of a lot better than most.
- Apocryphon 11y agoHe'll always be known for being an also-ran, but most of us won't even get that far.
- cookiecaper 11y agoAwesome article.
- jheriko 11y agoits a shame this is a joke. you really could learn better from ballmer than from jobs imo. i'd much rather be successful for the like ballmer than jobs. cult following is creepy, and recieving kudos even when you do nothing makes it easy to lose perspective. jobs was great at what he did, but massively overrated thanks to the excellent work of the apple marketting guys. those guys are absolutely amazing at what they do. its a shame they don't get more credit.
- Drdrdrq 11y ago> its a shame they don't get more credit. What do you mean? Is there any company whose marketing department you would rate higher?
- jheriko 11y agowell, the designers at apple get a lot more credit is what i mean... but that is one aspect of the beauty of their marketting. i guess if they got the credit it wouldn't work so well. :)
- beachstartup 11y agoi don't think this article is a joke. i think it's serious and makes some good points in an original and humorous manner. it also does it with an original (or at least not cliche'd) perspective, and is refreshingly honest about money.
- visakanv 11y agoThe author said so himself: > If you’re a non genius who hasn’t formed a globally important company in your early 20s — and especially if you’re funny looking — you’ll probably learn more from Ballmer than you can from Jobs. Just because it's funny doesn't mean it's not true!
- bitwize 11y agoJobs was the primordial Apple marketing guy. That's why he was so damn great (and hyped).
- visakanv 11y ago> i was prepared to snark I don't know why but this just got me laughing so hard. I'm thinking about one of those infomercials. "They laughed at me when I sat at the piano... but when I started to play!" It's like the Hacker News slogan or manifesto or something. HACKER NEWS: WE'RE PREPARED TO SNARK.
- dang 11y ago> It's like the Hacker News slogan or manifesto or something I know you mean this in good humor but I have to protest. Snark is an invasive species, and part of keeping it under control is not to forget that or identify with it. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10671199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10671199 and marked it off-topic.
- qwerty_asdf 11y agoYou can't stop us from snarking, Dang.
- dang 11y agoOh believe me I know. But it's more about what kind of community the community wants to be—and I do think that can shift over time. Indeed we've seen it do so.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rbanffy 11y agoWhy?
- m52go 11y ago> Go to the mirror and practice these faces. Great piece. This article is worth a click for that lead image alone. I really wonder what the context was for such an expression.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- srameshc 11y agoI would have passed this article anywhere else if not for Hacker News. This is a great insight and great way to work on your personality.
- loeber 11y agoSomething rarely mentioned: Ballmer could've been a first-rate mathematician. He graduated magna cum laude with an AB in math, and beat Bill Gates on the Putnam exam, finishing well within the top 100 contestants that year.
- vermontdevil 11y agoI also think he could be a winner on Dancing with the Stars contest. I mean he is a heck of a dancer.
- ska 11y agoFor what it's worth, the latter does not imply the former. But your broader point stands.
- humanrebar 11y agoYeah, that undermines the "non-genius" part of the premise.
- dbbolton 11y agoI think it already undermined itself by using Jobs as the example of a genius. Da Vinci and Goethe were geniuses. Jobs was charismatic, had good business sense, and understood his markets, like virtually all successful CEOs, but I think "genius" is quite a stretch.
- pcunite 11y agoThe photo of Gates and Ballmer is from this article, online here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2014/09/30/long-ago-twist-yielded-ballmer-a-fortune-in-microsoft-stock/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2014/09/30/long-ago...
- SonicSoul 11y agofun read but i'm not convinced about the advice. I'm sure Balmer is a smart guy and lucked out by joining MS as #30 (is it really so unlucky to be #30 at MS?). He was also outspoken, loud, and perhaps had some leadership qualities lacked by other nerds at that moment. And now it's easy to pick him apart and "be more like Balmer" but I doubt mirroring his annoying personality will get you far. Next time you give a presentation, repeat the same key word or phrase at least 5 times. Preferably 10. i think Balmer succeeded despite this behavior, not because of it. When you sense a gap that’s closing push yourself in with full energy. Love the party, get into it, then make it your own the "make it your own" is almost like saying "tell a funny touching story that everyone will love". Imagine you are — or be — the tallest person in the room. (Create situations where you’re standing and they’re sitting?) this reminds me of the NLP craze back in the day, i.e. micro behaviors that are subconsciously making you more attractive / easy to relate to / superior etc. Dubious at best. * not to dismiss micro behaviors completely. There are numerous TED talks about body language that present convincing evidence that it works. I think they are especially applicable if you're the kind of person that tries to occupy least space and remain un-seen in meetings. For an average person I just think this is a minor tweak, not the big change standing between you and tres commas club.
- ovi256 11y ago>micro behaviors that are subconsciously making you more attractive / easy to relate to / superior etc. Dubious at best. Have a look at primate domination behavior. It's a big subject of study for zoologists/ethologists. Displays of dominance are a real thing, even if NLP sold it as pop psychology.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tedks 11y agoDon't conflate NLP with pop psychology. Willpower or The Marshmallow Effect or even Thinking, Fast and Slow are pop psychology. NLP is overt psuedoscience that has never had any basis in fact.
- volandovengo 11y agoDespite his public perception, he's incredibly intelligent. He has an IQ of 150. His strategy of being a fast follower worked great for Microsoft when it had crappy competitors - it was ill equipped to deal with good ones like Apple and Google.
- lectrick 11y agoIQ of 148 here (not that I put much stock in it). Ballmer is an idiot. What he lacks in idiocy, he more than makes up for with... lack of leadership, lack of charisma, lack of ethics, and just raw lack of coolness period. Anyway, that's what I thought BEFORE I read the article. This article is actually pretty awesome! And points out some good things about the guy. I like him a little more now. Nice work, Medium! One thing I would note is that sticking with 1 company for a long period of time is not necessarily great. You (and the companies you switch among) can learn a TON from each other if you move around a bit. There's even studies that show this (your value to a company is largely exhausted after 2 years).
- jshelly 11y agoNice Work David Barnes! - FTFY
- elmar 11y agolectrick "There's even studies that show this (your value to a company is largely exhausted after 2 years)" could you please give some links to this studies I am very interested. Thanks
- lectrick 11y agohttp://money.howstuffworks.com/second-career-ideas/10-reasons-to-change-jobs.htm#page=1 http://money.howstuffworks.com/second-career-ideas/10-reason... http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/03/08/the-pros-and-cons-of-job-hopping/2/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/03/08/the-pr... I think this is the actual study? http://www.nerisearch.com/neri-newsletter-career-development-june-6-changing-jobs.html http://www.nerisearch.com/neri-newsletter-career-development... Basically, a skilled employee gets the most out of a job in the first 3 years. And the new company gets the most out of the employee in the first 3 years (or so). After that, in order to restart the learning experience for both parties, a "change of venue" is necessary.
- rogerbinns 11y agoIt all comes down to sales being easier to measure than other parts like development. Something like "doubling revenue" can be reasonably objectively measured. Trying to do the same thing for a developer is way too hard: double X? halve X? where X is lines of code, bugs, hours of attendance, appraisal scores, or other measurements don't remotely cut it, and are easy to game. (Revenue can also be gamed to some degree, but people/companies parting with cash is a higher hurdle.) That let him make a measurable deal with Gates & Allen. A new developer as employee #30 doesn't have anything comparable.
- hoodoof 11y agoBallmer was there since the earliest days of Microsoft. Only a fool would somehow think he just came along for the ride. Gates chose to give him a large slice of equity because he saw that he wanted something that Ballmer had and as far as I can tell that worked out extremely well. I won't argue that Steve Ballmer was the technical creative genius that Microsoft needed but to suggest that in some way he stumbled in and rode the gravy train, well I don't buy that. The new generation probably have little concept of how absolutely and totally Microsoft dominated the computer industry, in a way that no company does now (nope, not even Apple dominates today anything like the way Microsoft dominated in the 80's and 90's). It was Microsoft's world in a very real way. There were two men behind that complete domination - Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. The cynical (and there are many) might say "well it's Ballmer that lost that domination", but I wonder if such ongoing utter domination was even possible in the greatly expanded industry post WWW, regardless of who the leader was. Steve Ballmer is more than worthy of admiration, if you were smart you'd try to learn from him rather than portraying him as a buffoon sidekick to Bill Gates. To evaluate him in this way just displays ignorance. I think Gates brought on Ballmer as the business partner he needed, not the business partner he started with (Paul Allen). I'm not knocking Paul Allen but Bill Gates felt he needed Ballmer as his partner and as far as I could tell Ballmer and Gates were a powerful team, not Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. And when compared with Steve Jobs, it's worth remembering that Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates comprehensively beat, pounded and dominated Steve Jobs' Apple until "Steve's return". Apple was on the brink of going out of business when Steve returned and stayed in business because Gates and Ballmer provided Apple with $150M to stay in business - a wise move at the time because Microsoft was in trouble with the justice department and needed to ensure that there were companies still in existence that could even vaguely be argued to be valid competitors to Microsoft. Many, many entrepreneurs tried and failed to get the better of Gates and Ballmer until eventually a perception formed that you were an idiot if you tried to compete with them. VC's wouldn't invest in anything that was even seen as potentially an area that Microsoft might be interested in being involved with. Ballmer is one of the most formidable and, in his time, feared businessmen ever. Ballmer is one of the greatest business people of all time even if he doesn't have the romantic and charismatic story of Jobs or Gates. Respect is due.
- eegunnar 11y ago
- someear 11y agoDude has passion. Worked at Microsoft for a few years, and even though I didn't agree with many of his decisions...he does what he loves, and loves it so much, that it passes on to others as well. We need more of that everywhere, in every aspect of life, not just business.
- pg_is_a_butt 11y agoit isn't just "suck" anymore?? what did i miss?
- brudgers 11y agoBallmer was the "business guy" at the startup that created the greatest ever amount of money for its founders and employees by holding off an IPO and raising a minimal amount of outside investment. The amount of equity he and Gates retained allowed Microsoft to take a long term rather than a quarter by quarter Wall Street driven approach for about twenty years following the IPO. If Microsoft is currently undergoing a renaissance, it may be because Ballmer got the supertanker turned onto the right heading. Unlike the much beloved Sun, Microsoft is still around and its works are trending toward the right side of history while Sun's legacy is increasingly sliding into the pale of Oracle.
- sbilstein 11y agoBallmer was incredibly successful for the majority of his career but by the time I arrived at Microsoft (2011), I really think his hubris and attitude had a deleterious effect on Microsoft employees. His style of thinking about competitor's and their innovations trickled down to all levels of the company; people anywhere in the company displayed the same dismissiveness of almost anything Google or Apple or others did. Working at Microsoft is weird and feels like your in some special universe where other technology doesn't exist; socializing with Microsoft engineers (of any age and almost in any environments) and realizing they all had their blinders on was really disheartening. Things may be really different now, I don't know, but Steve was right to leave when he left.
- tomcam 11y agoHuge bummer to hear that. Was the exact opposite of that for my 1996-2000 tenure. Many decks used UNIX, many PMs used Macs--it was encouraged so you'd know the competition, whom they respected.
- sbilstein 11y agoReally interesting. It was nothing like that while I was there. Being caught with an iPhone just felt so awkward.
- parasubvert 11y ago
- CurtMonash 11y agoIIRC, Ballmer at one point went double or nothing, margining his stock to double his position. That explains half of his stake right there. That's when he was worth $100 or $200 million, not long after the IPO. Jim Treybig of Tandem Computers did something similar when he lost half his stock in a divorce.
- CurtMonash 11y agoAnyhow -- Steve had all the personality at the Windows 1.0 launch. Well, Steve and John Dvorak. Mike Maples and Jon Shirley, however, seemed like bigger deals in the company than Steve a while each. Steve is basically a great salesman. He's both a huge extrovert and a great listener. He's delusional enough to completely believe, yet well smarter than other similarly delusional people. I presume he has all the sales process mechanics mastered too, but I don't actually know that for a fact.
- CurtMonash 11y agoAnyhow -- Steve had all the personality at the Windows 1.0 launch. Well, Steve and John Dvorak. Mike Maples and Jon Shirley, however, seemed like bigger deals in the company than Steve a while each. Steve is basically a great salesman. He's both a huge extrovert and a great listener. He's delusional enough to completely believe, yet well smarter than other similarly delusional people. I presume he has all the sales process mechanics mastered too, but I don't actually know that for a fact.
- ape4 11y agofrom wikipedia: In 2007, Ballmer said "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."[55]
- corford 11y agoAnd in a funny sort of way he was kind of right :) http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougolenick/2015/05/27/apple-ios-and-google-android-smartphone-market-share-flattening-idc/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougolenick/2015/05/27/apple-ios... Android: 79% versus iOS: 14%
- Steko 11y agoThat quote isn't the smoking gun people hold it up to be, did he really believe this or was he just a salesman trash talking the competition? Steve Jobs crap talked a lot of products (e.g. tablets & then smaller tablets) right up until they day Apple was ready to sell them.
- kareemm 11y agoThe one thing Ballmer did right was double down when he saw a huge, once in a lifetime opportunity. Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger say that without their top 20 performing stocks, they'd be also-rans. Which really goes to show that when you find a great opportunity in life, you should go at it as hard as you can.
- kozukumi 11y agoMy personal opinion of Ballmer is that he was/is brilliant but he failed to prioritise in the right areas during the mid 2000s. He did well with investing in Azure and cloud tech but he was an idiot for letting Sinofsky run Windows into the ground with Windows 8.
- rajacombinator 11y agoThis just shows that terminal net worth is not that important.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- NickHaflinger 11y ago'SteveB went on the road to see the top weeklies, industry analysts and business press this week to give our systems strategy. The meetings included demos of Windows 3.1 (pen and multimedia included), Windows NT, OS/2 2.0 including a performance comparison to Windows and a “bad app” that corrupted other applications and crashed the system. It was a very valuable trip and needs to be repeated by other MS executives throughout the next month so we hit all the publications and analysts.' 'The demos of OS/2 were excellent. Crashing the system had the intended effect – to FUD OS/2 2.0. People paid attention to this demo and were often surprised to our favor. Steve positioned it as -- OS/2 is not "bad" but that from a performance and "robustness" standpoint, it is NOT better than Windows'. http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011107/PX_0860.pdf http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011107/PX_0860.pdf "I have written a PM app that hangs the system (sometimes quite graphically)." http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011107/PX_0797.pdf http://iowa.gotthefacts.org/011107/PX_0797.pdf
- 72deluxe 11y agoInformative and interesting. I like how the emails are straight to the point.
- l33tbro 11y agoThe Charlie Rose interview is a pretty decent insight into the man. Certainly shuts up the armchair quaterbacks here with 20:20 hindsight calling him an idiot for certain career moves. Sauce: http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60463433 http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60463433
- bigdipper 11y agoLet me add some color to the speculation here, I worked under Ballmer for sometime leading a product. Ballmer was a math genius, he was also a spreadsheet whiz and knew as much as a CFO did at anytime. His memory was that of a thousand elephants, and could recite forecasts, actuals and numbers for multiple years in one go. Microsoft played in the enterprise space, and Ballmer was a marketing genius when it came to enterprise positioning. I credit him with driving the attach revenue concept within the enterprise. Companies that bought Windows, bought office, bought Exchange server, bough maintenance and more. Even more, he was a relationship marketing genius. He had a photographic memory and remembered names of people he would meet once and recall entire conversations after months/years. And this was globally, he took the company global in a very aggressive way. He rewarded people, both Bill and Steve weren't stingy about doling out stock - unlike Jobs. This kept a strong talent pool of A players at Microsoft. He had a strong penchant for the enterprise and where he started faltering was when the Internet started maturing and consumer experiences started converging with the enterprise. Nevertheless, this man took Microsoft from $15B to $70B in revenue and you can't belittle that.
- kevin_morrill 11y agoFurthermore, the company made a quarter of a trillion dollars in profit during his tenure as a CEO. Early in his career, he was also the first manager of the Windows team, which went on to become one of the most profitable software franchises in history. I should hope to be such a failure.
- codinghorror 11y agoYeah the enterprisey turn of MS, which is an extremely profitable business, was definitely all Ballmer. He deserves all the credit for that. But the Apple turn was a pure consumer play, all bottom up.
- drb311 11y agoThank you for the real substance and redressing the balance! I'm glad to give people reason to reexamine Ballmer. I didn't expect more than a few people to read the story. I hope He wouldn't be pissed if he read it.
- 11y ago
- 0mbre 11y agoSo introvert vs extrovert?
- umaguma 11y agoDid Ballmer ever do any programming? If not, why? Did he just have no curiosity or interest? Sounds like he had far more capacity for maths than Jobs.
- x0 11y agoYou forgot "do a line of coke before giving a presentation"