> Similar happened to Balmer, he came in after the boom was over. Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980, before DOS on the IBM PC transformed the com

> Similar happened to Balmer, he came in after the boom was over. Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980, before DOS on the IBM PC transformed the company. He was a big part of its success all the way through..... > But tried to push into new markets (and failed.) When he became CEO the company was under close US judicial supervision (which lasted more than a decade), under attack from the EU, and paying out $billions in fines. So he started with a mess and operated with one hand tied behind his back, but he still managed to triple turnover and double profits. Ballmer had some spectacular failures on the new product front, but when he handed over to Nadella, Azure was already a success, Microsoft had an online Office suite better than Google's, and it was already moving into Android and iOS apps (of which there are now dozens). Not the best CEO of all time, but he could have done a lot worse. He certainly beat the forecasts of the Linux/OpenOffice fans of the day, who reckoned the company would be out of business by 2007 ;-)