4 ms·

Bit too much Ballmer bashing. He made plenty of mistakes so he's an easy target for the ignoranti, but the adoption of open source, the move to the cloud, the w

by scholia 10y ago

Bit too much Ballmer bashing. He made plenty of mistakes so he's an easy target for the ignoranti, but the adoption of open source, the move to the cloud, the writing of Android and iOS apps etc all started under Ballmer. Ballmer also cleaned up the anti-trust mess and -- while his hands were somewhat tied by a dozen years of constant DoJ supervision -- tripled Microsoft's sales and doubled its profits. This was despite competition from free Linux and OpenOffice, whose fans used to tell me that Microsoft would be out of business within five years....

kabdib 10y ago
Ballmer's biggest mistake was the review system at Microsoft. - Managers spent easily a quarter of their year on reviews - Employees often competed against one another (have a great idea? Okay, but That Guy down the hall found out about it and did a half-assed implementation and got a great annual review, and you got slammed for not accomplishing enough. Or maybe your idea simply got sabotaged in some closed-door meetings. Customers? What are those?) - Sorry, we know all the people on your team are good, but you have to fire five of them. And . . . don't bother picking them, HR already did that without your input. In 11 years I went through four changes in how reviews were done, and things got steadily worse with each iteration. I hear things are better now; it wouldn't be hard. There was a ton of bad attrition, of really good people who got fed up with things and quit. In a Q&A session I asked Lisa Brummel, the then head of HR, what she was doing about bad attrition, about good employees who were leaving because of the review system and politics. She wouldn't even admit that the problem existed. The board should have fired Ballmer five years earlier; on the other hand, they might have wound up with Kevin Turner running things, OMFG. Microsoft Kremlinology is a thing.
- caryme 10y ago
  Sorry, we know all the people on your team are good, but you have to fire five of them. And . . . don't bother picking them, HR already did that without your input. Ha, this happened to me. I found out I was getting laid off before my boss and boss' boss did.
- yuhong 10y ago
  I remember this article: https://hal2020.com/2013/07/09/on-org-structures-goals-and-metrics/ https://hal2020.com/2013/07/09/on-org-structures-goals-and-m...
samfisher83 10y ago
Under Ballmer's watch the revenue tripled. It could have been pure dumb luck. Even with all that Satya is doing it hasn't really showed any results on revenues and profits. Sun did a lot of great things for open source and they pretty much floundered.
- dctoedt 10y ago
  Nit: It's "On Ballmer's watch" (an old naval expression).
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  It's more the case that Gates left plenty of low hanging fruit to pick. Almost the entire revenue growth was in repricing stuff that was widely adopted because it was cheap, and a few short lived "innovations" that people are already abandoning everywhere.
  - scholia 10y ago
    You really think that repricing stuff gets you from roughly $20 billion to $70 billion in the PC market?
overgryphon 10y ago
Right- Office and Windows began talking to each other in 2011, when the consent decree ended. The silo structure at Microsoft was almost required by the government.
RaleyField 10y ago
Microsoft's biggest problem is undue intrusion on liberties that customers have come to expect on x86 computers. Under Ballmer and Gates this didn't happen, so consequently I liked their time much more than that of Satya. All the goodwill and other benefits that comes from open sourcing various components doesn't outweigh the privacy intrusions and lost trust that came with Windows 10, at least for me. Ballmer was loud and had his antics, Gates had his ruthless market drive that some despise, but I trusted closed source under them much more because of the claim not to abuse their customers was was hedged by the reputation the company, now that this trust is lost I can't trust Microsoft and that's Satya's legacy.

by scholia 10y ago

kabdib 10y ago

Ballmer's biggest mistake was the review system at Microsoft. - Managers spent easily a quarter of their year on reviews - Employees often competed against one another (have a great idea? Okay, but That Guy down the hall found out about it and did a half-assed implementation and got a great annual review, and you got slammed for not accomplishing enough. Or maybe your idea simply got sabotaged in some closed-door meetings. Customers? What are those?) - Sorry, we know all the people on your team are good, but you have to fire five of them. And . . . don't bother picking them, HR already did that without your input. In 11 years I went through four changes in how reviews were done, and things got steadily worse with each iteration. I hear things are better now; it wouldn't be hard. There was a ton of bad attrition, of really good people who got fed up with things and quit. In a Q&A session I asked Lisa Brummel, the then head of HR, what she was doing about bad attrition, about good employees who were leaving because of the review system and politics. She wouldn't even admit that the problem existed. The board should have fired Ballmer five years earlier; on the other hand, they might have wound up with Kevin Turner running things, OMFG. Microsoft Kremlinology is a thing.

caryme 10y ago
Sorry, we know all the people on your team are good, but you have to fire five of them. And . . . don't bother picking them, HR already did that without your input. Ha, this happened to me. I found out I was getting laid off before my boss and boss' boss did.
yuhong 10y ago
I remember this article: https://hal2020.com/2013/07/09/on-org-structures-goals-and-metrics/ https://hal2020.com/2013/07/09/on-org-structures-goals-and-m...

samfisher83 10y ago

Under Ballmer's watch the revenue tripled. It could have been pure dumb luck. Even with all that Satya is doing it hasn't really showed any results on revenues and profits. Sun did a lot of great things for open source and they pretty much floundered.

dctoedt 10y ago
Nit: It's "On Ballmer's watch" (an old naval expression).
marcosdumay 10y ago
It's more the case that Gates left plenty of low hanging fruit to pick. Almost the entire revenue growth was in repricing stuff that was widely adopted because it was cheap, and a few short lived "innovations" that people are already abandoning everywhere.
- scholia 10y ago
  You really think that repricing stuff gets you from roughly $20 billion to $70 billion in the PC market?

overgryphon 10y ago

Right- Office and Windows began talking to each other in 2011, when the consent decree ended. The silo structure at Microsoft was almost required by the government.

RaleyField 10y ago

Microsoft's biggest problem is undue intrusion on liberties that customers have come to expect on x86 computers. Under Ballmer and Gates this didn't happen, so consequently I liked their time much more than that of Satya. All the goodwill and other benefits that comes from open sourcing various components doesn't outweigh the privacy intrusions and lost trust that came with Windows 10, at least for me. Ballmer was loud and had his antics, Gates had his ruthless market drive that some despise, but I trusted closed source under them much more because of the claim not to abuse their customers was was hedged by the reputation the company, now that this trust is lost I can't trust Microsoft and that's Satya's legacy.