4 ms·

sounds like a true comment from someone who's only seen some memes about "developers" and assumed he was smarter than Balmer. There's a reason Microsoft was use

sounds like a true comment from someone who's only seen some memes about "developers" and assumed he was smarter than Balmer. There's a reason Microsoft was used by every IT department in the world when he left. He may have had some weaknesses on the consumer front but he made MS into a juggernaut on the business side. I still don't see any other company come even close.

Ensorceled 10y ago
Not at all. I believe the largest thing Nadella did was get out of the way of the individual organizational units and let them do their job; that's why he had so much success in his first few months as he simply unstoppered a blocked up product flow.
WallowC_33 10y ago
Every IT department in the world is a bit dramatic, since I have direct experience working with a couple +1 million user consumer facing companies that have a couple Windows laptops around for IE testing, but that's it. Ballmer takes over with momentum on his side; XP is still going up, Windows Mobile is shit but other than Blackberry the only other player in town, Xbox launches to huge success. When he leaves their mobile platform is effectively DOA, their cloud services are years behind AWS and Google, their consumer base is being eaten by Apple portables, and the last Xbox product he oversaw is getting its ass handed to it. They just added bash to Windows to keep/attract folks that aren't developing for their platform anymore. I don't think it is all Ballmer's fault. The world got wise to their scams from the past to some extent; no more shifty deals with the governments around the world calling you a monopolist. Google rose to power, and Apple got their shit together. Revenue went up in some spots, though how much of that is real or due to creative accounting (it's well known they shift Xbox losses around to obscure the real numbers), but if not for their huge war chest of cash (thanks to shady business practices), MS would be done.

Ensorceled 10y ago

Not at all. I believe the largest thing Nadella did was get out of the way of the individual organizational units and let them do their job; that's why he had so much success in his first few months as he simply unstoppered a blocked up product flow.

WallowC_33 10y ago

Every IT department in the world is a bit dramatic, since I have direct experience working with a couple +1 million user consumer facing companies that have a couple Windows laptops around for IE testing, but that's it. Ballmer takes over with momentum on his side; XP is still going up, Windows Mobile is shit but other than Blackberry the only other player in town, Xbox launches to huge success. When he leaves their mobile platform is effectively DOA, their cloud services are years behind AWS and Google, their consumer base is being eaten by Apple portables, and the last Xbox product he oversaw is getting its ass handed to it. They just added bash to Windows to keep/attract folks that aren't developing for their platform anymore. I don't think it is all Ballmer's fault. The world got wise to their scams from the past to some extent; no more shifty deals with the governments around the world calling you a monopolist. Google rose to power, and Apple got their shit together. Revenue went up in some spots, though how much of that is real or due to creative accounting (it's well known they shift Xbox losses around to obscure the real numbers), but if not for their huge war chest of cash (thanks to shady business practices), MS would be done.