16 ms·

What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

141 points by dbattaglia 8y ago

achow 8y ago
Excerpts from infamous mini-msft blog (in 2005 another msft employee venting anonymously): "I mean, what has he done or not done that is impacting the stock?" - along with Gates, made decisions that resulted in the company being found guilty of breaking the law twice(and counting)resulting in fines, restrictions... - along with Gates, invested over $10B of cash in failed telecom investments that ended up being written off - failed to make any meaningful investments at the bottom of the market crash when numerous companies were available for cheap.. - invested $10B's in various "emerging" businesses that even years later represent only about 10% of MSFT's revenue, aren't growing at even 10%.. - approved the onerous Licensing 6 program when many companies were hurting economically thereby pissing off a good portion of our customers and fueling the move to Open Source. - has been at the helm as MSFT failed to take security seriously and then has had to drop everything to play catch up, missed the paid search move and had to play catch up, missed the move to web services and had to play catch up, missed the portable music wave and had to play catch up, let IE stagnate and had to play catch up, and now seemingly can't ship any major product on time even stripped of formerly core features (can you say Longhorn, CRM, SQL, VS, etc. etc. etc?). Continued... http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/03/old-school-competencies.html#c111169237226667511 http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/03/old-school-competencies...
- Adrock 8y ago
  I'll add one more: https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/06/microsoft-stock-history-how-the-tech-giant-made-sh.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/06/microsoft-stock-hi... Take a look at the chart. Ballmer was CEO from January 2000 to February 2014.
  - Delmania 8y ago
    In the words of John Gruber of Daring Fireball, Ballmer knows how to make money. People will disagree with his decisions but the results don’t lie.
  - justin66 8y ago
    > Take a look at the chart. ...and keep in mind that it doesn't capture the money paid out in dividends for over a decade.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      Yeah, wasn't there some kind of thing as "splits" which skews the stock price? Or is that it?
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  During Ballmers tenure, the company massively increased it's revenues and profits, and they were exceptional in other areas. 'Missed paid search' and 'missed music player' etc. etc. are all haughty claims - MS was never an internet oriented business, it's like saying 'Oracle missed the search business' - well sure. Just like Google missed social? Or Facebook missed mobile? Or missed photo-sharing? I'm no fan of Ballmer or MSFT, but if the goal of MSFT is to make money via decent products that work well enough in the eyes of their buyers, he did that. Just not in the way that you might want or expect them to. I like Satya more, but give it a few years and we can judge then.
  - mgkimsal 8y ago
    > it's like saying 'Oracle missed the search business' did Oracle spend lots of $ and resources trying to get in to search?
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      If MS didn't then they would be lambasted just the same. As it stands, at least MSFT has a presence which entails at least strategic advantage. Not trying would be worse than trying and failing. But it doesn't matter - they're not a search company, it's such a different beast. Why on earth do people expect that MSFT should have been the king of that domain I have no idea.
  - nojvek 8y ago
    Satya is already wayyyy more succesful as a CEO than Steve Ballmer ever was. MSFT stock price took a big dip after 2000 and never recovered in Ballmer from 2000 - 2014. He was a decent CEO in the sense that he didn't kill MSFT like Marissa Mayer did to Yahoo. He missed a ton of opportunities and messed a lot of things like Nokia and Skype acquisitions that barely panned out. He let Apple and Google steal the mobile show when Windows Mobile had been the smart phone king for a long time. Microsoft used to be #1, now they are behind Apple, Amazon and Google. Granted, he was good at milking the Windows and Office cash cows that had been gifted to him from Gates era, but he spent an insane amount of money on things that never panned out. MSFT has a lot of money in the bank account so I'm sure they'll be fine even if they put a rock in the CEO seat.
rimher 8y ago
Very interesting read! He might've made some big mistakes during his tenure, but if Microsoft's still there it's also his merit
- ThrowawayR2 8y ago
  Yep, a lot of techies fail to appreciate the extent to which this is true. For those who disagree and were around in 2000, where is Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Yahoo, AOL, and Netscape today?
  - bigtones 8y ago
    They were all acquired or merged for a lot of money - and they were all highly profitable companies. None of those businesses failed. That is just natural business evolution for successful businesses.
    - 1996 8y ago
      I disagree, but I think it is a matter of perspective, if by "successful" you mean "do not end up in a bankrupcy sale". But then by your metric, there are businesses that are "more than successful": they are not acquired, but acquire others instead
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jaclaz 8y ago
This strikes me as "odd": >Then he looked up, waited for a pause in the presentation, and said in a soft voice: “This number is wrong!” >... >Any other executive would have assumed his finance people could write Excel formulas and delegated the task. All the (successful) executives I ever dealt with have a sort of "sense" for numbers, and surely do not really-really trust their finance people writing Excel formulas, or - better - they trust them as long as the results are reasonable and don't raise this "number sense" alarm.
- bigtones 8y ago
  Also, if the math was that wrong that it made the entire deal not make sense financially given it was a very large deal in monetary terms (which he stated) what were those 30 people doing? Most M&A deals make sense strategically first and then at a price second - rather than for a price first (especially if that price was very high).
- scriptproof 8y ago
  I am not impressed by this exploit, because there are some chance he had studied the document before the presentation, or even asked someone to verify it. He was flawed on many aspects, for example trying to attract developers by dancing and chanting "developers, dev...". His successors put Linux in Windows, open sourced .NET and this seems more efficient... without even harming Windows market share.
  - ThrowawayR2 8y ago
    > ...trying to attract developers by dancing and chanting "developers, dev..." That video was from Microsoft's _internal_ company-wide meeting held annually to rally their staff, so your assertion is invalid. Moreover, it's a bad example to begin with; Ballmer was and still is absolutely correct. What makes the FOSS software ecosystem so successful? That's right: developers, developers, developers. Somebody has to write all that code and it isn't going to be the end-users. When developers get pissed off at a platform, they abandon or fork it, which is why it makes sense to keep developers happy. Those of us who were around in the '80s-'90s remember that Microsoft's rise to dominance was partly powered by the fact that they offered relatively cheap and good compilers and dev tools and solid documentation to make it easy to develop software for their platform. Contrast that with the workstation vendors back then that charged much more than MS did just to get a compiler.
kelukelugames 8y ago
I can't wait for Ballmer to become the lovable, goofy NBA owner instead of be remembered as the guy who dragged down Microsoft.
- brewrwe 8y ago
  Looking back, the whole "Developers, Developers, Developers..." bit was just what we saw publicly, I hope he was on fewer drugs when doing day to day management, but perhaps that is part of why Microsoft found itself in a dying segment of an industry it once monopolized.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    Yeah, that's one of those memorable moments. Here's another one, the chair throw incident: "At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: "Just tell me it's not Google." I told him it was Google. At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."" [1] If you scroll up on there, you can read how very wrong he was on the iPhone, Linux, and FOSS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#Google
    - remir 8y ago
      Looks like a scene from a movie.
- zerr 8y ago
  > who dragged down Microsoft Did he?
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    By being unable to use his warchest on a changing market. As an example: missing the smartphone boat twice (once with Windows Mobile vs Symbian, and once with Windows Phone vs iOS/Android). Another example: Microsoft search / Bing. Microsoft kept Office relevant though, made Azure relevant, and are reinventing themselves from a proprietary to a data company (like Google, Facebook, and Amazon) who also do a lot of open source (like the previously mentioned companies). But I suppose Nadella takes credit for that.
majani 8y ago
He raises a good point about the law of large numbers. When your core business is doing $75b and has 95% market share, it's near impossible to find other lines of business to complement that core in a meaningful way. I'd go as far as to say it's illogical to expect crazy growth or innovation at such a point.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  That bit had me scratching my head. To me the law of large numbers had to do with stats. But apparently, MBAs have come up with their own completely unrelated "law".
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I've never heard it referred to as the law of large numbers (which I also associate with stats). But I still remember a discussion I had with an exec at a large systems company a number of years back when I was a consultant. I don't remember the exact context but it was around the potential for some new initiative or other. The gist of his remark was to the effect of "If it won't be a minimum $1 billion a year business for us, it's in the noise and uninteresting."
  - idontpost 8y ago
    I think the connection is that when you're 100% of the pie, you're, by definition, average. You cannot be exceptional when you so dominate the market segment.
Waterluvian 8y ago
"A leader falls on his sword for his team if and when needed." I like this. It also reminded me of a lesson I learned when reading Maj. Richard Winters' memoirs: a good leader leads from the front. First one in, last one out.
- mjw1007 8y ago
  But Ballmer didn't fall on his sword; he just apologised, to people who had no ability to punish him for the mistake which he claimed as his. If you receive an apology from someone several levels above where the mistake was made, I don't think it means much. You end up with no reassurance that anything is being done to stop it happening again.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    > no ability The bank could have abandoned Microsoft products. They could have sued Microsoft. Blaming one's underlings is a sign of weakness. Blaming the customer would be a disaster.
    - mjw1007 8y ago
      Sure, it was the right thing to do. But it wasn't a difficult thing to do.
      - skookumchuck 8y ago
        For an awful lot of people, apologizing and taking responsibility for an error is very difficult. People will go to ridiculous lengths to avoid doing so, coming up with ever more complicated explanations as to why they are blameless. Apologizing and taking responsibility is a sign of good character, not a sign of weakness. Case in point: antennagate and Jobs' attempt to blame the users for holding the phone wrong.
        HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
        Apologizing and taking responsibility is a sign of good character, not a sign of weakness. A lot of people disagree with you, and see it as a sign of weakness. Often those people have a lot of influence over your career.
theNewMicrosoft 8y ago
No word that he was a psychopath and a Corporate bully, Instead we have a hagiography for Steve.
- drewmate 8y ago
  Clever ambiguity, or mere coincidence?
SandersAK 8y ago
To witness one of the most deadly attacks in American history, and then, with gravitas, say "you know what's more important than connecting with our community and people and reach them now in a time of bloody and violent uncertainty? making sure MSFT makes more money" sounds like a real peach of a leader. truly inspiring.
- rich-and-poor 8y ago
  What does it mean to connect with their community? What should Microsoft have done? Be specific.
  - sethdj 8y ago
    Well the stuff they're doing now would have been a good start.
Zigurd 8y ago
The Nokia fiasco is a big blot on Ballmer's record. For a good reason: It shows the consequences of great arrogance. Nokia's marching orders were to make Windows Phone a success, and not to dilute that mission with a drop of alternative products. Just because he could, he took one of the finest companies on the planet and trashed it with a doomed strategy, at a cost of tens of billions in foregone value to his own shareholders and Nokia's employees. He took that much money, put it in a pile, lit it on fire and blocked the fire brigades, whether for vanity or for a weakly articulated strategy.
letientai299 8y ago
I've just learned that Medium now has a paywall for free member. Are there any other place/copy of this article that we can read without the paywall?
- dbenhur 8y ago
  Incognito window is your friend
timc3 8y ago
Interesting read but a pity that the author doesn’t understand the difference between blog and blog post particular as one of his points was attention to detail. If the author is reading this blog is the medium (like magazine or newspaper) and blog post or post is the individual what a blog is what one authors.
pappaSsmurf 8y ago
laughed at the notion that apple would ever be able to make a serious mobile phone https://bgr.com/2016/11/04/ballmer-iphone-quote-explained/ https://bgr.com/2016/11/04/ballmer-iphone-quote-explained/ edit: added the word 'serious'

141 points by dbattaglia 8y ago

Excerpts from infamous mini-msft blog (in 2005 another msft employee venting anonymously): "I mean, what has he done or not done that is impacting the stock?" - along with Gates, made decisions that resulted in the company being found guilty of breaking the law twice(and counting)resulting in fines, restrictions... - along with Gates, invested over $10B of cash in failed telecom investments that ended up being written off - failed to make any meaningful investments at the bottom of the market crash when numerous companies were available for cheap.. - invested $10B's in various "emerging" businesses that even years later represent only about 10% of MSFT's revenue, aren't growing at even 10%.. - approved the onerous Licensing 6 program when many companies were hurting economically thereby pissing off a good portion of our customers and fueling the move to Open Source. - has been at the helm as MSFT failed to take security seriously and then has had to drop everything to play catch up, missed the paid search move and had to play catch up, missed the move to web services and had to play catch up, missed the portable music wave and had to play catch up, let IE stagnate and had to play catch up, and now seemingly can't ship any major product on time even stripped of formerly core features (can you say Longhorn, CRM, SQL, VS, etc. etc. etc?). Continued... http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/03/old-school-competencies.html#c111169237226667511 http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/03/old-school-competencies...

Adrock 8y ago
I'll add one more: https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/06/microsoft-stock-history-how-the-tech-giant-made-sh.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/06/microsoft-stock-hi... Take a look at the chart. Ballmer was CEO from January 2000 to February 2014.
- Delmania 8y ago
  In the words of John Gruber of Daring Fireball, Ballmer knows how to make money. People will disagree with his decisions but the results don’t lie.
- justin66 8y ago
  > Take a look at the chart. ...and keep in mind that it doesn't capture the money paid out in dividends for over a decade.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    Yeah, wasn't there some kind of thing as "splits" which skews the stock price? Or is that it?
sonnyblarney 8y ago
During Ballmers tenure, the company massively increased it's revenues and profits, and they were exceptional in other areas. 'Missed paid search' and 'missed music player' etc. etc. are all haughty claims - MS was never an internet oriented business, it's like saying 'Oracle missed the search business' - well sure. Just like Google missed social? Or Facebook missed mobile? Or missed photo-sharing? I'm no fan of Ballmer or MSFT, but if the goal of MSFT is to make money via decent products that work well enough in the eyes of their buyers, he did that. Just not in the way that you might want or expect them to. I like Satya more, but give it a few years and we can judge then.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  > it's like saying 'Oracle missed the search business' did Oracle spend lots of $ and resources trying to get in to search?
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    If MS didn't then they would be lambasted just the same. As it stands, at least MSFT has a presence which entails at least strategic advantage. Not trying would be worse than trying and failing. But it doesn't matter - they're not a search company, it's such a different beast. Why on earth do people expect that MSFT should have been the king of that domain I have no idea.
- nojvek 8y ago
  Satya is already wayyyy more succesful as a CEO than Steve Ballmer ever was. MSFT stock price took a big dip after 2000 and never recovered in Ballmer from 2000 - 2014. He was a decent CEO in the sense that he didn't kill MSFT like Marissa Mayer did to Yahoo. He missed a ton of opportunities and messed a lot of things like Nokia and Skype acquisitions that barely panned out. He let Apple and Google steal the mobile show when Windows Mobile had been the smart phone king for a long time. Microsoft used to be #1, now they are behind Apple, Amazon and Google. Granted, he was good at milking the Windows and Office cash cows that had been gifted to him from Gates era, but he spent an insane amount of money on things that never panned out. MSFT has a lot of money in the bank account so I'm sure they'll be fine even if they put a rock in the CEO seat.

rimher 8y ago

Very interesting read! He might've made some big mistakes during his tenure, but if Microsoft's still there it's also his merit

ThrowawayR2 8y ago
Yep, a lot of techies fail to appreciate the extent to which this is true. For those who disagree and were around in 2000, where is Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Yahoo, AOL, and Netscape today?
- bigtones 8y ago
  They were all acquired or merged for a lot of money - and they were all highly profitable companies. None of those businesses failed. That is just natural business evolution for successful businesses.
  - 1996 8y ago
    I disagree, but I think it is a matter of perspective, if by "successful" you mean "do not end up in a bankrupcy sale". But then by your metric, there are businesses that are "more than successful": they are not acquired, but acquire others instead
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jaclaz 8y ago

This strikes me as "odd": >Then he looked up, waited for a pause in the presentation, and said in a soft voice: “This number is wrong!” >... >Any other executive would have assumed his finance people could write Excel formulas and delegated the task. All the (successful) executives I ever dealt with have a sort of "sense" for numbers, and surely do not really-really trust their finance people writing Excel formulas, or - better - they trust them as long as the results are reasonable and don't raise this "number sense" alarm.

bigtones 8y ago
Also, if the math was that wrong that it made the entire deal not make sense financially given it was a very large deal in monetary terms (which he stated) what were those 30 people doing? Most M&A deals make sense strategically first and then at a price second - rather than for a price first (especially if that price was very high).
scriptproof 8y ago
I am not impressed by this exploit, because there are some chance he had studied the document before the presentation, or even asked someone to verify it. He was flawed on many aspects, for example trying to attract developers by dancing and chanting "developers, dev...". His successors put Linux in Windows, open sourced .NET and this seems more efficient... without even harming Windows market share.
- ThrowawayR2 8y ago
  > ...trying to attract developers by dancing and chanting "developers, dev..." That video was from Microsoft's _internal_ company-wide meeting held annually to rally their staff, so your assertion is invalid. Moreover, it's a bad example to begin with; Ballmer was and still is absolutely correct. What makes the FOSS software ecosystem so successful? That's right: developers, developers, developers. Somebody has to write all that code and it isn't going to be the end-users. When developers get pissed off at a platform, they abandon or fork it, which is why it makes sense to keep developers happy. Those of us who were around in the '80s-'90s remember that Microsoft's rise to dominance was partly powered by the fact that they offered relatively cheap and good compilers and dev tools and solid documentation to make it easy to develop software for their platform. Contrast that with the workstation vendors back then that charged much more than MS did just to get a compiler.

kelukelugames 8y ago

I can't wait for Ballmer to become the lovable, goofy NBA owner instead of be remembered as the guy who dragged down Microsoft.

brewrwe 8y ago
Looking back, the whole "Developers, Developers, Developers..." bit was just what we saw publicly, I hope he was on fewer drugs when doing day to day management, but perhaps that is part of why Microsoft found itself in a dying segment of an industry it once monopolized.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  Yeah, that's one of those memorable moments. Here's another one, the chair throw incident: "At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: "Just tell me it's not Google." I told him it was Google. At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."" [1] If you scroll up on there, you can read how very wrong he was on the iPhone, Linux, and FOSS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer#Google
  - remir 8y ago
    Looks like a scene from a movie.
zerr 8y ago
> who dragged down Microsoft Did he?
- Fnoord 8y ago
  By being unable to use his warchest on a changing market. As an example: missing the smartphone boat twice (once with Windows Mobile vs Symbian, and once with Windows Phone vs iOS/Android). Another example: Microsoft search / Bing. Microsoft kept Office relevant though, made Azure relevant, and are reinventing themselves from a proprietary to a data company (like Google, Facebook, and Amazon) who also do a lot of open source (like the previously mentioned companies). But I suppose Nadella takes credit for that.

majani 8y ago

He raises a good point about the law of large numbers. When your core business is doing $75b and has 95% market share, it's near impossible to find other lines of business to complement that core in a meaningful way. I'd go as far as to say it's illogical to expect crazy growth or innovation at such a point.

ddebernardy 8y ago
That bit had me scratching my head. To me the law of large numbers had to do with stats. But apparently, MBAs have come up with their own completely unrelated "law".
- ghaff 8y ago
  I've never heard it referred to as the law of large numbers (which I also associate with stats). But I still remember a discussion I had with an exec at a large systems company a number of years back when I was a consultant. I don't remember the exact context but it was around the potential for some new initiative or other. The gist of his remark was to the effect of "If it won't be a minimum $1 billion a year business for us, it's in the noise and uninteresting."
- idontpost 8y ago
  I think the connection is that when you're 100% of the pie, you're, by definition, average. You cannot be exceptional when you so dominate the market segment.

Waterluvian 8y ago

"A leader falls on his sword for his team if and when needed." I like this. It also reminded me of a lesson I learned when reading Maj. Richard Winters' memoirs: a good leader leads from the front. First one in, last one out.

mjw1007 8y ago
But Ballmer didn't fall on his sword; he just apologised, to people who had no ability to punish him for the mistake which he claimed as his. If you receive an apology from someone several levels above where the mistake was made, I don't think it means much. You end up with no reassurance that anything is being done to stop it happening again.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  > no ability The bank could have abandoned Microsoft products. They could have sued Microsoft. Blaming one's underlings is a sign of weakness. Blaming the customer would be a disaster.
  - mjw1007 8y ago
    Sure, it was the right thing to do. But it wasn't a difficult thing to do.
    - skookumchuck 8y ago
      For an awful lot of people, apologizing and taking responsibility for an error is very difficult. People will go to ridiculous lengths to avoid doing so, coming up with ever more complicated explanations as to why they are blameless. Apologizing and taking responsibility is a sign of good character, not a sign of weakness. Case in point: antennagate and Jobs' attempt to blame the users for holding the phone wrong.
      - HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
        Apologizing and taking responsibility is a sign of good character, not a sign of weakness. A lot of people disagree with you, and see it as a sign of weakness. Often those people have a lot of influence over your career.

theNewMicrosoft 8y ago

No word that he was a psychopath and a Corporate bully, Instead we have a hagiography for Steve.

drewmate 8y ago
Clever ambiguity, or mere coincidence?

SandersAK 8y ago

To witness one of the most deadly attacks in American history, and then, with gravitas, say "you know what's more important than connecting with our community and people and reach them now in a time of bloody and violent uncertainty? making sure MSFT makes more money" sounds like a real peach of a leader. truly inspiring.

rich-and-poor 8y ago
What does it mean to connect with their community? What should Microsoft have done? Be specific.
- sethdj 8y ago
  Well the stuff they're doing now would have been a good start.

Zigurd 8y ago

The Nokia fiasco is a big blot on Ballmer's record. For a good reason: It shows the consequences of great arrogance. Nokia's marching orders were to make Windows Phone a success, and not to dilute that mission with a drop of alternative products. Just because he could, he took one of the finest companies on the planet and trashed it with a doomed strategy, at a cost of tens of billions in foregone value to his own shareholders and Nokia's employees. He took that much money, put it in a pile, lit it on fire and blocked the fire brigades, whether for vanity or for a weakly articulated strategy.

letientai299 8y ago

I've just learned that Medium now has a paywall for free member. Are there any other place/copy of this article that we can read without the paywall?

dbenhur 8y ago
Incognito window is your friend

timc3 8y ago

Interesting read but a pity that the author doesn’t understand the difference between blog and blog post particular as one of his points was attention to detail. If the author is reading this blog is the medium (like magazine or newspaper) and blog post or post is the individual what a blog is what one authors.

pappaSsmurf 8y ago

laughed at the notion that apple would ever be able to make a serious mobile phone https://bgr.com/2016/11/04/ballmer-iphone-quote-explained/ https://bgr.com/2016/11/04/ballmer-iphone-quote-explained/ edit: added the word 'serious'