4 ms·

From all the available recollections, Ballmer never had any valuable foresight. I wonder why the board of directors left him as CEO after Gates’ retirement. A

From all the available recollections, Ballmer never had any valuable foresight. I wonder why the board of directors left him as CEO after Gates’ retirement. Also reportedly Ballmer was disagreeing with Gates about how important the market of smartphones and tablets is, with Gates wanting to invest heavily in it. Oops!

ams6110 8y ago
Microsoft made a ton of money with Ballmer as CEO. I imagine the board was pretty happy with him at least for most of that time.
- bad_user 8y ago
  How much of that revenue can be attributed to Balmer though? As an outsider it seems to me that all Microsoft did during Ballmer was to milk the cash cows created during Bill Gates and at the same time destroy the good will of developers and the morale of their employees. I’m assuming any big company acquires a certain inertia and will keep producing money for as long as there is demand and the supply can meet it. Just look at Apple. So what did Ballmer do that can be praised?
  - flomo 8y ago
    I won't defend Ballmer, but the guy was a salesman, a really good salesman. Not a technologist. Also Bill Gates was "chief software architect" during the Longhorn/Vista thing so he's hardly absolved of blame.
    - bad_user 8y ago
      In defense of the Longhorn/Vista blunder, the problem is that Windows XP was really good (at least compared to previous Windows versions), some would say good enough for people to not upgrade to newer versions ... if you remember, this was the first Win NT version meant for consumers. By comparison previously Win 3.x, 95, 98, ME, and in between were really unstable and frankly unusable in certain scenarios, I know because I used them all. I have a feeling that even now Windows XP is more popular than people think and that they aren't reporting the real number of Windows XP installs in the wild. So they were competing against themselves, against a previous version that has been wildly successful, enough so that virtually nobody upgraded it. I mean, besides people capable of assembling and upgrading their PCs, component by component, I'm pretty sure that everybody bought into Windows 7 and later via new PCs. And PCs becoming good enough to keep around for years, I think the writing was on the wall that Windows's revenue will eventually go down.
  - rohitb91 8y ago
    That really echoes what I've been asking for years. If you get a CEO that walks in, does barely anything, will anyone even notice? Short of any media blunders or completely nuking a company, how can you really mess up a company during your tenure such that you get in and get out with your ridiculous compensation?
- kabdib 8y ago
  Sure . . . but they might have made more money with someone with better technical skills. Additionally, Ballmer had some dogma (Jack Welch style up-or-out review system, the "everything has to be Windows" nonsense [1]) that did a lot of damage. We'll never know. But Satya seems to be doing very well indeed with a combination of better technical direction and removing Ballmer-era toxicity. [1] On one project I worked on was an embedded system, and I joked that the only way that Ballmer would let it ship (if he'd known about it) would be to rename it "Microsoft Windows, Event-Loop-and-Some-Interrupt-Handlers Edition," whereupon it didn't matter what the heck the software looked like on the inside. As long as it said "Windows" somewhere on the outside, he'd be happy.
- toopsss 8y ago
  Not only did Apple return to relevancy during ballmersoft but they completely surpassed Microsoft in revenue and profits. And it was in an industry that Microsoft had every tool necessary (tech, talent pool, supplier and carrier relationships, ip portfolio) to excel in (other than good leadership).
digi_owl 8y ago
My guess, he was a money man appointed by a board filled with money men.

ams6110 8y ago

Microsoft made a ton of money with Ballmer as CEO. I imagine the board was pretty happy with him at least for most of that time.

bad_user 8y ago
How much of that revenue can be attributed to Balmer though? As an outsider it seems to me that all Microsoft did during Ballmer was to milk the cash cows created during Bill Gates and at the same time destroy the good will of developers and the morale of their employees. I’m assuming any big company acquires a certain inertia and will keep producing money for as long as there is demand and the supply can meet it. Just look at Apple. So what did Ballmer do that can be praised?
- flomo 8y ago
  I won't defend Ballmer, but the guy was a salesman, a really good salesman. Not a technologist. Also Bill Gates was "chief software architect" during the Longhorn/Vista thing so he's hardly absolved of blame.
  - bad_user 8y ago
    In defense of the Longhorn/Vista blunder, the problem is that Windows XP was really good (at least compared to previous Windows versions), some would say good enough for people to not upgrade to newer versions ... if you remember, this was the first Win NT version meant for consumers. By comparison previously Win 3.x, 95, 98, ME, and in between were really unstable and frankly unusable in certain scenarios, I know because I used them all. I have a feeling that even now Windows XP is more popular than people think and that they aren't reporting the real number of Windows XP installs in the wild. So they were competing against themselves, against a previous version that has been wildly successful, enough so that virtually nobody upgraded it. I mean, besides people capable of assembling and upgrading their PCs, component by component, I'm pretty sure that everybody bought into Windows 7 and later via new PCs. And PCs becoming good enough to keep around for years, I think the writing was on the wall that Windows's revenue will eventually go down.
- rohitb91 8y ago
  That really echoes what I've been asking for years. If you get a CEO that walks in, does barely anything, will anyone even notice? Short of any media blunders or completely nuking a company, how can you really mess up a company during your tenure such that you get in and get out with your ridiculous compensation?
kabdib 8y ago
Sure . . . but they might have made more money with someone with better technical skills. Additionally, Ballmer had some dogma (Jack Welch style up-or-out review system, the "everything has to be Windows" nonsense [1]) that did a lot of damage. We'll never know. But Satya seems to be doing very well indeed with a combination of better technical direction and removing Ballmer-era toxicity. [1] On one project I worked on was an embedded system, and I joked that the only way that Ballmer would let it ship (if he'd known about it) would be to rename it "Microsoft Windows, Event-Loop-and-Some-Interrupt-Handlers Edition," whereupon it didn't matter what the heck the software looked like on the inside. As long as it said "Windows" somewhere on the outside, he'd be happy.
toopsss 8y ago
Not only did Apple return to relevancy during ballmersoft but they completely surpassed Microsoft in revenue and profits. And it was in an industry that Microsoft had every tool necessary (tech, talent pool, supplier and carrier relationships, ip portfolio) to excel in (other than good leadership).

digi_owl 8y ago

My guess, he was a money man appointed by a board filled with money men.