20 ms·

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Sat

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

abhinav22 6y ago
100% truth
dforrestwilson 6y ago
Interesting to contrast Satya with Sundar Pichai, whose company seems rudderless by comparison.
- ck425 6y ago
  The things is I never read about any major decisions Sundar Pichai has made. There's tons online about Tim Cook, Satya, Netflix's various SLs, Daniel Ek, Elon Musk (admittedly more about his tweets than business strat these days) etc. But I never read about Sunder Pichai's strategies or decisions. What is he actually doing?
  - jgalt212 6y ago
    His only job is to fight the DOJ anti trust complaint.
  - Wonnk13 6y ago
    Now that I think about it, I'm really curious as well. I didn't work in Cloud, but my perception is TK is really reshaping GCP as well as the Gsuite to whatever it is now. Sundar's role seems to really be give his lieutenants free reign which I guess makes sense seeing as how he now oversees all of Alphabet.
  - ohazi 6y ago
    Collecting a check? What's the incentive to do anything at that level? He's going to walk away after 5-10 years with OOM a billion dollars regardless of how anything he does or doesn't do pans out for Google. Why not just play the quiet card and pin anything that happens to the fiefdom lords who now have free reign and no oversight? If good things happen, he gets credit for delegating well. If bad things happen, it's their fault. But if he loudly tries something different and it fails, the failure is more likely to get pinned on him. And again, he's already going to walk away with a billion regardless, so "financial upside" as a motivator for success is largely an illusion. He's a "just gotta keep my nose clean and get out with a middling reputation and a shitload of money" CEO.
    - ulkram 6y ago
      My sense is that people who think like this don't make it this high up. Sundar has already had opportunities to sell out much earlier; Money stopped becoming a problem for him long ago.
      - bumblebritches5 6y ago
        Have you seen his body language? He looks as meek as a hamster to me, i have no clue how he became CEO of google.
ArnoVW 6y ago
Office for iOS is hardly a company-changing announcement. And wasn't Azure the baby of Satya? And let's not forget decades of failed products under Balmer. The way I remember it, when Microsoft fiiiinaly launched something successful other than office/windows, it's father was quickly made the new king they had been looking for since so long.
ToFab123 6y ago
If there is someone at Microsoft who didn't got enough credit it was Ray Ozzie. Remember him when he was Chief Software Architect? He started Azure / Microsoft transition to the cloud. He created that shift in focus that Microsoft now rides on. Had he not gotten that brief period as BillG's replacement, Microsoft would have continued to live in the past where windows and on-premise office suite was king. Ray Ozzie changed the direction of Microsoft without ever really getting any credits for it.
- baxtr 6y ago
  Maybe it was a team effort and many are to be credited?
  - sramam 6y ago
    This. This [1] wired interview provides an insight into the structured thinking at Microsoft/Gates even back in 1996. I'm sure this kind of thinking permeates any successful company, to have a video of this depth, and now available for public viewing, is really unique. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFFlO7yBIBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFFlO7yBIBM
- Wistar 6y ago
  CraigMu was a big pusher behind cloud, too.
chenzhekl 6y ago
I can’t agree more. In fact, I feel that consumer products (e.g. Surface) from Microsoft in the era of Ballmer was far better than those of now.
kjaftaedi 6y ago
All of those things were at least 4 years delayed due to poor decision making by Ballmer. Trying to play catch up does not count as innovation in my book.
apetrovic 6y ago
Steve Ballmer was a guy who restlessly milked two Microsoft cash cows (Windows and Office) to accommodate investors quarter after quarter. He didn't have a vision or courage to push Microsoft in some other direction, and my impression was that all good things that started under his regime (Azure, more openness) was either reactionary or he simply didn't care (most of early open source push was from his lieutenants). At the end of his regime MS lost top-tier tech place (when someone says "big tech" it's Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, not MS), he lost the main Microsoft advantage - an army of Windows programmers. MS under Ballmer lost couple of generations of programmers, to the point where MS needs to ship Linux kernel with Windows just to get cosy with programmers again. Another example of such uninspired CEO that keeps making good quarters but tarnishes his company advantages is Tim Cook. I can't wait for him to be replaced.
- Adutude 6y ago
  I agree completely. Steve Ballmer put all of Microsoft eggs in the Office Basket that let mobile die on the vine. He pushed licensing and marketing and left developers and new tech to languish. It's why to this day, Microsoft doesn't have a place in the mobile space, it's iOS or Android. I also aggree that pushing MS in a more Open source direction has helped make them more palatable to developers.
- Miraste 6y ago
  Cook hasn't damaged Apple nearly as much as Ballmer hurt MS. During Ballmer's tenure, Microsoft launched the Zune, the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone, Windows 8, and the Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360). Cook may not be innovative, but he has yet to have a real failure, much less a disaster on the scale of those.
  - pavlov 6y ago
    > “... the Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360)” This is an odd thing to blame on Ballmer — he was CEO already during the original Xbox and Xbox 360 launches! His CEO tenure was 14 years... Why doesn’t he get credit for making Microsoft a top vendor in gaming?
metalliqaz 6y ago
Under Ballmer, MS dropped the ball on mobile. They had Windows CE, Windows on every desktop, and Xbox on the set top. And with all that, they couldn't put together a viable mobile product? They had the chance to make a holistic ecosystem that would span desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, TV, and everything in between. And they dropped the ball. Now we have to deal with a Duopoly between the largest advertiser and the largest media merchant. UGH.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  They really messed that whole thing up. They were complacent before and after the iPhone was released, they should have ported it to their tablet instead of ruining Windows desktop and they wasted billions buying Nokia. The funny thing is everyone I spoke to who used it loved Windows phone.
- sumtechguy 6y ago
  No kidding... WinCE should have been a stripped down NT. Instead it was this 'other' thing that they drug along that was 'windows' but not quite 'windows' and a pain to dev for. They were stuck in this weird spot where they had to create a build system that took into account of every BOM every crappy cell phone the ODMs could come up with. Then married to cell phones that would forget everything you setup on the drop of a hat. Apple did something different that changed the market. They put an unlimited plan on it, decent amount of NAND, a good touchscreen, and a straight forward GUI that worked in the small screen market.
  - projektfu 6y ago
    It’s an example of the company trying to avoid kneecapping the cash cow when experimenting. I really liked the Workpad z50, which was really the first netbook. Its windows CE runtime was light and useful, and booted instantly with execute-in-place. Its flaws were, in my opinion, entirely due to Microsoft not wanting to let CE become a viable alternative to NT. (That, and using a mask ROM instead of flash).
  - ThrowawayB7 6y ago
mabbo 6y ago
I remember being an intern at Microsoft in 2009 and going to a talk with Ballmer. What I remember is the most charismatic human being I've ever seen. The man could have been a cult leader. He had and maybe still has power in his ability to speak. Any question we asked (and we were interns, we asked lots of them) he had not just an answer but a good answer. He spoke of his failures well too: "They ask if we should make a video game console or a phone, and I chose the console- I should have said 'both'!". But nobody cares about how well you can speak. People want results.[0] The original schedule for the event actually got cancelled at the last minute- there was a huge announcement that had to be made, a big deal that was going to change the face of Microsoft, and it overlapped with our time. He was very apologetic about that, and rescheduled us for the next week, and then spoke at length about this incredible thing that was about to happen. That big announcement? Bing was teaming up with Yahoo on Search. (We all remember the day of that earth-changing event, right?) [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrhSLf0I-HM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrhSLf0I-HM
- Wistar 6y ago
  The man's natural speaking voice is the loudest I have ever heard. I could identify him coming down a long corridor by his voice well before I could by sight. He drove a several-year old dark red Mercury Montego in which he almost ran me over in a parking lot behind the EBC. He was on the phone.
- RandallBrown 6y ago
  I was at MS for his last company meeting and you're right. That guy has charisma and PASSION for Microsoft. I never liked working there, but watching him scream "I LOVE THIS COMPANY" while in tears made me feel like I was part of something huge and important.
  - anentropic 6y ago
    It sounds terrifying TBH :)
    - notJim 6y ago
momokoko 6y ago
I think Balmer takes a lot of the blame that should probably be directed more towards the board. Balmer was doing exactly what they asked him to do and had he made the type of decisions Satya is making, they would have replaced him with a more conservative CEO. Balmer was very successful in doing what he was tasked with. You can’t blame him for that.
brainzap 6y ago
he also realised that he needed to step down for growth
kabdib 6y ago
Ballmer created an indescribably toxic culture around reviews with his David Welch inspired "up or out" and "fire the bottom five percent" policies. Stack rankings were more like knife fights than honest appraisals of people's abilities and contributions. Teams used to deliberately hire underperformers so they could fire them, thus shielding productive people they would otherwise have to get rid of. I'm not going to get started on his miserable technical leadership. Things more or less just happened under him, he didn't seem that involved in the quality of what was being produced. Microsoft is well rid of him.
- rcoc 6y ago
  Jack Welch, but your point still stands.
  - kabdib 6y ago
    You're correct, my mistake.
lotso 6y ago
100%. A lot of these things were set in motion under Ballmer and he tee'd it up for Satya. That doesn't excuse Ballmer's missteps and of course Satya deserves credit for a lot of the execution, but I think people like to latch on to the simple narrative of Satya Good, Ballmer Bad.
nailer 6y ago
> It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. It was a few weeks later. Office for iOS was ready to go but I suspect Ballmer was holding it back (not wanting to give up precious Windows exclusives) rather than driving it.
simonh 6y ago
The problems at Microsoft started under Bill. Microsoft's tablet and mobile platform initiatives went absolutely nowhere. Pen computing, MPC and Origami were complete flops. Longhorn never even happened, Vista was a disaster. Windows 8 was after Bill left as software architect but he was still involved with the company at that time. Yes Office on iOS was a smart move, buy why was it even necessary? It was a white flag after over a decade of missed opportunities. Only under a new leader could it be re-branded as a refreshing change of direction. I honestly don't know to what extent the problems there can be laid at Ballmer's door, but it really wasn't just him, frankly it was him and Bill. They were fantastic at executing on established products and technologies pioneered by others but dropped the ball time and again at innovating into new areas.
danielovichdk 6y ago
I worked for MS under ballmer and turner. And they are in my opinion definitly, with Gates in the background, the ones that are the reason why the shared have rocketed. Satya did not invent the "platform wins" strategy. That was long before him. And that's what the company is still capitalizing on. That's what Microsoft is still the best at. Platform. And tools. No one comes even close to having the developer experience MS offers. And that plays directly into the platform strategy. Ballmer was a genius. Straight fact.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
whydoineedone 6y ago
Satya was head of cloud prior to ascending to ceo, though
vijaybritto 6y ago
Wait wasn't Satya the head of the cloud division before he became the CEO? I was thinking that he had started these things and pushed it further after becoming CEO!
libraryatnight 6y ago
I find it hard to believe his tenure was such hot garbage and he just saved his best stuff to hand off to Satya.
outworlder 6y ago
> It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. They might have been developed while he was at the helm, but how do you know he wasn't the one blocking their release?
spaetzleesser 6y ago
Very true. Ballmer didn't make Microsoft cool but he left a very healthy, highly profitable company with plenty of reserves. I wouldn't call what Nadella did a turnaround but just a change of direction and focus. I am not too impressed either with what MS is doing with Windows right now. The Windows 10 developer story seems pretty confusing and I am urging my company to go away from Windows for our devices.
CamperBob2 6y ago
What on earth are you talking about? Ballmer should have been met at the airport and given his walking papers when he got back from laughing at the iPhone on the Today Show. He basically won the lottery by getting assigned to the same dorm floor at Harvard as Bill Gates, and has been coasting ever since.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
I read somewhere that Satya openly expressed is views against Ballmer's Nokia/windows phone strategy and every other strategy which ended in failure during Ballmer's tenure during their meetings and that it played a crucial role in appointing him to the top role later on.
autodidacticon 6y ago
| I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. Agreed. Ballmer's tenure is widely misunderstood. Gates does not receive enough blame for the missteps of that era. Great read: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-l...
SEJeff 6y ago
Satya ran the entire cloud strategy before being promoted. The things you're giving Ballmer credit for were literally things Satya worked on :) In February 2011 Nadella was promoted to president of the Server and Tools Division, which oversaw products for companies’ data centers like Windows Server and the SQL Server database. This department also oversaw the Azure cloud platform. When he took over this area it was doing $16.6 billion in revenue. In two years, by 2013, Nadella raised that number to $20.3 billion.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

abhinav22 6y ago

100% truth

dforrestwilson 6y ago

Interesting to contrast Satya with Sundar Pichai, whose company seems rudderless by comparison.

ck425 6y ago
The things is I never read about any major decisions Sundar Pichai has made. There's tons online about Tim Cook, Satya, Netflix's various SLs, Daniel Ek, Elon Musk (admittedly more about his tweets than business strat these days) etc. But I never read about Sunder Pichai's strategies or decisions. What is he actually doing?
- jgalt212 6y ago
  His only job is to fight the DOJ anti trust complaint.
- Wonnk13 6y ago
  Now that I think about it, I'm really curious as well. I didn't work in Cloud, but my perception is TK is really reshaping GCP as well as the Gsuite to whatever it is now. Sundar's role seems to really be give his lieutenants free reign which I guess makes sense seeing as how he now oversees all of Alphabet.
- ohazi 6y ago
  Collecting a check? What's the incentive to do anything at that level? He's going to walk away after 5-10 years with OOM a billion dollars regardless of how anything he does or doesn't do pans out for Google. Why not just play the quiet card and pin anything that happens to the fiefdom lords who now have free reign and no oversight? If good things happen, he gets credit for delegating well. If bad things happen, it's their fault. But if he loudly tries something different and it fails, the failure is more likely to get pinned on him. And again, he's already going to walk away with a billion regardless, so "financial upside" as a motivator for success is largely an illusion. He's a "just gotta keep my nose clean and get out with a middling reputation and a shitload of money" CEO.
  - ulkram 6y ago
    My sense is that people who think like this don't make it this high up. Sundar has already had opportunities to sell out much earlier; Money stopped becoming a problem for him long ago.
    - bumblebritches5 6y ago
      Have you seen his body language? He looks as meek as a hamster to me, i have no clue how he became CEO of google.

ArnoVW 6y ago

Office for iOS is hardly a company-changing announcement. And wasn't Azure the baby of Satya? And let's not forget decades of failed products under Balmer. The way I remember it, when Microsoft fiiiinaly launched something successful other than office/windows, it's father was quickly made the new king they had been looking for since so long.

ToFab123 6y ago

If there is someone at Microsoft who didn't got enough credit it was Ray Ozzie. Remember him when he was Chief Software Architect? He started Azure / Microsoft transition to the cloud. He created that shift in focus that Microsoft now rides on. Had he not gotten that brief period as BillG's replacement, Microsoft would have continued to live in the past where windows and on-premise office suite was king. Ray Ozzie changed the direction of Microsoft without ever really getting any credits for it.

baxtr 6y ago
Maybe it was a team effort and many are to be credited?
- sramam 6y ago
  This. This [1] wired interview provides an insight into the structured thinking at Microsoft/Gates even back in 1996. I'm sure this kind of thinking permeates any successful company, to have a video of this depth, and now available for public viewing, is really unique. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFFlO7yBIBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFFlO7yBIBM
Wistar 6y ago
CraigMu was a big pusher behind cloud, too.

chenzhekl 6y ago

I can’t agree more. In fact, I feel that consumer products (e.g. Surface) from Microsoft in the era of Ballmer was far better than those of now.

kjaftaedi 6y ago

All of those things were at least 4 years delayed due to poor decision making by Ballmer. Trying to play catch up does not count as innovation in my book.

apetrovic 6y ago

Steve Ballmer was a guy who restlessly milked two Microsoft cash cows (Windows and Office) to accommodate investors quarter after quarter. He didn't have a vision or courage to push Microsoft in some other direction, and my impression was that all good things that started under his regime (Azure, more openness) was either reactionary or he simply didn't care (most of early open source push was from his lieutenants). At the end of his regime MS lost top-tier tech place (when someone says "big tech" it's Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, not MS), he lost the main Microsoft advantage - an army of Windows programmers. MS under Ballmer lost couple of generations of programmers, to the point where MS needs to ship Linux kernel with Windows just to get cosy with programmers again. Another example of such uninspired CEO that keeps making good quarters but tarnishes his company advantages is Tim Cook. I can't wait for him to be replaced.

Adutude 6y ago
I agree completely. Steve Ballmer put all of Microsoft eggs in the Office Basket that let mobile die on the vine. He pushed licensing and marketing and left developers and new tech to languish. It's why to this day, Microsoft doesn't have a place in the mobile space, it's iOS or Android. I also aggree that pushing MS in a more Open source direction has helped make them more palatable to developers.
Miraste 6y ago
Cook hasn't damaged Apple nearly as much as Ballmer hurt MS. During Ballmer's tenure, Microsoft launched the Zune, the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone, Windows 8, and the Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360). Cook may not be innovative, but he has yet to have a real failure, much less a disaster on the scale of those.
- pavlov 6y ago
  > “... the Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360)” This is an odd thing to blame on Ballmer — he was CEO already during the original Xbox and Xbox 360 launches! His CEO tenure was 14 years... Why doesn’t he get credit for making Microsoft a top vendor in gaming?

metalliqaz 6y ago

Under Ballmer, MS dropped the ball on mobile. They had Windows CE, Windows on every desktop, and Xbox on the set top. And with all that, they couldn't put together a viable mobile product? They had the chance to make a holistic ecosystem that would span desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, TV, and everything in between. And they dropped the ball. Now we have to deal with a Duopoly between the largest advertiser and the largest media merchant. UGH.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
They really messed that whole thing up. They were complacent before and after the iPhone was released, they should have ported it to their tablet instead of ruining Windows desktop and they wasted billions buying Nokia. The funny thing is everyone I spoke to who used it loved Windows phone.
sumtechguy 6y ago
No kidding... WinCE should have been a stripped down NT. Instead it was this 'other' thing that they drug along that was 'windows' but not quite 'windows' and a pain to dev for. They were stuck in this weird spot where they had to create a build system that took into account of every BOM every crappy cell phone the ODMs could come up with. Then married to cell phones that would forget everything you setup on the drop of a hat. Apple did something different that changed the market. They put an unlimited plan on it, decent amount of NAND, a good touchscreen, and a straight forward GUI that worked in the small screen market.
- projektfu 6y ago
  It’s an example of the company trying to avoid kneecapping the cash cow when experimenting. I really liked the Workpad z50, which was really the first netbook. Its windows CE runtime was light and useful, and booted instantly with execute-in-place. Its flaws were, in my opinion, entirely due to Microsoft not wanting to let CE become a viable alternative to NT. (That, and using a mask ROM instead of flash).
- ThrowawayB7 6y ago

mabbo 6y ago

I remember being an intern at Microsoft in 2009 and going to a talk with Ballmer. What I remember is the most charismatic human being I've ever seen. The man could have been a cult leader. He had and maybe still has power in his ability to speak. Any question we asked (and we were interns, we asked lots of them) he had not just an answer but a good answer. He spoke of his failures well too: "They ask if we should make a video game console or a phone, and I chose the console- I should have said 'both'!". But nobody cares about how well you can speak. People want results.[0] The original schedule for the event actually got cancelled at the last minute- there was a huge announcement that had to be made, a big deal that was going to change the face of Microsoft, and it overlapped with our time. He was very apologetic about that, and rescheduled us for the next week, and then spoke at length about this incredible thing that was about to happen. That big announcement? Bing was teaming up with Yahoo on Search. (We all remember the day of that earth-changing event, right?) [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrhSLf0I-HM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrhSLf0I-HM

Wistar 6y ago
The man's natural speaking voice is the loudest I have ever heard. I could identify him coming down a long corridor by his voice well before I could by sight. He drove a several-year old dark red Mercury Montego in which he almost ran me over in a parking lot behind the EBC. He was on the phone.
RandallBrown 6y ago
I was at MS for his last company meeting and you're right. That guy has charisma and PASSION for Microsoft. I never liked working there, but watching him scream "I LOVE THIS COMPANY" while in tears made me feel like I was part of something huge and important.
- anentropic 6y ago
  It sounds terrifying TBH :)
  - notJim 6y ago

momokoko 6y ago

I think Balmer takes a lot of the blame that should probably be directed more towards the board. Balmer was doing exactly what they asked him to do and had he made the type of decisions Satya is making, they would have replaced him with a more conservative CEO. Balmer was very successful in doing what he was tasked with. You can’t blame him for that.

brainzap 6y ago

he also realised that he needed to step down for growth

kabdib 6y ago

Ballmer created an indescribably toxic culture around reviews with his David Welch inspired "up or out" and "fire the bottom five percent" policies. Stack rankings were more like knife fights than honest appraisals of people's abilities and contributions. Teams used to deliberately hire underperformers so they could fire them, thus shielding productive people they would otherwise have to get rid of. I'm not going to get started on his miserable technical leadership. Things more or less just happened under him, he didn't seem that involved in the quality of what was being produced. Microsoft is well rid of him.

rcoc 6y ago
Jack Welch, but your point still stands.
- kabdib 6y ago
  You're correct, my mistake.

lotso 6y ago

100%. A lot of these things were set in motion under Ballmer and he tee'd it up for Satya. That doesn't excuse Ballmer's missteps and of course Satya deserves credit for a lot of the execution, but I think people like to latch on to the simple narrative of Satya Good, Ballmer Bad.

nailer 6y ago

> It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. It was a few weeks later. Office for iOS was ready to go but I suspect Ballmer was holding it back (not wanting to give up precious Windows exclusives) rather than driving it.

simonh 6y ago

The problems at Microsoft started under Bill. Microsoft's tablet and mobile platform initiatives went absolutely nowhere. Pen computing, MPC and Origami were complete flops. Longhorn never even happened, Vista was a disaster. Windows 8 was after Bill left as software architect but he was still involved with the company at that time. Yes Office on iOS was a smart move, buy why was it even necessary? It was a white flag after over a decade of missed opportunities. Only under a new leader could it be re-branded as a refreshing change of direction. I honestly don't know to what extent the problems there can be laid at Ballmer's door, but it really wasn't just him, frankly it was him and Bill. They were fantastic at executing on established products and technologies pioneered by others but dropped the ball time and again at innovating into new areas.

danielovichdk 6y ago

I worked for MS under ballmer and turner. And they are in my opinion definitly, with Gates in the background, the ones that are the reason why the shared have rocketed. Satya did not invent the "platform wins" strategy. That was long before him. And that's what the company is still capitalizing on. That's what Microsoft is still the best at. Platform. And tools. No one comes even close to having the developer experience MS offers. And that plays directly into the platform strategy. Ballmer was a genius. Straight fact.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

whydoineedone 6y ago

Satya was head of cloud prior to ascending to ceo, though

vijaybritto 6y ago

Wait wasn't Satya the head of the cloud division before he became the CEO? I was thinking that he had started these things and pushed it further after becoming CEO!

libraryatnight 6y ago

I find it hard to believe his tenure was such hot garbage and he just saved his best stuff to hand off to Satya.

outworlder 6y ago

> It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. They might have been developed while he was at the helm, but how do you know he wasn't the one blocking their release?

spaetzleesser 6y ago

Very true. Ballmer didn't make Microsoft cool but he left a very healthy, highly profitable company with plenty of reserves. I wouldn't call what Nadella did a turnaround but just a change of direction and focus. I am not too impressed either with what MS is doing with Windows right now. The Windows 10 developer story seems pretty confusing and I am urging my company to go away from Windows for our devices.

CamperBob2 6y ago

What on earth are you talking about? Ballmer should have been met at the airport and given his walking papers when he got back from laughing at the iPhone on the Today Show. He basically won the lottery by getting assigned to the same dorm floor at Harvard as Bill Gates, and has been coasting ever since.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

I read somewhere that Satya openly expressed is views against Ballmer's Nokia/windows phone strategy and every other strategy which ended in failure during Ballmer's tenure during their meetings and that it played a crucial role in appointing him to the top role later on.

autodidacticon 6y ago

| I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. Agreed. Ballmer's tenure is widely misunderstood. Gates does not receive enough blame for the missteps of that era. Great read: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-l...

SEJeff 6y ago

Satya ran the entire cloud strategy before being promoted. The things you're giving Ballmer credit for were literally things Satya worked on :) In February 2011 Nadella was promoted to president of the Server and Tools Division, which oversaw products for companies’ data centers like Windows Server and the SQL Server database. This department also oversaw the Azure cloud platform. When he took over this area it was doing $16.6 billion in revenue. In two years, by 2013, Nadella raised that number to $20.3 billion.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]