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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 visi

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?
- ProAm 6y ago
  > the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone Surprisingly the phone was loved. What wasnt loved was the one desktop everywhere so when they tried to push 'Metro' to the PC, tablet and phone it struggled. But the tiled phone interface was good, and a lot of people liked it. I really think Ballmer and Cook are manifestations of the same person. Mac OS quality is the worst it's been in probably a decade+? Hardware design for the laptops have been under massive scrutiny. Cook brought the Watch to the table which is a massive success. Their services business plan is just a money grab like their approach to accessories. But Apple isn't innovating much, they have been cashing in in recent years (besides the watch imo, maybe airpods but Id personally disagree)
  - hanley 6y ago
    The Windows phone was loved because it had excellent Nokia hardware. The software was not loved and the app store was lacking.
    - nailer 6y ago
      I think the software was loved. It was years before Apple and Android did their own 'natively digital' designs which echoed Metro and Zune's design aesthetic.
    - thomasz 6y ago
      Owned one. It was a damn good phone, had a great UI that remains unsurpassed to this day, but it clearly came at least two years too late to gain the critical mass needed for a thriving ecosystem.
      - dougmany 6y ago
        I miss having a copy and paste that worked so well.
      - VRay 6y ago
        I loved the UX on it too, but the crappy locked-down web browser killed it for me.. I don't even use apps, but since I couldn't load Firefox with uBlock on there, and there weren't any single-purpose apps, it was really rough
- doublerabbit 6y ago
  As someone who bought the Windows Phone it was glorious. When Windows Mobile 10 arrived it was fantastic. Such a shame they sold it off and yes I know the reasons but it was the best phone I've had in the modern century.
  - karmakaze 6y ago
    Doesn't iPhone have live tiles now/soon?
- ThrowawayB7 6y ago
  Y'know, the CEO doesn't personally make all the decisions at a company. Specifically: > "Windows Phone" You can lay that at Terry Myerson's feet. The several breaks in backward compatibility was a big factor in ensuring WP had no apps. > "Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360)" That was crappy decision making by Don Mattrick. He also had a hand in killing Flight Simulator IIRC.
  - Miraste 6y ago
    I'll concede the Xbox One wasn't Ballmer's fault, but he still gets a fair share of the blame for WP. It was (or should have been) Microsoft's most important new initiative for years, Ballmer could clearly see that it was failing, and yet he kept promoting Myerson and giving him more power. A better CEO would have intervened.
- knicknic 6y ago
  If you want to talk about a failure you should talk about the kin.
yourapostasy 6y ago
> 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. Easy to say "making good quarters" is table stakes, much harder to come up with a vision that works. What do you see as possible visions Cook could pursue given Apple's positioning?
dannykwells 6y ago
Apple stock has 10x'd under Cook since 2011. Microsoft was flat under Ballmer. So ummm, maybe a slight difference in performance.
- na85 6y ago
  Basing your opinion of a CEO solely on stock prices, which can easily be inflated via things like buybacks, is perhaps a bit narrow minded. A company is more than its stock price.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Ok as a general point, but those criticisms simply do not apply to Cooke. The company has done absolute gang busters both in products and fundamental performance, and that's what has driven up the stock price.
  - btilly 6y ago
    Inflating your stock price by buybacks is easier said than done. In fact according to the CAPM economic model, it is impossible. The assets of the company decrease by the money spent on buybacks, which matches the value of stock bought and destroyed. This should leave the price per remaining stock unchanged.
    - na85 6y ago
      Sounds to me like the CAPM economic model is in need of revision. Buybacks are a common tool for increasing shareholder value and investor sentiment figures heavily in asset pricing.
      - btilly 6y ago
        There are a number of reasons why buybacks can increase prices. See https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-value-of-share-buybacks#:~:text=Research%20from%20both%20academics%20and,of%20the%20shares%2C%20see%20prices https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-cor... for a list. All are second order effects.
lupinglade 6y ago
Yes, Cook needs to go!
umutisik 6y ago
They did the Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple Music under Cook. Lots of innovations in the phone and tablet (pencil, photo processing, 120hz screen, neural engine and more) And now they make as good processors as Intel does and will be deploying them in macs which they seem to be doing thoughtfully. Even in AI, while they are not as strong as others, they have led with their push for privacy and on-device models. Tim Cook has done a fantastic job.
sorenjan 6y ago
I wonder what your thoughts are on Sundar Pichai. Has Google created anything interesting under his leadership? I would put Cook above Pichai if I ranked top tech CEOs.
- nailer 6y ago
  Google hasn't had a major new product for a decade. Prior to 2010: Search, Doubleclick, Maps, Mail, GSuite, AppEngine (which was first serverless platform). All of which were category makers or category killers. Since 2010:
  - criley2 6y ago
    Who has? We're still on Facebook and Twitter and Youtube, using iPhones to play digital music. You say 2020, I say 2009. Wireless earbuds and smart watches I guess are the only "game changing" (they're not) inventions of note for the past decade? Web... phone... computer... they're just more refined versions of products we had in 2009.
    - novok 6y ago
      Well VR is a thing now for $300. And there is tiktok and snapchat as far as social media goes. Companies are slowly marching to deliver AR as a product too. Consumer drones are another thing along with cheap digital large sensor cameras, and once something like waymo and boom delivers, those would be revolutions of their own. Also solar is cheaper than coal now as an energy source, and complete DNA sequencing now costs $1000 vs $100’000. Electric cars are now something that the upper-middle class can own practically.
      - stjohnswarts 6y ago
        Am I the only that finds SM platforms like snapchat and tiktok infantile and vacuous? Say what you want about Facebook and Reddit, but in the right forums you can have thoughtful debates and discussions. I don't see TT and SC as anything but fads. TT is the same 10 or 15 takes on the same thing over and over and SC is just a 1 hit music star that somehow still lingers around.
scarface74 6y ago
As far as Cook. There is no next iPhone. The iPhone was a once in a lifetime product. There were already 1 billion phones being sold a year when the iPhone was introduced - Jobs said he wanted to sell 10 million phones and capture 1% of the market. The smart phone (not the iPhone) has 70-80% penetration. What we call an electronic communication device that’s always connected may change, but there is no larger conceivable electronic market. As much as HN poo poos the Apple Watch and the AirPods, from a technical standpoint it is much more innovative than the iPad - the last product that was introduced under Jobs. Once you have the iPhone, using the same technology in something with less constraints was easy. The Watch is just the oppposite. From a financial standpoint. The Watch already produced more in revenue and profit than the iPod at peak. As does the AirPods. Not to mention that Apple could have never shipped in volume without Cooks supply chain management expertise. Then there are the upcoming ARM Macs that will probably be the fastest personal computers in the industry in a year or two. The $399 iPhone SE is already faster than any Android phone at any price.
- fossuser 6y ago
  The next iPhone is likely some sort of AR glasses interface (whenever that hardware becomes plausible). They’ve been laying the platform groundwork for AR for years now, that’s not an accident.
- acoard 6y ago
  Humour me – if the iPad isn't innovative as it's simply a larger iPhone, how is the Watch innovative? Is it not simply a smaller iPhone with a strap? I recognize Apple's A series and S series chips are different, but both the chips and watch in general seem like incrementalism to me.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Technically? It’s easy when you have more space, larger batteries and higher thermal limits to have more features. But the original iPad had technically inferior processor (256MB RAM vs 512MB than the iPhone that came out 3 months later). The Watch being smaller, it’s technically much more impressive that it has an always on display, cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, heart rate sensors, altimeter, gyroscope, 32GB Storage, and it still gets 12-16 hours of battery life. While the Apple’s A series is already 2 or 3 years ahead of everything else in the mobile market, nothing is even coming that close to the S series chip.
jm4 6y ago
I disagree. Tim Cook has been pretty solid. He's no Steve Jobs, but he's done a fine job. Although he hasn't produced any new cash cows so far, he's been a decent steward of the ones they already had and he's taken the company into new markets with the Apple Watch. It's not the most inspiring product, but it is the premium wearable and clear leader. Then there are the AirPods, which fit in nicely in wearable category. And I love what Apple is doing with their own silicon. Sure, there are no home runs here, but he's effectively executing a coherent strategy and hasn't really had any big mistakes. I wouldn't put him as high up as Nadella and I certainly wouldn't put him as low as Ballmer. It's tough to be the guy who follows the founder and Cook has handled it well. I don't know who is out there who looks like a better candidate or a suitable replacement for Cook.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > Although he hasn't produced any new cash cows so far ... > Sure, there are no home runs here, ... Huh? AirPods + Apple Watch are bigger than either the Mac or the iPad and are growing much faster. Companies don't crank out iPhone class "home runs" every 10 years. Microsoft had the Windows and Office, Google had Search and GMail (and made solid acquisitions in the form of YouTube and Docs). Facebook had Facebook... and bought everything else they own worth a damn. Apple created a $25 billion/ year product line (AirPods/ Beats/ Watch) under Cook... but it's not a home run?
  - jm4 6y ago
    I didn't realize they generate that much money. When you put it in those terms, he looks even better. In any case, I think the guy has done a pretty good job.
hevelvarik 6y ago
If when people say big tech they exclude msft (and include Facebook), they are simply wrong. .net, sqlserver, power bi, hell office are the blood flowing through Government and industry. Gaming is also tech and azure will get there if they just keep at it. The startup world is only a slice of the pie, and not the largest or most important . If you don’t live on the coasts, and you want to invest in a stack that will keep you employed indefinitely and wherever you go, you pick dotnet hands down, and I say this as someone who hasn’t written a line of dotnet code
- raunakdag 6y ago
  No matter what technologies MSFT have, the number one thought in people’s minds these days when you say big tech is simply FB G Amazon and Apple. It’s no longer MSFT up there with them. Definitely a stigma thing.
  - unethical_ban 6y ago
    Who cares? They have sustainable business models in several segments, and even though they aren't on the cutting edge of pop culture, they're doing well.
    - bennysonething 6y ago
      Plus c# seems to be usually much further a head than java. See lamdas, async await... One thing about Microsoft, their tooling just seems more polished and things tend to just work. I'd be surprised if a lot of start ups don't start using c# since it's now open source and more platform agnostic.
      - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
        I was considering .NET Core for a project but they appear to have fallen behind the JVM rather dramatically when it comes to GC performance. The JVM now has low latency collectors for very large heaps. Is there any work being done in .NET Core to catch up?
ogre_codes 6y ago
> 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. Comments like this make zero sense to me. Apple might be better if Jobs was still alive. But without a time machine, and potentially better medicine, that's not an option. Under Cook Apple: - Increased profitability and market share massively. - Created the most successful watch brand in the world. - Turned Beats into Beats + AirPods, the two most successful headphone brands in the world. - Massively increased Mac, iPhone, iPad, install base. - Avoided the sort of ridiculous cash burning acquisitions to inflate growth Ballmer was guilty of. Apple has a bunch of mis-steps under Cook, but none of them have had long term company damaging impact. Many of the things people beat Cook up over were actually things Jobs was as bad/ worse with. For example almost all the App Store policies everyone hates were created under Jobs. Jobs was also far more protective and litigious. Cook isn't Jobs, since Jobs is dead the comparison is pointless. Cook has done better than the vast majority of CEOs who have taken over successful brands. Apple is doing just fine.
- godelmachine 6y ago
  >>potentially better medicine Jobs refused conventional treatment to treat his cancer until it was too late. He placed heavy emphasis on oriental mysticism.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    There is a lot of conjecture about Jobs death, I try to avoid delving into speculation too much.
  - FreeFull 6y ago
    While that's true, pancreatic cancer is nasty enough that even with prompt treatment, there was a good chance he'd succumb to it anyway, although he'd definitely have way better chances.
    - baldfat 6y ago
      His cancer was the least deadly of the cancers and with treatment he would have lived much longer. My mom had stage one pancreatic cancer 4 years ago and she is still alive today and cancer free for over four years. So it is possible.
CountSessine 6y ago
and my impression was that all good things that started under his regime (Azure, more openness) I think a lot of that was Ray Ozzie. I guess Balmer deserves some credit at least for hiring him? MS under Ballmer lost couple of generations of programmers A lot of younger programmers may not realize this, but in the 90’s, all roads led to Microsoft. If you were a programmer and you didn’t know at least some of the MS acronym soup of Win32/VB/ATL/MFC/etc/etc, you weren’t getting paid. Microsoft and Windows completely dominated commercial software development. And then what happened? Balmer tried stupidly to kill the web. He redeployed the IE team and assumed that the web would stagnate without his attention. He’d killed Netscape and the threat had passed. In the meantime, Mozilla and Apple and Google were forming the whatwg and architecting the next generation of the web. And MS was not only not a part of it, but had lost all credibility in the eyes of web and browser devs. And then of course he also got caught flat-footed by the iPhone. Balmer was a serial failure as a CEO. Maybe he deserves some credit, a little bit at least for Azure? But he’ll always be remembered for all of those stupid quips he made about how Apple wasn’t going to be able to make headway in the smartphone biz.
- alarge 6y ago
  The comment about the 90's is simply not true. I've been a successful (e.g., getting paid) developer since the 80s and have never been in the Microsoft stack. With the exception of a small bit of VMS-hosted development in the 80s, everything I have done in my career has been hosted on some sort of Unix. And I'm not some outlier. Sun Microsystems dominated the 90s for problems of just about any scale beyond the small workgroup. I make this point because many of us (both engineers and customers alike) pushed back hard against Microsoft. They actively fought against open standards and interoperability. We literally thought of them as the evil empire. Even as late as the mid 2000s, when I was at Yahoo and there was talk of a Microsoft acquisition, I would have quit rather than work at Microsoft. Economics aside, changing that toxic culture is what I appreciate most about Nadella's time as CEO. He has (it appears) made Microsoft into a citizen.
  - bluedino 6y ago
    You jumped from ship to ship while you could have just been a Windows developer the whole time. Not that you wouldn't have had a bunch of ships to jump between in Windows-land.
ska 6y ago
Cook isn't Jobs. But Cook isn't Ballmer, either.
heimatau 6y ago
At first I was going to be critical of your point but thinking about it for a minute. I think your right. Apple and Microsoft aren't as innovative anymore. It's sad. But I do think Microsoft is leading this front between the two. Some of their acquisitions of SAS products have grown and improved, where Apple isn't doing something significant to improve the lives of it's users. Does a photo really add that much value? Or an emoji? Whereas many of the SAS products Microsoft has is a business model that is to speed up it's users productivity. As for losing out on programmers which (my words) essentially reduce the exponential behavior that tech was experiencing. I'll say this. It is sad. Rent seeking is a typical behavior of any company that gets large. I'm actually now wondering if something is preventing these companies from growing very fast, like a national actor. If you look at Amazon, they are in numerous industries and have a little market share of them and are trying to innovate in them. Amazon isn't slowing down either. I find it an interesting case study. Only AWS is helping programmers, many other products are actually against user's interests. Another case study would be Tesla. They are emerging as a most likely monopoly due to their relentless innovation. But they don't harness community programmers either. I believe this will change overtime, since Musk has said this for many years but I doubt there will be a lot of freedom in their system either. I want to see a company that is innovative and allowing others to innovate on their platform. It would be very valuable to society if we do this.
RestlessMind 6y ago
No strong opinions on Cook but a Ballmer of the current era is Sundar Pichai. Google of the last few years is utterly rudderless, losing all the mojo and goodwill they once had. That shows in the Stock price, in (a lack of) successful new products, in Google’s loss of reputation as the “coolest company to be at”, in the bloated middle management occupied in turf wars, in essentially most of the things that matter.
- medium_burrito 6y ago
  That's extremely unfair to Ballmer- Ballmer made lots of bets and put a lot of effort into them. Some were given up on- the phone, but you can't critize Azure, among many. Microsoft has developed lots of products and can develop more. They did plenty under Ballmer. When they fail they try again, or invest more effort. Google has only one cash cow. They don't know how to develop products and how to win customers. I feel like products at Google get developed when someone has a bright idea, and then as soon as they get promoted they go do other stuff, and the business isn't really about nurturing a new product. All they care about is their big ads cash cow, with which nothing can compare.
  - RestlessMind 6y ago
    > That's extremely unfair to Ballmer LOL, I agree. Ballmer at least came across as a strong leader, if wrong-headed at times. Sundar just comes across as a weakling yes-man trying to please all the sides.
  - temp667 6y ago
    Google doesn't maintain anything. I couldn't / can't get my work calendars to work on google home, but I can get my work calendars to work on Alexa - let that sink in! Been a top complaint for years - they just don't care - it's really all about the new stuff. Apple - a lot of nice features that solve problems I had usually on new releases.
- fakedang 6y ago
  That's what you get for hiring the B-school type who I doubt has coded even one line after undergrad (or even in undergrad). Google has just been McKinseying a ton of products in the name of poor sales instead of actively changing them for better. Not to mention the loss of workplace culture, the end of TGIF dinners, and zero diversification from the ads business.
SimonPStevens 6y ago
To not include Microsoft when you say 'big tech' is blinkered. They are currently the 2nd biggest company in the world by market cap. Around double the size of Facebook. They might not be cool or trendy in tech circles anymore, but they are without a doubt a big tech company. Their OS runs over 70% of desktops [1] and their office suite has over 80% of the market share [2]. And that's just the sectors they completely dominate in before we even talk about other sectors that they are involved in with major competitive products. Xbox, Surface, Azure, SQL server, Power BI, Windows Server, .net, Visual Studio, BizTalk, are all huge popular widely used tech products. And I'm sure there's more that I don't know. And then add GitHub and LinkedIn if you want to count recent acquisitions that still seem to operate mostly independently at the moment. 1 - https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide 2 - https://www.ciodive.com/news/Google-Microsoft-Office-collaboration/571740/ https://www.ciodive.com/news/Google-Microsoft-Office-collabo...
caycep 6y ago
Cook was also running Apple ops for a decade before being CEO. It's not like he appeared out of nowhere. One can argue Apple's design chops and freedom to innovate were because of Cook, who cleaned up all the business and ops shenanigans that were driving Apple bankrupt under Scully, Spindler and Amelio, and create a stable foundation for Jobs to work his magic.
- ksec 6y ago
  I am certainly not happy with Tim Cook from a Product and Strategy perspective. But from an Operation / COO perspective. He is second to none. So good that I put him as Genius in this Category.
curyous 6y ago
Steve Ballmer made some mistakes, but after enough years went by, he realized that and changed his approach, setting up MS for success once again. He just didn't have enough time to execute on his new vision before he got ousted.
shawnb576 6y ago
As someone who was at MS during those years, directly involved with Azure, OSS, Mobile/phone I can verify that Steve was a great biz guy but had very little sense for where the tech world was headed. What Satya has done is incredibly impressive and will be much studied IMHO
madeofpalk 6y ago
> when someone says "big tech" it's Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, not MS For what it's worth (and this is mostly seperate from your point I guess), most of the time when people say "big tech", they're talking about the negative cultural, political, and economic impacts of those companies. Maybe its not so bad to not be lumped in with Facebook?

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?
ProAm 6y ago
> the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone Surprisingly the phone was loved. What wasnt loved was the one desktop everywhere so when they tried to push 'Metro' to the PC, tablet and phone it struggled. But the tiled phone interface was good, and a lot of people liked it. I really think Ballmer and Cook are manifestations of the same person. Mac OS quality is the worst it's been in probably a decade+? Hardware design for the laptops have been under massive scrutiny. Cook brought the Watch to the table which is a massive success. Their services business plan is just a money grab like their approach to accessories. But Apple isn't innovating much, they have been cashing in in recent years (besides the watch imo, maybe airpods but Id personally disagree)
- hanley 6y ago
  The Windows phone was loved because it had excellent Nokia hardware. The software was not loved and the app store was lacking.
  - nailer 6y ago
    I think the software was loved. It was years before Apple and Android did their own 'natively digital' designs which echoed Metro and Zune's design aesthetic.
  - thomasz 6y ago
    Owned one. It was a damn good phone, had a great UI that remains unsurpassed to this day, but it clearly came at least two years too late to gain the critical mass needed for a thriving ecosystem.
    - dougmany 6y ago
      I miss having a copy and paste that worked so well.
    - VRay 6y ago
      I loved the UX on it too, but the crappy locked-down web browser killed it for me.. I don't even use apps, but since I couldn't load Firefox with uBlock on there, and there weren't any single-purpose apps, it was really rough
doublerabbit 6y ago
As someone who bought the Windows Phone it was glorious. When Windows Mobile 10 arrived it was fantastic. Such a shame they sold it off and yes I know the reasons but it was the best phone I've had in the modern century.
- karmakaze 6y ago
  Doesn't iPhone have live tiles now/soon?
ThrowawayB7 6y ago
Y'know, the CEO doesn't personally make all the decisions at a company. Specifically: > "Windows Phone" You can lay that at Terry Myerson's feet. The several breaks in backward compatibility was a big factor in ensuring WP had no apps. > "Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360)" That was crappy decision making by Don Mattrick. He also had a hand in killing Flight Simulator IIRC.
- Miraste 6y ago
  I'll concede the Xbox One wasn't Ballmer's fault, but he still gets a fair share of the blame for WP. It was (or should have been) Microsoft's most important new initiative for years, Ballmer could clearly see that it was failing, and yet he kept promoting Myerson and giving him more power. A better CEO would have intervened.
knicknic 6y ago
If you want to talk about a failure you should talk about the kin.

yourapostasy 6y ago

> 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. Easy to say "making good quarters" is table stakes, much harder to come up with a vision that works. What do you see as possible visions Cook could pursue given Apple's positioning?

dannykwells 6y ago

Apple stock has 10x'd under Cook since 2011. Microsoft was flat under Ballmer. So ummm, maybe a slight difference in performance.

na85 6y ago
Basing your opinion of a CEO solely on stock prices, which can easily be inflated via things like buybacks, is perhaps a bit narrow minded. A company is more than its stock price.
- simonh 6y ago
  Ok as a general point, but those criticisms simply do not apply to Cooke. The company has done absolute gang busters both in products and fundamental performance, and that's what has driven up the stock price.
- btilly 6y ago
  Inflating your stock price by buybacks is easier said than done. In fact according to the CAPM economic model, it is impossible. The assets of the company decrease by the money spent on buybacks, which matches the value of stock bought and destroyed. This should leave the price per remaining stock unchanged.
  - na85 6y ago
    Sounds to me like the CAPM economic model is in need of revision. Buybacks are a common tool for increasing shareholder value and investor sentiment figures heavily in asset pricing.
    - btilly 6y ago
      There are a number of reasons why buybacks can increase prices. See https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-value-of-share-buybacks#:~:text=Research%20from%20both%20academics%20and,of%20the%20shares%2C%20see%20prices https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-cor... for a list. All are second order effects.

lupinglade 6y ago

Yes, Cook needs to go!

umutisik 6y ago

They did the Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple Music under Cook. Lots of innovations in the phone and tablet (pencil, photo processing, 120hz screen, neural engine and more) And now they make as good processors as Intel does and will be deploying them in macs which they seem to be doing thoughtfully. Even in AI, while they are not as strong as others, they have led with their push for privacy and on-device models. Tim Cook has done a fantastic job.

sorenjan 6y ago

I wonder what your thoughts are on Sundar Pichai. Has Google created anything interesting under his leadership? I would put Cook above Pichai if I ranked top tech CEOs.

nailer 6y ago
Google hasn't had a major new product for a decade. Prior to 2010: Search, Doubleclick, Maps, Mail, GSuite, AppEngine (which was first serverless platform). All of which were category makers or category killers. Since 2010:
- criley2 6y ago
  Who has? We're still on Facebook and Twitter and Youtube, using iPhones to play digital music. You say 2020, I say 2009. Wireless earbuds and smart watches I guess are the only "game changing" (they're not) inventions of note for the past decade? Web... phone... computer... they're just more refined versions of products we had in 2009.
  - novok 6y ago
    Well VR is a thing now for $300. And there is tiktok and snapchat as far as social media goes. Companies are slowly marching to deliver AR as a product too. Consumer drones are another thing along with cheap digital large sensor cameras, and once something like waymo and boom delivers, those would be revolutions of their own. Also solar is cheaper than coal now as an energy source, and complete DNA sequencing now costs $1000 vs $100’000. Electric cars are now something that the upper-middle class can own practically.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      Am I the only that finds SM platforms like snapchat and tiktok infantile and vacuous? Say what you want about Facebook and Reddit, but in the right forums you can have thoughtful debates and discussions. I don't see TT and SC as anything but fads. TT is the same 10 or 15 takes on the same thing over and over and SC is just a 1 hit music star that somehow still lingers around.

scarface74 6y ago

As far as Cook. There is no next iPhone. The iPhone was a once in a lifetime product. There were already 1 billion phones being sold a year when the iPhone was introduced - Jobs said he wanted to sell 10 million phones and capture 1% of the market. The smart phone (not the iPhone) has 70-80% penetration. What we call an electronic communication device that’s always connected may change, but there is no larger conceivable electronic market. As much as HN poo poos the Apple Watch and the AirPods, from a technical standpoint it is much more innovative than the iPad - the last product that was introduced under Jobs. Once you have the iPhone, using the same technology in something with less constraints was easy. The Watch is just the oppposite. From a financial standpoint. The Watch already produced more in revenue and profit than the iPod at peak. As does the AirPods. Not to mention that Apple could have never shipped in volume without Cooks supply chain management expertise. Then there are the upcoming ARM Macs that will probably be the fastest personal computers in the industry in a year or two. The $399 iPhone SE is already faster than any Android phone at any price.

fossuser 6y ago
The next iPhone is likely some sort of AR glasses interface (whenever that hardware becomes plausible). They’ve been laying the platform groundwork for AR for years now, that’s not an accident.
acoard 6y ago
Humour me – if the iPad isn't innovative as it's simply a larger iPhone, how is the Watch innovative? Is it not simply a smaller iPhone with a strap? I recognize Apple's A series and S series chips are different, but both the chips and watch in general seem like incrementalism to me.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Technically? It’s easy when you have more space, larger batteries and higher thermal limits to have more features. But the original iPad had technically inferior processor (256MB RAM vs 512MB than the iPhone that came out 3 months later). The Watch being smaller, it’s technically much more impressive that it has an always on display, cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, heart rate sensors, altimeter, gyroscope, 32GB Storage, and it still gets 12-16 hours of battery life. While the Apple’s A series is already 2 or 3 years ahead of everything else in the mobile market, nothing is even coming that close to the S series chip.

jm4 6y ago

I disagree. Tim Cook has been pretty solid. He's no Steve Jobs, but he's done a fine job. Although he hasn't produced any new cash cows so far, he's been a decent steward of the ones they already had and he's taken the company into new markets with the Apple Watch. It's not the most inspiring product, but it is the premium wearable and clear leader. Then there are the AirPods, which fit in nicely in wearable category. And I love what Apple is doing with their own silicon. Sure, there are no home runs here, but he's effectively executing a coherent strategy and hasn't really had any big mistakes. I wouldn't put him as high up as Nadella and I certainly wouldn't put him as low as Ballmer. It's tough to be the guy who follows the founder and Cook has handled it well. I don't know who is out there who looks like a better candidate or a suitable replacement for Cook.

ogre_codes 6y ago
> Although he hasn't produced any new cash cows so far ... > Sure, there are no home runs here, ... Huh? AirPods + Apple Watch are bigger than either the Mac or the iPad and are growing much faster. Companies don't crank out iPhone class "home runs" every 10 years. Microsoft had the Windows and Office, Google had Search and GMail (and made solid acquisitions in the form of YouTube and Docs). Facebook had Facebook... and bought everything else they own worth a damn. Apple created a $25 billion/ year product line (AirPods/ Beats/ Watch) under Cook... but it's not a home run?
- jm4 6y ago
  I didn't realize they generate that much money. When you put it in those terms, he looks even better. In any case, I think the guy has done a pretty good job.

hevelvarik 6y ago

If when people say big tech they exclude msft (and include Facebook), they are simply wrong. .net, sqlserver, power bi, hell office are the blood flowing through Government and industry. Gaming is also tech and azure will get there if they just keep at it. The startup world is only a slice of the pie, and not the largest or most important . If you don’t live on the coasts, and you want to invest in a stack that will keep you employed indefinitely and wherever you go, you pick dotnet hands down, and I say this as someone who hasn’t written a line of dotnet code

raunakdag 6y ago
No matter what technologies MSFT have, the number one thought in people’s minds these days when you say big tech is simply FB G Amazon and Apple. It’s no longer MSFT up there with them. Definitely a stigma thing.
- unethical_ban 6y ago
  Who cares? They have sustainable business models in several segments, and even though they aren't on the cutting edge of pop culture, they're doing well.
  - bennysonething 6y ago
    Plus c# seems to be usually much further a head than java. See lamdas, async await... One thing about Microsoft, their tooling just seems more polished and things tend to just work. I'd be surprised if a lot of start ups don't start using c# since it's now open source and more platform agnostic.
    - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
      I was considering .NET Core for a project but they appear to have fallen behind the JVM rather dramatically when it comes to GC performance. The JVM now has low latency collectors for very large heaps. Is there any work being done in .NET Core to catch up?

ogre_codes 6y ago

> 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. Comments like this make zero sense to me. Apple might be better if Jobs was still alive. But without a time machine, and potentially better medicine, that's not an option. Under Cook Apple: - Increased profitability and market share massively. - Created the most successful watch brand in the world. - Turned Beats into Beats + AirPods, the two most successful headphone brands in the world. - Massively increased Mac, iPhone, iPad, install base. - Avoided the sort of ridiculous cash burning acquisitions to inflate growth Ballmer was guilty of. Apple has a bunch of mis-steps under Cook, but none of them have had long term company damaging impact. Many of the things people beat Cook up over were actually things Jobs was as bad/ worse with. For example almost all the App Store policies everyone hates were created under Jobs. Jobs was also far more protective and litigious. Cook isn't Jobs, since Jobs is dead the comparison is pointless. Cook has done better than the vast majority of CEOs who have taken over successful brands. Apple is doing just fine.

godelmachine 6y ago
>>potentially better medicine Jobs refused conventional treatment to treat his cancer until it was too late. He placed heavy emphasis on oriental mysticism.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  There is a lot of conjecture about Jobs death, I try to avoid delving into speculation too much.
- FreeFull 6y ago
  While that's true, pancreatic cancer is nasty enough that even with prompt treatment, there was a good chance he'd succumb to it anyway, although he'd definitely have way better chances.
  - baldfat 6y ago
    His cancer was the least deadly of the cancers and with treatment he would have lived much longer. My mom had stage one pancreatic cancer 4 years ago and she is still alive today and cancer free for over four years. So it is possible.

CountSessine 6y ago

and my impression was that all good things that started under his regime (Azure, more openness) I think a lot of that was Ray Ozzie. I guess Balmer deserves some credit at least for hiring him? MS under Ballmer lost couple of generations of programmers A lot of younger programmers may not realize this, but in the 90’s, all roads led to Microsoft. If you were a programmer and you didn’t know at least some of the MS acronym soup of Win32/VB/ATL/MFC/etc/etc, you weren’t getting paid. Microsoft and Windows completely dominated commercial software development. And then what happened? Balmer tried stupidly to kill the web. He redeployed the IE team and assumed that the web would stagnate without his attention. He’d killed Netscape and the threat had passed. In the meantime, Mozilla and Apple and Google were forming the whatwg and architecting the next generation of the web. And MS was not only not a part of it, but had lost all credibility in the eyes of web and browser devs. And then of course he also got caught flat-footed by the iPhone. Balmer was a serial failure as a CEO. Maybe he deserves some credit, a little bit at least for Azure? But he’ll always be remembered for all of those stupid quips he made about how Apple wasn’t going to be able to make headway in the smartphone biz.

alarge 6y ago
The comment about the 90's is simply not true. I've been a successful (e.g., getting paid) developer since the 80s and have never been in the Microsoft stack. With the exception of a small bit of VMS-hosted development in the 80s, everything I have done in my career has been hosted on some sort of Unix. And I'm not some outlier. Sun Microsystems dominated the 90s for problems of just about any scale beyond the small workgroup. I make this point because many of us (both engineers and customers alike) pushed back hard against Microsoft. They actively fought against open standards and interoperability. We literally thought of them as the evil empire. Even as late as the mid 2000s, when I was at Yahoo and there was talk of a Microsoft acquisition, I would have quit rather than work at Microsoft. Economics aside, changing that toxic culture is what I appreciate most about Nadella's time as CEO. He has (it appears) made Microsoft into a citizen.
- bluedino 6y ago
  You jumped from ship to ship while you could have just been a Windows developer the whole time. Not that you wouldn't have had a bunch of ships to jump between in Windows-land.

ska 6y ago

Cook isn't Jobs. But Cook isn't Ballmer, either.

heimatau 6y ago

At first I was going to be critical of your point but thinking about it for a minute. I think your right. Apple and Microsoft aren't as innovative anymore. It's sad. But I do think Microsoft is leading this front between the two. Some of their acquisitions of SAS products have grown and improved, where Apple isn't doing something significant to improve the lives of it's users. Does a photo really add that much value? Or an emoji? Whereas many of the SAS products Microsoft has is a business model that is to speed up it's users productivity. As for losing out on programmers which (my words) essentially reduce the exponential behavior that tech was experiencing. I'll say this. It is sad. Rent seeking is a typical behavior of any company that gets large. I'm actually now wondering if something is preventing these companies from growing very fast, like a national actor. If you look at Amazon, they are in numerous industries and have a little market share of them and are trying to innovate in them. Amazon isn't slowing down either. I find it an interesting case study. Only AWS is helping programmers, many other products are actually against user's interests. Another case study would be Tesla. They are emerging as a most likely monopoly due to their relentless innovation. But they don't harness community programmers either. I believe this will change overtime, since Musk has said this for many years but I doubt there will be a lot of freedom in their system either. I want to see a company that is innovative and allowing others to innovate on their platform. It would be very valuable to society if we do this.

RestlessMind 6y ago

No strong opinions on Cook but a Ballmer of the current era is Sundar Pichai. Google of the last few years is utterly rudderless, losing all the mojo and goodwill they once had. That shows in the Stock price, in (a lack of) successful new products, in Google’s loss of reputation as the “coolest company to be at”, in the bloated middle management occupied in turf wars, in essentially most of the things that matter.

medium_burrito 6y ago
That's extremely unfair to Ballmer- Ballmer made lots of bets and put a lot of effort into them. Some were given up on- the phone, but you can't critize Azure, among many. Microsoft has developed lots of products and can develop more. They did plenty under Ballmer. When they fail they try again, or invest more effort. Google has only one cash cow. They don't know how to develop products and how to win customers. I feel like products at Google get developed when someone has a bright idea, and then as soon as they get promoted they go do other stuff, and the business isn't really about nurturing a new product. All they care about is their big ads cash cow, with which nothing can compare.
- RestlessMind 6y ago
  > That's extremely unfair to Ballmer LOL, I agree. Ballmer at least came across as a strong leader, if wrong-headed at times. Sundar just comes across as a weakling yes-man trying to please all the sides.
- temp667 6y ago
  Google doesn't maintain anything. I couldn't / can't get my work calendars to work on google home, but I can get my work calendars to work on Alexa - let that sink in! Been a top complaint for years - they just don't care - it's really all about the new stuff. Apple - a lot of nice features that solve problems I had usually on new releases.
fakedang 6y ago
That's what you get for hiring the B-school type who I doubt has coded even one line after undergrad (or even in undergrad). Google has just been McKinseying a ton of products in the name of poor sales instead of actively changing them for better. Not to mention the loss of workplace culture, the end of TGIF dinners, and zero diversification from the ads business.

SimonPStevens 6y ago

To not include Microsoft when you say 'big tech' is blinkered. They are currently the 2nd biggest company in the world by market cap. Around double the size of Facebook. They might not be cool or trendy in tech circles anymore, but they are without a doubt a big tech company. Their OS runs over 70% of desktops [1] and their office suite has over 80% of the market share [2]. And that's just the sectors they completely dominate in before we even talk about other sectors that they are involved in with major competitive products. Xbox, Surface, Azure, SQL server, Power BI, Windows Server, .net, Visual Studio, BizTalk, are all huge popular widely used tech products. And I'm sure there's more that I don't know. And then add GitHub and LinkedIn if you want to count recent acquisitions that still seem to operate mostly independently at the moment. 1 - https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide 2 - https://www.ciodive.com/news/Google-Microsoft-Office-collaboration/571740/ https://www.ciodive.com/news/Google-Microsoft-Office-collabo...

caycep 6y ago

Cook was also running Apple ops for a decade before being CEO. It's not like he appeared out of nowhere. One can argue Apple's design chops and freedom to innovate were because of Cook, who cleaned up all the business and ops shenanigans that were driving Apple bankrupt under Scully, Spindler and Amelio, and create a stable foundation for Jobs to work his magic.

ksec 6y ago
I am certainly not happy with Tim Cook from a Product and Strategy perspective. But from an Operation / COO perspective. He is second to none. So good that I put him as Genius in this Category.

curyous 6y ago

Steve Ballmer made some mistakes, but after enough years went by, he realized that and changed his approach, setting up MS for success once again. He just didn't have enough time to execute on his new vision before he got ousted.

shawnb576 6y ago

As someone who was at MS during those years, directly involved with Azure, OSS, Mobile/phone I can verify that Steve was a great biz guy but had very little sense for where the tech world was headed. What Satya has done is incredibly impressive and will be much studied IMHO

madeofpalk 6y ago

> when someone says "big tech" it's Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, not MS For what it's worth (and this is mostly seperate from your point I guess), most of the time when people say "big tech", they're talking about the negative cultural, political, and economic impacts of those companies. Maybe its not so bad to not be lumped in with Facebook?