7 ms·

Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

40 points by ejz 2y ago

johnloeber 2y ago
I've had the same thought for a long time. I think this is spot-on. Ballmer is underrated in that he put Microsoft into a profoundly well-resourced position that a better product leader was then able to make productive use of.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  I'd love to have Ballmer back. The Microsoft products I use (Windows) have become increasingly crappified under current leadership.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    Ballmer was there when Longhorn/Vista happened.
    - Zr01 2y ago
      He was there when 7 happened as well.
    - throwaway4pp24 2y ago
      Vista was good, just slow on the older contemporary computers. I bought a new properly specced machine when it was released and it was a significant improvement over XP.
      - jq-r 2y ago
        Vista was utter garbage. It is historical revisionism to only blame it's failing on minimum requirements. Not only was it slow, it was a horrible clickfest eg with almost 20 clicks and almost as many windows to change wifi settings. At that time (and probably still today) do you know how many did you need to get to wifi settings on OSX? 3 or 4. That was insulting to a windows user and I've never used windows again as my primary choice of OS. Windows 11 is on a good path to become Vista as it's enshittified to hell and back.
        rbanffy 2y ago
        I second that, and I don’t have a much better opinion on 7 and eight. I kind of like 10 and 11 on their corporate crapware-free versions. Still would prefer a Unix like OS though. Windows is too complicated to debug.
    - Andrex 2y ago
      Longhorn was a failure born of ambition. W10-11's failures' are born of greed.
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        Longhorn was a failure born out of poor management. Vista what was left of Longhorn.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Consumer Windows doesn't generate enough revenue per customer and the consumer OS space is commodified, so I'd say it's getting the treatment it deserves.
FrankWilhoit 2y ago
We need to be asking who the most overrated are. They are the ones who can exploit their positions to do real harm. (Lookin' at you, Sloe Mnuk.)
- apwell23 2y ago
  jack welch ?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    Having worked at GE, during Neutron Jack's time, I concur.
    - throw0101c 2y ago
      Not wrong, but then he (post-retirement) says things like: > Regarding shareholder value, Welch said in a Financial Times interview on the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, "On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy...your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products."[67] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#Politics Given his actions as CEO, what he says (above) and what he actually did, there's some kind of disconnect (unless he had some kind of 'conversion' in retirement).
  - throw0101c 2y ago
    > jack welch ? Perhaps when he was actually still at GE, but after his retirement, it is now know that GE did all sorts of 'sideways accounting': * https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-21166 https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releas... So he is no longer viewed as highly as he once was: * https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vqr30e/jack_welch_extracted_record_profits_from_ge_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vqr30e/jack_...
    - apwell23 2y ago
throw0101c 2y ago
"Steve Ballmer played a powerful part in Microsoft’s comeback" (2019): * https://qz.com/1551842/steve-ballmer-played-a-powerful-part-in-microsofts-revitalization https://qz.com/1551842/steve-ballmer-played-a-powerful-part-... "Satya Nadella credits Steve Ballmer for pushing Microsoft into the cloud": * https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/16/satya-nadella-credits-ballmer-for-pushing-microsoft-to-cloud-cramer.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/16/satya-nadella-credits-ballme... I think the biggest knock against Ballmer was not being able to figure out a (smart)phone strategy that ended up working. Having more than just Android and iOS would probably have been a better situation for everyone to be in.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Microsoft absolutely whiffed on mobile generally and that has to be on Ballmer to a significant degree. As with Intel with x86, they relied far too heavily on Windows being their essential beachhead. That said, he put the financial and some of the business/technical foundation in place for Nadella to be able to re-establish Microsoft as an important/relevant player with Azure (and Linux) which was by no means a given.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Mobile 8 was not compatible with Mobile 7. You can't go around and change interfaces when companies are betting the barn on you. For Windows proper you can release and deprecate a GUI every 20 minutes because there is always Win32 to fall back to. But when you are bootstrapping an entire eco-system you can't muck around like that. Also strategic blunder to buy Nokia and then do exactly nothing with it. Linux was still toxic to Microsoft. Nokia had a Linux computer which was also a phone which sold incredibly well despite Microsoft almost denying its existance, definitely not marketing it. They had to stop making it because to stop selling it. (No not "Linux" like Android is "Linux". A real Linux PC in your pocket. Imagine a Raspberry with data connection and phone.
  - whaleofatw2022 2y ago
    That sounds a bit generous to Nokia, Maemo to me seemed more screwed into bureaucratic hell with Moblin/Meego partnerships...
mentos 2y ago
Developers are the seeds in your garden so I believe his laser focus on "developers, developers, developers" while now a meme is spot on.
- russfink 2y ago
  https://youtu.be/KMU0tzLwhbE?si=1df0XsriTET6OWRT https://youtu.be/KMU0tzLwhbE?si=1df0XsriTET6OWRT Warning - serious ear worm.
- maxehmookau 2y ago
  I agree. Which is why its such a shame the current Microsoft era is hacking down the trees to the tune of thousands of layoffs.
ko_pivot 2y ago
The latest Acquired episode makes a pretty strong case for Ballmer, implying that he led the Microsoft move to own all enterprise software, not Gates.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  I think the current CEO is definitely a good one. I just wish one CEO would finally focus on making Windows less awful for power users. Let us turn off all the useless garbage and have offline accounts. I'll personally pay more to do so. Give power users the OS they want. Curious why Ballmer is coming up lately, did something happen with him?
  - latexr 2y ago
    What you’re asking is not specific to power users. I have never seen a single user, “power” or not, saying they like ads and privacy invasions embedded in their OS.
    - giancarlostoro 2y ago
      Sure, but if they market it to power users, I'll take that as a win. Right now they're not targeting such a thing to any users. Until then, I'll stay on Linux, and buy Mac or Linux exclusive devices.
      - latexr 2y ago
        > but if they market it to power users The point is they won’t. This crap they’re pulling is not an oversight, they know exactly what they’re doing. It makes zero difference who they “market it” for, most people would want to do it if they opened the door. > Right now they're not targeting such a thing to any users. Exactly. By design. And it’ll stay that way until enough users leave Windows. Which is unlikely any time soon.
  - antaviana 2y ago
    All that comes to mind is that he is now surpassing the net worth of Bill Gates, to a large extent because when he left Microsoft he said he would keep his Microsoft stock positions.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
Honestly we as consumers might have been better off with Microsoft’s vision of a Windows computer in each home acting as the hub of digital life and monetization through purchase of hardware and software instead of our current model where the hubs are large centralized services and monetization is through ads.
- Ensorceled 2y ago
  Microsoft's ORIGINAL vision. Microsoft products are now all about the centralized services, ads and subscriptions.
manarth 2y ago
No. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...>
shrubble 2y ago
It's easy to look like a genius when your company engages in sleazy, underhanded business practices and becomes a near-monopoly as a result. Stac, the paying off of Ziff-Davis publications, etc. Ever since Bill Gates snookered Ed Roberts , Microsoft has had 'flexible' business ethics.
- geodel 2y ago
  Maybe 3 orders of magnitude more people have tried same techniques but couldn't succeed. So yes, it is still genius.
  - shrubble 2y ago
    Every large mafia thus is "genius" by your definition.
andrewstuart 2y ago
Steve Ballmer is basically the co founder of Microsoft. He came on a little later but Bill moved heaven and earth to bring him on to run the company with him. He was given and incredible deal so he could be effectively an equity partner. Steve Ballmer is underrated and did an incredible job and is to be credited with the success of Microsoft as much as anyone. He’s one of my computing heroes.
anticorporate 2y ago
I guess it depends on your measure. Personally, the Ballmer era represents Microsoft going from being "the" software company to just another dying giant that wasn't relevant to me. I used fewer Microsoft products in 2014 than I did in 2000 when Ballmer took over. Sure, they expanded the product categories they competed in, but any company with that kind of capitalization could have chosen to do the same.
- thorin 2y ago
  Yet still most enterprises use windows, O365, teams outlook, AD/entra etc. Azure has like 30% of market share. Copilot, visual studio, Dotnet framework, Microsoft dynamics, Power Automate are massive. I prefer the current incarnation of MS to any of the previous ones TBH, experience of Xbox has been pretty good as well.
  - Keyframe 2y ago
    I think the question posed is whether that's due to Ballmer or despite him.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      Because of him. Ballmer backed the "Enterprise Business" (precursor of Office 365) and "Server and Tools" (precursor of Azure and MS Security) divisions over the then prominent "Windows" division. MS back then was in a weird transitional phase where it as a company needed to decide whether it wanted to prioritize B2C or B2B/Enterprise. Ballmer made the call to go for Enterprise. There was also no guarantee that then-resurgent Apple or new-kid-on-the-block Google wouldn't be able to eat into MS's Enterprise market share with release of the iPad+iWork and Google Apps (now Google Workspaces) respectively. Before Ballmer, it was the Windows and B2C teams that had the upper hand internally at MS instead of Enterprise.
      - nobodyandproud 2y ago
        Sadly, Ballmer couldn’t reign in the Windows team before they effectively killed Windows Phone. If I recall, the team had a large hand in hindering Windows Phone up until Windows 8; when everyone was too fed up to develop for the platform.
ThrowawayB7 2y ago
There's a case to be made that Ballmer is smarter than the ignorati give him credit for but let's not forget things like the attempted Yahoo acquisition. That would have been an absolute disaster for Microsoft.
- mulletbum 2y ago
  I don't think him not doing something that makes sense is a negative. "Balmer did not invest billions in a company that would go no where" is not a negative.
scosman 2y ago
Having worked on mobile there 2008-2011: no, I would say he’s properly rated. Had years head start on the Android model (hackable OS+vendors+wide HW support), and threw it away. Chased iPhone model briefly without the commitment to actually win. Took smartphone market share from 20-30% to 0% when it mattered most. Invested more in XBox and Business intelligence platforms.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Threw Mobile 7 developers under the bus. The most ambitious and commited.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Invested more in XBox and Business intelligence platforms. Both of which turned out to be the right move long term. Mobile is a commoditized winner takes all market, and there's no guarantee MS would have won even if they concentrated entirely on it. Concentrating on BI platforms helped spawn M365, and the Enterprise focus helped spawn MS Azure which had very early Product-Market Fit at the Fed because they became FedRAMP authorized well before AWS. There's way more money in Enterprise B2B than there is in B2C.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    >There's way more money in Enterprise B2B than there is in B2C. Apple would like a word--although arguably their B2C success translated into B2B in a world where corporations increasingly didn't just dictate employee gear decisions. But to your other point, Microsoft (though I credit this more to Nadella than Ballmer) were absolutely able to parlay Microsoft's enterprise strength to Azure in government/enterprise which AWS didn't really get at first and Google was even slower to do.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      > Apple would like a word Apple's success is a form of survivorship bias. Multiple previously massive B2C vendors like Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, HP, Dell, RiM, etc either died trying to compete in the B2C space or pivoted out as a result. Google, Huawei, and Samsung are only able to compete against Apple because they are subsidizing their B2C ventures with their B2B product lines. MS in the 2000s could have joined that dustbin of history as well because the old school "Windows" division was very B2C and Consumer oriented at the expense of Enterprise.
KingOfCoders 2y ago
"Developers, developers, developers!"
knighthack 2y ago
This was such an an enjoyable read. My view of Ballmer has completely changed, in retrospect. Am also impressed that he was a mathematician by training and outscored Gates, and went quite against norms by his own business judgment (which is commendable - it means he made his own path, and didn't just chase after trends).
- FeloniousHam 2y ago
  There was a recent interview with Ballmer on The Dispatch Podcast[0]. I've been longtime casual Ballmer-hater because of Microsoft's treatment of Linux, but at least for 30 minutes, found him to be a genial, thoughtful, and interesting bazillionaire. [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-data-we-trust-interview-steve-ballmer/id1493229344?i=1000659238920 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-data-we-trust-inter...
surfingdino 2y ago
Balmer presided over Microsoft's transition into irrelevance. He wanted developers to write software for Windows. He did not want them to write software for the world that was changing, opening (the internet, Open Source, etc.) which is why developers gave him a middle finger. Just like any large corporation Microsoft stopped leading and started chasing and could not keep up until they struck gold with the XBox.
paxys 2y ago
During Ballmer's tenure, the Office division spent a lot of resources building apps for iOS. Ballmer saw a demo, realized that they were better than the Office apps available on Microsoft's own phones and tablets, and so blocked the release. The company sat on the apps for multiple years. When Nadella came on, one of his first decisions as CEO was to release them to the public. This single incident perfectly demonstrates Ballmer's failures and Nadella's new vision. Had he remained at the helm Microsoft would have continued to stagnate and sink with the likes of IBM, Cisco and HP rather than stay on top of technological shifts and become the biggest company in the world.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >During Ballmer's tenure, the Office division spent a lot of resources building apps for iOS. Ballmer saw a demo, realized that they were better than the Office apps available on Microsoft's own phones and tablets, and so blocked the release. Is there a source for this?
- vanjajaja1 2y ago
  ok it was obviously a bad move in hindsight, but at that point in time, was it not a gutsy high risk move to try give windows phone a small advantage? its obvious once you cancel winphone, but canceling winphone was a big concession
- sph 2y ago
  Meh, I don't see how Nadella's "vision" is praiseworthy either: * their flagship OS is more and more a spyware platform * Windows Server is pretty much a rarity these days outside of large corporate deployments. Anybody has seen MS SQL recently? * Azure seems to have reached its peak mind share, mostly pushed by free credits * Their gaming division mainly lives on Game Pass, while XBox is further and further away from Playstation and now there's Valve eating their lunch * Windows on ARM, even Windows branded laptops or 2-in-1s are a niche within a niche * What is a cell phone again? * Edge's philosophy is "as evil and spyware as Google, but worse". In fact, Microsoft as a whole is trying to badly emulate the peak evil Google of 2015+ Ballmer made some enormous blunders and a lot of his indecision proved costly. Nadella pushed proudly forward in destroying the Microsoft name all to make a quick buck. I'll give you VSCode and Github to be good ideas, though the latter is just an acquisition, not a bonafide good product built in house.
317070 2y ago
Steve Ballmer is worth $147 billion. Not by any stretch of my imagination is the man underrated. I'd say, like many American CEO's, he has vastly been overrated through a failure in capitalism. If I do some back of the envelope calculations, a teacher makes about 50k a year, so about 2 million in a career. In his career so far, Steve Ballmer has made as much as 75k teachers do in their career. For comparison, Arizona has about 50k teachers. Now, the man has achieved a lot, maybe even a lot compared to other CEOs. But by this measure, he must be overrated.
epups 2y ago
This article is borderline comical. The thin list of his accomplishments focus on increasing revenue ($15B to $70B) and launching or acquiring successful initiatives (Xbox, Skype, Azure). Then the rest is a recollection of his biggest embarassments, like terrible mobile products, misguided Windows strategy and trailing AWS by 7 years. Reporting on business issues is always muddled by a lack of proper comparisons, along with cherry picking. For example, this article makes the argument that increasing Microsoft's revenue by 4x was very impressive, even though the stock value stagnated. However, when evaluting his tenure as owner of a basketball club, he is declared successful because its value doubled. The problem is that Microsoft was eclipsed compared to its peers at the time - Google, Amazon, etc. -, and likewise the average basketball club doubled in value as well.
_7acn 2y ago
During his tenure, Windows 8 was released... Just as W8, the server version also lacked the START button, which was particularly noticeable when working through RDP. Also, the whole "Metro" design was a disaster. I also remember the acquisition of Skype for an astronomical amount. Where is Skype now? Indeed, an underrated CEO...
- filoleg 2y ago
  > Where is Skype now? A good chunk of Teams’ backend is built on top of Skype. Not sure about the present day, but just a few years ago, you could see tons of references to Skype in the Teams’ codebase.
  - mulletbum 2y ago
    Still can, Skype was rebranded into a more successful product, but the backend has ton of legacy Skype work inside it still.
    - rasz 2y ago
      There is zero Skype legacy in Teams. Skype P2P model was rewritten after acquisition to enable spying.
      - filoleg 2y ago
        I worked with the source code directly a few years ago. The grandparent comment confirms that what I saw back then is still the case today (assuming they have access to the source code in the present day). With that in mind, where does such confidence on your end come from?
        rasz 2y ago
        Was the 'few years ago' 2012? Skype was rewritten less than a year after acquisition https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...
alephnerd 2y ago
For most people on HN, I'd say so. Mobile is fun and cool and probably started a lot of HNers careers, but everyone on here seems to ignore how much more money there is to be made in the Enterprise and B2B space, and how it absolutely dwarfs B2C revenue from an effort and retention perspective. B2C Growth Sales is a slog with a lot of variability outside of a company's control. MS back then was in a weird transitional phase where it as a company needed to decide whether it wanted to prioritize B2C or B2B/Enterprise. Ballmer made the call to go for Enterprise and helped pivot MS away from being a B2C or B2B2C company to a company heavily devoted to Enterprise and B2B sales motions. It was Ballmer who laid the seeds for Azure, M365, and Enterprise in general by making the "Enterprise Business" and "Servers and Tools" (precursor for Azure and MS Security) divisions much more prominent internally than their "Windows" division. There was also no guarantee that then-resurgent Apple or new-kid-on-the-block Google wouldn't be able to eat into MS's Enterprise market share with release of the iPad+iWork and Google Apps (now Google Workspaces) respectively, and and could have tangibly done the same pivot that Amazon did in the late 2000s
KoolKat23 2y ago
He was entrepreneurial, in summary his strength. He convinced shareholders to part with potential dividends and invested in new things. There's little excuse for company like Microsoft generating so much cash not to be doing so. Mixed bag: Xbox 360 - success Vista - fail Windows 7 - success Zune - fail Windows phone - fail Azure - success Similar story for Zuckerberg. Lucky with Facebook. Thereafter ensured he had a finger in every pie. One minute he's a bad bet with his quixotic expenditure on AR/VR, and the next minute he's a genius with his investment in AI (Llama). At the end of the day, it pays to have your finger in many pies. Money makes money.
ssharp 2y ago
For comparison, Apple's stock about 20x'd during Ballmer's tenure and that was after atrocious AAPL performance from 2000-2003. Balmer's biggest failures were mirrored by Apple's enormous success. The two areas this article calls out as Balmer's missteps were the exact areas Apple flourished in -- hardware innovation and operating system. I don't see how you can "underrate" Ballmer as CEO given his mistakes allowed a nearly-dead rival to grow to be larger than Microsoft. The opportunity for Microsoft to capture a significant chunk of that was completed squandered.
waisbrot 2y ago
"Maybe the memes making fun of this person are, in fact, an exaggeration." Sure. I don't need much convincing that Ballmer was only "bad" rather than "uniquely terrible". It seems a pretty normal thing that the negative reaction was outsized. But I also think it would be more interesting to look at cases where the reaction by the haters was _spot on_. Or even where it _undersold_ how bad things were.
hksgdk 2y ago
[dead]
err4nt 2y ago
Perhaps it was because of his top priorities, which were: "Developers, developers, developers, developers!"
sunflowerfly 2y ago
He missed the entire move to mobile. I am still mad MS gave up on Windows phone so easily.
chrismcb 2y ago
Wait, what? You can practically see when ballmer was ceo by looking at the stock market graph.
wslh 2y ago
Is there a book recomendation about Ballmer? Can find some titles on Amazon but no idea about how serious they are.

40 points by ejz 2y ago

I've had the same thought for a long time. I think this is spot-on. Ballmer is underrated in that he put Microsoft into a profoundly well-resourced position that a better product leader was then able to make productive use of.

AlexandrB 2y ago
I'd love to have Ballmer back. The Microsoft products I use (Windows) have become increasingly crappified under current leadership.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Ballmer was there when Longhorn/Vista happened.
  - Zr01 2y ago
    He was there when 7 happened as well.
  - throwaway4pp24 2y ago
    Vista was good, just slow on the older contemporary computers. I bought a new properly specced machine when it was released and it was a significant improvement over XP.
    - jq-r 2y ago
      Vista was utter garbage. It is historical revisionism to only blame it's failing on minimum requirements. Not only was it slow, it was a horrible clickfest eg with almost 20 clicks and almost as many windows to change wifi settings. At that time (and probably still today) do you know how many did you need to get to wifi settings on OSX? 3 or 4. That was insulting to a windows user and I've never used windows again as my primary choice of OS. Windows 11 is on a good path to become Vista as it's enshittified to hell and back.
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        I second that, and I don’t have a much better opinion on 7 and eight. I kind of like 10 and 11 on their corporate crapware-free versions. Still would prefer a Unix like OS though. Windows is too complicated to debug.
  - Andrex 2y ago
    Longhorn was a failure born of ambition. W10-11's failures' are born of greed.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      Longhorn was a failure born out of poor management. Vista what was left of Longhorn.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Consumer Windows doesn't generate enough revenue per customer and the consumer OS space is commodified, so I'd say it's getting the treatment it deserves.

FrankWilhoit 2y ago

We need to be asking who the most overrated are. They are the ones who can exploit their positions to do real harm. (Lookin' at you, Sloe Mnuk.)

apwell23 2y ago
jack welch ?
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  Having worked at GE, during Neutron Jack's time, I concur.
  - throw0101c 2y ago
    Not wrong, but then he (post-retirement) says things like: > Regarding shareholder value, Welch said in a Financial Times interview on the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, "On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy...your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products."[67] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#Politics Given his actions as CEO, what he says (above) and what he actually did, there's some kind of disconnect (unless he had some kind of 'conversion' in retirement).
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > jack welch ? Perhaps when he was actually still at GE, but after his retirement, it is now know that GE did all sorts of 'sideways accounting': * https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-21166 https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releas... So he is no longer viewed as highly as he once was: * https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vqr30e/jack_welch_extracted_record_profits_from_ge_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vqr30e/jack_...
  - apwell23 2y ago

throw0101c 2y ago

"Steve Ballmer played a powerful part in Microsoft’s comeback" (2019): * https://qz.com/1551842/steve-ballmer-played-a-powerful-part-in-microsofts-revitalization https://qz.com/1551842/steve-ballmer-played-a-powerful-part-... "Satya Nadella credits Steve Ballmer for pushing Microsoft into the cloud": * https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/16/satya-nadella-credits-ballmer-for-pushing-microsoft-to-cloud-cramer.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/16/satya-nadella-credits-ballme... I think the biggest knock against Ballmer was not being able to figure out a (smart)phone strategy that ended up working. Having more than just Android and iOS would probably have been a better situation for everyone to be in.

ghaff 2y ago
Microsoft absolutely whiffed on mobile generally and that has to be on Ballmer to a significant degree. As with Intel with x86, they relied far too heavily on Windows being their essential beachhead. That said, he put the financial and some of the business/technical foundation in place for Nadella to be able to re-establish Microsoft as an important/relevant player with Azure (and Linux) which was by no means a given.
actionfromafar 2y ago
Mobile 8 was not compatible with Mobile 7. You can't go around and change interfaces when companies are betting the barn on you. For Windows proper you can release and deprecate a GUI every 20 minutes because there is always Win32 to fall back to. But when you are bootstrapping an entire eco-system you can't muck around like that. Also strategic blunder to buy Nokia and then do exactly nothing with it. Linux was still toxic to Microsoft. Nokia had a Linux computer which was also a phone which sold incredibly well despite Microsoft almost denying its existance, definitely not marketing it. They had to stop making it because to stop selling it. (No not "Linux" like Android is "Linux". A real Linux PC in your pocket. Imagine a Raspberry with data connection and phone.
- whaleofatw2022 2y ago
  That sounds a bit generous to Nokia, Maemo to me seemed more screwed into bureaucratic hell with Moblin/Meego partnerships...

mentos 2y ago

Developers are the seeds in your garden so I believe his laser focus on "developers, developers, developers" while now a meme is spot on.

russfink 2y ago
https://youtu.be/KMU0tzLwhbE?si=1df0XsriTET6OWRT https://youtu.be/KMU0tzLwhbE?si=1df0XsriTET6OWRT Warning - serious ear worm.
maxehmookau 2y ago
I agree. Which is why its such a shame the current Microsoft era is hacking down the trees to the tune of thousands of layoffs.

ko_pivot 2y ago

The latest Acquired episode makes a pretty strong case for Ballmer, implying that he led the Microsoft move to own all enterprise software, not Gates.

giancarlostoro 2y ago
I think the current CEO is definitely a good one. I just wish one CEO would finally focus on making Windows less awful for power users. Let us turn off all the useless garbage and have offline accounts. I'll personally pay more to do so. Give power users the OS they want. Curious why Ballmer is coming up lately, did something happen with him?
- latexr 2y ago
  What you’re asking is not specific to power users. I have never seen a single user, “power” or not, saying they like ads and privacy invasions embedded in their OS.
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    Sure, but if they market it to power users, I'll take that as a win. Right now they're not targeting such a thing to any users. Until then, I'll stay on Linux, and buy Mac or Linux exclusive devices.
    - latexr 2y ago
      > but if they market it to power users The point is they won’t. This crap they’re pulling is not an oversight, they know exactly what they’re doing. It makes zero difference who they “market it” for, most people would want to do it if they opened the door. > Right now they're not targeting such a thing to any users. Exactly. By design. And it’ll stay that way until enough users leave Windows. Which is unlikely any time soon.
- antaviana 2y ago
  All that comes to mind is that he is now surpassing the net worth of Bill Gates, to a large extent because when he left Microsoft he said he would keep his Microsoft stock positions.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago

Honestly we as consumers might have been better off with Microsoft’s vision of a Windows computer in each home acting as the hub of digital life and monetization through purchase of hardware and software instead of our current model where the hubs are large centralized services and monetization is through ads.

Ensorceled 2y ago
Microsoft's ORIGINAL vision. Microsoft products are now all about the centralized services, ads and subscriptions.

manarth 2y ago

No. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...>

shrubble 2y ago

It's easy to look like a genius when your company engages in sleazy, underhanded business practices and becomes a near-monopoly as a result. Stac, the paying off of Ziff-Davis publications, etc. Ever since Bill Gates snookered Ed Roberts , Microsoft has had 'flexible' business ethics.

geodel 2y ago
Maybe 3 orders of magnitude more people have tried same techniques but couldn't succeed. So yes, it is still genius.
- shrubble 2y ago
  Every large mafia thus is "genius" by your definition.

andrewstuart 2y ago

Steve Ballmer is basically the co founder of Microsoft. He came on a little later but Bill moved heaven and earth to bring him on to run the company with him. He was given and incredible deal so he could be effectively an equity partner. Steve Ballmer is underrated and did an incredible job and is to be credited with the success of Microsoft as much as anyone. He’s one of my computing heroes.

anticorporate 2y ago

I guess it depends on your measure. Personally, the Ballmer era represents Microsoft going from being "the" software company to just another dying giant that wasn't relevant to me. I used fewer Microsoft products in 2014 than I did in 2000 when Ballmer took over. Sure, they expanded the product categories they competed in, but any company with that kind of capitalization could have chosen to do the same.

thorin 2y ago
Yet still most enterprises use windows, O365, teams outlook, AD/entra etc. Azure has like 30% of market share. Copilot, visual studio, Dotnet framework, Microsoft dynamics, Power Automate are massive. I prefer the current incarnation of MS to any of the previous ones TBH, experience of Xbox has been pretty good as well.
- Keyframe 2y ago
  I think the question posed is whether that's due to Ballmer or despite him.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Because of him. Ballmer backed the "Enterprise Business" (precursor of Office 365) and "Server and Tools" (precursor of Azure and MS Security) divisions over the then prominent "Windows" division. MS back then was in a weird transitional phase where it as a company needed to decide whether it wanted to prioritize B2C or B2B/Enterprise. Ballmer made the call to go for Enterprise. There was also no guarantee that then-resurgent Apple or new-kid-on-the-block Google wouldn't be able to eat into MS's Enterprise market share with release of the iPad+iWork and Google Apps (now Google Workspaces) respectively. Before Ballmer, it was the Windows and B2C teams that had the upper hand internally at MS instead of Enterprise.
    - nobodyandproud 2y ago
      Sadly, Ballmer couldn’t reign in the Windows team before they effectively killed Windows Phone. If I recall, the team had a large hand in hindering Windows Phone up until Windows 8; when everyone was too fed up to develop for the platform.

ThrowawayB7 2y ago

There's a case to be made that Ballmer is smarter than the ignorati give him credit for but let's not forget things like the attempted Yahoo acquisition. That would have been an absolute disaster for Microsoft.

mulletbum 2y ago
I don't think him not doing something that makes sense is a negative. "Balmer did not invest billions in a company that would go no where" is not a negative.

scosman 2y ago

Having worked on mobile there 2008-2011: no, I would say he’s properly rated. Had years head start on the Android model (hackable OS+vendors+wide HW support), and threw it away. Chased iPhone model briefly without the commitment to actually win. Took smartphone market share from 20-30% to 0% when it mattered most. Invested more in XBox and Business intelligence platforms.

actionfromafar 2y ago
Threw Mobile 7 developers under the bus. The most ambitious and commited.
alephnerd 2y ago
> Invested more in XBox and Business intelligence platforms. Both of which turned out to be the right move long term. Mobile is a commoditized winner takes all market, and there's no guarantee MS would have won even if they concentrated entirely on it. Concentrating on BI platforms helped spawn M365, and the Enterprise focus helped spawn MS Azure which had very early Product-Market Fit at the Fed because they became FedRAMP authorized well before AWS. There's way more money in Enterprise B2B than there is in B2C.
- ghaff 2y ago
  >There's way more money in Enterprise B2B than there is in B2C. Apple would like a word--although arguably their B2C success translated into B2B in a world where corporations increasingly didn't just dictate employee gear decisions. But to your other point, Microsoft (though I credit this more to Nadella than Ballmer) were absolutely able to parlay Microsoft's enterprise strength to Azure in government/enterprise which AWS didn't really get at first and Google was even slower to do.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > Apple would like a word Apple's success is a form of survivorship bias. Multiple previously massive B2C vendors like Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, HP, Dell, RiM, etc either died trying to compete in the B2C space or pivoted out as a result. Google, Huawei, and Samsung are only able to compete against Apple because they are subsidizing their B2C ventures with their B2B product lines. MS in the 2000s could have joined that dustbin of history as well because the old school "Windows" division was very B2C and Consumer oriented at the expense of Enterprise.

KingOfCoders 2y ago

"Developers, developers, developers!"

knighthack 2y ago

This was such an an enjoyable read. My view of Ballmer has completely changed, in retrospect. Am also impressed that he was a mathematician by training and outscored Gates, and went quite against norms by his own business judgment (which is commendable - it means he made his own path, and didn't just chase after trends).

FeloniousHam 2y ago
There was a recent interview with Ballmer on The Dispatch Podcast[0]. I've been longtime casual Ballmer-hater because of Microsoft's treatment of Linux, but at least for 30 minutes, found him to be a genial, thoughtful, and interesting bazillionaire. [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-data-we-trust-interview-steve-ballmer/id1493229344?i=1000659238920 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-data-we-trust-inter...

surfingdino 2y ago

Balmer presided over Microsoft's transition into irrelevance. He wanted developers to write software for Windows. He did not want them to write software for the world that was changing, opening (the internet, Open Source, etc.) which is why developers gave him a middle finger. Just like any large corporation Microsoft stopped leading and started chasing and could not keep up until they struck gold with the XBox.

paxys 2y ago

During Ballmer's tenure, the Office division spent a lot of resources building apps for iOS. Ballmer saw a demo, realized that they were better than the Office apps available on Microsoft's own phones and tablets, and so blocked the release. The company sat on the apps for multiple years. When Nadella came on, one of his first decisions as CEO was to release them to the public. This single incident perfectly demonstrates Ballmer's failures and Nadella's new vision. Had he remained at the helm Microsoft would have continued to stagnate and sink with the likes of IBM, Cisco and HP rather than stay on top of technological shifts and become the biggest company in the world.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>During Ballmer's tenure, the Office division spent a lot of resources building apps for iOS. Ballmer saw a demo, realized that they were better than the Office apps available on Microsoft's own phones and tablets, and so blocked the release. Is there a source for this?
vanjajaja1 2y ago
ok it was obviously a bad move in hindsight, but at that point in time, was it not a gutsy high risk move to try give windows phone a small advantage? its obvious once you cancel winphone, but canceling winphone was a big concession
sph 2y ago
Meh, I don't see how Nadella's "vision" is praiseworthy either: * their flagship OS is more and more a spyware platform * Windows Server is pretty much a rarity these days outside of large corporate deployments. Anybody has seen MS SQL recently? * Azure seems to have reached its peak mind share, mostly pushed by free credits * Their gaming division mainly lives on Game Pass, while XBox is further and further away from Playstation and now there's Valve eating their lunch * Windows on ARM, even Windows branded laptops or 2-in-1s are a niche within a niche * What is a cell phone again? * Edge's philosophy is "as evil and spyware as Google, but worse". In fact, Microsoft as a whole is trying to badly emulate the peak evil Google of 2015+ Ballmer made some enormous blunders and a lot of his indecision proved costly. Nadella pushed proudly forward in destroying the Microsoft name all to make a quick buck. I'll give you VSCode and Github to be good ideas, though the latter is just an acquisition, not a bonafide good product built in house.

317070 2y ago

Steve Ballmer is worth $147 billion. Not by any stretch of my imagination is the man underrated. I'd say, like many American CEO's, he has vastly been overrated through a failure in capitalism. If I do some back of the envelope calculations, a teacher makes about 50k a year, so about 2 million in a career. In his career so far, Steve Ballmer has made as much as 75k teachers do in their career. For comparison, Arizona has about 50k teachers. Now, the man has achieved a lot, maybe even a lot compared to other CEOs. But by this measure, he must be overrated.

epups 2y ago

This article is borderline comical. The thin list of his accomplishments focus on increasing revenue ($15B to $70B) and launching or acquiring successful initiatives (Xbox, Skype, Azure). Then the rest is a recollection of his biggest embarassments, like terrible mobile products, misguided Windows strategy and trailing AWS by 7 years. Reporting on business issues is always muddled by a lack of proper comparisons, along with cherry picking. For example, this article makes the argument that increasing Microsoft's revenue by 4x was very impressive, even though the stock value stagnated. However, when evaluting his tenure as owner of a basketball club, he is declared successful because its value doubled. The problem is that Microsoft was eclipsed compared to its peers at the time - Google, Amazon, etc. -, and likewise the average basketball club doubled in value as well.

_7acn 2y ago

During his tenure, Windows 8 was released... Just as W8, the server version also lacked the START button, which was particularly noticeable when working through RDP. Also, the whole "Metro" design was a disaster. I also remember the acquisition of Skype for an astronomical amount. Where is Skype now? Indeed, an underrated CEO...

filoleg 2y ago
> Where is Skype now? A good chunk of Teams’ backend is built on top of Skype. Not sure about the present day, but just a few years ago, you could see tons of references to Skype in the Teams’ codebase.
- mulletbum 2y ago
  Still can, Skype was rebranded into a more successful product, but the backend has ton of legacy Skype work inside it still.
  - rasz 2y ago
    There is zero Skype legacy in Teams. Skype P2P model was rewritten after acquisition to enable spying.
    - filoleg 2y ago
      I worked with the source code directly a few years ago. The grandparent comment confirms that what I saw back then is still the case today (assuming they have access to the source code in the present day). With that in mind, where does such confidence on your end come from?
      - rasz 2y ago
        Was the 'few years ago' 2012? Skype was rewritten less than a year after acquisition https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...

alephnerd 2y ago

For most people on HN, I'd say so. Mobile is fun and cool and probably started a lot of HNers careers, but everyone on here seems to ignore how much more money there is to be made in the Enterprise and B2B space, and how it absolutely dwarfs B2C revenue from an effort and retention perspective. B2C Growth Sales is a slog with a lot of variability outside of a company's control. MS back then was in a weird transitional phase where it as a company needed to decide whether it wanted to prioritize B2C or B2B/Enterprise. Ballmer made the call to go for Enterprise and helped pivot MS away from being a B2C or B2B2C company to a company heavily devoted to Enterprise and B2B sales motions. It was Ballmer who laid the seeds for Azure, M365, and Enterprise in general by making the "Enterprise Business" and "Servers and Tools" (precursor for Azure and MS Security) divisions much more prominent internally than their "Windows" division. There was also no guarantee that then-resurgent Apple or new-kid-on-the-block Google wouldn't be able to eat into MS's Enterprise market share with release of the iPad+iWork and Google Apps (now Google Workspaces) respectively, and and could have tangibly done the same pivot that Amazon did in the late 2000s

KoolKat23 2y ago

He was entrepreneurial, in summary his strength. He convinced shareholders to part with potential dividends and invested in new things. There's little excuse for company like Microsoft generating so much cash not to be doing so. Mixed bag: Xbox 360 - success Vista - fail Windows 7 - success Zune - fail Windows phone - fail Azure - success Similar story for Zuckerberg. Lucky with Facebook. Thereafter ensured he had a finger in every pie. One minute he's a bad bet with his quixotic expenditure on AR/VR, and the next minute he's a genius with his investment in AI (Llama). At the end of the day, it pays to have your finger in many pies. Money makes money.

ssharp 2y ago

For comparison, Apple's stock about 20x'd during Ballmer's tenure and that was after atrocious AAPL performance from 2000-2003. Balmer's biggest failures were mirrored by Apple's enormous success. The two areas this article calls out as Balmer's missteps were the exact areas Apple flourished in -- hardware innovation and operating system. I don't see how you can "underrate" Ballmer as CEO given his mistakes allowed a nearly-dead rival to grow to be larger than Microsoft. The opportunity for Microsoft to capture a significant chunk of that was completed squandered.

waisbrot 2y ago

"Maybe the memes making fun of this person are, in fact, an exaggeration." Sure. I don't need much convincing that Ballmer was only "bad" rather than "uniquely terrible". It seems a pretty normal thing that the negative reaction was outsized. But I also think it would be more interesting to look at cases where the reaction by the haters was _spot on_. Or even where it _undersold_ how bad things were.

hksgdk 2y ago

[dead]

err4nt 2y ago

Perhaps it was because of his top priorities, which were: "Developers, developers, developers, developers!"

sunflowerfly 2y ago

He missed the entire move to mobile. I am still mad MS gave up on Windows phone so easily.

chrismcb 2y ago

Wait, what? You can practically see when ballmer was ceo by looking at the stock market graph.

wslh 2y ago

Is there a book recomendation about Ballmer? Can find some titles on Amazon but no idea about how serious they are.