> Ballmer, or Microsoft under Ballmer, had to have been laying the groundwork for Azure, TypeScript and VS code before they took off under Nadella. More specif

> Ballmer, or Microsoft under Ballmer, had to have been laying the groundwork for Azure, TypeScript and VS code before they took off under Nadella. More specifically: Nadella under Ballmer laid the groundwork for those things. Dan lists three big wins for Ballmer: Bing, Azure, Office365. Nadella led Bing and Azure. Not sure where Office365 sat in the org chart, but even if he wasn't managing it a _lot_ of services at Microsoft at that time relied on technology that was developed in Bing and Azure. He was promoted for good reason.