Look, he's the CEO of the once mightiest tech company in the world and you satisfy yourself with: "he was right about something dismissed by many". I would expe

Look, he's the CEO of the once mightiest tech company in the world and you satisfy yourself with: "he was right about something dismissed by many". I would expect that "[contending] with forces out of [his] control" is exactly the job of a CEO, not something they should get a standing ovation for, if they pull it off once in a decade. So we should either all agree that most CEOs are clueless, add no value to their companies, and have the anticipating power of dart throwing monkeys in which case I wonder why we keep paying them so much. Or we believe that they have a higher role to play (I do), and we raise our expectations and criticism. Note 1: that I'm not saying that their job is easy. It's certainly insanely difficult. But they get paid a loooot of money for it, so they have to be held accountable. And being right from time to time, here and there is not enough. Note 2: my comment is specific to the article. I believe Ballmer did more than just one thing right, also I'm convinced he did many things right.