Very interesting read! He might've made some big mistakes during his tenure, but if Microsoft's still there it's also his merit
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What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer
11–20 of 73 posts
Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer
#12He raises a good point about the law of large numbers. When your core business is doing $75b and has 95% market share, it's near impossible to find other lines of business to complement that core in a meaningful way. I'd go as far as to say it's illogical to expect crazy growth or innovation at such a point.
Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer
#13"A leader falls on his sword for his team if and when needed."
I like this. It also reminded me of a lesson I learned when reading Maj. Richard Winters' memoirs: a good leader leads from the front. First one in, last one out.
Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, a lot of techies fail to appreciate the extent to which this is true. For those who disagree and were around in 2000, where is Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Yahoo, AOL, and Netscape today?
They were all acquired or merged for a lot of money - and they were all highly profitable companies. None of those businesses failed. That is just natural business evolution for successful businesses.
I disagree, but I think it is a matter of perspective, if by "successful" you mean "do not end up in a bankrupcy sale".
But then by your metric, there are businesses that are "more than successful": they are not acquired, but acquire others instead
Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer
#15I can't wait for Ballmer to become the lovable, goofy NBA owner instead of be remembered as the guy who dragged down Microsoft.
How did Ballmer drag down MS?
Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer
#16"A leader falls on his sword for his team if and when needed." I like this. It also reminded me of a lesson I learned when reading Maj. Richard Winters' memoirs: a good leader leads from the front. First one in, last one out.
But Ballmer didn't fall on his sword; he just apologised, to people who had no ability to punish him for the mistake which he claimed as his.
If you receive an apology from someone several levels above where the mistake was made, I don't think it means much. You end up with no reassurance that anything is being done to stop it happening again.
Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer
#17"A leader falls on his sword for his team if and when needed." I like this. It also reminded me of a lesson I learned when reading Maj. Richard Winters' memoirs: a good leader leads from the front. First one in, last one out.
Strange comparison. If you look at the leaders in WWII (Churchill, Eisenhower, Hitler, Stalin, etc), none of them were at the front. Generals generally aren't either. Its direct leaders such as corporals and sergeants who are leading from the front; not officers. As comparison: the direct leaders would be CTO, division leaders, or direct managers.
Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer
#18No word that he was a psychopath and a Corporate bully, Instead we have a hagiography for Steve.
Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer
#19I can't wait for Ballmer to become the lovable, goofy NBA owner instead of be remembered as the guy who dragged down Microsoft.
> who dragged down Microsoft Did he?
By being unable to use his warchest on a changing market. As an example: missing the smartphone boat twice (once with Windows Mobile vs Symbian, and once with Windows Phone vs iOS/Android). Another example: Microsoft search / Bing.
Microsoft kept Office relevant though, made Azure relevant, and are reinventing themselves from a proprietary to a data company (like Google, Facebook, and Amazon) who also do a lot of open source (like the previously mentioned companies). But I suppose Nadella takes credit for that.
Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer
#20I can't wait for Ballmer to become the lovable, goofy NBA owner instead of be remembered as the guy who dragged down Microsoft.
Looking back, the whole "Developers, Developers, Developers..." bit was just what we saw publicly, I hope he was on fewer drugs when doing day to day management, but perhaps that is part of why Microsoft found itself in a dying segment of an industry it once monopolized.
Yeah, that's one of those memorable moments.
Here's another one, the chair throw incident:
"At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: "Just tell me it's not Google." I told him it was Google. At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."" [1]
If you scroll up on there, you can read how very wrong he was on the iPhone, Linux, and FOSS.