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What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

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Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

#41

Post by idontpost »

ddebernardy wrote: post #30
majani wrote: post #12

He 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.

That bit had me scratching my head. To me the law of large numbers had to do with stats. But apparently, MBAs have come up with their own completely unrelated "law".

I think the connection is that when you're 100% of the pie, you're, by definition, average. You cannot be exceptional when you so dominate the market segment.

Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

#42

Post by idontpost »

Fnoord wrote: post #17
Waterluvian wrote: post #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.

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.

Political leaders don't lead troops. They lead department heads in decision making. In that field, good ones operate the same way: leading from the front, showing willingness to take risk on themselves, supporting their direct reports as needed.

Similarly, Generals don't (usually) lead troops. They lead company commanders.

And so on.

Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

#43

Post by [deleted] »

alttab wrote: post #38
TheWiseOne wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question - how is Bing a good investment? Isn't it essentially a non-factor in the search market?

My guess is the algorithms and infrastructure serve search functions across all of their products. The "search market" is really the "Display advertising" market, and sure, they suck at that because no one goes to bing. But bing isn't worthless.

[deleted]

Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

#44

Post by warty »

TheWiseOne wrote: post #28
CSMastermind wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bing has proved to be one of the best investments that Microsoft ever made. Ballmer's failure as it related to Bing was trying to build an advertising platform to compete with Google and failing.

Genuine question - how is Bing a good investment? Isn't it essentially a non-factor in the search market?

It's a huge guinea pig for .net, windows server, and azure - a perfect example of eating your own dog food.

Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

#45

Post by mjw1007 »

skookumchuck wrote: post #39
mjw1007 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> no ability The bank could have abandoned Microsoft products. They could have sued Microsoft. Blaming one's underlings is a sign of weakness. Blaming the customer would be a disaster.

Sure, it was the right thing to do. But it wasn't a difficult thing to do.

Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

#46

Post by can16358p »

alttab wrote: post #38
TheWiseOne wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question - how is Bing a good investment? Isn't it essentially a non-factor in the search market?

My guess is the algorithms and infrastructure serve search functions across all of their products. The "search market" is really the "Display advertising" market, and sure, they suck at that because no one goes to bing. But bing isn't worthless.

I've lost trust on them the day they were busted copying results directly from Google (https://www.wired.com/2011/02/bing-copies-google/)

Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

#47

Post by Fnoord »

idontpost wrote: post #42
Fnoord wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Political leaders don't lead troops. They lead department heads in decision making. In that field, good ones operate the same way: leading from the front, showing willingness to take risk on themselves, supporting their direct reports as needed. Similarly, Generals don't (usually) lead troops. They lead company commanders. And so on.

A peculiar definition of "leading at the front".

Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

#48

Post by sonnyblarney »

achow wrote: post #2

Excerpts from infamous mini-msft blog (in 2005 another msft employee venting anonymously): "I mean, what has he done or not done that is impacting the stock?" - along with Gates, made decisions that resulted in the company being found guilty of breaking the law twice(and counting)resulting in fines, restrictions... - along with Gates, invested over $10B of cash in failed telecom investments that ended up being writte…

During Ballmers tenure, the company massively increased it's revenues and profits, and they were exceptional in other areas.

'Missed paid search' and 'missed music player' etc. etc. are all haughty claims - MS was never an internet oriented business, it's like saying 'Oracle missed the search business' - well sure. Just like Google missed social? Or Facebook missed mobile? Or missed photo-sharing?

I'm no fan of Ballmer or MSFT, but if the goal of MSFT is to make money via decent products that work well enough in the eyes of their buyers, he did that. Just not in the way that you might want or expect them to.

I like Satya more, but give it a few years and we can judge then.

Re: What I Learned Working for Steve Ballmer

#49

Post by doikor »

dsjoerg wrote: post #37
gizmo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the funny thing is the author even didn't get the correct take-away from this event. Ballmer looked at the bottom line, was surprised by the number he saw and then started looking at the math that produced that number in detail. It has nothing to do with being a math wizz. The lesson here is that good executives ignore noise (the speaker) and focus on importance (numbers). Balmer isn't a superhuman who can l…

I wish this were true of programmers of average ability.

In my experience most do. It’s just that they work on project that leave zero time to do anything to fix the issue. Customer is paying to add feature X not to fix Y that still worked yesterday.
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