61–70 of 138 posts
If you're curious why this run-of-the-mill PR piece is rising on HN, keep in mind that Microsoft (and other FAANG) posts like these are gamed by employees. https://www.kickscondor.com/satya-nadella-'reads''games'-hac...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bill Gates built an amazing airplane. Steve Ballmer crashed it in the desert. Satya Nadella rallied the survivors, put it back together, and got it flying again. Yes, he absolutely deserves the credit just as Ballmer absolutely deserves the blame.
If you’re only looking at stock price then Ballmer did exceptionally well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, Ballmer did quite well at MS. He consistently increased earnings via Windows and Office during his tenure as CEO. He was a very good businessman. He was not, however, a product guy. Witness their failures with the Zune, mobile, early cloud computing. His problem was that he always tried to do what would be best for Microsoft and not the customer. You can get away with this if you already have an install bas…
I feel that reflects quite well Steve Jobs vs Tim Cook as well. Jobs just wanted to make 'insanely great' products [for their users], with the side effect of profit, while Tim Cook is probably fixated on efficiency and Shareholder value. Apple has had record profits and performance, but most will tell it's not the same and its future is not so certain. It seems paradoxical that trying to maximize shareholder value at…
I can imagine what happened with Zune, cloud, etc is that (an enormously successful) MS assigned senior engineers to head up potentially prestigious new projects as professional rewards, but what they should have done was acquire-hire startup founders with fire in their belly (and strong vision) about the space. Ironically anyone with that much belly fire probably would have left MS to pursue it, basically disqualifying everyone left. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, Ballmer did quite well at MS. He consistently increased earnings via Windows and Office during his tenure as CEO. He was a very good businessman. He was not, however, a product guy. Witness their failures with the Zune, mobile, early cloud computing. His problem was that he always tried to do what would be best for Microsoft and not the customer. You can get away with this if you already have an install bas…
I feel that reflects quite well Steve Jobs vs Tim Cook as well. Jobs just wanted to make 'insanely great' products [for their users], with the side effect of profit, while Tim Cook is probably fixated on efficiency and Shareholder value. Apple has had record profits and performance, but most will tell it's not the same and its future is not so certain. It seems paradoxical that trying to maximize shareholder value at…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you’re only looking at stock price then Ballmer did exceptionally well.
Go look at the stock history, the moment Ballmer became CEO in 2000 the price stopped growing, lulled back down into the ~20-30's and stayed there until he stepped down in 2014. He did "exceptionally well" at keeping it where it was...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you’re only looking at stock price then Ballmer did exceptionally well.
Go look at the stock history, the moment Ballmer became CEO in 2000 the price stopped growing, lulled back down into the ~20-30's and stayed there until he stepped down in 2014. He did "exceptionally well" at keeping it where it was...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bill Gates built an amazing airplane. Steve Ballmer crashed it in the desert. Satya Nadella rallied the survivors, put it back together, and got it flying again. Yes, he absolutely deserves the credit just as Ballmer absolutely deserves the blame.
If you’re only looking at stock price then Ballmer did exceptionally well.
First: A stock can rise for reasons having zero to do with the reality of the business behind the stock, for example mispricing, availability or the lack thereof of alternative investments, inflation, currency devaluation etc. Second: To me it always leaves a very foul aftertaste when the achievements of a team are ascribed to whoever the visible front-person is. I find it hard to believe that among the other 149999…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bill Gates built an amazing airplane. Steve Ballmer crashed it in the desert. Satya Nadella rallied the survivors, put it back together, and got it flying again. Yes, he absolutely deserves the credit just as Ballmer absolutely deserves the blame.
Actually, Ballmer did quite well at MS. He consistently increased earnings via Windows and Office during his tenure as CEO. He was a very good businessman. He was not, however, a product guy. Witness their failures with the Zune, mobile, early cloud computing. His problem was that he always tried to do what would be best for Microsoft and not the customer. You can get away with this if you already have an install bas…
His "everything has to be Windows" philosophy was toxic, too. (Then I realized that he didn't really care about the underlying technologies of things, and as long as you called your embedded system that had an event loop and some interrupt handlers "Windows Event Loop And Some Interrupt Handlers, Enterprise Edition" you would be politically safe).
Did they sell that many more … what exactly? I am just trying to understand where that value is.
Or was this essentially all stock buybacks that artificially inflate the "value" as established by the market cap?
Ironically too is that when you control the MSFT market cap against the Trump inflated stock market, there is actually no actual gain, especially when you control for stock buybacks, aka, corporate stock self-inflation.