Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

Baller was the right CEO for 90s Microsoft up through about 2002. He was the wrong CEO for 2010-onward Microsoft but it took a chunk of years for the board to realize that.

I disagree. Tech companies need tech leadership, and Ballmer didn't have the chops for that, or imagination either. He got some deals done, I'm sure.

How so? Missed mobile after working on it for a decade+ previously. Despite developers⁴ they didn't implement a decent terminal until a few years ago, thirty years late. Enough said.

It's probably better for the industry Ballmer was mediocre or worse. I'm often forced to do business with Microsoft already. His horrible deal to buy Yahoo would have improved the playing field further.

Ah, rose colored glasses never get old :)

He was a CEO, that much can be said. The rest is up for debate.

No he wasn’t haha. The only thing he did was slide the company sideways via pre existing illegal monopoly. In fact, they lost most of their monopoly under his supervision . At no point did the quality of their products improve, and that’s evidenced with this year’s massive massive Windows outage, or Garmins mega ransomware, out a hundred other people who’ve been hacked via Windows.

If you’re running Windows for anything, it’s only a matter of when, not if.

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