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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

danluu.com

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#13

Post by lysace »

FanaHOVA wrote: post #9
lysace wrote: post #3

Wow, gotta love the recent MS fanfic. Ballmer was just an average sales jock along for the ride. Edit: Seems like I was proven wrong. Assumptions are... assumptions :).

I don't have a strong opinion on his tenure at MSFT, but I don't know many sales jocks with a 1600 SAT score and a degree in applied math from Harvard.

Good point.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/6/4/personable-ballm...

> In high school, Ballmer scored a 1600 on his SATs and was a National Merit Scholar.

Would the Crimson verify this or just trust the claim?

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#17

Post by mixmastamyk »

FanaHOVA wrote: post #9
lysace wrote: post #3

Wow, gotta love the recent MS fanfic. Ballmer was just an average sales jock along for the ride. Edit: Seems like I was proven wrong. Assumptions are... assumptions :).

I don't have a strong opinion on his tenure at MSFT, but I don't know many sales jocks with a 1600 SAT score and a degree in applied math from Harvard.

Effective sales and marketing is more dependent on math than most people realize.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#18

Post by abirch »

exabrial wrote: post #8

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 anyth…

I remember when he retired and the MSFT jumped. Satya is underrated.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#19

Post by bigstrat2003 »

I think that a lot of people are commenting here without actually reading the article. The article lays out a concrete (and imo pretty persuasive) argument as to why the author thinks that Ballmer was a decent CEO. You should really read it, but the TLDR is:

* Some of the big feathers in Microsoft's cap today (O365 and Azure) started during Ballmer's tenure

* While the company had plenty of failed initiatives during his time, what matters in the end is that the hits made up for the misses in terms of profit, and they did

* Metrics like revenue and so on were all positive during his tenure

Frankly, unless the author is factually incorrect on these points (which I don't have the knowledge to assert either way), I think it's a good argument.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#20

Post by analog31 »

exabrial wrote: post #8

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 anyth…

I wonder if Windows is even their flagship app any more. I think people will give up Windows before they give up Excel. And they might not even notice a different OS, so long as it had the same file manager. In fact Excel is the last non-FOSS app that I still use, even if sporadically.
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