I read the entire article, and I love how virtually every comment here is what Dan wrote about.
Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#22If Microsoft had just tracked the market while he was CEO: what is the delta in market cap? His vision destroyed multiple Enrons of shareholder value.
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#23> Even Bing, widely considered a failure, on last reported revenue and current P/E ratio, would be 12th most valuable tech company in the world, between Tencent and ASML.
A tiny slice of the search market (4% IIRC) is worth this much? Incredible. Everyone knows Google is swimming in money, but I guess it never really computed for me that managing to grab a tiny slice of the search market would be so valuable. If I was making a guess prior to reading this, my intuition would have been that Bing was some kind of loss leader. Shows what I know! Hah
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#24No 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.
Satya's tenure has seen the fall of Xbox, the lost relevance of Windows. While moving to a services model is going to be very lucrative for them, they risk competitors offering swap-out models.
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#25No 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…
there was no windows outage
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#26Is there a name for this phenomenon when past leaders are viewed in a better light than they objectively deserved? I see this in politics a lot (eg Dubya) but in business too.
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#27Isn't it pretty well documented that he made several decisions that turned out to not pan out and then were nearly immediately reversed by the current CEO that turned out to be massive successes? That doesn't scream "underrated".
It’s so well documented you can’t even come with an actual one while writing your comment.
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#28I read the entire article, and I love how virtually every comment here is what Dan wrote about.
Also, I agree with the gist of the article, in that a lot of Nadella's success is stuff that takes more than 3-4 years to execute.
Ballmer, or Microsoft under Ballmer, had to have been laying the groundwork for Azure, TypeScript and VS code before they took off under Nadella.
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
He's listed on their page:
https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/interior.aspx?sid=1758&...
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#30No 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…
Steve Ballmer has not been CEO for a decade. At 10 years later it is very much Nadella's ship.