Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO • Hacker News Board

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#121

Post by wsc981 » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 1:12 AM UTC

causality0 wrote: post #119

codeflo wrote: post #74

I'm not informed enough to rebut this, and don't want to be quoted in the follow-up article that suggests HN is still too dumb to get the genius of Ballmer, but here's my take. It's only the footnote of the article that mentions Ballmer's "stage persona". I think that's the important point, and I would add that his "interview persona" might have been even worse. Back then, he was quoted as saying insanely dumb shit a…

Brief data transmissions being called "squirts" is common, and was more common at the time.

I squirt all the time on Twitter.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#122

Post by rawgabbit » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 1:15 AM UTC

chucke1992 wrote: post #102

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ballmer's attempt to buy Yahoo and disregard for touch screen phones is what defined his legacy. You are weirdly obsessed with that but Ballmer actually started Bing and bought Nokia to make touchscreen phones. I think you are extremely biased to the point of being entirely disconnected from the facts at hand. > Ability to buy right things is important too. Ballmer bought Skype and launched the foundation of what w…

I am biased but I am not disconnected from the facts. I am still pissed at Ballmer with how they missed search and mobile market. They were late with Search and they were late with mobile. With Teams it was just luck, but even then Team's growth happened years years after Ballmer and can be attributed to the multiplatform push of O365 by Satya.

Azure Search is still broken FWIW. A lot of Azure is still vapor ware; it works in the tutorial but not in real life. Every time my company signs/re-up a contract with Microsoft, I die a little.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#123

Post by rawgabbit » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 1:17 AM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #19

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…

He was good at sales but their products were and are still inferior. Only Excel and SQL Server are two products I would personally buy.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#124

Post by not_a_bot_4sho » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 1:19 AM UTC

Funny story. I used to see Steve almost every weekday for a couple of years.

I can't speak to his business skills, but I can attest that he never once offered a tip for his daily black iced tea. We'd even have it ready for him before he showed up so he never had to wait! He would pay with cash, and I'd hand him his change and drink, and that was that.

It's funny to me now: one of the richest men in the world and he never once offered a tip.

Frugality aside, he was always very polite and warm so I can't be mad. Makes for a good ice breaker story.

Edit: holy moly, this is a sensitive subject. Please remember this was from a time before tipflation. Tipping meant you left your change behind once in a while only if you felt the desire to show appreciation. It wasn't an obligation. Yes, I still do think it's a funny story. Roast me for being entitled lol

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#125

Post by kfajdsl » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 1:23 AM UTC

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #114

greggyb wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MS should've been able to simply just extend their OS monopoly into all platforms and all architectures, but they didn't, and to a vast swath of the world have become irrelevant, and worse, have lost their ability to become relevant. Microsoft is, pretty famously, on the receiving end of one of the most significant antitrust judgments in modern history. Choosing to further a monopoly seems that it would be a phenom…

I don't buy the "MS purposefully let IE die to avoid anti-trust" story. Ballmer was an enterprise sales guy, no wonder his enterprise software business did great, IE lacked focus and died. Just keeping IE around, they didn't have to kill Google, but just keeping it around would've been interesting in 2020 as they can conceivably use it to move onto rivals. Similarly, windows phone didn't die because of anti-trust but…

Was there ever a world where a proprietary OS could win out against Linux? Or for that matter, a proprietary DB as opposed to MySQL/Postgres.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#126

Post by paulpauper » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 1:26 AM UTC

fnord123 wrote: post #59

A rare miss by Mr. Luu. > Ballmer wins... 2010: Microsoft creates Azure The Azure project was run by Nadella before he became CEO. And it succeeded despite Ballmer. Azure was seen as the Microsoft cloud, where people ran Windows Servers. But Microsoft had long lost the battle for the server space to Linux. When Ballmer stepped aside, only then could Nadella drop the limiters and push the Microsoft <3 Linux perspectiv…

Agree .Balmer was a disaster. Microsoft stock basically languished from 2003-2013 as everything else went up.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#127

Post by Maxatar » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 1:28 AM UTC

My understanding is that Azure became an incredibly profitable cloud platform once it became open to Linux, which was something done after Ballmer had stepped down and Nadella became CEO.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#128

Post by arandomusername » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 1:28 AM UTC

not_a_bot_4sho wrote: post #124

Funny story. I used to see Steve almost every weekday for a couple of years. I can't speak to his business skills, but I can attest that he never once offered a tip for his daily black iced tea. We'd even have it ready for him before he showed up so he never had to wait! He would pay with cash, and I'd hand him his change and drink, and that was that. It's funny to me now: one of the richest men in the world and he n…

What frugality? He was paying the full price that it was being sold at.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#129

Post by cyberax » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 1:30 AM UTC

dh2022 wrote: post #95

parl_match wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Windows was already losing relevance in the data center when Nadya took over -because of Linux. At AWS in 2008 / 2009 adoption was all about LAMP stack - AWS's tools were all geared for LAMP. AWS offered some Windows + SQL Server licenses on their cloud, however it was a struggle to get a deal (any deal) with Microsoft. On the mobile side Windows was losing relevance to iPhone - which Ballmer so famously derided. Sat…

> Why hardware makers do not figure this out for themselves is a different topic

Have you _seen_ the typical software produced by hardware makers?

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#130

Post by Maxatar » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 1:31 AM UTC

parl_match wrote: post #24

abirch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

XBox's irrelevance is thanks to Don Mattrick for ruining the XBox One release.

It is fair to point out that XBox continues to stagnate and despite many billions of dollars that Microsoft has pumped into gaming and acquiring numerous studios and publishers, they still have yet to succeed in that area.