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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#171

Post by hyperhopper »

isodev wrote: post #163
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on whether it's table service, or whether you yourself go to the counter to buy your drink. Until very recently, that was the dividing line for tips (except at bars).

How cruel can one be to try to come up with such a "line"? In my mind it goes like this: If you're served by a human and tips are not included in normal pay by law, you tip. If it's a country where people can't live with just the one job, you tip a lot.

By your own logic, do you tip every grocery store cashier? Do you tip your landlord? Do you tip the toll collector on the highway?

Tipping everybody who you hand cash to is crazy. And the US is the only place where you have to do it for a large percentage of that population.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#172

Post by skyyler »

unixhero wrote: post #162
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…

Tipping for a convenience item at the till really really sucks. Am I the only one sane on this? Best regards Norway

It does suck.

But in this culture that Steve exists within, those positions are paid mostly by tips. He certainly could afford to help out the people that prepared his iced tea ritual for him in a timely manner, but he did not.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#173

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

kfajdsl wrote: post #125
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it's better, by tying it in with your other products, by making it compatible with the market, and by building an ecosystem moat on top of it. You can also lower the price to capture marketshare. Plenty of proprietary systems won despite being late and the open source system had become incumbent. See discord/slack, MATLAB, Spotify.

If Windows Server had a better DX, had supported everything Linux did, AND had proprietary features on top of that, it would've done well I reckon.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#174

Post by cryptoz »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #160
stouset wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Bro there's no "wait staff" involved in this transaction. He purchased an item, the person handed it to him. This is well outside the bounds of what should be tipped.

If that is your takeaway from this story, hooooo boy you must be in a rage every day. Places all over Seattle default their machines to tip 18% when you buy a single roll of toilet paper and nothing else. (Edit: you could also pick up a few bottles of expensive wine they sell; maybe you’re in a rush and don’t expect a tip screen ; ooooops you tipped $40 for nothing!)

There’s a place that does this less than a block from me right now. Actually probably 2-3 places if you extend a block further.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#175

Post by wongarsu »

dexterdog wrote: post #148
dyauspitr wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure happened because of Nadella (who led the project) despite Ballmer.

Azure may be successful financially, but as someone who has finally used it for the last two years after 15 years of AWS and a little bit of GCP, I can't help but think the world would be a better place if it didn't exist or if some lesser player had that market share.

For most stuff Azure is pretty meh, but it seems to have the best features for running Windows servers and integrates well with Active Directory (or MS Entra or whatever they currently call it). Features that I don't need as a startup founder, but that would be very interesting for many places I worked at.

Basically the cloud for everyone but the tech companies

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#178

Post by legitster »

snowwrestler wrote: post #143
legitster wrote: post #75

Having spent some time at the Microsoft campus, I can tell you this is basically the consensus view from employees today. Ballmer was not a cool, trendy, or fun CEO who people rallied behind - but he more or less "got the job done". He was the captain of a massive ship with a turning radius the size of a continent guiding it through icebergs. Azure's success was specifically set in motion under Ballmer. Owed to the f…

This is hindsight bias. Because other people took some of his later initiatives and made them successful, it’s tempting to look back and grant him these as wins. We should resist that temptation and judge him on the results he delivered. MS was the essential tech company, king of the world, and under his leadership their innovation stalled, they lost in markets where they were leading, the stock stagnated, and huge p…

Hindsight works both ways.

Developing OSes and software was clearly an unsustainable business. It's obvious in hindsight that cloud infrastructure was the way to go. But at the time placing a lot of different bets to find a few successful product-market fits was the best you could ask for.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#179

Post by Brian_K_White »

Krssst wrote: post #107
SoothingSorbet wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ballmer also gave us the maligned Windows Vista and Windows 8. Microsoft has also been way more open source friendly during Nadella's tenure, whereas Ballmer was openly hostile to FOSS. I'll take Nadella, thanks (although he should fix his user-hostile spyware).

Windows 8 was misguided but not user-hostile. I miss not being repeatedly asked by my OS to create an account or share my data. If it was a human doing it rather than software I am not sure it would be legal.

These are both valid takes really. I'll take neither Ballmer nor Nadella thanks.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#180

Post by stavros »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #138
eudushshd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>> We'd even have it ready for him before he showed up so he never had to wait! > Man, your entitlement just makes me want to never tip. Urban legend has it that the word "tips" is an acronym for "to insure prompt service." Whether or not this is true, the OP's optimization for "prompt service", as defined above, makes an assessment of same qualifying as entitlement puzzling. > Just because someone has the ability to…

I don't know about the US, but in my country this sort of service is rewarded by me continuing to frequent that establishment. If the shop requires money for this convenience, they will have an extra fee, which I will be happy to choose whether I want to pay or not.
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