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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#211

Post by thatfrenchguy »

itake wrote: post #203
skyyler wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But in this culture that Steve exists within, those positions are paid mostly by tips. False. Presumably this was in WA, employers have to pay full wages. there is no carve out "tipped" wage (most) of the rest of the USA has. Currently, min wage in Redmond (King County) is $20.29/hr. Many businesses in King County do not allow tipping.

Minimum wage != Prevailing wage in that occupation

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#212

Post by geodel »

booleandilemma wrote: post #169
pensatoio wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Absolutely. I hope the tip screen on tablets goes away soon.

I think they are just getting started. Soon there will announcement on speakers for non-tippers "Congratulations! You won cheap ass of the day award"

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#213

Post by greggyb »

julianeon wrote: post #155
RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #44

It’s funny how all the comments here are falling in the trap described in the beginning of the article of disliking Ballmer because he comes from the sales side and they can’t fathom someone not coming from the tech side leading a tech company. What’s undeniable in the article is that Ballmer literally built what remains Microsoft best asset even before being a CEO there: it’s incredibly good relationship with its co…

I wouldn’t use that language exactly. I think they’ve set up a very effectively profitable relationship with the industry - part carrot and part stick. But I don’t think AWS usage would’ve exploded as it did if their clients truly felt both respected and understood.

AWS was the first mover, and they execute very well on products. Despite this, AWS market share has been pretty flat for a while.

Azure was a second mover. Microsoft executes on platform and partner ecosystem very well. Azure is still growing market share pretty quickly.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#214

Post by adventured »

01100011 wrote: post #157
pensatoio wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We allow wages you can't live on but then expect customers to randomly make up the difference but only for some jobs. Make too little to afford an apartment, healthcare and food and you work in the food service industry? You deserve a tip. You work in a meatpacking plant? Oh, get screwed.

Waiters in the US make more than their peers in: Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, etc.

That's thanks entirely to the tip system.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#215

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

abirch wrote: post #18
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.

Satya’s success is built on stuff that began under Ballmer. Azure’s core services are all from Bing, which was something Ballmer pushed for.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#216

Post by Uvix »

Kuraj wrote: post #116
GuB-42 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget gaming. Gaming on Linux is possible but Windows still has the advantage in both software and hardware support. I particularly like the video series from LinusTechTips where they try to use Linux as their daily driver because it is very telling. They manage to do stuff, but it isn't great. I find it interesting because it is done from the point of view of computer enthusiasts but not IT professionals or p…

I don't think calling gaming on linux "possible" gives it the justice it deserves, with the arrival of the Steam Deck and all the improvements Valve contributed to the upstream. The experience is practically _seamless_. I agree though that linux _on desktop_ is pretty janky, or at least it always was for me, having tried daily driving numerous distros.

It's only seamless if you buy everything through Steam. Third-party stores need not apply.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#217

Post by metadat »

vjust wrote: post #181
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…

Ballmer hated Linux & open source. He would've driven their cloud division to the ground trying to sell Windows servers in the cloud. It would've taken him another 20 years to accept that Linux was key to the cloud. VSCode (Visual Studio Code) - would never have taken birth. Microsoft survived and thrived once Ballmer had no option but leave. In this era of Python development, Microsoft Windows still feels a step or…

I have as much disdain for the monkey man as the next OSS fan. But VSCode was always closed sourced crap at the arbitrary whims of a soulless zombie corp, and they never promised otherwise in a significant way. It's not relevant and not a good foundational signal or basis for any argument.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#218

Post by skyyler »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #211
itake wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in this culture that Steve exists within, those positions are paid mostly by tips. False. Presumably this was in WA, employers have to pay full wages. there is no carve out "tipped" wage (most) of the rest of the USA has. Currently, min wage in Redmond (King County) is $20.29/hr. Many businesses in King County do not allow tipping.

Minimum wage != Prevailing wage in that occupation

>Currently, min wage in Redmond (King County) is $20.29/hr.

I'd love to know if that is a livable wage in King County.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#219

Post by dangus »

legitster wrote: post #178
snowwrestler wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While it may be true that the OS itself isn't really a cash cow anymore (if it ever was), I still think Microsoft's greatest failure of the previous decade was exiting the smartphone OS space and ceding it to Google and Apple.

I think that Ballmer's management can take a lot of blame for that. I think a different CEO could have executed and possibly have kept Microsoft in that market with success.

The Apple App Store by itself is a trillion dollar ecosystem. Microsoft being able to gain even a sliver of that size would be worth quite a lot.

We might give Apple similar criticism on the other side of this coin by saying that it's somewhat insane that Apple hasn't tried entering the public cloud market, especially given the fact that they now design their own ARM processors that are essentially the market leaders in that architecture.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#220

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

vjust wrote: post #181
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…

Ballmer hated Linux & open source. He would've driven their cloud division to the ground trying to sell Windows servers in the cloud. It would've taken him another 20 years to accept that Linux was key to the cloud. VSCode (Visual Studio Code) - would never have taken birth. Microsoft survived and thrived once Ballmer had no option but leave. In this era of Python development, Microsoft Windows still feels a step or…

Actually there was a lot of open source happening under Ballmer - not because of him but in that time. VSCode’s beginnings were in an earlier similar product were from that time. He didn’t interfere or stop those projects. Attributing that to Nadella is just false.
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