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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#301

Post by locusofself »

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.

do you know how expensive it is to live in Redmond? Very expensive

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#302

Post by locusofself »

skyyler wrote: post #218
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live in Redmond. A decent house is 1.2 million dollars here.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#303

Post by toast0 »

dangus wrote: post #219
legitster wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 mean, Microsoft was too early and too late on smartphones. I never cared to look into the pre WP7 history.

But the more recent Windows Phone died with WM10, which I don't think is fair to blame on Balmer. WM10 came out in public beta in Feburary 2015, and Balmer was replaced in February 2014. Microsoft eliminated their legendary testing program in August 2014, and the WM10 betas and release in November 2015 had very poor quality. On my phones, I had to choose between annoying bugs in notifications in WP8 or WM10 with a subpar, laggy experience with mobile Edge that managed to be worse than mobile IE. They did manage to get a decent final release together in 2020, although mobile Edge was still crap. You can blame Balmer for not letting Firefox on their app store, I think; a browser that didn't suck would have helped me stay on WP longer anyway.

Still, I think Continuum with an x86 phone could have gotten market share, but Intel cancelled atom for phones in April 2016.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#304

Post by avazhi »

not_a_bot_4sho wrote: post #276
avazhi wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you seem to think that simply because of his wealth he should have been tipping you? The corollary would be the notion that regardless of where you were working at the time, you would have expected a tip from him simply on account of his wealth? There's a huge difference between tips being a thing certain patrons do every once in awhile, and something being an established norm - are you trying to say that in Seatt…

> So you seem to think that simply because of his wealth he should have been tipping you? No. But it's funny that he, of all people, didn't. It's the juxtaposition of wealth and frugality that are amusing. > are you trying to say that in Seattle at the time tipping baristas was literally a well-established norm? Yes. Without a doubt. But the norm was to tip infrequently, and not everyone did it. Those that did tipped…

Well, I guess what I’d say is this: if you told the story but left out the part about the tips, but then people asked if ever tipped and you said no, that would be a very different story from one where the fact he didn’t tip looms large because of how you tell it. I think the story is notable just because a billionaire both ordered his own drinks personally and was a nice guy. Aside from Buffett going to McDonald’s in Omaha I don’t think the super rich ordering their own fast food is especially common these days.

I do agree though in general about tipping culture and how most people feel about it. I’m not necessarily trying to white knight for a billionaire here, either.

Hope that makes sense and I do appreciate your responses.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#305

Post by ThrowawayB7 »

addicted wrote: post #182

This article doesn’t understand what was fundamentally wrong with Ballmer’s leadership and what Nadella actually changed. The specific technologies that were successful is irrelevant. Microsoft has and continues to invest in nearly every computer related technology that may come around the corner or they got late on. The problem with Microsoft was everything went through Windows. The entire company was designed to pr…

Except Steven Sinofsky, longtime head of the Windows division and one of the internal forces preventing Microsoft from going in alternate directions, was pushed out under Ballmer's tenure, not Nadella's.

Granted, Ballmer made the mistake of putting Terry Myerson, who headed up the failed Windows Phone effort, in charge of Windows but that's another story.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#306

Post by pennybanks »

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

this isnt expected. not for most ppl at least. you can if you want but its nothing like sitting down getting served or delivery driver, etc.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#309

Post by snowwrestler »

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.

Treating his tenure as just a bunch of vague bets that didn't pan out does not give Ballmer enough credit. He was a hands-on leader responsible for how MS executed, which had a direct impact on product success or failure.

MS did not just have bad luck, they lost to competitors.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#310

Post by bryanrasmussen »

xandrius wrote: post #229
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What frugality? He was paying the full price that it was being sold at. By that logic, most reading these comments should expect to hear from their employer: What annual bonus? What stock options? The company is paying full price that your time was being sold at.

Annual bonus is either performance based or as a retainer to make up for differences in the wages since the person was hired. Stock options are because you could be paid more or you are taking risks for future rewards. A mandatory tip is because your employer doesn't want to pay you full wage and instead of increasing the price and pay you more, they pass it over to the customers. So they get the same profits without…

>A mandatory tip

evidently the tips under discussion were not mandatory.

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