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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#461

Post by cypress66 »

signa11 wrote: post #382
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... https://github.com/microsoft/vscode ? It's MIT licensed. Or are we here to start GPL vs MIT for the 10,000th time?

oh please :) the old ‘embrace-extend-extinguish’ model is what it _truly_ is, f.e. , you cannot take extensions from m$ store and use it. there have been large number of discussions around this topic, and folks have highlighted these concerns more articulately than i could ever hope to do. take your pick.

Idk, I use cursor which is a proprietary commercial VS code fork and it just works. So clearly the license/OSS situation is very workable.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#462

Post by everfrustrated »

gitaarik wrote: post #420
bawolff wrote: post #43

> One part of the plan to kill Google was to redirect users who typed google.com into their address bar to MSN search. Crazy they were ever considering this.

It's Microsoft

Folks have forgotten how truly aggressive Microsoft was pre-antitrust days.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#463

Post by Hypergraphe »

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…

I'm not sure that devaluating Windows is a good strategy at all...

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#464

Post by elzbardico »

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…

Ballmer didn't hate linux and open source.

He feared it as a threath to Microsoft's business model and revenue streams.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#465

Post by madisp »

archerx wrote: post #313
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…

Well since Nadella I have been using less Microsoft products and probably won’t be using Windows anymore once my Windows 10 LTSC stops working. I keep hearing praise for Nadella but all he is doing is alienating a lot of customers with his terrible decisions.

With GitHub, TypeScript and VS code I'm probably using more Microsoft products than before.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#466

Post by belter »

Hypergraphe wrote: post #463
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…

I'm not sure that devaluating Windows is a good strategy at all...

Bad strategy for Microsoft but clearly a wining strategy for the World.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#467

Post by rbanffy »

madisp wrote: post #465
archerx wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well since Nadella I have been using less Microsoft products and probably won’t be using Windows anymore once my Windows 10 LTSC stops working. I keep hearing praise for Nadella but all he is doing is alienating a lot of customers with his terrible decisions.

With GitHub, TypeScript and VS code I'm probably using more Microsoft products than before.

Of those three, the only one that drives revenue to MS is GitHub.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#468

Post by tyleo »

The Acquired podcast also supports this claim in a 2-part episode on Microsoft I’ll link below.

Their evidence is from interviews with current and former Microsoft employees who worked with Ballmer IIRC including Ballmer himself. They basically describe him as being the rock that cheerlead, navigated, and held the company together through a decade of legal troubles. He also started many important businesses like enterprise, gaming, and cloud.

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/microsoft

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#469

Post by kristiandupont »

signa11 wrote: post #382
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... https://github.com/microsoft/vscode ? It's MIT licensed. Or are we here to start GPL vs MIT for the 10,000th time?

oh please :) the old ‘embrace-extend-extinguish’ model is what it _truly_ is, f.e. , you cannot take extensions from m$ store and use it. there have been large number of discussions around this topic, and folks have highlighted these concerns more articulately than i could ever hope to do. take your pick.

> ‘embrace-extend-extinguish’ model is what it _truly_ is

With this mindset, what could MS possibly create that wouldn't make you say this?

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#470

Post by rbanffy »

lenkite wrote: post #419
ThrowawayB7 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Windows phone was damn good and was growing in popularity when Nadella came in and killed it. When you are #3 in a market, you need persistence to win. One cannot expect immediate, massive profits in a saturated market. Yet, Windows phone by itself was a growth multiplier for Windows which Nadella annihilated in order to turn Microsoft into a cloud & ad services company.

> you need persistence to win.

You also need a plan. How would Windows Phone displace either Apple or Android?

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