Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO • Hacker News Board

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#481

Post by cjblomqvist » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 11:58 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #467

madisp wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not true, at least not according to MS themselves. MS have done several studies and adoption of these tools drive adoption of Azure. That's why MS invests in it.

They've been quite clear about this. The one platform/OS was Windows. The new platform/OS is Azure/Cloud. It's almost like saying Google doesn't make any revenues from search, only from selling ads.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#482

Post by raxxorraxor » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 11:59 AM UTC

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.

They bought it. If Microsoft had developed it, we would get something like sourcesafe (was that the name?).

Sure, the investment was quite sensible, although I don't think they can change it for their ambitions too much.

Microsofts conquest against open source was of course a wrong strategy of Balmer.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#483

Post by Jgrubb » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 12:03 PM UTC

hyperhopper wrote: post #167

hermanradtke wrote: post #36

> Much like Gary Bernhardt's talk, which was panned because he made the problem statement and solution so obvious that people didn't realize they'd learned something non-trivial I really want to see this video, but I cannot find it anywhere. I checked https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcGKfGEEONaDvuLDFFKRf... but I believe Gary asks that his videos not be shown (which I am fine with). I also checked https://www.…

His "using you're types good" talk being censored is my go-to example for how "cancel culture" and "wokeness" has gone too far, a good useful talk not meant to be harmful to anybody, with no evidence that anybody was hurt by it, is removed from the world for the far reaching fear that one day some person might not be happy about it. The fact that years later people still want to learn from it and nobody has every tal…

Look, I don't know the video but how do we know - or why do we assume - that it was taken down out of fear of future weaponized wokeness? Maybe Gary took it down for Gary's reasons.

Edit: from the couple of descriptions in this thread I could totally envision an empathetic individual waking up one day and deciding that talk felt too much like punching down and taking it down because they felt like they could do better.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#484

Post by sirjaz » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 12:04 PM UTC

greggyb wrote: post #192

kfajdsl wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See my sibling comment. Windows Server dominates server OS revenue share at ~70%. They get most of the money that people are willing to spend on server OSes.

In addition on-prem Windows Server share is 70%+ as of 2023 of all Server usage.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#485

Post by infecto » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 12:05 PM UTC

skyyler wrote: post #172

unixhero wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Should not matter how rich the person is. Tipping at the register is a shame.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#486

Post by raxxorraxor » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 12:06 PM UTC

globalise83 wrote: post #480

rowanG077 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for me as well. I do have a VR gaming machine which I don't think will linuxify soon but I would if I could. Nadella has grown Microsoft no doubt. But in the process has trashed Windows. One of the most valuable pieces of software. I wouldn't be surprised this will bite them in the long run a lot.

Our company is absolutely full of Microsoft products (all the Office 365 stuff, PowerBI, Azure, Microsoft SSO etc. etc.), yet most of our teams use Macbooks. Windows is no longer a necessity to work in a mostly-Microsoft environment, and that strategy is making Microsoft fabulous amounts of money.

Tools like PowerBI are quite good, the data pipelines are amazing, but at the end of the chain Microsoft always makes mistakes so that something good like PowerBI will only remain an advanced Power Point version. If you go a bit deeper the platform is fairly locked down behind artificial restraints.

Azure has good parts, auth with Microsoft is perfect for software in the office world and goes beyond the usual LDAP Active Directory. But on the other hand it is quite slow to a degree that it really affects productivity. The damage is probably in the billions/trillions for their many customers. That is the real price of office cloud versions.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#487

Post by znpy » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 12:06 PM UTC

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.

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

cool, how much money have you paid to Microsoft to use those?

Except for Github (which they bought, by the way) probably not much. And github has some serious competitors (Gitlab which is just great and to a lesser extent, bitbucket).

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#488

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 12:08 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#489

Post by znpy » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 12:08 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #445

spacechild1 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let alone ads in the start menu!

To be fair, Windows 98 came with almost-ads in the stock Active Desktop wallpaper - and promos for AOL/CompuServ/Prodigy.

AOL was stuff that people actually used however. It wasn't "random stuff".

For many people in the 90ies it was like the brand "AOL" was a synonym of "internet".

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#490

Post by squarefoot » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 12:10 PM UTC

juped wrote: post #334

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.

Ballmer would never have put honest-to-God advertisements in Windows Solitaire .

As a 100% Linux user with good memories of that era (flying chair, Linux==cancer, etc.) I may be the best person here to actually defend Ballmer, having for sure no hidden interests in doing that. Everything changed in those years: Google was cool, Linux desktop almost non existent, cryptocurrency not even in the head of its creator, AI was a myth and the best voice recognition could offer was the hilarious "double the killer" demonstration [1]. How can we compare CEOs actions separated by two decades? Ballmer did what was perceived as useful for its company back then just as Nadella is doing that now. Perspectives have changed, hence companies and their CEOS had to adapt. I'm 100% sure that if Ballmer were MS CEO today, he would include advertisements as well, as today putting advertisements in every free corner of the known Universe is perceived as acceptable, if not necessary, which was not the case 20 years back.

[1] context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX8oYoYy2Gc