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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#491

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

itsoktocry wrote: post #450
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like you say, at his level of wealth, the actual dollars and cents become almost meaningless. Setting aside whether somebody in that position should be leaving a tip, how could you not want to? I would love to have the experience of just dropping a $1k tip to see what it's like. Maybe he did that once so never felt the need to again.

> I would love to have the experience of just dropping a $1k tip to see what it's like. What exactly are your expectations here?

I'm not sure, that's exactly why I'd like to experience it and find out! I guess the server would be very grateful, but who knows. They might tell me it will change their life in some way, the restaurant might name a dish after me, countless things could happen.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#492

Post by raxxorraxor »

rbanffy wrote: post #470
lenkite wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It wouldn't and it wouldn't need to. The decision was still very likely wrong, especially transparent after Apple proved with silicon that ARM platforms can be that competitive. Windows wasn't ready here and platform interop wasn't at all it strength.

If Windows phones would have had an emulated x86 mode, many people would have bought it instantly due to the momentum that now steadily decreases.

There can be solid business revenue if you are "just" #3 and the experience with development is very valuable. Although it is true that Microsoft and hardware has always been turbulent, with partners or without. Sometimes they simply created the best products in their class with a lot of margin, sometimes they basically sold scrap.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#493

Post by mysterydip »

rbanffy wrote: post #470
lenkite wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Just a spitball idea, but rather than focusing on the consumer market, they could've been the new blackberry for businesses (that give employees phones). Native active directory and group policy integration would be a good solution for the myriad of third party apps/services/devices that attempt to control the other phones.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#494

Post by yalogin »

Underrated? He is properly rated in the sense that he owns 10s of billions even though he singlehandedly killed the windows smartphone and tablet business and also killed Nokia. Granted that apple killed them but with Microsoft’s resources there was no reason to just give up like they did. Buying Nokia was a historic bad decision that screams he didn’t understand the business at all. There was a huge opportunity to just emulate apple and just suck in all of the corporate market in one swoop and add them to their recurring revenue office service but Ballmer didn’t see it. He just saw them as phones and hardware.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#495

Post by actionfromafar »

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.

VS Code is also low-key keeping Windows relevant as a developer OS. If something else came along which was truly very excellent but was only working well with Linux, and VS Code was not there to be the de-facto go-to solution for most new devs, it could eat away more of Windows marketshare.

So I see VS Code as a slight moat, also in its promulgation of dotnet-isms. So I think VS Code drives some revenue Microsofts way in a pretty diffuse but real way.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#496

Post by trelane »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #58
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'm assuming that "this years massive Windows outage" refers to the Crowdstrike thing, which wouldn't have happened if Microsoft had been able to lock down the kernel, which antitrust regulators prohibited. (The essay extensively deals with antitrust, I'm sure you have thoughts on this.)

Only if you believe that executing in the kernel is necessary and that there could not be another way to do this, with public interfaces.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#497

Post by _heimdall »

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…

Lately it has definitely felt as though Microsoft is resurrecting Ballmer's old meme as "AI! AI! AI!"

I was at Microsoft for the last couple years of Ballmer and the first few years of Nadella. He definitely did change the company and I remember at the time feeling that he handled the change really well, but from where I sat he spent the first part of his tenure evolving Ballmer's final push to move focus from Windows to developers. Everything Microsoft did prior to LLMs was to bring developers over, from VS Code to GitHub to WSL.

Now the company seems fully baked I to LLMs with everything they do chasing that. It would even make sense if the developer push was driven in part by the need to build up training sets for the eventual LLM work, though I really have a hard time believing that Microsoft was so well ahead of the game that they started grooming developers to provide data more than a decade ago.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#498

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

walthamstow wrote: post #283
adventured wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Britain has tips. Every restaurant adds 12.5% as an 'optional' charge but they know full well that Brits are allergic to causing a fuss and will never ask it to be removed. Do US waiters really get paid more than UK with PPP/forex? You seem to have the data to hand.

> Britain has tips. Every restaurant adds 12.5% as an 'optional' charge but they know full well that Brits are allergic to causing a fuss and will never ask it to be removed.

That "service charge" is usually (mandated?) listed on the menu, so it would lead to quite an awkward conversation if you then complained after sitting and eating the meal. It's quite often specified for groups over a certain size and it makes more sense than getting into a "tipping" argument after the meal.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#499

Post by tylerchilds »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #482
madisp wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

this is the funny thing about microsoft

they are way better at buying and selling software than ideating and creating it.

successful microsoft products are acquisitions.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#500

Post by actionfromafar »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #492
rbanffy wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need persistence to win. You also need a plan. How would Windows Phone displace either Apple or Android?

It wouldn't and it wouldn't need to. The decision was still very likely wrong, especially transparent after Apple proved with silicon that ARM platforms can be that competitive. Windows wasn't ready here and platform interop wasn't at all it strength. If Windows phones would have had an emulated x86 mode, many people would have bought it instantly due to the momentum that now steadily decreases. There can be solid bu…

The entire mobile market was immature back then, people didn't expect much interoperability and Windows Mobile 7 Nokias were slick and faster than iPhone or Android. They could have become the "contrarians luxury" if you didn't want to just get an iPhone. A bunch of hardcore Microsoft fan developers were gearing up to develop for Windows Mobilet dotnet when Microsoft changed the APIs with Mobile 8 (IIRC) and this dedicated bunch of developers just dropped the platform and just embraced Android or iOS instead.
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