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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

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Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#81

Post by mathattack »

twoodfin wrote: post #56
mathattack wrote: post #7

Huge news! Let's see what happens to the stock today. It edged up a little at the end of the day, suggesting that perhaps news was getting out. It's up 8% in premarket trading. [1] One interesting thing to note from that chart is their Beta (a measure of link to market volatility) is less than 1, which is very low for a high tech stock. It basically means that the market views them as less volatile to market conditio…

Seems like a complex enough beast that finding an appropriate outsider would be difficult too. I think they said the same thing right before Lou Gerstner went to IBM, and that turned out very well, at least from an investor's point of view. Obviously IBM was in a lot more trouble business-wise then than Microsoft is today, but I expect a similar degree of transformation out of a successful new CEO.

Yes - Lou Gerstner was a very rare bird as a CEO. He was a consultant who became a great executive, then a CEO, then led a transformation the likes of which he'd advised on as a consultant. What's needed is of that order of magnitude. How do you find folks like that?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#83

Post by anuragramdasan »

the_bear wrote: post #54
anuragramdasan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ballmer has always lacked the ability to see the future. Be it about him calling Zune the iPhone killer, or much prior to that claiming it in the media that no one would ever wan tto buy an iPhone. Also, really below par products.

To be fair, one of the greatest "see the future" CEOs has said similar things. Just off the top of my head, I know that Steve Jobs said that no one would want a larger screen than the original iPhone had, and he said that 7" tablets didn't make any sense. Now Apple has a larger iPhone screen and 7" tablet. That's not to say that Steve Jobs was wrong about the future, but he had to sell devices in the present which me…

Yes, probably. But then again, Ballmer failed quite often. Also I wouldn't really think of any CEO bashing another companies product just for the sake of rivalry and then fail. Its a huge risk to take.

Also having to sell silly products again is the CEOs problem for having to decided to sell those. Its just that the past 10-13 years have been cluttered with bad products and I would assume the ceo had a major role to play in it.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#84

Post by vidarh »

bedhead wrote: post #19

$24 billion. That's the increase in market value as of 15 minutes before the open. This has to be a record for a CEO announcing he's leaving. I've always wondered how much these types of things bruise the egos of the retiring execs.

The few hundred million that his own Microsoft shared have appreciated in value ought to at least partially make up for his bruised ego...

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#86

Post by kaonashi »

lbarrow wrote: post #39
leokun wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think he'll be seen worse than the CEOs of AOL Time Warner, Enron, Worldcom, or Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, but sure you go on with your hyperbole. It's turning into a staple on HN. Really raising the bar there. Edit: parent comment used to say "worst CEO of modern history"

You've got a point. I'll edit it to say "terrible". How's that?

They did tread water. I'd go with 'middling'.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#87

Post by sampo »

leokun wrote: post #30
lbarrow wrote: post #23

He'll be remembered as a terrible CEO. Ballmer took over as CEO in 2000. In the 13 years since then, Apple has experienced an unprecedented resurgence. Google and Facebook have gone from being obscure startups to giants. The tech industry went through the bubble, recovered, and today is stronger than ever. What happened to Microsoft? While the rest of the tech sector exploded and prospered, it stayed still. A MSFT sh…

No, I don't think he'll be seen worse than the CEOs of AOL Time Warner, Enron, Worldcom, or Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, but sure you go on with your hyperbole. It's turning into a staple on HN. Really raising the bar there. Edit: parent comment used to say "worst CEO of modern history"

> parent comment used to say "worst CEO of modern history"

What about Stephen Elop?

"As of June 2013, Nokia's [...] stock value dropped by 85% since Elop's takeover."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#88

Post by gregd »

kjhughes wrote: post #61

What were the key Ballmer era highlights? == Negatives == * Clashes with Gates during CEO transition of power: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121261241035146237.html * Developer relations / motivational speaking (thanks mathattack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc * Employee retention (thanks JonnieCache, Ziomislaw): http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/microsoft-ceo-im-going... * Windows Phone: http://…

Not entirely sure any of these can be attributed to Ballmer but Microsoft has been entirely successful in the enterprise.

Active Directory (copied, but marketed better than Novell), Group Policies, Visual Studio (arguably the best IDE available today), Sql Server, .NET, Azure.

And trust me, I am no fan of Ballmer. I think this announcement is the best thing to happen to Microsoft in a LONG time.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#89

Post by n00b101 »

lee wrote: post #49
mathattack wrote: post #7

Huge news! Let's see what happens to the stock today. It edged up a little at the end of the day, suggesting that perhaps news was getting out. It's up 8% in premarket trading. [1] One interesting thing to note from that chart is their Beta (a measure of link to market volatility) is less than 1, which is very low for a high tech stock. It basically means that the market views them as less volatile to market conditio…

I'm not sure your description of Beta is accurate. Correctly if I'm wrong, but Beta is a measure of volatility in correlation with the broader market, not a measure of volatility in of itself. There are plenty of stocks that have beta Having a low beta simply means its price isn't as correlated with the overall market. An example, Netflix has a beta < 1 but is extremely volatile.

If S is the stock return and M is the market return, then

Beta = cor(S,M)*vol(S)/vol(M)

Where cor(A,B) is correlation between A and B, and vol(X) is volatility of X (i.e. standard deviation).

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