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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

#151

Post by eykanal »

Delmania wrote: post #63

I think Ballmer is an interesting case study in perception versus results. He's commonly portrayed as a poor CEO that has led Microsoft in the direction of irrelevance. And yet, to quote oft critic Gruber, "he knows how to make money" ( http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/04/19/msft-q3 ) I'd love to sit down and talk to him, and see if his vision is a bit more long range than your average industry analyst, similar…

The man missed mobile. He screwed up search. And social. And Windows Vista, and Windows 7, and Windows 8. He insulted the OEMs with the Windows Tablet, which was also a failure. He created the Zune. He even managed to screw up with Mac Office, by removing and then putting back in VBA.

For one man, he sure has a lot of failures on his plate.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#152

Post by Kiro »

rrrrtttt wrote: post #111

Let me tell you an anecdote why I think Ballmer was incompetent and largely responsible for the sorry state that Microsoft is in at the moment. Yesterday there was a long article in the Israeli newspaper Globes about the success of the Israeli adware companies. Israel has in recent years become a world leader in software that installs unwanted toolbars on your elderly dad and mom's PC and "monetizes" them until they…

I'm pretty sure that has very little to do with Microsoft's state today.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#153

Post by nekgrim »

gregd wrote: post #98
Delmania wrote: post #63

I think Ballmer is an interesting case study in perception versus results. He's commonly portrayed as a poor CEO that has led Microsoft in the direction of irrelevance. And yet, to quote oft critic Gruber, "he knows how to make money" ( http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/04/19/msft-q3 ) I'd love to sit down and talk to him, and see if his vision is a bit more long range than your average industry analyst, similar…

I would argue that Gruber is wrong. Microsoft would have made money during it's Ballmer years, regardless of who was at the helm. When Gates left, MS was a Katamari ball rolling down hill, catching all the money in it's path.

Never thought I'll read a comparison with Katamari one day on HN. Thank you.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#154

Post by JonnieCache »

gregd wrote: post #88
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.

If we're marking off the copies, the last two in that list weren't exactly original ideas either.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#156

Post by selfexperiments »

rrrrtttt wrote: post #111

Let me tell you an anecdote why I think Ballmer was incompetent and largely responsible for the sorry state that Microsoft is in at the moment. Yesterday there was a long article in the Israeli newspaper Globes about the success of the Israeli adware companies. Israel has in recent years become a world leader in software that installs unwanted toolbars on your elderly dad and mom's PC and "monetizes" them until they…

Screwing over your own customers... you mean like when Microsoft enthusiastically sold out their users to the NSA?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#157

Post by seldo »

potatolicious wrote: post #130
Delmania wrote: post #63

I think Ballmer is an interesting case study in perception versus results. He's commonly portrayed as a poor CEO that has led Microsoft in the direction of irrelevance. And yet, to quote oft critic Gruber, "he knows how to make money" ( http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/04/19/msft-q3 ) I'd love to sit down and talk to him, and see if his vision is a bit more long range than your average industry analyst, similar…

I think both are correct. Ballmer was gloriously good at extracting profits - out of existing, successful product divisions. I believe Ballmer has a firm grasp of the enterprise market, and Microsoft's revenue and profitability numbers reflect this. But new product development, particularly consumer product development, at Microsoft has largely fallen flat in the Ballmer years. WinPhone, Win8, Kin? So while Ballmer h…

Reacting to new market conditions is definitely Ballmer's problem. Under Gates, the explosive growth of the web took them totally by surprise, and he managed to swing the whole company around, producing the market-crushing behemoth that was Internet Explorer 6, and green-lit the XBox on the basis that "convergence" (i.e. computers running your TV) was inevitable. Those two alone are really tough, smart, forward-thinking decisions that Gates nailed.

Under Ballmer, Microsoft had the same pattern repeatedly: Zune, Kin, Windows Phone, Surface, Windows 8 -- they took too long to see the need, took way too long to make the product, and when they did it was either not good enough, too late, or both.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#158

Post by acangiano »

sidcool wrote: post #119
rrrrtttt wrote: post #111

Let me tell you an anecdote why I think Ballmer was incompetent and largely responsible for the sorry state that Microsoft is in at the moment. Yesterday there was a long article in the Israeli newspaper Globes about the success of the Israeli adware companies. Israel has in recent years become a world leader in software that installs unwanted toolbars on your elderly dad and mom's PC and "monetizes" them until they…

I didn't know this. Can you tell me how the adware firms earn money? I am asking out of sincere curiosity.

They sell traffic to Pay Per View companies, which in turn sell it to affiliates. Basically, if you are an affiliate you can go to a PPV company and buy pageview for a landing page of your choice which will be prompted in response to a given action by the user. For example, you might want to prompt your scammy acai berry trial affiliate page to people who searched for the word 'diet' in google or visited weightwatchers.com. The ad software takes care of popping up the right ad for the right user, according to the criteria of the campaign.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#159

Post by davidbrear »

Steve Ballmer is the perfect example of why a business person should not run a software company. The opinion that "Steve knows how to make money" is a poor indicator of a successful leader. Microsoft has alienated developers leaving only enterprise developers to create boring interfaces for users causing many personal computer users to find something more aesthetically pleasing (OSX/Ubuntu). A company based solely on making money is like a marriage based solely around sex and benefit to social-status. If you're a .NET developer and this offended you; good. Money != happiness

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#160

Post by bsullivan01 »

potatolicious wrote: post #130
Delmania wrote: post #63

I think Ballmer is an interesting case study in perception versus results. He's commonly portrayed as a poor CEO that has led Microsoft in the direction of irrelevance. And yet, to quote oft critic Gruber, "he knows how to make money" ( http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/04/19/msft-q3 ) I'd love to sit down and talk to him, and see if his vision is a bit more long range than your average industry analyst, similar…

I think both are correct. Ballmer was gloriously good at extracting profits - out of existing, successful product divisions. I believe Ballmer has a firm grasp of the enterprise market, and Microsoft's revenue and profitability numbers reflect this. But new product development, particularly consumer product development, at Microsoft has largely fallen flat in the Ballmer years. WinPhone, Win8, Kin? So while Ballmer h…

"was gloriously good at extracting profits - out of existing, successful product divisions"

If you forget that they now have 12 or so divisions with $billion plus in revenue.

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