Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#291

Post by bengrunfeld » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 3:18 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #94

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…

I agree that he will probably not be remembered for having more than doubled revenue and almost tripled profits. He will not be remembered for transforming Microsoft into one of the most important enterprise software companies. Not for introducing .NET, C# or Kinect either. All of that will be forgotten. He will be remembered for missing mobile. He will also be remembered for caring a lot about developers and about d…

I feel that many people dislike the idea of him, without exactly knowing what he did during his time as CEO, because the Windows platforms are known as being notoriously buggy and unsecure. XP was a nightmare that caused SysAdmins to cry themselves to sleep until the expansion pack 3 came out, Windows Vista was an unmitigated disaster, Windows 7 was surprisingly decent, and Windows 8 has been hailed as a terrible idea that should have died in its crib.

In the last 13 years, we've all seen the rise of Microsoft, and are now seeing the beginning of it's fall. Ballmer was an extremely important figure in the tech world. I just wish the Operating Systems that came out during his time didn't suck so much.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#292

Post by corresation » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 3:19 PM UTC

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 markets where Microsoft makes money are almost identical to the markets that they made money in pre-Ballmer, despite a massively changed computing landscape, and it is possibly inertia that has them still making loads of profits.

But inertia fades: Exchange servers are being decommissioned. SQL Server instances are being replaced. People are supplanting an enormous amount of computing time that they did on desktops with non-Microsoft tablets and smartphone devices, which is a migration that makes Windows dramatically less entrenched (Office was once the lynchpin of Microsoft's maintenance of a captive market, however the need to use a mix of devices has made Office much less palatable than it once was). In other markets, such as online and Home and Entertainment, it has been a decade of losses, and the xbox is being usurped right as Microsoft was supposed to start profiting off of their moves.

And as this happens, Microsoft has responded by essentially tapping their existing business customer base to make up for lost market. The prices of some of the new versions are extraordinary (e.g. a Sharepoint 2013 deploy), leading to more departures. It is unsustainable.

Microsoft today feels very similar to RIM of 2010 -- the profits are still there, but the industry has moved on. In no way does that mean that they're doomed, and they can still pivot, but things don't look good.

Many younger people on HN have no knowledge of just how much Microsoft dominated technology at the turn of the millennium. I remember eagerly waiting for betas of far off Microsoft products, because every shift of Microsoft had a profound impact on the entire industry.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#293

Post by twoodfin » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 3:19 PM UTC

c2prods wrote: post #226

twoodfin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Microsoft's response to the web is comparable to their failures in mobile. billg's "Internet Tidal Wave" memo went out in 1995, long before the web had become ubiquitous. They still had plenty of time to (legally or otherwise!) ride the .com tidal wave to dominant marketshare and huge profitability. A similar memo would have done the most good in 2005, when it was becoming clear that we'd soon all have…

I don't think missing the Internet revolution was their biggest mistake. If you look at Apple they focused on hardware. What Microsoft could have done too. Instead, they just tried to continue this Windows monopoly and overlooked everything else.

My point was they didn't miss the Internet revolution. In fact, they picked up on it faster than most of the '80's tech companies and radically shifted strategy because billg knew that by, say, 1997, it might have been too late.

I agree that trying to remake the PC space in the PDA and phone worlds was a strategic blunder for Microsoft. OEMs competing to build low-margin devices for a common OS worked for Google because they could afford to give Android away for free and the carriers and handset makers were terrified of Apple.

On hardware, Microsoft had a model to follow: XBox. Imagine if they'd built an "XPhone" in 2005 instead of playing me-too to Apple with the Zune.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#294

Post by 001sky » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 3:20 PM UTC

ant512 wrote: post #266

film42 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft saw social and search and thought, "we must create our own!" While apple saw social and search, and said, "that's not our market, let's have google handle that for us." Edit: Apple did acquire ping, but that was social music, which is a bit different. They also introduced siri, which simply plugged in to preexisting search services (Google in iOS 6, Bing in iOS7) so it really is agnostic on that front.

I think that's one of Microsoft's main failings. "Google are making baked beans? Why aren't we in the baked bean market? Let's make beans!" "What? Now Facebook are making Facebook Soda? We need to make Microsoft Soda!" Every time a tech company produces something new MS have to muscle in on the market, despite having a) no prior experience, b) no aptitude, c) existing products that could use their attention.

windows, Xbox and Explorer from the 90's...all mimic plays

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#295

Post by RogerL » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 3:23 PM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #215

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…

why is stock price the only measure of a company and its CEO? Unless of course you're a share holder.

The CEO's job is to make the company valuable. That's kind of a sociopathic view, of course (gee, I thought our job was to make heart valve replacements or whatever). But, that is the trade off you make when you go public. And, just in case it isn't clear, stock price + dividends over time should equal the cash flow generated by the company. So, looking at stock price over a ten year period is a decent proxy for evaluating a CEO's performance.

Only decent, and only proxy. Say you worked the first 5 years propping up a dying business, and the next 5 years building a bunch of incredible value. The stock market may not have reacted to that, but your company is set to explode in value. Or you may have started in a bubble, or finished in a bubble, or...

So of course it is not the only measure, but it is certainly an extremely large part of measuring a CEO, since it is his job to maintain and/or grow the value of the company. It will never tell you if the company is bettering humanity, good to its employees, or other very worthwhile measures.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#296

Post by Miyamoto » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 3:23 PM UTC

eykanal wrote: post #151

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.

Windows 7 was not a failure. Your wild accusations are baseless.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#297

Post by shawkinaw » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 3:23 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #283

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that he will probably not be remembered for having more than doubled revenue and almost tripled profits. He will not be remembered for transforming Microsoft into one of the most important enterprise software companies. Not for introducing .NET, C# or Kinect either. All of that will be forgotten. He will be remembered for missing mobile. He will also be remembered for caring a lot about developers and about d…

>>>>>He will be remembered for missing mobile Windows 7 and 8 were the first mobile OS that didn't completely rip off Apple, had the first original interface since Apple's iphone and you're saying they missed the target? Seriously? WP 8 has some incredibly original features my Android and Apple friends swoon over. Not to mention the platform is completely wide open for developers. It's not completely crowded out like…

Based on market share Windows Phone is a disaster, so yeah that's a miss.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#298

Post by randyrand » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 3:25 PM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #109

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…

Thank God. (Speaking as an ex-Microsoftie). Hopefully MS will lose the "we need to put Windows on everything, including embedded systems" attitude. Windows is a horrible bloated mess barely capable of successfully running on a tablet PC, much less smaller things. (And if you've ever had to /build/ Windows . . . OMG. OMFG). There are core bits of Windows that are great; the I/O system is incredibly well done. Then the…

Not sure if you're talking about the kernel (which I've heard very good things about and has been ported to run on WP smartphones with as little as 256mb ram and crappy processors) or specifically just the windows layer on top of it but I don't know of any desktop class OS that runs on smartphones.

OSX doesnt. OSX doesnt even run on tablets (not that it can't, idk)

Ubuntu cant run on smartphones either. The edge was the most powerful smartphone ever envisioned just to be able to run ubuntu well.

I don't see how not being able to run a desktop OS on a smartphone is a criticism. When it comes to tablets windows actually runs quite well on the surface RT which isn't all that impressive hardware wise. Sure it might not be able to run intensive apps but that's mainly the fault of the app makers, not windows.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#299

Post by seunosewa » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 3:25 PM UTC

Tloewald wrote: post #274

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…

Well it could be worse. (Nokia, RIM.) I think he made one hideous strategic mistake -- deciding Microsoft was the Windows company instead of the Office (or "whatever makes money") company. If he had reacted to iOS and Android by selling Office for those platforms Microsoft would probably be making money off the mobile revolution instead of facing oblivion (or at least irrelevance). (Recall that Microsoft makes, or us…

I agree with you, but I think that mistake belongs to Bill Gates and not Steve Balmer. Steve certainly would not have led the company in any direction that Bill disagreed with.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#300

Post by hrvbr » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 3:27 PM UTC

DonnyV wrote: post #52

Scott Guthrie for CEO!!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Guthrie

He's more of a CTO.

"CEO of Microsoft" is a prestigious title. They could use it as an opportunity to pull a coup. Like offering to merge with Facebook and giving the title to Zuckerberg. It doesn't have to be with FB, any big guy that would bring a missing market to Microsoft's empire would be a coup.

But the reasonable thing to do is to hire from inside.