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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

#451

Post by ripvanwinkle »

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…

There's a lot written about Ballmer's successes and failures and most focus on the tangibles - Like growing revenues by x and profits by Y and such and such product bombing or taking off.

IMHO his legacy though, is the culture he leaves behind. Its an intensely competitive internal culture that has

- employees jousting with each other in the rankings game

- pressure across the board for businesses and individuals to deliver "results" in time for each annual and half year review which limited experiments and blue sky endeavors.

- over the top status mails and visibility exercises to preserve and extends one's influence

Everything else is a symptom of that - products that are kinda incomplete, or only incrementally better than the previous ones because it insanely hard to get everyone on board and ship truly game changing products in a manner that fit into the appraisal cycles.

Note the incremental approach is extremely good for more risk averse sectors like enterprise software but not really for the wild west of consumer technologies.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#452

Post by rbanffy »

sampo wrote: post #87
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"

> 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

> What about Stephen Elop?

How so? The guy is absolutely brilliant!

Of course, you must realize he actually works for Microsoft, not Nokia.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#453

Post by 300bps »

leetrout wrote: post #303
ant512 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It does feel like MS just shows up like that. Azure did (and does) give that impression; Zune, as well. And Surface tablets are also a clear response to the iPad (whether MS ever had anything in R&D previously or not, they certainly didn't ship). But I think Google is much more prone to jump in to a market with force, they just seem to execute "better" (I leave that open to interpretation). FB comes out and MS buys i…

And Surface tablets are also a clear response to the iPad

I find it hard to believe that someone who writes something this wrong can function in society.

Microsoft invented the tablet computer a decade before the iPad existed.

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

Their marketing may have sucked, but they were well ahead of the rest of the industry (and apparently the world).

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#454

Post by rybosome »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #376
umsm wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tend to forget that Microsoft ALREADY did what these "startups" did. MSFT already pushed the envelope and changed the way we use technology in our day to day lives. There is (probably) only so much change one company / person can do. Even if there is additional potential, in the end companies will seek profit and stability.

> We tend to forget that Microsoft ALREADY did what these "startups" did. MSFT already pushed the envelope and changed the way we use technology in our day to day lives. We tend to forget that IBM did that in a previous era. Another example that "in the end companies will seek profit and stability" and be an "enterprise software company"

Agreed, 100%. I see it as kind of an inevitability.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#456

Post by clarky07 »

I feel bad for ballmer. his legacy is going to be pretty terrible because the stock price was flat from when he took over until now. nobody seems to take into account that he took over in the middle of the tech bubble bursting and msft was hugely overvalued at the time. I think profit has tripled since he took over or something like that. following gates was already going to be one of the hardest tasks possible. getting handed an overvalued company in the middle of a bubble bursting makes it all but impossible.

while i don't actually think he was a good ceo, i think he is much better than he gets credit for. they say he missed mobile, but i think windows phone is pretty good and new take on it. it was just a year or 2 late. xbox has been pretty fantastic overall. windows 7 was good. i think windows 8 has potential. azure is pretty good as far as i can tell. sure vista sucked (though not as badly as everyone says), and there have been other failures (kin anyone?).

People act like other good ceo's don't ever fail. Jobs had plenty of failures. Ping, mobile me, etc... Jobs had the "benefit" of taking over an almost dead company. making it thrive meant stock went crazy and he gets to be awesome. Ballmer just got in on the wrong end of the market. Tim Cook might have this problem as well, but at least Apple wasn't wildly overvalued at the time.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#458

Post by cabalamat »

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…

> A MSFT share was worth about $35 dollars when Ballmer took over; it's worth about $35 now. The world moved on, and Microsoft didn't move with it.

It's a bit unfair to say Ballmer hasn't increased the MSFT share price -- just today he's put the price up from $32 to $34.5.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#459

Post by slykat »

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…

The stock investor in me loves this attitude because while MSFT has done an impressive job of milking their cash cows (Windows, Server, & Office), Wallstreet & the press have been completely un-exuberant on the company, making the stock price very appetizing (until recently).

But yes, the engineer in me laments with you. Microsoft has gone from an innovator to an optimizer very good at minting cash.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#460

Post by mkautzm »

gregors wrote: post #417
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…

.Net and C# are prime examples of Microsoft waiting until someone else invented something (Java) and then doing it again. The problem is that it seemed that was the strategy for everything! Very little innovation mostly just copying and one upping.

That's not really true.

C# and Java do look the same, but the use cases for them are totally and completely different.

Java is a cross-platform language used when you don't want to write code more than once for more than 1 platform.

C# is a Windows-exclusive deal that gives you access to WFs and other Windows-centric things, including some low level shit that would be a pain to deal with otherwise.

Despite the languages looking really similar, they don't fill the same slot.

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