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

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#601

Post by scholia » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 12:20 AM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #430

> Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980, and became Microsoft's 30th employee, the first business manager hired by Gates. > Ballmer was initially offered a salary of $50,000 as well as a percentage of ownership of the company. When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8 percent of the company. In 2003, Ballmer sold 8.3% of his shareholdings, leaving him with a 4% stake in the company Wow. How c…

It was a very small company and self-financing, so its stock hadn't already been gobbled up by venture capitalists.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#602

Post by hannibal5 » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 12:22 AM UTC

BrandonM wrote: post #530

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://…

What about Microsoft developing some of the best enterprise programming tools in the world? I don't use any of the following, but I have to admit that they are (or at one time were) best-in-class is basically all of them: * C#, F#, and all of .NET * Visual Studio * SQL Server * DirectX * ActiveX[1] [1] ActiveX is not the best technology, but it paved the way for the AJAX programming that everyone does today.

It's good to realize that most of it was developed as response to innovation elsewhere. And they don't make up for those horrible Visual Basic versions they pushed for years.

Famous quote from 90's:

"Anybody who thinks a little 9,000-line program that's distributed free and can be cloned by anyone is going to affect anything we do at Microsoft has his head screwed on wrong." - Bill Gates (regarding Java, shortly before Microsoft licensed Java and cancelled the Blackbird project)

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#603

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 12:27 AM UTC

300bps wrote: post #449

lotso wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Microsoft has been a stain on the last decade of the computing industry Pretty easy to make bold claims without expanding on them.

Ridiculous claims are impossible to expand on without showing how ridiculous they are.

Your ridiculous claim that ridiculous claims are impossible to expand on is so ridiculous that I find it impossible to ridicule to show how ridiculous it is.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#604

Post by locusm » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 12:29 AM UTC

Systemic33 wrote: post #577

mrdodge wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much growth potential is there in selling Active Directory, Excel, and Exchange? Every sizable company already has these things installed. Smaller and new companies may choose to spend their dollars elsewhere and that's a change of events for Microsoft. Projects that previously would go on Sharepoint are now done less expensively with cloud services, for example. In tech, growth is in consumer, and with consu…

You can't really blame people for abandoning sharepoint, it's really an excellent display of why you shouldn't try to interbreed all your gui applications with internetexplorer iframes. It's literally the worst MS have ever produced.

That said, Im amazed at the volume of seemingly smart people that choose to implement that steaming pile of poo.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#605

Post by MichaelGG » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 12:31 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #583

SiVal wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. Others would come up with new stuff, and Microsoft would "embrace and extend" whatever got traction in the market by adding it to their near-monopoly OS/app stack at whatever price served the purpose of eliminating the inventor and taking their market. This strategy always made Gates paranoid, because the risk was that some alternative to t…

I'd argue that search and Ajax did more harm and drove the first wedge. Search gave Google a business model and revenue stream. Ajax enabled Web apps, beginning with Gmail. That enabled platform independence and a split from the Office monopoly, particularly Outlook/Exchange and Active Directory. Mobile was another keg of coffin nails, particularly in consumer space showing that ease of use and zero configuration wer…

Microsoft essentially invented AJAX. In the late 90s they had some HTML remote update thingy via a Java applet, I believe. Then they introduced XMLHttpRequest. Developing for IE around that timeframe wasn't bad. They had excellent documentation, and added (proprietary, sure) extensions that let you do all sorts of neat stuff.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#606

Post by aplummer » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 12:36 AM UTC

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #403

nl wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may well be true. That doesn't make it any less sad.

No sadness here - Microsoft has been a stain on the last decade of the computing industry. The only sadness is that their trajectory of circling of the toilet might change, with a new CEO. But I doubt it.

You know 100 000 people are employed there right? And its blue chip stock for probably millions? Just checking to confirm you don't care at all about any of these people...

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#607

Post by MichaelGG » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 12:38 AM UTC

Yuioup wrote: post #252

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 the brainchild of Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of Delphi who moved from Boland to Microsoft. Kinect was invented by an Israeli company before being bought out by Microsoft. Your point still stands though :-)

C# yes, but claiming .NET (aka COM+ Runtime, the CLR, Project 7, all that stuff) is his is a slight overstatement.

Generics, one of the CLR's major distinguishing features over the JVM, came entirely from MSR, at considerable resistance from MS Corp.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#608

Post by laureny » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 12:42 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #328

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…

It's hard to disagree with sarcasm on the internet. But in this case you are absolutely correct. Microsoft used to control the future of computing. Now they are yet another enterprise software company with no apparent mission except to make money. The lay somewhere on a continuum with IBM, Oracle, SAP all the way through to companies like CA. At one end of that spectrum they do research and produce software that peop…

> Microsoft is now primarily an enterprise software company.

You're forgetting the XBox a bit too quickly.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#609

Post by laureny » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 12:44 AM UTC

SiVal wrote: post #506

EthanHeilman wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is a non-trivial possibility that Facebook/Google etc become lumbering giants just like MSFT. It might already be true, how do you distinguish between a lumbering giant and not without the help of hindsight? The public consensus on such things lags a few years behind reality. What signs have you seen in 2013 that Google is not a lumbering giant?

Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. Others would come up with new stuff, and Microsoft would "embrace and extend" whatever got traction in the market by adding it to their near-monopoly OS/app stack at whatever price served the purpose of eliminating the inventor and taking their market. This strategy always made Gates paranoid, because the risk was that some alternative to t…

> Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate.

XBox, Surface and ergonomic keyboards would beg to differ. Not mentioning the countless other innovations that didn't become as popular as these ones.

I know the Hacker News hive mind likes to perpetuate the myth that Microsoft doesn't innovate but it innovates at least as much as, if not more than, Google and Apple.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#610

Post by hannibal5 » Sat, Aug 24, 2013, 12:46 AM UTC

pmelendez wrote: post #211

Funny thing that people tend to prefer Gates' version of Microsoft ( which is full of popular but sub-quality products) rather than Ballmer's version ( with unpopular but more stable products)

I only realized what was wrong with Gate's version of Microsoft few years before he retired. It was only then when I learned that Gate's has been the chief software architect of MS all these years.

Gate's is very intelligent guy, brilliant and ruthless businessman and knows software, but he is not software architect. When Ray Ozzie took over, things turned instantly better. Chief software architect is the guy who have to balance between the need to add features and general soundness of the system that translates into quality in long term. Gates clearly did not have that ability. MS products never had general feel of good design principles you get from many other software products.