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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

danluu.com

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#221

Post by stackskipton »

wongarsu wrote: post #175
dexterdog wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure may be successful financially, but as someone who has finally used it for the last two years after 15 years of AWS and a little bit of GCP, I can't help but think the world would be a better place if it didn't exist or if some lesser player had that market share.

For most stuff Azure is pretty meh, but it seems to have the best features for running Windows servers and integrates well with Active Directory (or MS Entra or whatever they currently call it). Features that I don't need as a startup founder, but that would be very interesting for many places I worked at. Basically the cloud for everyone but the tech companies

As Azure SRE for a tech company, what feature is missing? We are using AKS with Linux, Blob storage and ServiceBus. Database is MySQL Flexible Server.

I'm even using some Azure Tables for backend services just because it was easier to deal with.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#222

Post by drooby »

addicted wrote: post #183
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We'd even have it ready for him before he showed up so he never had to wait! > Man, your entitlement just makes me want to never tip. Urban legend has it that the word "tips" is an acronym for "to insure prompt service." Whether or not this is true, the OP's optimization for "prompt service", as defined above, makes an assessment of same qualifying as entitlement puzzling. > Just because someone has the ability to…

In the US tipping isn’t just a cultural expectation. There are fundamental legal differences between tipped and non-tipped employees. For example, federal minimum wages for tipped employees are close to $2 vs the $7 for non tipped employees.

And fyi - If the tips do not cover what would have been the federal minimum then the employer must pay the difference.

And for many states the state minimum wage overrides this.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#223

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

fnord123 wrote: post #59

A rare miss by Mr. Luu. > Ballmer wins... 2010: Microsoft creates Azure The Azure project was run by Nadella before he became CEO. And it succeeded despite Ballmer. Azure was seen as the Microsoft cloud, where people ran Windows Servers. But Microsoft had long lost the battle for the server space to Linux. When Ballmer stepped aside, only then could Nadella drop the limiters and push the Microsoft <3 Linux perspectiv…

I’m guessing you don’t know any Microsoft employees who were from that era and sufficiently senior to know. Azure was not run by Nadella. Its predecessor was Bing and much of Azure then was just a reselling of Bing services. Bing was something Ballmer invested in and pushed for. Nadella didn’t drop any limiters or push the Azure perspective - that was people closer to Azure.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#224

Post by cryptoz »

adventured wrote: post #214
01100011 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We allow wages you can't live on but then expect customers to randomly make up the difference but only for some jobs. Make too little to afford an apartment, healthcare and food and you work in the food service industry? You deserve a tip. You work in a meatpacking plant? Oh, get screwed.

Waiters in the US make more than their peers in: Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, etc. That's thanks entirely to the tip system.

Got a citation for that? Lots of waiters in the US make $2/hour or something before tips (can anyone correct me here?) where the expectation is that tips will bring them up to $7-8/hour, more in line with other minimum wage jobs.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#225

Post by l33t7332273 »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #184
arandomusername wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What frugality? He was paying the full price that it was being sold at.

> What frugality? He was paying the full price that it was being sold at. By that logic, most reading these comments should expect to hear from their employer: What annual bonus? What stock options? The company is paying full price that your time was being sold at.

The “full price” often includes a bonus and stock options.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#226

Post by greggyb »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #113
greggyb wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MS should've been able to simply just extend their OS monopoly into all platforms and all architectures, but they didn't, and to a vast swath of the world have become irrelevant, and worse, have lost their ability to become relevant. Microsoft is, pretty famously, on the receiving end of one of the most significant antitrust judgments in modern history. Choosing to further a monopoly seems that it would be a phenom…

> > MS should've been able to simply just extend their OS monopoly into all platforms and all architectures, but they didn't, and to a vast swath of the world have become irrelevant, and worse, have lost their ability to become relevant. > Microsoft is, pretty famously, on the receiving end of one of the most significant antitrust judgments in modern history. Choosing to further a monopoly seems that it would be a ph…

Windows runs in more places than it probably should. And the OS is just fine on other platforms. Windows on ARM works quite well. As I understand it, it worked just fine on Itanium. NT launched with support for PowerPC. I'm sure RISC-V support will be there pretty quickly. NT was designed for this sort of portability.

Most user software is not ready for the transition. Microsoft doesn't impose the same kind of control over its application ecosystem as Apple does. This prevents Microsoft from being able to make architectural shifts like Apple has. Arguably, this more open and flexible ecosystem (and bending over backward compatibility) has been one of the driving factors in Windows's popularity over MacOS. I have no strong opinion about which is a better business strategy.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#227

Post by stackskipton »

analog31 wrote: post #20
exabrial wrote: post #8

No he wasn’t haha. The only thing he did was slide the company sideways via pre existing illegal monopoly. In fact, they lost most of their monopoly under his supervision . At no point did the quality of their products improve, and that’s evidenced with this year’s massive massive Windows outage, or Garmins mega ransomware, out a hundred other people who’ve been hacked via Windows. If you’re running Windows for anyth…

I wonder if Windows is even their flagship app any more. I think people will give up Windows before they give up Excel. And they might not even notice a different OS, so long as it had the same file manager. In fact Excel is the last non-FOSS app that I still use, even if sporadically.

Windows Desktop still feels very important to them. Windows Server on the other hand feels very "Fine, since you are willing to pay for it." Thud "Is there any features?" "More money and your welcome I'm even giving this to you."

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#229

Post by xandrius »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #184
arandomusername wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What frugality? He was paying the full price that it was being sold at.

> What frugality? He was paying the full price that it was being sold at. By that logic, most reading these comments should expect to hear from their employer: What annual bonus? What stock options? The company is paying full price that your time was being sold at.

Annual bonus is either performance based or as a retainer to make up for differences in the wages since the person was hired.

Stock options are because you could be paid more or you are taking risks for future rewards.

A mandatory tip is because your employer doesn't want to pay you full wage and instead of increasing the price and pay you more, they pass it over to the customers. So they get the same profits without having to bother.

Quite different reasons.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#230

Post by not_a_bot_4sho »

adventured wrote: post #194
not_a_bot_4sho wrote: post #124

Funny story. I used to see Steve almost every weekday for a couple of years. I can't speak to his business skills, but I can attest that he never once offered a tip for his daily black iced tea. We'd even have it ready for him before he showed up so he never had to wait! He would pay with cash, and I'd hand him his change and drink, and that was that. It's funny to me now: one of the richest men in the world and he n…

> the richest man in the world (at the time) and he never once offered a tip. Ballmer was never the richest man in the world, not even for a moment. Right now is about the closest he has ever come to that marker (#8, $148 billion).

You're absolutely right. Bill Gates was the richest back then. My memory failed me on that part. (It's been over 20 years...)

Fixed my comment to reflect this correction. Thanks!

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