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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#371

Post by Karrot_Kream »

metadat wrote: post #217
vjust wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ballmer hated Linux & open source. He would've driven their cloud division to the ground trying to sell Windows servers in the cloud. It would've taken him another 20 years to accept that Linux was key to the cloud. VSCode (Visual Studio Code) - would never have taken birth. Microsoft survived and thrived once Ballmer had no option but leave. In this era of Python development, Microsoft Windows still feels a step or…

I have as much disdain for the monkey man as the next OSS fan. But VSCode was always closed sourced crap at the arbitrary whims of a soulless zombie corp, and they never promised otherwise in a significant way. It's not relevant and not a good foundational signal or basis for any argument.

... https://github.com/microsoft/vscode? It's MIT licensed. Or are we here to start GPL vs MIT for the 10,000th time?

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#372

Post by fragmede »

nl wrote: post #297
Uvix wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just "what you're used to", but I'd swap Azure and AWS in that statement. Going from Azure to AWS, I found it not nearly as nice to use or easy to understand. Even basic features like "see all the resources in my account" were missing from AWS.

I use all three regularly. AWS has a horrible , inconsistent UI, and the Azure portal is mostly ok (although I think GCP is the best of the three) But OTOH AWS generally works and usually does what you think, whereas I'm never surprised when Azure breaks or some random Azure API works nothing like we expect.

I feel your pain, also being on all three.

The biggest difference IMO is in how they're handled by large organizations and how prod permissions are provisioned by them. In Azure you have one user account and one org, with subscriptions for your user account to activate to get permissions. You can have multiple subscriptions but they're under the same login/user account and you can have multiple active at the same time. In AWS, you get access to an account or accounts that have different logins, so you get to juggle those with login/logout, even if there's SSO. In GCP, there are multiple projects, under a single login, but you may have to juggle projects.

The other aspect is how regions are dealt with. AWS global resource index/search thing is useful, but it totally feels like I spend more time juggling regions with AWS. Azure's regions themselves are, let's just say, interesting. GCP is better at it than AWS, and less interesting than Azure (which is a good thing).

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#374

Post by fragmede »

stackskipton wrote: post #221
wongarsu wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think

> Basically the cloud for everyone but the tech companies

is referring to the idea that tech companies are competent enough to run their own computers, not that Azure is missing something specific.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#375

Post by 71bw »

ethbr1 wrote: post #338
ryandv wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is eye-opening. I make a fraction of what Steve does and am still dumb enough to be hitting 20% at the machine every time I go out. If 0% is good enough for Mr. Ballmer, it's good enough for me.

There's a difference between being frugal and being an asshole. If you have enough money that tips are a rounding error for you -- not tipping just makes you an asshole.

It's none of your business to ever tip anywhere UNLESS you explicitly want to thank somebody for their service. How hard is that to understand?

It is the workplace's responsibility to pay their staff adequately. NOT YOURS.

0% tip all the way everywhere. No matter if I have $10 or $10k on the bill.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#376

Post by kortilla »

dingaling wrote: post #333
paulpauper wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree .Balmer was a disaster. Microsoft stock basically languished from 2003-2013 as everything else went up.

Which only means he was a 'disaster' from the speculative trader's perspective. Stock trading has no benefit to a company unless they need to go to the markets for another round of funding, which Microsoft didn't.

This is not true when your employees’ compensation depends on the stock. They all implicitly become speculative traders and watching the employees at Amazon/Google become millionaires in a couple of years caused a lot of brain drain at Microsoft.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#377

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

pensatoio wrote: post #145
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…

[flagged]

I'm going to the US in a couple of weeks and I'm already abhorring the prospect of spending some time looking at the specific tipping requirements of the state I'm going to, to then spend a week awkwardly guessing if I'm tipping enough, too much, or offending someone in the process; while having uncomfortable feelings about the people serving me food, drink, tour guidance, etc. (on the one hand because they all seem to be hunting for my money and being a foreigner, they might be hoping that I will tip too much, on the other hand because they might be underpaid and I might be an asshole to them if I tip too little).

I suppose people who have lived there all their life just don't notice it, but for me as an outsider the amount of stress and awkwardness that the tipping culture produces in daily life is ludicrous.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#378

Post by LudwigNagasena »

godelski wrote: post #245
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…

Everyone, chill Regardless of how you feel about tipping culture we're not talking about the average person nor are we talking about the average * experience* . The dude is worth north of $100bn, and is making nearly $10k per minute![0]. Someone who cannot spend his wealth. Someone who'd have to spend tens of millions of dollars every single day just to stop his wealth from growing. Someone who makes money faster tha…

Why should he give money to someone over literally any other person in the same establishment or outside of it? What does that have to do with "the man"?

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#379

Post by Sakos »

cyberax wrote: post #135
Sakos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ballmer's tenure started with XP and eventually gave us Windows 7. Nadella gave us 10 and 11. Though 10 was largely developed under Ballmer before its initial launch, it's been under Nadella's stewardship ever since. I'll take Ballmer, thanks.

WinXP was developed mostly during Gates' tenure. Ballmer is responsible for the disastrous Windows Vista, Microsoft phone operating systems, and Windows 8.

You mean the best mobile phone OS that we ever had? Unfortunately disastrously managed and then squandered, but still.

Also, Vista was a mess, but it was ambitious and it laid the foundation for 7 and it was only around for a few years before being replaced. Unlike 10, where Nadella has doubled down on the worst choices and even worse ones were made going into 11 (HOW THE FUCK DO YOU SET DEFAULT APPLICATIONS NOW, THIS IS FUCKING NONSENSE).

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#380

Post by kaon_ »

ThrowawayB7 wrote: post #305
addicted wrote: post #182

This article doesn’t understand what was fundamentally wrong with Ballmer’s leadership and what Nadella actually changed. The specific technologies that were successful is irrelevant. Microsoft has and continues to invest in nearly every computer related technology that may come around the corner or they got late on. The problem with Microsoft was everything went through Windows. The entire company was designed to pr…

Except Steven Sinofsky, longtime head of the Windows division and one of the internal forces preventing Microsoft from going in alternate directions, was pushed out under Ballmer's tenure, not Nadella's. Granted, Ballmer made the mistake of putting Terry Myerson, who headed up the failed Windows Phone effort, in charge of Windows but that's another story.

I really wanted windows phone to be a success and am still sad it wasn't. I loved the interface. The native integration between my desktop/laptop and phone would have been great. Nowadays with so many apps being PWAs and built with nativescript or ionic, maybe windowsphone has a chance again? I have no idea tbh.
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