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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

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Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#81

Post by chucke1992 »

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #70
chucke1992 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was a good CFO type of a leader. Unlike a lot of other companies like Intel or Boeing, that were run by CFOs, he did not last long enough to run MSFT into the ground due to being too late to modern trends. Sure he build the foundation, but he was not smart enough to lead the path forward. With him MSFT would have never reached top 3 most valuable companies - I would say it would be at 500-600b maybe at best. Even…

> Unlike a lot of other companies like Intel or Boeing, that were run by CFOs, he did not last long enough to run MSFT into the ground due to being too late to modern trends. How can you right this in good faith while replying to a comment laying out to you that Microsoft most successful investments a decade later were all started by Ballmer and that he took a lot of risks with R&D? > Even with Azure and Office, he w…

> How can you right this in good faith while replying to a comment laying out to you that Microsoft most successful investments a decade later were all started by Ballmer and that he took a lot of risks with R&D?

Investment in R&D means nothing if you can't deliver. Intel has enormous R&D budget. Boeing too. Did it help them? No.

> Also the Microsoft Phone with, you know, touch screens

With Windows Phone he was too late to the market. It does not matter if he thought of it later - he famously disregarded iPhone saying that it did not have keyboard. They had Windows Mobile, but they were busy competing with Blackberry instead of going after innovation.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#82

Post by ytoawwhra92 »

parl_match wrote: post #24
abirch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when he retired and the MSFT jumped. Satya is underrated.

Satya's tenure has seen the fall of Xbox, the lost relevance of Windows. While moving to a services model is going to be very lucrative for them, they risk competitors offering swap-out models.

The fall of Xbox started with the Xbox One, which was developed and released while Ballmer was CEO. They put an enormous amount of investment into that console, but made some bad calls in both its development and marketing that put them in a deep hole that they've been unable to get out of since. The increasing backwards compatibility of modern consoles means that the current 4th generation Xbox is paying for the sins of the 3rd generation in addition to dealing with its own struggles. Really the only thing that can fix the situation is money, but the business is probably under pressure to show profits after two decades of heavy investment with minimal return.

I don't necessarily think you can blame Ballmer for the missteps the Xbox team made, but I definitely think you can't blame Nadella.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#83

Post by RandomThoughts3 »

chucke1992 wrote: post #81
RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlike a lot of other companies like Intel or Boeing, that were run by CFOs, he did not last long enough to run MSFT into the ground due to being too late to modern trends. How can you right this in good faith while replying to a comment laying out to you that Microsoft most successful investments a decade later were all started by Ballmer and that he took a lot of risks with R&D? > Even with Azure and Office, he w…

> How can you right this in good faith while replying to a comment laying out to you that Microsoft most successful investments a decade later were all started by Ballmer and that he took a lot of risks with R&D? Investment in R&D means nothing if you can't deliver. Intel has enormous R&D budget. Boeing too. Did it help them? No. > Also the Microsoft Phone with, you know, touch screens With Windows Phone he was too l…

> Investment in R&D means nothing if you can't deliver. Intel has enormous R&D budget. Boeing too. Did it help them? No.

The most profitable current divisions at Microsoft were started under Ballmer. That’s literally stated in the original comment in the thread you are replying to.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#84

Post by GuB-42 »

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.

Don't forget gaming. Gaming on Linux is possible but Windows still has the advantage in both software and hardware support.

I particularly like the video series from LinusTechTips where they try to use Linux as their daily driver because it is very telling. They manage to do stuff, but it isn't great. I find it interesting because it is done from the point of view of computer enthusiasts but not IT professionals or programmers. The kind who know about the command line, but are not very comfortable with it and would rather do without.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#86

Post by mixmastamyk »

lysace wrote: post #50
mixmastamyk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective sales and marketing is more dependent on math than most people realize.

...how? I get that it correlates with intelligence, but with math, specifically?

Lots of metrics to analyze and statistics to crunch. Knowing where to focus the schmoozing is as important as the schmoozing itself.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#87

Post by RandomThoughts3 »

chucke1992 wrote: post #79
RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he? What did he start? Most of MS current successes were launched under Ballmer most notably Azure. Satya has been good with acquisitions but what else?

But here is the thing - launching the initiative means nothing. Satya is able to expand and develop it. Like with Ballmer we certainly would not have got O365 to iOS for example. It would be 100% bundled one way or another to Windows services or something or browser or whatever. Even with Azure we would not have got such aggressive expansion and attempts to push services across Windows and Linux or playing with Open…

> Ballmer's attempt to buy Yahoo and disregard for touch screen phones is what defined his legacy.

You are weirdly obsessed with that but Ballmer actually started Bing and bought Nokia to make touchscreen phones. I think you are extremely biased to the point of being entirely disconnected from the facts at hand.

> Ability to buy right things is important too.

Ballmer bought Skype and launched the foundation of what would become Teams - you know - arguably the most important corporate piece of software after Covid.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#88

Post by wbl »

bydo wrote: post #78
p1necone wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gamepass and the lack of first party exclusives both seem like moves to kill the console in the long term, but as of now it's still a serious competitor to playstation and switch no?

Not really. The only generation of Xbox that was competitive was the 360, which still came in third in sales, just not as distantly.

Having Halo as an exclusive was huge.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#89

Post by kjs3 »

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #44

It’s funny how all the comments here are falling in the trap described in the beginning of the article of disliking Ballmer because he comes from the sales side and they can’t fathom someone not coming from the tech side leading a tech company. What’s undeniable in the article is that Ballmer literally built what remains Microsoft best asset even before being a CEO there: it’s incredibly good relationship with its co…

When you do deal with them as a corporate customer, you really get the feeling that they understand the way things work in a big corp IT department and will be reliable and predictable.

Just got done negotiating our E5 license last year and omfg is this laugh-out-loud untrue. Don't even get me started on how we have to check the Azure websites before every meeting with our M$ counterparts to figure out what Azure services they've changed the name of since the last call.

But yes, completely agree it's the corporate customers that are the wind beneath their sales. But it's because they understand that for almost any large corp IT department on the planet, telling the 85% of their employees who don't give a steaming crap what the nerds think about Windows or Ballmer, "you have to dump Excel & Word and learn something else"[1] is not a hill any of them are willing to die on. We have people that won't use Excel on a Mac because once they found a place where it didn't work exactly like the Windows version.

[1] No. LibreOffice is not the answer.

Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

#90

Post by legitster »

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…

> 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

Window's massive install base is not really a testament to their failure.

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