Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

blog.jovono.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 116 posts

Re: Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

#91

Post by scosman »

alephnerd wrote: post #54
scosman wrote: post #30

Having worked on mobile there 2008-2011: no, I would say he’s properly rated. Had years head start on the Android model (hackable OS+vendors+wide HW support), and threw it away. Chased iPhone model briefly without the commitment to actually win. Took smartphone market share from 20-30% to 0% when it mattered most. Invested more in XBox and Business intelligence platforms.

> Invested more in XBox and Business intelligence platforms. Both of which turned out to be the right move long term. Mobile is a commoditized winner takes all market, and there's no guarantee MS would have won even if they concentrated entirely on it. Concentrating on BI platforms helped spawn M365, and the Enterprise focus helped spawn MS Azure which had very early Product-Market Fit at the Fed because they became…

> There's way more money in Enterprise B2B than there is in B2C.

Definitively not true by a huge margin.

Re: Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

#92

Post by nobodyandproud »

alephnerd wrote: post #68
Keyframe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the question posed is whether that's due to Ballmer or despite him.

Because of him. Ballmer backed the "Enterprise Business" (precursor of Office 365) and "Server and Tools" (precursor of Azure and MS Security) divisions over the then prominent "Windows" division. MS back then was in a weird transitional phase where it as a company needed to decide whether it wanted to prioritize B2C or B2B/Enterprise. Ballmer made the call to go for Enterprise. There was also no guarantee that then-…

Sadly, Ballmer couldn’t reign in the Windows team before they effectively killed Windows Phone.

If I recall, the team had a large hand in hindering Windows Phone up until Windows 8; when everyone was too fed up to develop for the platform.

Re: Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

#93

Post by actionfromafar »

whaleofatw2022 wrote: post #79
actionfromafar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile 8 was not compatible with Mobile 7. You can't go around and change interfaces when companies are betting the barn on you. For Windows proper you can release and deprecate a GUI every 20 minutes because there is always Win32 to fall back to. But when you are bootstrapping an entire eco-system you can't muck around like that. Also strategic blunder to buy Nokia and then do exactly nothing with it. Linux was stil…

That sounds a bit generous to Nokia, Maemo to me seemed more screwed into bureaucratic hell with Moblin/Meego partnerships...

Maybe, I still think Microsoft missed a golden opportunity. People installed Debian packages on the darned things. They could have "WSL" on the phones in the future.

Re: Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

#94

Post by scosman »

ko_pivot wrote: post #8

The latest Acquired episode makes a pretty strong case for Ballmer, implying that he led the Microsoft move to own all enterprise software, not Gates.

Probably fair that he led the move to enterprise.

Also true it blew a very very strong lead in the B2C business.

Re: Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

#95

Post by apwell23 »

sph wrote: post #66
paxys wrote: post #43

During Ballmer's tenure, the Office division spent a lot of resources building apps for iOS. Ballmer saw a demo, realized that they were better than the Office apps available on Microsoft's own phones and tablets, and so blocked the release. The company sat on the apps for multiple years . When Nadella came on, one of his first decisions as CEO was to release them to the public. This single incident perfectly demonst…

Meh, I don't see how Nadella's "vision" is praiseworthy either: * their flagship OS is more and more a spyware platform * Windows Server is pretty much a rarity these days outside of large corporate deployments. Anybody has seen MS SQL recently? * Azure seems to have reached its peak mind share, mostly pushed by free credits * Their gaming division mainly lives on Game Pass, while XBox is further and further away fro…

“The metaverse is not just transforming how we see the world. It’s changing how all of us actively participate in it”

"The age of AI transformation"

“There isn’t a single industry that isn’t being transformed,” “We collectively have the opportunity to lead in this transformation.”

"All of these three things, web3, blockchain and the metaverse, are all going to happen."

Visionary Nadella here folks . Everything is transformative to this guy.

Re: Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

#96

Post by rbanffy »

Andrex wrote: post #74
rbanffy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ballmer was there when Longhorn/Vista happened.

Longhorn was a failure born of ambition. W10-11's failures' are born of greed.

Longhorn was a failure born out of poor management. Vista what was left of Longhorn.

Re: Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

#97

Post by waisbrot »

"Maybe the memes making fun of this person are, in fact, an exaggeration."

Sure. I don't need much convincing that Ballmer was only "bad" rather than "uniquely terrible". It seems a pretty normal thing that the negative reaction was outsized.

But I also think it would be more interesting to look at cases where the reaction by the haters was _spot on_. Or even where it _undersold_ how bad things were.

Re: Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

#98

Post by gentleman11 »

paxys wrote: post #43

During Ballmer's tenure, the Office division spent a lot of resources building apps for iOS. Ballmer saw a demo, realized that they were better than the Office apps available on Microsoft's own phones and tablets, and so blocked the release. The company sat on the apps for multiple years . When Nadella came on, one of his first decisions as CEO was to release them to the public. This single incident perfectly demonst…

Stop celebrating the guy who brought spyware and ads to windows

Re: Is Steve Ballmer the Most Underrated CEO of the 21st Century?

#100

Post by alephnerd »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #92
alephnerd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of him. Ballmer backed the "Enterprise Business" (precursor of Office 365) and "Server and Tools" (precursor of Azure and MS Security) divisions over the then prominent "Windows" division. MS back then was in a weird transitional phase where it as a company needed to decide whether it wanted to prioritize B2C or B2B/Enterprise. Ballmer made the call to go for Enterprise. There was also no guarantee that then-…

Sadly, Ballmer couldn’t reign in the Windows team before they effectively killed Windows Phone. If I recall, the team had a large hand in hindering Windows Phone up until Windows 8; when everyone was too fed up to develop for the platform.

Imo, it's good that the Windows Phone died - it would have distracted Microsoft from the much more lucrative segments it's in today and opened the door to potential antitrust litigation.
Post reply on HN