Maybe Steve Ballmer Doesn't Deserve the Hate 240
Nerval's Lobster writes "Who could forget Steve Ballmer's defining moment, that infamous 'Developers! Developers! Developers!' rant that became a YouTube hit? Or the reports of frighteningly accurate chair-throwing? Who could miss the tech media and investors blaming him for everything from Microsoft's largely stagnant stock price over the past decade to its inability to get in front of trends such as mobile devices? But tech columnist (and Kernel editor-in-chief) Milo Yiannopoulos talked to a bunch of Ballmer's friends and colleagues, picked through Microsoft's history, and came away with the argument that the man deserves a second look as an effective leader. 'He stands accused of running one of the greatest companies in American history into the ground, even as its stock price remains remarkably resilient and the company continues to turn a healthy profit,' he writes. 'The mature verdict on Steve Ballmer is that he has made only one major strategic error: not combining his own brilliance for sales and detail with a visionary product leader who has the authority to create bold new revenue streams for the company.' Do you agree? Or does Ballmer deserve his reputation as a bad CEO?"
Bad CEO? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
does Ballmer deserve his reputation as a bad CEO?
Bad CEO? Throwing chairs, browbeating your employees, prioritizing squeezing your customer over making a quality product, bribing government officials all over the world to expand your regulatory monopolies while preaching laissez-faire extremism to excuse cheating on your taxes -- those things don't necessarily make you a bad CEO. By the quarterly profit measure, they make you a good one. Those things don't make you a bad CEO; they make you a bad person.
Monty Phython (Score:4, Interesting)
All kidding aside he is not a great or even good leader. If he was half as effective as Bill Gates MS would have have only lost half of the product wars that it has. He has perpetually missed the boat on emerging trends, and then tried to chase the boat down in a runabout with a 5HP outboard motor.
Stock Price Comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
Maintaining a steady stock price isn't what makes the Wall Street Casino happy.
Microsoft is down from its high in 2000 [yahoo.com] while competitors like Apple [yahoo.com] and Google [yahoo.com] are now worth significantly more than they were. Considering Microsoft's once-dominant position, it shouldn't be flat.
Microsoft has done better than HP [yahoo.com] and Yahoo [yahoo.com], but considering even stodgy old IBM has seen its stock price rise [yahoo.com] you have to wonder if Ballmer knows how to set a new course, adjusting to changes in tech, or just keep the ship afloat, buoyed by Windows and Office.
Microsoft had Windows for Pen Computing, Windows XP Tablet Edition, and later Courier, but lost the tablet market to Apple and Google. They had Windows CE and Windows Mobile well before iOS and Android, but never really made inroads in the smartphone market. Leveraging their default IE homepage, they couldn't get MSN / Live.com / Bing to overtake Google. Even in successful things, like HoTMaiL or IE, they simply stopped innovating until competitors appeared, and in the process those competitors took away chunks of Microsoft's market share. That they continue to exist off the profits from Windows and Office isn't the same as thriving, and that's why Ballmer gets the criticism he deserves.
Re:The company you keep (Score:3, Interesting)
> I tend to judge leaders by those they choose to surround themselves with
Hmm. If the company tanks, no-one's going to remember those other people. Or the company, ultimately. In business, it's just profit that counts - keeping the company going, making products people want (or need). Currently, Microsoft don't seem to be doing very well, hence the falling PC sales, price cuts on Microsoft's overpriced tablets with poor battery life etc, shocking Windows 8 sales to which Microsoft reluctantly conceded needed a change so that people could actually use them the way they were used to etc. More time is needed to see if Microsoft can recover from these decisions or if the decline he's ruled over will continue until Microsoft exit the stage.
Re:The company you keep (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't own a fair amount of MSFT stock or make million-dollar IT contract purchases? Why should you then care?
If you do, then these names are at least passing familiarity.
The whole article is a parlour game, even if you do own or buy significantly. Yes, Ballmer is shite. No, he's not going anywhere... Ever.
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
And given that Microsoft has an 80%+ marketshare, a "largely stagnant stock price" could have been pretty much achieved by doing absolutely nothing, which, when you look at the company over the last decade, isn't far from the truth.
This! Too big to fail doesn't only apply to corporate bail-outs. It also means that massive companies can ride through one period after the other of colossally stupid mistakes. If you split Microsoft up into various division then take a look at where the money is coming from, the company is surviving on it's monopoly and cash cows Windows and Office, and neither of those can be attributed to Steve Ballmer.
We can attribute to him everything else at Microsoft. Unfortunately all those things seem to be making a loss. Search, mobile, entertainment, all of these things are what Ballmer has been pushing for in the past few years while letting the Windows and Office divisions rot and all of them can at this point be considered a failure.
Now the real question is, given Ballmer's fetish for trying to one-up Apple and screwing Windows in the process will the company continue to survive on it's old cash cow, or will he let that slip through his hands? Honestly I don't know what the board of directors is thinking supporting the drunk at the wheel.
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Building an enterprise products division: SQL Server becoming very high end, Dynamics, Lync, SharePoint becoming a central component in many enterprise applications. That's Balmer's contribution and it is worth tens of billions per year.
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Building an enterprise products division: SQL Server becoming very high end, Dynamics, Lync, SharePoint becoming a central component in many enterprise applications. That's Balmer's contribution and it is worth tens of billions per year.
What about IE, Windows 8, Bing, Zune, Windows Mobile.
The fact of the matter is MS once owned 85% of the mobile market too with Windows CE. MS owned 90% of the market with IE. Windows was liked more and XP loyalists are still hear loving that OS and refusing to upgrade as it was perfection. Those my friend happened under Gates and were handed too Balmer.
First Blackberry and now Google and Apple are all eating MS PDA and smartphone market. Mozilla and now Google took IEs dominance away. Bing never materialized and Apple too got rid of WindowsCE as MS planned to own 90% of the embeded and mobile market by now and iOS, Linux, and Android have taken that away.
Those are all under Balmers watch. He deserves to go.
Even if MS did make improvements for Windows 7 and Sharepoint it doesn't matter as there is no compelling reason to upgrade. Ms is competing with the ghost of itself as Windows 2003, IE 8, Exchange 2003, are here to stay for a very long time. That hurts and costs money.
Windows 7 is great but took almost years to get there from XP as we know longhorn failed (vista is not Longhorn), same with IE 10 being too little as IE 6 was the last thing close to cutting edge and none of the users count as they were catch-up to Firefox.
He failed. Apple and Google are the new kings now.
I would go further, 7 wasn't a winner, it wasn't a (Score:3, Interesting)
I would go further, 7 wasn't a winner, it wasn't as big a loser.
Ballmer is overseeing a drugs operation in a city of billions where there is no law, everyone is a millionaire and all the other drug barons have long since gone from shooting themselves in the foot to traveling back in time and shooting their ancestors in the head.
MS didn't rise to dominance because of the brilliance of its leaders but because the competition made some of the biggest and most classic mistakes in business history. They have been discussed before but IBM just handing the PC business to a tiny upstart has to be rank in the top 3 biggest mistakes ever.
Windows and Office are gigantic sellers and unlike Intels Itanium, when MS goofs with a release, they don't have to factor in gigantic hard production costs of shifting a production facility back to old products, they just print different keys to ship to business. The actual physical Windows 8 boxes are a tiny fraction of their business. Large customers just get a load of keys and download the version they want. And when Intel is sued to keep making chips, MS can fume all it wants about still having to sell XP during Vista, the costs of doing so are trivial compared to keeping an unprofitable chip line open.
I am not saying the lack of sales on Vista and 8 don't hurt but they don't hurt as much as having to retire a physical production line and getting rid of unsold stock.
You might claim their are losing money in mobile and that is true enough but it is like trying to empty the ocean with a bucket. It is just not going to have an effect any time soon.
Basically right now MS is operating like a government that is ruling willing slaves. It collects what is essentially a tax on every PC and the public goes out of its way to re-inforce its shackles every day. Note that the Xbox One pre-orders didn't really hurt at all over the entire fuzz about always on online and always on kineckt. People were fuming on it on the internet while standing in line to get their pre-order in.
You can therefor judge Ballmer NOT by asking how good he has to be to keep the business running as normal (cash cow Windows/Offfice loosing money everywhere else) but just how bad he can be before the Windows/Office cash cow would take a massive hit.
And let us not forget the company rose to power on Dos, Windows 1-2-3 95 etc etc. It was normal for early Windows machines to crash several times a day, not to support common hardware, refuse to run older software and be downright insecure by design. And sales GREW!
That makes me think that MS could release a Windows 9 that killed you cat, impregnated your daughter and fucked you up the ass with a ten foot spiked dildo and people would either buy it because it is the latest version or totally burn MS by forcing MS to take their money for old software. I wish women would use that logic for dating "Date you? A nerd? No way, ever! Burn nerd, I am just going to have sex with you in ways you can never imagine AND pay you for it whenever you want but I am never going to go on a date because you are a nerd and I want to hurt your feelings". Well... I think I could live with that.
People made much about people demanding to buy downgrades from MS. I am sure Ballmer cried bitter tears of defeat and only had billions of dollars to console himself with.
No, the question isn't how good Ballmer has to be to keep MS running, it is just how fucking bad he would have to be to actually HURT MS in any serious way. I think he would have to start physically assaulting each and every customer.