also, he is the only CEO I routinely saw at the “corporate gym” in Redmond before the pandemic struck. No bodyguards, no nothings. Like a regular dude going to the gym, hanging out in the sauna/jacuzzi. He had a super positive attitude towards the staff and other people that would strike up a conversation. While I did not the to have the image of a naked Ballmer burned into my retinas, I do appreciate that he did not let all that wealth go to his head.
> their market cap is like 10x in the past decade
Steve Ballmer left 6 years ago. Pick your source regarding Microsoft's market cap while Ballmer was leading:
Also, a decade later, Microsoft is experiencing a software renaissance, in part, due to the the work Ballmer setup. One example: Azure. In the cloud space there are 2 gorillas: AWS and Azure (everything else is vaporware and at this point I don't think it would be wise to bet the farm on GCP or ... Oracle). How did Azure get here? Do you think they decided to do cloud and it happened magically?
Another example: the XBOX. I personally will never but a PS, and I believe XBOX is awesome in this space.
Microsoft's renaissance is mainly due to Nadella focusing on software and services instead of selling Windows. You mentioned Xbox as a way to support Ballmer. The Xbox story mentioned in the article does not support Ballmer.
Agreed re Azure but I don't know if Ballmer was still focusing on Windows for Azure, which seems likely. Keep in mind Azure is mostly Linux instances today.
It is windows 8 let me return from Linux to Windows, and it is windows 10 let me back to Linux again.
From what I can tell, once upon a time we had mainframes and server rooms and big expensive computers, and there was no personal computing.
Then, we got personal computing and had very limited consumer connection to centralized servers on them. A lot of people barely had internet.
Then, we connected personal computing to centralized servers and many products were born.
Now, we have platforms built for creating centralized services because managing your own hardware was not necessary.
Where is the pattern there? It seems like you’re extrapolating a wave pattern from what could be a single datapoint. We got this, we got that, we connected them, now we’re here. Where is the back-and-forth you implied?
From a sales pov, the company also grew and prospered. Microsoft had phenomenal growth while under Ballmer.
It's easy to remember all the things he botched (hello iphone?) but if you look at it objectively I think Ms did survive and prospered under Ballmer.
If you look at it objectively you include all the things he botched, which are "easy to remember" according to you. At best, he was meh. In my personal opinion he was horrible - I think a random employee likely would have done better.
