Hacker News Reader

Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

Funny and satirical as it is, [1] completely changed my opinion of Steve Ballmer for the positive.

> Steve Ballmer. You open the door to his enormous grinning face, and before you know it he’s in the hall handing over a bottle of something cheap (but with such confidence you don’t notice) and he’s giving you the handshake of your life. Then he’s in. Loving it. Loving the music. Loving the food and drink. He’s going up to everyone, saying hello. And after a while you realize he’s started balling “thanks for coming, great to see you man!” to your guests. By the end of the evening it’s his party and everybody had a great time. That’s Steve Ballmer.

https://medium.com/packt-publishing/how-to-be-like-steve-bal...

View on HN

"non genius" seems like a funny way to describe a person who outperformed gates on the putnam

One thing that gets wrong is calling Gates the genius. Ballmer is the smarter of the two.

Could you elaborate on that?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mn1N0ssZsUs

He was featured on the A&E show Biography, and one of his high school math teachers said that Ballmer never once got a math problem wrong, which I found incredible in the true sense of the word.

Did he emphasise the "once"? Crucial bit of info here ;)

Then why did Microsoft stagnate under his leadership, once Gates left?

COOs don't make good CEOs in general. They are great at executing someone else's vision, but not great at coming up with one on their own.

I'm not saying Microsoft didn't need a change by the end of Ballmer's reign, but it is seriously underrated. Yes there were many mis-steps, especially in the consumer space, but he never put a foot wrong in the enterprise space and got a lock few would have credited would be possible with a Windows-server-only strategy.

Ballmer did a great job keeping the ship going for sure. He just failed to turn into the wind. :)

Because intelligence by itself does not assure success. I'm not a Balmer/Microsoft fan, but 'stagnated' isn't the word I'd use to describe Microsoft in Balmer's era: they missed mobile and got into search late, but they did extremely well in other areas.

He stepped in in 2000, with microsoft being the top dog of the tech world, and left in 2014 with them not even being one of the "big four".

Right now Apple, Amazon, Google & HP are all bigger (in terms of revenue) than Microsoft:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_informatio...

> He stepped in in 2000, with microsoft being the top dog of the tech world, and left in 2014 with them not even being one of the "big four".

It seems we are in agreement - being overtaken =/= stagnation. A more convincing argument would have been if their revenues had plateued under Ballmer (they didn't - revenue grew by 280% from $25B to $70B in 2014).

That's a common misconception about Ballmer. The stock stagnated and they did miss mobile. However, if you look at their financials, under Ballmer revenue doubled and net income increased. Ballmer may not be the best person to identify and capitalize on new trends, but if you want someone who can make money, he's your man.

Ballmer focused on the unsexy enterprise market and missed mobile. He got beaten up for it in the stock market, but the company was still doing well

> handing over a bottle of something cheap (but with such confidence you don’t notice)