Ask HN: who should replace Steve Ballmer?

4 points·evo_9··8 comments

Title says it all...

I personally thought it would have been someone like Robbie Bach, aka someone that actually gets consumers, but instead they axed him recently.

View on HN

I say this with all seriousness and not to be a goof but:

Does anyone here actually care?

Yeah, good point. I considered this before posting but figured why not? It's fun/interesting to think about this stuff and I figured people on HN are pretty smart/thoughtful. it's like sports in a way, I love hockey more than loving just my favorite team; I watch the Stanley Cup finales even though I don't follow either team. Aka still fun/interesting.

People care enough to write dozens of blog posts about it and share them on HN and tweet and digg about them.

Bill Gates

It is time to Bill Gates to be back and salvage the damage done under Steve Ballmer, and retain the value of 8% or so of microsoft common stock still owned by him

Eric Raymond

Steve Wozniak

Well, that depends on what the goal is, right? If I were a MS shareholder and wanted to see them grow and profit and succeed, I'd say somebody like Ray Ozzie.

But since I despise Microsoft and really don't care if they crash and burn or whatever, I'd go for somebody else for either ironic effect, comic potential, or just sheer absurdity. So my list of candidates would be:

1. Richard Stallman

2. Eric S. Raymond

3. Zed Shaw

4. Jamie Zawinski

5. Joel Spolsky

6. Darl McBride

7. Linus Torvalds

8. Paul Graham

9. Tom Siebel

10. Sir Tim Berners-Lee

11. Tony Hayward

Richard Stallman!!!!??????

Reply on news.ycombinator.com