Steve Ballmer might be the funniest dude ever to run a tech company. Every story with him is absolutely golden.
Meanwhile Xbox has been a product driver - a big mostly positive influence on Windows gaming and on other platforms.
When I quit my third job, my boss told me "Karl, I know you hate me now, but in a couple years, you'll be making a million dollars a year and love me."
My response "Even if I believed you, I wouldn't do this job for a million dollars".
I still think I made the right choice by leaving. You have to live your life, and unless you really love your job, 80+ hours per week in the office is not living your life.
Also, I left that macro quant job by calling up Google and asking if they'd re-open the job offer I turned down 4 months earlier. It certainly helped that I had good backup jobs available.
Not saying its healthy tho; I think somepeople have simply mastered the 'embrace the suck' mentality when it comes to toxicity...they call that 'resilience'
In my opinion, a good boss can be loud, but must also smart and willing to hear, learn and teach, which are essential if you want to increase productivity and get your team full of smart and idea generating people together.
If you work for a mean and stupid boss, not only you'll work in hell, if the business failed due to their mistake, they'll probably put failure on their employees. Which is really bad if their false words got into the ears of your next recruiter.
Life is short, if something is obviously bad, don't try it.
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.
windows is most popular os on desktop/home/work(non-server) PCs?
My smartphone is a computer, which I use at home and work, and it sure as hell doesn't run Windows. Smartphones are a far more significant type of computer in the modern world than laptop or desktop PCs.
https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/mobile-desktop-internet...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263393/global-pc-shipmen...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone...
The original proposition was that desktop sales would rise with mobile sales (with a lag time), and that's clearly not the case to this point, and there are no indicators that will ever be true.
Phones, even the premium tier are a much less costly investment than a desktop PC. In addition to the $1500-$2500 for a decent desktop computer you also have all the supporting bits, a desk to put it on, a chair, maybe a printer, + the floorspace to house it all.
With a phone it's just the phone, and maybe a case. So while a household might be satisfied with a single desktop computer, every member of the household is going to want their own phone. More devices per household + higher turn over frequency = higher volume annual sales even at saturation.
2) Do you have any data to back up the claim that mobile usage leads to desktop purchases? I have never heard such a claim before
Additionally given the amount of people that run Office on their phones, in spite of total lack of usability to do such kind of work on those devices, again very good reaction.
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.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....
The point was about actually working on documents with a proper level of quality that aspires to good evaluations.
Then proper copy-paste workflows across applications when placing those pictures into the word document, alongside the table created in Excel for the respective field information and bar charts with the results.
Yes, it is doable, but better have lots of patience and time available to jump through all the obstacles to make it work on Android tablets.
There is also the possibility to use a pen instead, which again is very much hit and miss across Android tablets, more miss than hit actually, when compared with the capabilities of Windows Ink and surface pens.
> 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:
Thanks for updating my view!
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?
It is windows 8 let me return from Linux to Windows, and it is windows 10 let me back to Linux again.
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.
One wonders how the future of civilization will work if the vast majority cannot even understand the true scope of the wheels they’re standing on, or turning in the background.
I thought we were assessing him as a CEO, not an employee. Sure, he contributed before, and during, being a CEO. And obviously everything is speculation since we can't A/B test hypothetical timelines. But the numerous anecdotes of his "unique" management (if some of the stories are true, which I cannot verify, the guy should get sued for harassment on multiple counts), the fact that he missed obvious opportunities for MS (sure it's easy in hindsight, but even then I remember thinking "what is he doing?"), and the fact that Microsoft's reputation plummeted during his reign (again, subjective, but none of my friends wanted to work there and openly mocked it as an employer and that has completely changed under Nadella) are all strong signs that he wasn't an excellent leader.
But ultimately this is just my opinion, and he's a brilliant (I think he's a horrible CEO, but a very talented mathematician) billionaire. So what do I know?
It's only acceptable for him to do that because of his position. Imagine a factory worker doing that to the CEO "just cause it's funny". That's the same with other funny-but-inappropriate behaviors we should discourage at work.
EDIT: not that im saying Steve was in the right, who knows what their relationship was like