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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

My understanding was that Steve Ballmer was primarily a punching bag.

I thought he had a VERY short-lived period where he was popular in the media and everyone was raving about him (Developers, Developers, Developers - like 1 or 2 years after XP), and then after that he was a punching bag for like a decade.

Is this wrong?

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I think the issue is that Ballmer's Microsoft wasn't very effective.

While late-Gates Microsoft was the king of whole technology industry, by late Ballmer it was one of many players. While they haven't decayed into "enterprise" obscurity like IBM, they weren't driving the industry then.

They missed several "trends" like mobile phones, and only thanks to Nadella they've caught up in cloud with Azure.

Sort of ignores that during this period they were fighting the US. federal government and their product development gotten taken over by lawyers

There is a sort of "the current president inherits the previous person's work" going on.

Balmer was responsible for the One Microsoft reorganization which Nadella finished executing.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/11/4514160/steve-ballmers-re...

https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/11/4486730/microsoft-reorgan...

I dont think Ballmer get's enough credit for reflecting on his tenure, looking at what didnt work, and blowing it up for the future on his way out the door.

The comment you're responding to is referring to a meme about the optimal level of drunkenness for programming[1] not Ballmer's press performance.

[1] https://xkcd.com/323/

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