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Sundar is an example of what happens when you promote from within and rule out anyone with enemies. You get nice guys whom everyone "likes."

The comment about sociopathic almost-CEO's is spot on. Tony, Andy, Anthony, and Vic all would have been terrible CEO's.

On the other hand, Bill Coughran, Alan Eustace, Udi Manber, or Patrick Pichette would have been decent, at the very least. Maybe even very good.

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Nadella is a very good counter example for that. I think one difference is that Ballmer set up Nadella much better in his final years (both by removing alternative power centres like Sinofsky, and kick starting projects like Office on iOS which solely get credited to Nadella)

Possibly you're right. I'm not as familiar with MS-internal politics.

Off topic. But huge shout out to Udi Manber for one of my favorite CS books: Introduction to Algorithms, A Creative Approach.

I didn't even know he wrote that.

Here he is, introducing Bob Mankoff, the longtime cartoon editor of the New Yorker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kogikw3InpY

I helped out on this talk, but Udi apparently knew Bob somehow, so he introduced him.

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