Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

I think that a lot of people are commenting here without actually reading the article. The article lays out a concrete (and imo pretty persuasive) argument as to why the author thinks that Ballmer was a decent CEO. You should really read it, but the TLDR is:

* Some of the big feathers in Microsoft's cap today (O365 and Azure) started during Ballmer's tenure

* While the company had plenty of failed initiatives during his time, what matters in the end is that the hits made up for the misses in terms of profit, and they did

* Metrics like revenue and so on were all positive during his tenure

Frankly, unless the author is factually incorrect on these points (which I don't have the knowledge to assert either way), I think it's a good argument.

He was a good CFO type of a leader. Unlike a lot of other companies like Intel or Boeing, that were run by CFOs, he did not last long enough to run MSFT into the ground due to being too late to modern trends.

Sure he build the foundation, but he was not smart enough to lead the path forward. With him MSFT would have never reached top 3 most valuable companies - I would say it would be at 500-600b maybe at best.

Even with Azure and Office, he was too much into "bundle with Windows" type of guy. Similar to how he was saying that touchscreen would never work as businesses needed buttons to type. I think with Satya, they would have tried multi touch screen at least for sure.

By and large, Ballmer was not the very open minded person. And his attempt to buy Yahoo...Oof.

> Unlike a lot of other companies like Intel or Boeing, that were run by CFOs, he did not last long enough to run MSFT into the ground due to being too late to modern trends.

How can you right this in good faith while replying to a comment laying out to you that Microsoft most successful investments a decade later were all started by Ballmer and that he took a lot of risks with R&D?

> Even with Azure and Office, he was too much into "bundle with Windows" type of guy.

Seriously? Ballmer started Office365 you know. Also the Microsoft Phone with, you know, touch screens. The sheer amount of historical revionism in this thread even in the face of hard facts is mind numbing.

Honestly, even discarding all the rest, Ballmer would deserve more respect than he gets there for getting Microsoft out of the antitrust lawsuits alone.

> How can you right this in good faith while replying to a comment laying out to you that Microsoft most successful investments a decade later were all started by Ballmer and that he took a lot of risks with R&D?

Investment in R&D means nothing if you can't deliver. Intel has enormous R&D budget. Boeing too. Did it help them? No.

> Also the Microsoft Phone with, you know, touch screens

With Windows Phone he was too late to the market. It does not matter if he thought of it later - he famously disregarded iPhone saying that it did not have keyboard. They had Windows Mobile, but they were busy competing with Blackberry instead of going after innovation.

> Investment in R&D means nothing if you can't deliver. Intel has enormous R&D budget. Boeing too. Did it help them? No.

The most profitable current divisions at Microsoft were started under Ballmer. That’s literally stated in the original comment in the thread you are replying to.

We cannot tell if the currently most profitable divisions would become that profitable under Ballmer.

That's the whole point - Satya somehow was able to develop the platforms through acquisitions and business vendor lock much better than Ballmer ever could. And we saw what happened with Windows division under Ballmer - it was profitable but it had no future. MSFT could become another IBM.

With Ballmer we could get some Windows hubris like "Azure only with Windows OS license" or something.

My only issue with Satya is that he is not "a cult of personality" type of person like Jensen Huang or Phil Spencer. He is basically a guy who "walks softly and wields a big stick".

> And we saw what happened with Windows division under Ballmer - it was profitable but it had no future.

Microsoft under Ballmer was insanely profitable, more than its competitors and far more than before he took the helm. And despite that Ballmer launched Azure, started the push towards Entreprise software and at no point stopped investing.

I don’t think Ballmer was the best CEO ever but his poor reputation is very much undeserved.

He was good at sales but their products were and are still inferior. Only Excel and SQL Server are two products I would personally buy.

> Microsoft under Ballmer was insanely profitable, more than its competitors and far more than before he took the helm.

Yeah, that's the thing - he was a good CFO. He was able to maximize profit and stuff. But people remember CEOs by their achievements - "a founder", "made MSFT into top three world companies"...With Ballmer people remember the lost decade and that's it.