←back to thread

Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

(danluu.com)
371 points greggyb | 1 comments | 28 Oct 24 21:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.287s | source
Show context
exabrial ◴[28 Oct 24 22:11 UTC] No.41976993[source]▶
No he wasn’t haha. The only thing he did was slide the company sideways via pre existing illegal monopoly. In fact, they lost most of their monopoly under his supervision . At no point did the quality of their products improve, and that’s evidenced with this year’s massive massive Windows outage, or Garmins mega ransomware, out a hundred other people who’ve been hacked via Windows.

If you’re running Windows for anything, it’s only a matter of when, not if.

replies(10): >>41977048 #>>41977054 #>>41977071 #>>41977086 #>>41977123 #>>41977171 #>>41977190 #>>41977222 #>>41977574 #>>41979180 #
1. burnte ◴[28 Oct 24 22:28 UTC] No.41977171[source]▶
Agreed. He was the "put windows everywhere" guy because he forgot that Microsoft and Windows weren't the same thing and thus he failed Microsoft AND Windows.

Microsoft is a software company, they sell software (and now software services). Steve thought that because their main product was Windows, that Windows was the only product that mattered and everything else had to depend on being run on Windows. Office sells very well on Macs. Office in the browser is really improving every year. XBox 360 was a huge hit while not really running "Windows" at all, just a related kernel and DirectX APIs; it wasn't even x86!

Steve made MS a Windows First company, and the entire company stagnated for years. He may have been a great number two to BillG but that doesn't mean he was suited to being CEO. Being the XO is a very different job from being the Captain, and a lot of times they take two very different types of people.