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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

(danluu.com)
371 points greggyb | 3 comments | 28 Oct 24 21:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.641s | source
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RandomThoughts3 ◴[28 Oct 24 22:25 UTC] No.41977131[source]▶
It’s funny how all the comments here are falling in the trap described in the beginning of the article of disliking Ballmer because he comes from the sales side and they can’t fathom someone not coming from the tech side leading a tech company.

What’s undeniable in the article is that Ballmer literally built what remains Microsoft best asset even before being a CEO there: it’s incredibly good relationship with its corporate customers. Honestly, it’s really what sets Microsoft apart for me. When you do deal with them as a corporate customer, you really get the feeling that they understand the way things work in a big corp IT department and will be reliable and predictable.

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1. kjs3 ◴[28 Oct 24 23:08 UTC] No.41977534[source]▶
When you do deal with them as a corporate customer, you really get the feeling that they understand the way things work in a big corp IT department and will be reliable and predictable.

Just got done negotiating our E5 license last year and omfg is this laugh-out-loud untrue. Don't even get me started on how we have to check the Azure websites before every meeting with our M$ counterparts to figure out what Azure services they've changed the name of since the last call.

But yes, completely agree it's the corporate customers that are the wind beneath their sales. But it's because they understand that for almost any large corp IT department on the planet, telling the 85% of their employees who don't give a steaming crap what the nerds think about Windows or Ballmer, "you have to dump Excel & Word and learn something else"[1] is not a hill any of them are willing to die on. We have people that won't use Excel on a Mac because once they found a place where it didn't work exactly like the Windows version.

[1] No. LibreOffice is not the answer.

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2. RandomThoughts3 ◴[28 Oct 24 23:34 UTC] No.41977739[source]▶
> We have people that won't use Excel on a Mac because once they found a place where it didn't work exactly like the Windows version.

Then again, Excel on a Mac is significantly inferior to the Windows version to be honest.

> Don't even get me started on how we have to check the Azure websites before every meeting with our M$ counterparts to figure out what Azure services they've changed the name of since the last call.

Not my experience at all and we spend millions of dollars a year with them.

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3. kjs3 ◴[29 Oct 24 22:24 UTC] No.41990057[source]▶
Not my experience at all

Really? You mean you missed Azure AD renamed to Entra ID? How about Microsoft Azure Security Center + Azure Defender combined into Azure Defender for Cloud? All the products that were "Azure Defender something" that became "Microsoft Defender something"? Yammer -> Viva? MyAnalytics -> Viva Insight? How about the 20-something products that changed to the "Microsoft Purview" branding.

By our count, Microsoft renamed something like Azure 60 products in the last 5 years. And you didn't "experience" any of that?

we spend millions of dollars a year with them

Oh my...I sure hope you don't think spending "millions" of dollars a year with Microsoft makes you special; our mid-8-figure USD yearly spend sure doesn't move us to the front of too many lines. But they do let us know when they change product names...