Most active commenters

    ←back to thread

    Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

    (danluu.com)
    371 points greggyb | 45 comments | 28 Oct 24 21:48 UTC | HN request time: 1.059s | source | bottom
    Show context
    addicted ◴[29 Oct 24 02:19 UTC] No.41978723[source]▶
    This article doesn’t understand what was fundamentally wrong with Ballmer’s leadership and what Nadella actually changed.

    The specific technologies that were successful is irrelevant. Microsoft has and continues to invest in nearly every computer related technology that may come around the corner or they got late on.

    The problem with Microsoft was everything went through Windows. The entire company was designed to promote Windows.

    This was the fundamental flaw with Microsoft that Nadella changed. He quickly not just made Windows just another part of Microsoft’s business, to a great extent he actively devalued it.

    The fact that Ballmer invested in Azure, etc before Nadella would all be irrelevant because under Ballmer Azure would have remained a red headed step child to Windows, so it’s unlikely to have seen much success under him anyways. Same goes for pretty much everything else Microsoft is doing right now.

    replies(12): >>41978980 #>>41979581 #>>41979633 #>>41980308 #>>41982340 #>>41982669 #>>41983142 #>>41983652 #>>41985347 #>>41985738 #>>41988158 #>>41990754 #
    1. archerx ◴[29 Oct 24 05:23 UTC] No.41979633[source]▶
    Well since Nadella I have been using less Microsoft products and probably won’t be using Windows anymore once my Windows 10 LTSC stops working.

    I keep hearing praise for Nadella but all he is doing is alienating a lot of customers with his terrible decisions.

    replies(6): >>41980038 #>>41982519 #>>41982757 #>>41982839 #>>41983044 #>>41986302 #
    2. juped ◴[29 Oct 24 06:35 UTC] No.41980038[source]▶
    Ballmer would never have put honest-to-God advertisements in Windows Solitaire.
    replies(4): >>41981139 #>>41981459 #>>41983062 #>>41984754 #
    3. rightbyte ◴[29 Oct 24 09:07 UTC] No.41981139[source]▶
    I always had the feeling MS was squeezing competitors and software vendors, not users directly.

    The user hostility have made me move me to Linux systems.

    4. spacechild1 ◴[29 Oct 24 09:36 UTC] No.41981459[source]▶
    Let alone ads in the start menu!
    replies(2): >>41982098 #>>41982350 #
    5. DaiPlusPlus ◴[29 Oct 24 10:22 UTC] No.41982098{3}[source]▶
    To be fair, Windows 98 came with almost-ads in the stock Active Desktop wallpaper - and promos for AOL/CompuServ/Prodigy.
    replies(1): >>41983047 #
    6. 1980phipsi ◴[29 Oct 24 10:46 UTC] No.41982350{3}[source]▶
    Or screw up search on the start menu
    7. rowanG077 ◴[29 Oct 24 11:01 UTC] No.41982519[source]▶
    This is true for me as well. I do have a VR gaming machine which I don't think will linuxify soon but I would if I could. Nadella has grown Microsoft no doubt. But in the process has trashed Windows. One of the most valuable pieces of software. I wouldn't be surprised this will bite them in the long run a lot.
    replies(1): >>41982942 #
    8. madisp ◴[29 Oct 24 11:27 UTC] No.41982757[source]▶
    With GitHub, TypeScript and VS code I'm probably using more Microsoft products than before.
    replies(3): >>41982812 #>>41982981 #>>41983030 #
    9. rbanffy ◴[29 Oct 24 11:36 UTC] No.41982812[source]▶
    Of those three, the only one that drives revenue to MS is GitHub.
    replies(2): >>41982970 #>>41983118 #
    10. StableAlkyne ◴[29 Oct 24 11:39 UTC] No.41982839[source]▶
    > he is doing is alienating a lot of customers with his terrible decisions

    Windows doesn't even make up 1/5 of their income, and in contrast a bit over half of their income is Office and Cloud*

    The real money is in enterprise IT and cloud services. The average consumer doesn't keep their prebuilt computer long enough to buy another version of the OS. They don't need to keep a niche within a minority (privacy-oriented customers who would buy an OS) happy with Windows to continue drowning in revenue.

    It seems like he has done a fantastic job, if the goal was to decouple their fortune from Windows.

    *Based on googling and a lazy reluctance to dig through their earnings calls

    replies(1): >>41983279 #
    11. globalise83 ◴[29 Oct 24 11:54 UTC] No.41982942[source]▶
    Our company is absolutely full of Microsoft products (all the Office 365 stuff, PowerBI, Azure, Microsoft SSO etc. etc.), yet most of our teams use Macbooks. Windows is no longer a necessity to work in a mostly-Microsoft environment, and that strategy is making Microsoft fabulous amounts of money.
    replies(5): >>41983029 #>>41983493 #>>41983840 #>>41985186 #>>41985902 #
    12. cjblomqvist ◴[29 Oct 24 11:58 UTC] No.41982970{3}[source]▶
    Not true, at least not according to MS themselves. MS have done several studies and adoption of these tools drive adoption of Azure. That's why MS invests in it.

    They've been quite clear about this. The one platform/OS was Windows. The new platform/OS is Azure/Cloud. It's almost like saying Google doesn't make any revenues from search, only from selling ads.

    13. raxxorraxor ◴[29 Oct 24 11:59 UTC] No.41982981[source]▶
    They bought it. If Microsoft had developed it, we would get something like sourcesafe (was that the name?).

    Sure, the investment was quite sensible, although I don't think they can change it for their ambitions too much.

    Microsofts conquest against open source was of course a wrong strategy of Balmer.

    replies(2): >>41983155 #>>41983913 #
    14. raxxorraxor ◴[29 Oct 24 12:06 UTC] No.41983029{3}[source]▶
    Tools like PowerBI are quite good, the data pipelines are amazing, but at the end of the chain Microsoft always makes mistakes so that something good like PowerBI will only remain an advanced Power Point version. If you go a bit deeper the platform is fairly locked down behind artificial restraints.

    Azure has good parts, auth with Microsoft is perfect for software in the office world and goes beyond the usual LDAP Active Directory. But on the other hand it is quite slow to a degree that it really affects productivity. The damage is probably in the billions/trillions for their many customers. That is the real price of office cloud versions.

    15. znpy ◴[29 Oct 24 12:06 UTC] No.41983030[source]▶
    > With GitHub, TypeScript and VS code I'm probably using more Microsoft products than before.

    cool, how much money have you paid to Microsoft to use those?

    Except for Github (which they bought, by the way) probably not much. And github has some serious competitors (Gitlab which is just great and to a lesser extent, bitbucket).

    replies(1): >>41992204 #
    16. ◴[29 Oct 24 12:08 UTC] No.41983044[source]▶
    17. znpy ◴[29 Oct 24 12:08 UTC] No.41983047{4}[source]▶
    AOL was stuff that people actually used however. It wasn't "random stuff".

    For many people in the 90ies it was like the brand "AOL" was a synonym of "internet".

    18. squarefoot ◴[29 Oct 24 12:10 UTC] No.41983062[source]▶
    As a 100% Linux user with good memories of that era (flying chair, Linux==cancer, etc.) I may be the best person here to actually defend Ballmer, having for sure no hidden interests in doing that. Everything changed in those years: Google was cool, Linux desktop almost non existent, cryptocurrency not even in the head of its creator, AI was a myth and the best voice recognition could offer was the hilarious "double the killer" demonstration [1]. How can we compare CEOs actions separated by two decades? Ballmer did what was perceived as useful for its company back then just as Nadella is doing that now. Perspectives have changed, hence companies and their CEOS had to adapt. I'm 100% sure that if Ballmer were MS CEO today, he would include advertisements as well, as today putting advertisements in every free corner of the known Universe is perceived as acceptable, if not necessary, which was not the case 20 years back.

    [1] context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX8oYoYy2Gc

    19. actionfromafar ◴[29 Oct 24 12:19 UTC] No.41983118{3}[source]▶
    VS Code is also low-key keeping Windows relevant as a developer OS. If something else came along which was truly very excellent but was only working well with Linux, and VS Code was not there to be the de-facto go-to solution for most new devs, it could eat away more of Windows marketshare.

    So I see VS Code as a slight moat, also in its promulgation of dotnet-isms. So I think VS Code drives some revenue Microsofts way in a pretty diffuse but real way.

    replies(2): >>41983225 #>>41983379 #
    20. tylerchilds ◴[29 Oct 24 12:24 UTC] No.41983155{3}[source]▶
    this is the funny thing about microsoft

    they are way better at buying and selling software than ideating and creating it.

    successful microsoft products are acquisitions.

    replies(3): >>41983462 #>>41984041 #>>41984378 #
    21. KptMarchewa ◴[29 Oct 24 12:34 UTC] No.41983225{4}[source]▶
    I'm not sure how it's improving Windows relevancy, second most popular IDE group - Jetbrains ones - are on Windows too.
    replies(2): >>41983433 #>>41983759 #
    22. _thisdot ◴[29 Oct 24 12:43 UTC] No.41983279[source]▶
    It's a mystery to me why they haven't made Windows free yet. Surely they make much more money from users using Windows than buying Windows
    replies(3): >>41983411 #>>41983450 #>>41983464 #
    23. fakedang ◴[29 Oct 24 12:56 UTC] No.41983379{4}[source]▶
    How is VS Code a moat when it's platform agnostic? Plus the developer market is just a fraction of the overall market.

    MS Office is the real moat, as is Windows XP/7. Everyone use MS Office because Google Slides/Docs/Sheets is a silly contender to the MS Office suite. Windows XP/7 because that's what a huge percent of the human population using computers grew up on today, so they're most familiar with it. And let's be honest, that's not going away, even as MS enshittifies Windows 11, simply because no Linux build can apparently mirror the Windows XP/7 UI (for some reason, not even Mint) while Apple is hell-bent on doing its own thing on the sidelines.

    The day MS breaks Office suite is the day Microsoft goes down, but that's unlikely because the current crop of devs at MS don't even know how to get started. Microsoft could literally not do anything and still make tons in revenue.

    replies(1): >>41983999 #
    24. saghm ◴[29 Oct 24 13:00 UTC] No.41983411{3}[source]▶
    It basically already is, at least for consumers. You can download an .iso of whatever the latest Windows version is and install it, and although it will prompt you to put in a product key, nothing stops you from continuing to use it if you don't. You can't customize certain cosmetic settings, and there's a small watermark in the bottom left corner, but it's hard to imagine that it being fully functional otherwise is an oversight rather than something they're fine with. The only people who will go through the effort to install it like that and keep using it are the ones who are least likely to pay for it.
    replies(1): >>41984460 #
    25. actionfromafar ◴[29 Oct 24 13:02 UTC] No.41983433{5}[source]▶
    That's why I wrote slight. VS Code is more of a backstop to make sure developing on Windows doesn't suck. Don't let Windows fall behind kind of thing. Every cross platform thing is biggest on Windows by default because Windows is the biggest platform.
    26. hiatus ◴[29 Oct 24 13:05 UTC] No.41983450{3}[source]▶
    It comes preinstalled on most computers. The consumers don't pay, OEMs do. And they'll continue to pay because most people don't want an OS-less machine.
    27. meekins ◴[29 Oct 24 13:06 UTC] No.41983462{4}[source]▶
    Same story with Azure. All the good services are acquisitions, rest is low quality feature catch-up with AWS augmented by a terrible IAM system.
    28. gtirloni ◴[29 Oct 24 13:06 UTC] No.41983464{3}[source]▶
    Only PC enthusiasts buy Windows. 99% of the population gets it bundled with their computers and who knows how much MS is charging those OEMs. Probably pennies.

    Windows already has a de facto monopoly in desktop OS. They don't need to be nicer and give it for free to get more market share. They have all market share they every will.

    29. gtirloni ◴[29 Oct 24 13:10 UTC] No.41983493{3}[source]▶
    > yet most of our teams use Macbooks.

    Exactly this. Today I can switch from Linux to macOS to Windows and 99% of what the average users does can be done in the browser. Worse, in a smartphone.

    So it was very smart of Microsoft to realize Windows was going to stop being a hard requirement for most use cases.

    replies(1): >>41988391 #
    30. makeitdouble ◴[29 Oct 24 13:42 UTC] No.41983759{5}[source]▶
    VSCode Server and other remote dev servers are a big deal. Before we had to sync or mount a remote partition to manage the gap between Windows and the *nix server. I remember just plain using vim over ssh to avoid the hassle.

    That pain existed under macos and linux as well, but to such a lower extent as you could do so much more locally.

    While Jetbrains does it too, VSCode being strong guarantees it stays a viable path in the future.

    31. cameronh90 ◴[29 Oct 24 13:51 UTC] No.41983840{3}[source]▶
    Indeed. Conversely, Apple are the ones now forcing you to buy into their walled garden if you want to support users on their devices.

    We are a mostly Windows+Linux shop, but we need Macs to build and test iPhone apps, investigate issues with Safari on iOS, do certain iPhone support tasks, etc.

    32. sausagefeet ◴[29 Oct 24 13:59 UTC] No.41983913{3}[source]▶
    > SourceSafe was originally created by a North Carolina company called One Tree Software.
    replies(1): >>41990463 #
    33. rightbyte ◴[29 Oct 24 14:09 UTC] No.41983999{5}[source]▶
    > And let's be honest, that's not going away, even as MS enshittifies Windows 11, simply because no Linux build can apparently mirror the Windows XP/7 UI

    Windows 10/11 does a really bad job at emulating XP/7 UI. It is about as foreign to XP users as Debian or whatever.

    I made a XP VM the other month to run some insane software I had to run at work.

    I felt so much at home. It was so nice. Everything was awesome. The control panel was awesome. The distinct buttons were awesome. The start menu was awesome. The 'My computer' at desktop root was awesome.

    All in muscle memory, still.

    Then I am back out to 10 and can't figure out where my app shortcuts are without knowing their name or what of the 3 or 4 different control panels I am supposed to use.

    replies(1): >>41996800 #
    34. benrutter ◴[29 Oct 24 14:14 UTC] No.41984041{4}[source]▶
    I agree but I'm not sure it's just microsoft- meta's instagram, whatsapp and quest are all acquisitions of already sucessful products. Oracle are similar.

    I think, up to a point, and especially in the US where antitrust is pretty lax, it's a very safe investment to just buy other already sucessful companies.

    replies(1): >>41985403 #
    35. Tostino ◴[29 Oct 24 14:48 UTC] No.41984378{4}[source]▶
    Hell, even Sql Server wasn't originally developed by Microsoft. They have taken it a long way since though.
    36. nilamo ◴[29 Oct 24 14:55 UTC] No.41984460{4}[source]▶
    This is true: my gaming PC had that watermark for nearly 10 years. You can't change the wallpaper, remote desktop doesn't work, but that's the only downside to not paying for windows (and using Microsoft's free iso, instead of pirating a key).

    It's quite clear to anyone who's tried it (at least since Win10), that Microsoft does not care at all if you pay for Windows.

    37. 486sx33 ◴[29 Oct 24 15:19 UTC] No.41984754[source]▶
    Exactly
    38. fluoridation ◴[29 Oct 24 15:40 UTC] No.41985186{3}[source]▶
    Sorry, but how is that a response to what the GP said? It was not necessary to keep making Windows worse and worse to decouple it from other MS products.
    39. tylerchilds ◴[29 Oct 24 15:50 UTC] No.41985403{5}[source]▶
    The most glaring example in recent memory would be the amazon monopoly and the evidence i submit is diapers.com

    with enough money, you can fund your investments to strategically take down every mom and pop.

    amazon can’t take on every consumer vertical simultaneously, but they used their funds to drive diapers.com into the red, because as a parent you’re scrwed either way and comparing food to diapers, will buy the cheaper diapers instead of the cheaper food.

    amazon wanted diapers.com

    diapers.com said, we’re good this isn’t a billion dollar enterprise, but it pays the bills.

    amazon bought it after making sure they couldn’t actually use it to pay the bills.

    40. rowanG077 ◴[29 Oct 24 16:19 UTC] No.41985902{3}[source]▶
    So you agree or disagree with me? I'm not sure how this is a response to my comment?
    41. codegeek ◴[29 Oct 24 16:43 UTC] No.41986302[source]▶
    Since Nadella took over, Microsoft stock has gone up from $30 to $400 with a market value of over $3T. Satya understood that for MS to compete, they have to get out of the "Windows Only" mentality. For example, .NET Core was a huge thing when it finally came out. I don't think that he has made any terrible decisions for the company. May be for some users like you, sure. But not for the company overall.
    42. red-iron-pine ◴[29 Oct 24 19:27 UTC] No.41988391{4}[source]▶
    honestly that was the case about a decade ago. small / boutique MSP I was at cut costs by buying everyone white-label laptops, since one of the manufacturers was a client in LA and SF.

    anyone who really wanted a windows license could get one, but most of the staff used Unbutu, with some AD and other stuff on the backend

    43. meiraleal ◴[29 Oct 24 23:22 UTC] No.41990463{4}[source]▶
    Visual SourceSafe was Microsoft's source control software, terrible by the way.
    44. linhns ◴[30 Oct 24 05:50 UTC] No.41992204{3}[source]▶
    GitHub is still a lot better than GitLab. Nice CLI, simple user interface that's not a pain in the eye like what GitLab has.
    45. fakedang ◴[30 Oct 24 16:12 UTC] No.41996800{6}[source]▶
    Now you just gave me the itch to learn how to make a Windows XP VM.