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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

(danluu.com)
371 points greggyb | 5 comments | 28 Oct 24 21:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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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.

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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.

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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.
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raxxorraxor ◴[29 Oct 24 11:59 UTC] No.41982981{3}[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.

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1. tylerchilds ◴[29 Oct 24 12:24 UTC] No.41983155{4}[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.

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2. meekins ◴[29 Oct 24 13:06 UTC] No.41983462[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.
3. benrutter ◴[29 Oct 24 14:14 UTC] No.41984041[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.

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4. Tostino ◴[29 Oct 24 14:48 UTC] No.41984378[source]▶
Hell, even Sql Server wasn't originally developed by Microsoft. They have taken it a long way since though.
5. tylerchilds ◴[29 Oct 24 15:50 UTC] No.41985403[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.