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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

(danluu.com)
371 points greggyb | 1 comments | 28 Oct 24 21:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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adabyron ◴[29 Oct 24 01:58 UTC] No.41978615[source]▶
What Dan doesn't mention is that Steve was given the reins to a sinking ship if I recall.

The US Govt was just finishing it's trial on Microsoft & was watching them closely.

Tech bubble just burst.

On day 1 of the transition after Steve, the stock jumped like crazy & continued that momentum. The stock was, as Dan mentions, at an unfairly low p/e ratio too.

Idk if Steve was great but seems he was given the role of transition CEO. Plus did Bill ever really leave?

It'll be interesting to see how Satya finishes his career & the first few years after. Microsoft was making really good software the first few years after Satya took over & a lot of people were wanting to work there. Since Covid though, their software quality & updates have crashed imo.

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hilux ◴[29 Oct 24 02:37 UTC] No.41978814[source]▶
> On day 1 of the transition after Steve, the stock jumped like crazy & continued that momentum.

Many people would interpret that as "investors had no faith in Steve Ballmer and were delighted to see his back." Do you have a different interpretation?

Also, you seem to be implying that the trial was some external event, and not directly the fault of Bill and Steve. That is not how most people felt at the time.

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1. adabyron ◴[29 Oct 24 13:31 UTC] No.41983677[source]▶
> Many people would interpret that as "investors had no faith in Steve Ballmer and were delighted to see his back." Do you have a different interpretation?

You're 100% right. Starbucks just did something similar. I personally don't believe these jumps are warranted until the new CEO proves their ability to change the ship. It would be really interesting to hear from Microsoft insiders what changes were being made before the CEO changeover & what ones were heavily done by Satya.

> Also, you seem to be implying that the trial was some external event, and not directly the fault of Bill and Steve. That is not how most people felt at the time.

While many people may have felt they were being very anti-competitive at the time, the same standard has not been held to other companies or Microsoft much over the past 20 years in the United States.