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Does Ballmer Need To Go?
Pickens notes a TechCrunch analysis wondering — after Windows Vista and the failed Yahoo bid — whether Steve Ballmer's days at Microsoft are numbered. "Ballmer has been the big driver behind [the Yahoo] deal at Microsoft — some would say to the point of obsession. After the disaster that has been Windows Vista, Ballmer may have realized he needed to redeem himself in the eyes of Microsoft's board. And the 'transformative' deal with Yahoo was the way he was going to do it... If Microsoft's board loses patience with him, it might have to ask Bill Gates to temporarily come back as CEO until it finds a replacement. After all, Ballmer has already made a strong and convincing case for why Microsoft needs Yahoo to make its online and advertising strategy work. It's not clear whether Microsoft can achieve its objectives on its own or through other acquisitions. Maybe Ballmer thinks he can still do the deal by making Yahoo's stock price collapse and come back with a hostile offer."
The SlashDot Borg Icon for Microsoft needs to be Ballmer not Gates.
In Microsoft there are two sets of crowds, the Gates set and the Ballmer set.
The Gates set is more apt to give stuff to users, do things the right way, and has been the underpinnings of things MS has gotten right or had done right by the IT world as a whole. They tend to take what they do seriously, have pride in Microsoft and want it to continue to succeed for the right reasons, etc.
The Ballmer group are the business minded, make a buck, and screw you type of people. They step on each other, screw over other projects if it gains them something, and could give a crap about the IT world or even Microsoft itself in the long run.
When you see the 4 versions of Vista, this was the result of the Ballmer crowd and OEMs wanting a dirt cheap version. The Gates crowd kept NT as two roles, Desktop and Server, but sadly the Ballmer nuts won that war cause they thought it would make MS an extra buck.
Gates = technology and empowering.
Ballmer = dominance and money.
Sadly Gates assumes that because most businesses think like Ballmer that Ballmer is doing the right thing, when Microsoft could be structured more like Gate's foundation and not only help the IT world more, but be just as profitable.
I would love to see Ballmer retire and the idiots that think like him go as well.
I left at the peak. Not just luck of course. Also not just smelling the coffee. It was a feedback effect. By leaving, someone not quite as talented took my place. And soon more people decided it was time to leave. Of course, it didnt just happen to me, but I really do feel if I had stayed things could have been different. Its just that, well, too many parasites and glommed on and it just wasn't worth fighting them anymore.
While I think Ballmer is certainly responsible, the problems really started much earlier. I blame Melinda for taking the edge off Bill, seriouly, he was a changed man after he got married. Balmer picked up the slack and quite frankly, hes an overbearing personality with no technical knowledge.
One of my heroes, Chris Peters had said that in order to have a successful product, you must reduce all dependencies. After he left, Ballmer changed the strategy: he actually told everyone to increase their dependencies on other teams. I think he must have been influenced by some of those self-help gurus who talk about the stages of maturity (dependence,independence, inter-dependence) and misapplied the lessons. Whatever it was, working at MS became a real chore and jerks, megalomaniacs and scammers began get power and the BS built up.
I doubt MS can ever recover from this period, its stock will never rise significantly again.