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Microsoft's Lost Decade
theodp writes "Newsweek's Daniel Lyons (that's Fake Steve to you) explains why Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates, arguing that what most hurt Microsoft was BillG's decision to step down as CEO in January 2000: 'Gates was a software geek. He understood technology. Ballmer is a business guy.' And the problem with putting non-techies in charge of tech companies, concludes Lyons, is that they have blind spots. So while Microsoft's revenues nearly tripled from $23B to $58B on Ballmer's watch, says Lyons, the company became bureaucratic and lumbering, slowing down while the rest of the world — including Google, Apple and Amazon — sped up."
Even if that was true, he understood what other geeks needed. Plain business men probably aren't going to understand that.
And if you're ever read some book by Bill Gates, you'd notice he does have quite (interesting, I might add) ideas. Not just with OS and such, but with technology general and how to combine it with everyday life.
This says a lot more about Steve Balmer's competence than Bill Gate's geekness. A far as I know Steve Jobs is no geek, but apparently Apple's relevance is affected by him being there.
It may be 7 digits, but at least it's a semiprime
Plus which, it doesn't help that Ballmer is a flaming sociopath who should be on medication not running a multi-billion dollar corporation.
I always thought that was required from *all* CEO's of multi-billion dollar corporations.
Also like how Wikipedia article tells on his early life,
One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.[15]
At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language.
Gates wrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly female students.
That gotta give some hacker and geekiness points ;)
So Bill Gates studied the source code and benefitted from having done so? I wonder if he appreciates that he'd have been unable to do this if everyone operated the way Microsoft does.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Oh come on how do you write a 4k BASIC interpreter and editor in assembly and not "know technology"?
I don't care how buggy Altair BASIC was, Bill Gates knew what he was doing back then.
I have to disagree that it's about a tech-oriented CEO. MS's problem is that they are good at leveraging dominance of one market to conquer another. They are bundlers and package-oriented wheeler-dealers. However, the internet relies on open standards to function, and MS simply hasn't found out how to work smoothly among open-standards. Their instinct is and has always been to to kill them off via manipulation, and their reputation surrounding standards has hampered them. They simply came to the end of the leveraging-of-proprietary rope. This would have happened with or without Gates.
They would have to almost completely change company personality to get out of their rut, much like IBM did when they decided that services, not hardware, were going to be their thing. But IBM had to have it's face shoved into the boiling calderon of death before it realized it had to start over. MS is still a ways from that point.
Table-ized A.I.
Regardless of how it got there, having a mass market platform to develop against surely made many projects feasible that would otherwise have cost too much for niche markets.
UNIX was handling that just fine before Microsoft came along. You also forget there were other perfectly viable user platforms until that point, like Amiga or the Mac, or for that matter even OS/2. Any benefit gained was lost in the terrible issues we have resulting from a security monoculture.
Java is a tragic missed opportunity.
Given the number of jobs and active server side development going on, and the fact that Android is based atop it, and the fact that until now mobile programming such as it was was J2ME, and the fact that Java is in the Blu-Ray menuing system... I'm almost afraid to see what an un-missed opportunity looks like (apologies to Strunk & White for the numerous "fact that").
Buying up experts and stuffing them into R&D is always hit and miss. Generally you'll take a lot of misses to get the one big hit though. It takes time and even with the recession Microsoft is still spending over 9 billion on R&D this year..
The ultimate Ivory Tower, that doubles as a dungeon - despite all that money spent they have very little usable output to point to compared to Google or Apple or just about any other company that does R&D. It's more a place to try and keep smart people AWAY from other companies than it is a productive force.
I can honestly say that I don't think anyone cared much that Microsoft was backing HD-DVD.
It's not about you or I caring. It was all about Microsoft financially backing the format, and the companies that would have leapt from the sinking ship staying about because Microsoft was still there. It's a shame they didn't do further study on the fates of other Microsoft partners or many billions might have been saved (not that I shed any tears for the movie studios)...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As a long time MS employee I can say that what the article says is only partially true. Because Ballmer is no businessman either.
He would rather save a dollar than earn 10. He is so focused on reducing costs that he leaves billions in the table to save millions.
His management style could make sense in a company whose main problem is low margins, but when you have >50% operating margins and your only threats come from your competitors being able to outinnovate you (in many cases, simply through investing more, such as in mobile), then focusing on cost is not only absurd, it is irresponsible. If it wasn't his money as well I would claim he's a crook. Since it is, he's just a jerk.