Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Steve Ballmer's Head On the Block?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the if-I-go-there-will-be-trouble dept.

mix77 writes "Influential hedge fund manager David Einhorn has called for Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to step down, saying the world's largest software company's long-time leader is stuck in the past."

49 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. Finally... by Bai+jie · · Score: 2

    we're talking about that damn elephant in the room.

    1. Re:Finally... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Geez, the guy ain't THAT out of shape.

    2. Re:Finally... by SimonTheSoundMan · · Score: 2

      Time to do an Apple and bring back Gates?

    3. Re:Finally... by Z00L00K · · Score: 2

      Maybe not physically - but his personality is in the elephant category.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    4. Re:Finally... by truthsearch · · Score: 2

      He wasn't much better.

      --
      Developers: We can use your help.
    5. Re:Finally... by The+Grim+Reefer2 · · Score: 2

      Maybe not physically - but his personality is in the elephant category.

      Please stop insulting elephants.

    6. Re:Finally... by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'd really rather that they keep him indefinitely. He's doing an excellent job of running the company into the ground.

      --
      Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
    7. Re:Finally... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The most successful IT CEO in history "not much better." Interesting.

    8. Re:Finally... by Elbowgeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem with Ballmer is that he's a strictly corporate type, with no real vision of his own. All of his decisions are informed by corporate thinking, which means he looks at already established and emerging markets and reacts to them. Unfortunately, by the time MS has created a product in reaction to the market the market is already dominated by someone else and/or the public rejects the MS product due to the perception of MS being uncool.

      MS has had very little forward-thinking tech make it to the mainstream in the past 20 years considering the size and and intellectual resources at its disposal, and I believe this is what Einhorn is addressing. What MS needs is a leader who can leverage the best and brightest in the company and allow the best ideas (and there's a lot of great ideas floating around in their labs) to see daylight and be marketed properly.

      --
      Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
    9. Re:Finally... by rudy_wayne · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The problem with Ballmer is that he's a strictly corporate type, with no real vision of his own. All of his decisions are informed by corporate thinking, which means he looks at already established and emerging markets and reacts to them. Unfortunately, by the time MS has created a product in reaction to the market the market is already dominated by someone else and/or the public rejects the MS product due to the perception of MS being uncool.

      MS has had very little forward-thinking tech make it to the mainstream in the past 20 years considering the size and and intellectual resources at its disposal, and I believe this is what Einhorn is addressing. What MS needs is a leader who can leverage the best and brightest in the company and allow the best ideas (and there's a lot of great ideas floating around in their labs) to see daylight and be marketed properly.

      The problem is not a lack of vision -- the problem is a lack of a strong competent leader.

      For example, a group within Microsoft developed a tablet before Apple came out with the iPad. When the head of the division went to Ballmer for funding to bring the product to market Ballmer killed it. Why? Because the tablet ran a version of Windows and Microsoft's Windows group complained that the tablet group was infringing on "their territory". It's this type of thinking and management incompetence that has caused Microsoft's problems.

    10. Re:Finally... by wisty · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem with Ballmer is that he's a strictly corporate type, with no real vision of his own. All of his decisions are informed by corporate thinking, which means he looks at already established and emerging markets and reacts to them.

      What the hell? That's all Microsoft has ever done. Copied DOS, copied Apple's copy of Xerox's work, copied Java, copied WordPerfect, copied that spreadsheet app ...

      Their only problem was, they stopped copying the right products, or copied them too late.

      Unfortunately, by the time MS has created a product in reaction to the market the market is already dominated by someone else and/or the public rejects the MS product due to the perception of MS being uncool.

      No, MS has a great image. Not amongst techies, but that's nothing new. Microsoft is seen as great by most people in education, small business, big business, and government. Bing didn't suffer for being "uncool". It suffers for being 10 years late, and having no way to lock people in.

      MS has had very little forward-thinking tech make it to the mainstream in the past 20 years considering the size and and intellectual resources at its disposal, and I believe this is what Einhorn is addressing. What MS needs is a leader who can leverage the best and brightest in the company and allow the best ideas (and there's a lot of great ideas floating around in their labs) to see daylight and be marketed properly.

      MS has made a lot of innovative stuff. Problem is, it gets killed by cross-fighting from established products. How does it fit in with Windows and Office's plans? It doesn't? Bye bye.

      They should just copy stuff, and not worry about synergies with their other knock-offs. Their main synergy is their stable of excellent engineers, testers, and managers; and their brand name.

    11. Re:Finally... by somersault · · Score: 2

      FWIW, I still think he's a douche. It seems that Microsoft has actually improved since he left, and if you were in the top 10 richest people in the world, it wouldn't take much to do "incredible philanthropy efforts" while still having more money left over for yourself than you know what to do with.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    12. Re:Finally... by whereiswaldo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      From what little I've seen and heard, his biggest problem is his temper. I can imagine the crappy ideas he's railroaded through by yelling at people, instead of getting them through on merit.

    13. Re:Finally... by harperska · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why so many people fail to grasp the difference between "first to do X" and "first to do X well" I will never understand. Yes, they innovate by taking concepts that others have thought of (tables, mp3 players, etc.) and merge them with a true forward-thinking vision to make something that people want.

    14. Re:Finally... by realityimpaired · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, most of what Apple has brought to market with a little i in front of it is their own locked down version of something somebody else has invented.

      Creative beat Apple to market with the media player, Sandisk had some really nice offerings in the early days as well that easily competed with the early iPods. Palm beat Apple to market with the smart phone. Microsoft beat Apple to market with the idea of a media-center PC (which they were copying from programs available in Linux).... the list goes on.

      Apple frankly sucks at innovation. They are reasonably good at improving something somebody else has already invented, but where they truly excel is at marketing. Microsoft is actually pretty good at improving other peoples' work as well, but they have a major image problem, and their marketing is basically non-existant except for the xbox. But neither company really succeeds at innovation despite the wealth of intellectual talent available to both companies.... most innovation is coming out of small shops, and the only behemoth of a company that really fosters innovation these days is Google.

    15. Re:Finally... by somersault · · Score: 2

      somebody with brains & imagination needs to step up to the plate and kick Apple's ass for a change...

      Google are already doing so with Android. Their business model isn't exactly sunshine and puppies, but they do make good products. But really it isn't any one tech company that is doing us good (though I'd give bonus points to Mozilla, Ubuntu and Google for their contributions in the 00s). Given a monopoly they would eventually screw us over out of laziness, or greed. The great thing is having everyone try to outdo each other.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    16. Re:Finally... by yarnosh · · Score: 2

      I think the timing of the tablet was also important. You needed smart phones to get people used to idea of touch devices being used more like general computing platforms. Before iOS and Android, tablets were just not seen as useful devices. Nobody could place them. They were marketed as laptop computers with no keyboard or mouse. Nobody wanted that. But a smart phone with a huge screen, on the other hand...

      This, of course, highlights Microsoft's failure in the mobile arena. They keep trying to cram a desktop experience into a mobile device. They just don't seem to get that mobile/touch devices are different.

    17. Re:Finally... by DWMorse · · Score: 2

      That puts him more on the Rhinoceros category then, right?

      --
      There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
    18. Re:Finally... by BrokenHalo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      but philanthropy and plutocratic excess are, equally, signals of money that isn't being invested in R&D or being left in customers' hands with lower prices...

      Although I have no particular fondness for Bill Gates, it's fair to say that his money is his own, and he is entitled to do whatever he pleases with it. Neither the corporation he founded, nor its shareholders have any claim on it, and he is under no obligation to ask for your opinion on the matter.

    19. Re:Finally... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      You should be so lucky. With Android for example it's possible to have a whole Debian install on your phone, so you can have your GUI and ignore it too. Meanwhile, when you just want to bring up the browser, POW!

      Linux distributions have been trying to make Linux easier to use forever. We've been demanding it all along. Now that some distributions are trying to make it actually happen everyone is screaming bloody murder.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    20. Re:Finally... by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Microsoft has been behind the pack consistently over the last twenty years. Instead of innovation, it had market clout. It nearly missed the boat on the Internet, and its solution was to repackage the Windows for Workgroups TCP/IP package into Chicago/Win95, making possibly the worst TCP/IP stack in the history of networking. It only overcame WordPerfect in the office world because WP stumbled badly over its Windows version. The same applies to Lotus (although rumors still float about that Lotus's failure were hardly all Lotus's fault). The browser war it won by giving away IE, but even with near-total dominance in the browser world for a decade, it still couldn't get its various iterations of MSN web presence to catch on, and in fact, basically let its browser team almost wither and die and did nothing. Yes, it had its dominance with Office-Exchange, and certainly I give it credit for Active Directory (although its not that innovative, just a variant of LDAP with some automated registry alteration built into), but look at Exchange, it's a fucking behemoth, massively overlarge and difficult to maintain.

      But the mobile/tablet world is killing it. It's so far behind the big players it really isn't worth mentioning. Apple and Google are kicking ass right left and centre. As to web presence, well, Google is still champion and Microsoft continues to flounder, which only adds to the disaster that it's facing in the home market. It still has its business/corporate market and there I suspect it will remain dominant, but now that smartphones, subnotebooks and tablets appear poised to gut a good chunk of the PC market (even Intel is figuring out it's got to start building chips here), Microsoft is about to lose a huge chunk of that linkage between PC, operating system and office software that has made it king since the 1980s.

      Microsoft needs new leadership badly. It needs someone willing to decouple its business and development divisions from Windows, to port Outlook to ARM-based operating systems, and not just move Windows into a market that it has little enough ability to penetrate. It has to admit that the way that it became supreme 25 years ago is gone, rather than just smacking its head against the same old wall.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    21. Re:Finally... by paimin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So, by your argument, Apple beat Palm solely based on superior marketing and not based on any innovation in the iPhone's design versus Palm's offerings at the time. This is completely and utterly false. The iPhone defined smartphone design NOT because of marketing but because the design was in fact extremely innovative. People like you look at feature lists and say "this one did it first" or "this one is better than that one". Where you fail is that design and engineering !== feature lists.

      --
      Facebook is the new AOL
    22. Re:Finally... by UnknowingFool · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If Apple's only real strength was marketing then they would have failed long ago. Apple's modus operandi since Jobs came back isn't rocket science. Take geek gadget. Polish and refine it so that average consumers don't need to refer to a manual to use it then sell as many as they can.

      Marketing isn't MS only problem. The Kin was a buggy dumb phone with smart phone prices. This was at the estimated cost of over a $1 billion before they killed it. The Zune was decent but was always behind the iPod and didn't offer many compelling reasons to switch. Again a few billion dollars down the drain. The Xbox has great market share but it has a long way to recover the billions it lost in the first years of its existence.

      MS still makes tons of profit on OS and Office. Their expansions into other markets have not been financially successful. Investors want growth.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    23. Re:Finally... by a_nonamiss · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You seem to really buy into the concept that the sole measure of success is how much money a person has in his or her bank account. It must be comforting to have such a narrow view of the world that a person's entire life can be reduced to one series of numbers that is greater than another series of numbers. Never mind that study after study has shown that money has virtually no effect (or even a negative effect) on stress and personal happiness. Also never mind the fact that $8.3 billion is more money than a single human could ever possibly spend on material goods in his or her lifetime. But $56 billion is more, so I guess Bill Gates is the winner!

      --
      -Arthur
      Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
    24. Re:Finally... by cpuh0g · · Score: 2

      Who gives a shit who had the idea first, that means nothing if you cant capitalize on it. The tech highway is littered with carcasses of shitty companies like Palm and Sandisk and Creative who had a good idea and had no idea how to market it to the masses and dominate the market. Love them or not, you have to give Jobs credit for having an amazing team of visionary designers and engineers who can take someones poorly implemented idea and turn it into gold.

      I dont care who first invented the hand-held mp3 player (I had a 128KB Creative RIO ), I care who makes the BEST one, and that happens to be Apple.

      Apple frankly does not "suck at innovation", thats narrow minded myopic thinking. They have revolutionized industrial design with their products over the past 10 years, you have to be blind or willfully ignorant not to recognize it. Their "closed" business model is orthogonal to the discussion. The fact is they are one of the only truly successful AND innovative companies and their growing market share and market capitalization speaks directly to that fact.

      You can hate the fact that their software and hardware isn't "open", but you cant deny they are well designed and often truly unique when compared to the other products on the market in terms of their physical design.

    25. Re:Finally... by MisterSquid · · Score: 2

      Creative beat Apple to market with the media player, Sandisk had some really nice offerings in the early days as well that easily competed with the early iPods. Palm beat Apple to market with the smart phone. Microsoft beat Apple to market with the idea of a media-center PC (which they were copying from programs available in Linux).... the list goes on.

      The problem with such thinking is that it views innovation in terms of gadgets and standalone products rather than as interfaces to digital media systems. Even disregarding your casual dismissal of innovation in interface design for the iPod and iPhone, the innovations of these i-devices include the way in which they integrate with applications and media storage and delivery systems in their resident OSes.

      Your mistake is the mistake of the mad-scientist inventor: you think a better lightbulb is what will capture the market and fail to realize that a lightbulb that can influence and respond to electrical production and distribution systems would be more likely to spur innovation and lead to market dominance.

      In the near future, I think people will also look back at the desktop wars which Microsoft decisively won in the early 1990s and realize that victory was a shallow one at best. Apple (and Linux to a lesser extent) swallowed Microsoft OSes whole by means of third-party virtualization technologies. This means that only Apple machines have a standardized commercial solution to running multiple versions of Windows in a single host OS. The same is not available for Windows because of the proprietary lockdown of OS X.

      The end result is that to run the most innovative browsers and software in a “standardized” UNIX environment, one must use Apple’s solution. Every other solution is partial. This fact allows one to reinterpret Microsoft’s obsessive pursuit and “successful” capture of the desktop as a failure to understand the real implications of the judicious use of proprietary lockdown. Where Apple uses intellectual property to protect things that differentiates their products, Microsoft uses intellectual property to dilute their product and force its distribution everywhere.

      Only time will tell which business strategy is stronger.

      --
      blog
    26. Re:Finally... by CharlyFoxtrot · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Jobs has headed 3 companies to success: Apple (2 different occasions), Next and Pixar. Gates on the other hand is a one-trick pony.

      --
      If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
    27. Re:Finally... by Old97 · · Score: 2

      Successful as a CEO is increasing the value of the company. Successful as an investor is increasing your personal net worth. Jobs is a more successful CEO. Gates was more successful at personal enrichment as an investor. To me it seems that Gates sees money as the marker of success while Jobs is more interested in "creating cool things".

      --
      Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
    28. Re:Finally... by guruevi · · Score: 2

      Successful in terms of bringing in large amounts of cash - probably if Apple doesn't surpass them in the next couple of years. Successful in terms of bringing in talent, new ideas, worthwhile products... not so much. Microsoft made it big because others made big mistakes themselves marketing products that were very good, stable and ahead of the curve but for such an immature market (in the '90's) overpriced (WordPerfect, between-Jobs Apple, BeOS, OS/2, Sun, SGI)

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    29. Re:Finally... by nohelix · · Score: 3, Informative

      Additionally, Bill and Melinda Gates are the second most-generous philanthropists in America (as of 2007 by Bloomberg ratings). He has been successfully married for 17 years and has 3 children. He is an honorary Knight. Jobs has an illegitimate child that he caused to be raised on welfare when he denied (then later acknowledged) paternity. He allowed his personal feelings to influence his business decisions when he banned all books from a publisher from Apple stores because the publisher had published an unauthorized biography of him. While his wife is now focused on non-profit and charity work, he is not noted to sit on any of the boards she serves on. I make no claim about their companies, but their lives outside their jobs are as different as night and day.

    30. Re:Finally... by AshtangiMan · · Score: 2

      I would argue that the success of the CEO is measured by the financial success of the company rather than the personal net worth for the CEO in question. You'll find plenty of wealthy CEOs whose companies went under leaving nothing for the employees and stockholders. Market cap might be a pretty good measure for financial success of a company.

    31. Re:Finally... by Grishnakh · · Score: 2

      Personal wealth is absolutely the wrong way to measure how a good a CEO is; the way to measure that is how they affected their company. Steve Jobs is probably the best CEO in that regard, as he took a company that was on the edge of ruin, and built it up to be more valuable than Microsoft is now. In that same time span, what has Ballmer done? MS has gone down in value in the past decade from what I've read. BillG wasn't much better; he built up MS a lot during the early years, but during the later years they just rode the tech bubble like everyone else (everyone except Apple, which was doing poorly until Jobs took over), and never improved after the bubble burst. So BillG got out and let his ugly buddy take over.

      Jobs is easily a much better CEO (though I hear he sucks to work for); the difference between him and Ballmer/Gates is that he doesn't charge nearly as much for his service. This is arguably a lot better too: instead of sucking money out of the company to inflate his own personal bank accounts, he leaves more money in the company's bank account to be used by it to improve products and pay employees.

    32. Re:Finally... by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2

      Innovative in ease of use and hardware design, perhaps, but even today there are things you could do on a PalmOS PDA that you still can't do on an iPhone (although the iPhone has had copy and paste and HTTP download for a while, good for them!). Running an alternate browser, a compiler/custom written app, port scanner or tethering client, for instance. I also used to have a proof-of-concept true multitasking app, although PalmOS only really supported "fast app switching with saved states" like iOS today.

      Technological progress! THE FUTURE IS NOW!

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  2. Soon, a chair found stuck into Einhorn's head by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 5, Funny

    Soon, a chair found stuck into Einhorn's head (dann, ein genauer Horn).

  3. Smells by Lord+Grey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From TFA (emphasis mine):

    Einhorn's Greenlight Capital hedge fund has been a recent buyer of Microsoft stock, which at under 10 times expected earnings is regarded by many as undervalued.

    So, this guy's company buys a bunch of Microsoft stock, then utters a (probably popular) opinion that the head of Microsoft should resign. Is Einhorn just pissed that the stock hasn't moved, or is he trying to manipulate the price through the media?

    --
    // Beyond Here Lie Dragons
    1. Re:Smells by truthsearch · · Score: 2

      His company is now a significant owner. He has the right to ask for such things. Nothing wrong with it at all.

      --
      Developers: We can use your help.
    2. Re:Smells by Phisbut · · Score: 2

      His company is now a significant owner. He has the right to ask for such things. Nothing wrong with it at all.

      From TFA :

      Greenlight currently holds about 9 million shares in Microsoft, or 0.11 percent of the company's outstanding shares, according to Thomson Reuters data.

      I'd hardly call 0.11% being a significant owner. Doesn't mean he's not allowed to voice his opinion though.

      --
      After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
      - The Tao of Programming
    3. Re:Smells by ShogunTux · · Score: 2

      Einhorn is Finkle, Finkle is Einhorn?

  4. I think we can all agree on the "head stuck" part. by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 3

    The only question is location...

    Ballmer seems to be following the Gates tradition of "massive amounts of technology" combined with a complete, utter, lack of imagination and inability to accurately anticipate technological trends. Hopefully, there's someone who can do the latter that isn't just an "I've discovered smartphones!" kind of guy.

    --
    Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
  5. has there ever been a situation by Presto+Vivace · · Score: 4, Insightful

    where a hedge fund manager made a change of management in a large publicly held company and that company got better?

  6. Can Every PLEASE Keep Quiet!!! by pandrijeczko · · Score: 3, Funny

    There's a whole bunch of really rich people who are about to rip into each other and I don't want to miss ANYTHING!

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  7. Re:Steve Ballmer's head on a pike by pandrijeczko · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think it would look better on a guppy.

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  8. Says The Guy who Bought a Share in the Mets? by gubers33 · · Score: 2

    I mean that show a smart and sound in investor. Let's buy a share in a team that is a money pit that will give me no say in the operations. He must really be in touch with the current times, because the Mets haven't made any money in years.

    --
    Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
  9. Re:I think we can all agree on the "head stuck" pa by steelfood · · Score: 2

    It's not "massive amounts of technology" so much as "shady business practices" that Gates is well known for. This has changed significantly over the past ten or fifteen years, partly due to the anti-trust ruling. Once that has expired, Microsoft can go back to throwing their weight around in the industry again. I don't know if Ballmer is the same level of business genius that Gates was. But he's certainly not moving the company in any other direction though.

    The lack of imagination and technological foresight part is otherwise fairly accurate. Individual employees might disagree, but this particular trait or the lack thereof comes out in management decisions.

    --
    "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
  10. The only thing you need to know by rudy_wayne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1. Bill Gates is Chairman of the Board of Directors

    2. Bill Gates is Microsoft's largest shareholder

    3. Steve Ballmer was Best Man at Bill Gates' wedding

    Unless Steve Ballmer gets hit by a bus, he isn't going anywhere.

  11. Laces out! by Shoten · · Score: 2

    Don't worry...soon, Steve will reveal that Einhorn is Finkle.

    --

    For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
  12. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  13. gambling by drb226 · · Score: 2

    An investor who put $100,000 into Microsoft stock 10 years ago would now have about $69,000 worth.

    Interesting. Anyone else feel like stocks are just glorified gambling? (Hint: the house always wins in the long run. Where do you think the now-missing $31k went?)

  14. Re: Steve Ballmer's Head On the Block? by cre_slash · · Score: 2

    Its a bit harsh to kill him, isn't it?